410 State Papers and Addresses

a few years before, with his "Beer Hall Putsch" in Munich, but he was not
considered a significant figure in international affairs of 1925.

On the domestic scene, the Country was just entering upon a period of
business expansion that was to witness vast corporate empires grow to fan-
tastic proportions, while people gayly threw their savings into the vortex of
Wall Street. America, it seemed, had come into its own at last, and its people
stood on the threshold of a golden age.

In the realm of ideology, Youth was in a state of revolt, but it was not
clear from what, or against whom. Certainly, it was not the revolt of Youth
fired with zeal for reform, seeking to throw off the shackles of injustice. It
almost seemed that the revolt was iconoclastic. Youth went about trying to
upset the beliefs that held their elders in bondage. They seemed to feel that
science had smashed the idols to which simpler people paid obeisance, and ex-
ulted in their own emancipation.

In their moments of serious discussion, they debated whether life in a
purely mechanistic universe was worthwhile, whether it had any great purpose
since the essence of spiritual belief seemed destroyed. Most Americans were
doing pretty well financially, however, and willing for the moment to confine
their intellectual activities to technical thinking without bothering too much
about ultimate values.

Merely to state these aspects of life twenty years ago is to emphasize
the contrast of today. The world scene has changed completely. The confidence
in an easy material future is gone. Abroad there is being waged a revolt
against civilization, a systematic destruction of cultural and humanistic values,
first through revolution and then through war and conquest. Humanity faces
a world in which the light of freedom has been snuffed out in almost all the
lands across the sea except those held by the fighting men of Britain.

No longer does irresponsibile cynicism or the flip assumption that life has
no purpose underlie the Nation's thinking.. The depression of the last decade,
and the war, have jolted us out of our smugness. The people have lately re-
awakened to the abiding importance of some of the values once so lightly tossed
aside. At last, our citizenry is alive to the necessity of making democracy
really work, of facing our home problems and solving them, and of making this
Country strong to resist any menaces from without.

Sometimes it is embarrassing for a member of the past generation to at-
tempt to advise the youth of today. It would hardly seem that the adults of to-
day have made a very good job of running the world themselves, what with war
and disruption, civil disorder, and political uncertainty on every hand

A few decades ago our generation was sitting where you are now and
listening to older men declaring that the future was ours. Those words become
very real when it is realized that the future they talked about has become the
living present. All that can be said is that the generations before you did their
best. The errors were errors in judgment, not in the application of false princi-
ples. For there are, and will ever be, certain fundamental truths by which
life is lived, upon which our way of life is founded.

First, there is honor. Let it be said with pride that there has been no