Address to Beginners

On the campuses, fall 1946 was football time (see SPORT) ; it was also a time for beginnings, and words designed--if not always destined--to stir students to their jobs, today & tomorrow. Last week, Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University published the opening address to entering students by Hopkins' president and famed geographer Isaiah Bowman, State Department specialist at Versailles, Dumbarton Oaks, San Francisco. Excerpts:

"Suddenly, admission to college has become recognized as a privilege involving keen competition. . . . For every one of you here there are several others outside the gate. They were close behind you in qualifications for college work. If you think of them as you should, you will be at peace with your conscience only if you make the best use of the special privilege you now enjoy and which was denied to them. . . .

"Distinctly you are not here, we hope, merely to gain the smartness required to beat other men. You don't need to go to college for that. In fact, you can learn that better outside college where the real specialists in acquisition are to be found. . . . We hope that you will think of your growing knowledge and skill always in relation to your duty to the community. It would be terribly lonesome business to know how to do something well only for the purpose of advancing a personal interest, to get ahead of someone else. . . ."

Two Systems. "You see peace on this campus and perhaps incline to think that war is something far off. Let me assure you that no place is far off today. All are near each other. Danger for one is danger for all. . . . What can you do about it?

"Soon, very soon, you may be required to do something about it. You may have to fight about it. Surely the issue should be clear to you if your life is at stake. The difficulties in the international field are not about votes in the Security Council or the disposition of Trieste or any of the things you see so frequently in the headlines. It is rather a choice between two systems, one democratic, the other totalitarian, one depending on the secret ballot, the other on secret police. Let no sophistry, no errors of government in our free society blind you to this distinction. Look at the whole balance sheet of America, not just a single detail, before you begin to disparage America. . . .

"In time you will become scientists or engineers or humanists or economists or doctors. . . . What we can do for you is of no lasting importance if we have not taught you that citizenship comes first today in our crowded world. . . . No man can enjoy the privileges of education and thereafter with a clear conscience break his contract with society. To respect that contract is to be mature, to strengthen it is to be a good citizen, to do more than your share under it is to be noble."

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