War at Commencement

Almost to a man, the orators of 1941's commencements talked about Adolf Hitler. Excerpts from last week's oratory:

Robert Maynard Hutchins (at University of Chicago): "When we talk about freedom, we usually mean freedom from something. . . . Freedom of the press is freedom from censorship. ... A free world is simply a world free from Hitler. But freedom must be something more than a vacant stare. . . . When we get political freedom, the important question remains: What shall we do with it?"

Charles S. Desmond (a judge of the New York Court of Appeals--at University of Buffalo): "Unhappy and unlucky are those who, for all their hate of national socialism, hope against hope to oppose our successive steps down the desperate road to war, who cannot bring themselves to believe that opposition to the evils of Naziism drives us, by logic and fate, straight to the battlefields."

Archibald MacLeish (at University of Pennsylvania): "Those who tell you that the destroying guns, the ruinous bombs, the fire, the misery, the indiscriminate death of the Fascist military action are a new, creative, irresistible historic force which you cannot oppose but only ride with as the rubbish rides the surf are victims prophesying with the tongues of victims."

Carl Sandburg (at University of North Carolina): "A famous aviator has quit flying and taken to talking. Thirteen years ago his picture was hung on college walls, a symbol of youth ready to risk and adventure for the sake of great achievement. Now all of a sudden that same daring aviator has begun to talk the language of comfort and safety first and of breakfast at home with mother."

Dixon Ryan Fox (president of Union College--at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute): "History will say that there were two appropriate times for us to enter this conflict--one in the autumn of 1939 . . . and the other in the summer of 1941, when it was seen to be absolutely necessary in order to avert a German peace."

Karl Taylor Compton (president of M.I.T.): "As compared with your predecessors ... in the past decade, you go out into a world where the issues are clearer and your course better defined. . . . Barring a miracle, it appears to me that we will become involved directly in this war, and that before very long. ... I personally believe that we ought to become involved, just as soon and in whatever way will most effectively join our forces to those of Britain. ..."

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