I'm sure you all must know the depth of my gratitude for this
honor you have done me. What you can't know is how great is
my feeling of unworthiness. For some 25 years I have nursed a
feeling of guilt about the degree given me here upon the occasion
of my own graduation. It was, I feel, more honorary than earned
and for all these years I have carefully refrained from referring to
myself as a "student" here. My very instinct is to mumble a
modest "thanks" and sit down, but that retreat is denied me.
Inherent in my invitation is the obligation to make some remarks
appropriate to this occasion which shall climax your years of
academic endeavor. I do not take this responsibility lightly.
Realizing there are many present who are better qualified to
perform this function, I have inquired right down to the start of
the Processional as to an appropriate theme.
There was a temptation of course to beg your favor by citing the
mistakes of my generation, dwelling on the awful site of the
world and suggesting that you would bring order out of chaos
and set things right. I'm not that pessimistic, however, and would
be less than honest and sincere if I chose such a course. With
your permission I would rather speak of something very close to
my heart. You members of the graduating class of 1957 are
today coming into your inheritance. You are taking your adult
places in a society unique in the history of man's tribal relations.
I would like to play the role of a "legal light" in the reading of
the will, and to discuss with you the terms and conditions of your
legacy.
Looming large in your inheritance is this country, this land
America, placed as it is between two great oceans. Those who
discovered and pioneered it had to have rare qualities of courage
and imagination—nor did these qualities stop there. Even the
modern-day immigrants have been possessed of courage beyond
that of their neighbors. The courage to tear up centuries-old
roots and leave their homelands, to come to this land where even
the language was strange. Such courage is part of our
inheritance, all of us spring from these special people and these
qualities have contributed to the make-up of the American
personality.
There are conditions to this "will" of which I speak. There are
terms the heirs must meet in order to qualify for the legacy. But,
I have never been able to believe that America is just a reward
for those of extra courage and resourcefulness. This is a land of
destiny and our forefathers found their way here by some Divine
system of selective service—gathered here to fulfill a mission—
to advance man a further step in his climb from the swamps.
Almost two centuries ago a group of disturbed men met in the
small Pennsylvania State House—they gathered to decide on a
course of action. Behind the locked and guarded doors they
debated for hours whether or not to sign the Declaration which
had been presented for their consideration. For hours the talk
was treason and its price—the headsman's axe, the gallows and
noose. The talk went on and decision was not forthcoming. Then,
Jefferson writes, a voice was heard coming from the balcony:
They may stretch our necks on all the gibbets in the land.
They may turn every tree into a gallows, every home into a
grave, and yet the words of that parchment can never die. They
may pour our blood on a thousand scaffolds and yet from every
drop that dyes the axe a new champion of freedom will spring
into birth. The words of this declaration will live long after our
bones are dust.
To the mechanic in his workshop they will speak hope; to
the slave in the mines, freedom; but to the coward rulers, these
words will speak in tones of warning they cannot help but hear.
Sign that parchment. Sign if the next moment the noose is
around your neck. Sign if the next minute this hall rings with the
clash of falling axes! Sign by all your hopes in life or death, not
only for yourselves but for all ages, for that parchment will be
the textbook of freedom—the bible of the rights of man forever.
Were my soul trembling on the verge of eternity, my hand
freezing in death, I would still implore you to remember this
truth—God has given America to be free.
As he finished, the speaker sank back in his seat exhausted.
Inspired by his eloquence the delegates rushed forward to sign
the Declaration of Independence. When they turned to thank the
speaker for his timely words he couldn't be found and to this day
no one knows who he was or how he entered or left the guarded
room.
Here was the first challenge to the people of this new land, the
charging of this nation with a responsibility to all mankind. And
down through the years with but few lapses the people of
America have fulfilled their destiny.
Almost a century and a half after that day in Philadelphia, this
nation entered a great world conflict in Europe. Volumes of
cynical words have been written about that war and our part in
it. Our motives have been questioned and there has been talk of
ulterior motives in high places, of world markets and balance of
power. But all the words of all the cynics cannot erase the fact
that millions of Americans sacrificed, fought and many died in
the sincere and selfless belief that they were making the world
safe for democracy and advancing the cause of freedom for all
men.
A quarter of a century later America went into World War
II, and never in the history of man had the issues of right and
wrong been so clearly defined, so much so that it makes one
question how anyone could have remained neutral. And again in
the greatest mass undertaking the world has ever seen, America
fulfilled her destiny.
A short time after that war was concluded a plane was winging
its way across the Pacific Ocean. It contained dignitaries of the
Philippines and of our own government. Landing at a naval
installation a short distance from Manila, the plane was held
there while those people listened by radio to the first detonation
of an experimental atomic weapon at the Bikini Atoll. Then the
plane took to the air again and soon landed in Manila. There
these people, together with our vice president, senators, generals
and admirals, met with 250,000 Philippines in the Grand
Concourse, where they watched the American flag come down
and the flag of the Philippine independence take its place.
I was privileged to sit in an auditorium one night and hear one of
the passengers on that plane, a great man of the Philippines,
describe this scene, General Carlos Romulo, whose father was
killed by American soldiers in the Philippine insurrection. As a
boy, the General was taught to be a guerrilla and to fight
Americans and hate them. But I saw him, with tears in his eyes,
tell us how he turned to his wife that day in Manila and said, a
hundred years from now will our children's children learn in their
schoolrooms that on this day an atomic weapon was detonated
for the first time on a Pacific Island, or will they learn that on
another Pacific Island a great and powerful nation, which had
bled the flower of its youth into the sands of the island's beaches
reconquering them from a savage enemy, had on this day turned
to the people of that island and for the first time in the history of
man's relationship to man had said, 'Here, we've taken your
country back for you. It's yours.” As we heard him, I think most
of us realized once again the magnitude of the challenge of our
destiny, that here indeed is "the last best hope of man on earth."
And now today we find ourselves involved in another struggle—
this time called a cold war. This cold war between great
sovereign nations isn't really a new struggle at all. It is the oldest
struggle of human kind, as old as man himself. This is a simple
struggle between those of us who believe that rnan has the
dignity and sacred right and the ability to choose and shape his
own destiny and those who do not so believe. This irreconcilable
conflict is between those who believe in the sanctity of individual
freedom and those who believe in the supremacy of the state.
In a phase of this struggle not widely known, some of us came
toe to toe with this enemy—this evil force in our own community
in Hollywood, and make no mistake about it, this is an evil force.
Don't be deceived because you are not hearing the sound of
gunfire, because even so you are fighting for your lives. And
you're fighting against the best organized and the most capable
enemy of freedom and of right and decency that has ever been
abroad in the world. Some years ago, back in the thirties, a man
who was apparently just a technician came to Hollywood to take
a job in our industry, an industry whose commerce is in tinsel
and colored lights and make-believe. He went to work in the
studios, and there were few to know he came to our town on
direct orders from the Kremlin. When he quietly left our town a
few years later the cells had been formed and planted in virtually
all of our organizations, our guilds and unions. The framework
for the Communist front organizations had been established.
It was some time later, under the guise of a jurisdictional strike
involving a dispute between two unions, that we saw war come
to Hollywood. Suddenly there were 5,000 tin-hatted, club-
carrying pickets outside the studio gates. We saw some of our
people caught by these hired henchmen; we saw them open car
doors and put their arms across them and break them until they
hung straight down the side of the car, and then these tin-hatted
men would send our people on into the studio. We saw our so-
called glamour girls, who certainly had to be conscious of what a
scar on the face or a broken nose could mean careerwise going
through those picket lines day after day without complaint. Nor
did they falter when they found the bus which they used for
transportation to and from work in flames from a bomb that had
been thrown into it just before their arrival. Two blocks from the
studio everyone would get down on hands and knees on the floor
to avoid the bricks and stones coming through the windows. And
the 5,000 pickets out there in their tin hats weren't even motion
picture workers. They were maritime workers from the
waterfront—members of Mr. Harry Bridges' union.
We won our fight in Hollywood—cleared them out after seven
long months in which even homes were broken, months in which
many of us carried arms that were granted us by the police, and
in which policemen lived in our homes, guarding our children at
night. And what of the quiet film technician who had left our
town before the fighting started? Well, in 1951 he turned up on
the Monterey Peninsula where he was involved in a union price-
fixing conspiracy. Two years ago he appeared on the New York
waterfront where he was Harry Bridges' right hand man in an
attempt to establish a liaison between the New York and West
Coast waterfront workers. And a few months ago he was
mentioned in the speech of a U.S. Congresswoman who was
thanking him for his help in framing labor legislation. He is a
registered lobbyist in Washington for Harry Bridges.
Now that the first flush of victory is over—we in Hollywood
find ourselves blessed with a newly developed social awareness.
We have allowed ourselves to become a sort of a village idiot on
the fringe of the industrial scene—fair game for any demagogue
or bigot who wants to stand up in the pulpit or platform and
attack us. We are also fair game for those people, well-meaning
though they may be, who believe that the answer to the world's
ills is more government and more restraint and more
regimentation. Suddenly we find that we are a group of second
class citizens subject to discriminatory taxation, government
interference and harassment.
This harassment reaches its peak, of course, in censorship. Here
in this great land of the free exchange of ideas our section of the
communications industry is subjected to political censorship in
more than 200 cities and 11 states and it's spreading every day.
But are we the only victims of these restraints and restrictions on
our personal freedom? Is censorship really a restriction on us
who already have a voluntary censorship code of good taste, or
is this an invasion of your freedom? Isn't this the case of a few of
your neighbors taking it upon themselves the right to tell you
what you are capable of seeing and hearing on a motion picture
screen?
So we worry a little about the class of '57, we who are older and
have known another day. We worry that perhaps someday you
might not resist as strongly as we would if someone decides to
tell you what you can read in a newspaper, or hear on the radio,
or hear from a speaker's platform, or what you can say or what
you can think. So there are terrns and conditions to the will, and
one of the terms is your own eternal vigilance guarding against
restrictions on our American freedom.
You today are smarter than we were. You are better educated
and better informed than we were twenty-five years ago. And
that is part of your heritage. You enjoy these added benefits
because, more than 100 years ago near this very spot, a man
plunged an ax into a tree and said, “here we will build a school
for our children." And for over 100 years people have
contributed to the endowment and support of this college. Their
contributions were of the utmost in generosity because they
could never know the handclasp of gratitude in return for their
contributions. Their gifts were to generations yet unborn.
Many of us here share this heritage with you, and some of us
shared it under different circumstances. I recall my own days on
this campus in the depths of the depression. Even with study and
reading I don't think you can quite understand what it was like to
live in an America where the Illinois National Guard, with fixed
bayonets, paraded down Michigan Avenue in Chicago as a
warning to the more than half million unemployed men who slept
every night in alleys and doorways under newspapers. On this
campus many of us came who brought not one cent to help this
school and pay for our education. The college, of course, had
suffered and lost much of its endowment in the stock crash, had
seen its revenue not only from endowment but from gifts
curtailed because of the great financial chaos. But we heard none
of that. We attended a college that made it possible for us to
attend regardless of our lack of means, that created jobs for us,
so that we could eat and sleep, and that allowed us to defer our
tuition and trusted that they could get paid some day long after
we had gone. And the professors, God bless them, on this
campus, the most dedicated group of men and women whom I
have ever known, went long months without drawing any pay.
Sometimes the college, with a donation of a little money or
produce from a farm, would buy groceries and dole them out to
the teachers to at least try and provide them with food. We know
something of your heritage, but even if we had been able to pay
as many of you have paid for your education we, and you, must
realize that the total price paid by any student of this college is
far less than it costs this college to educate you. This is true not
only of Eureka, but of the hundreds of schools and universities
across the land.
Now today as you prepare to leave your Alma Mater, you go
into a world in which, due to our carelessness and apathy, a
great many of our freedoms have been lost. It isn't that an
outside enemy has taken them. It's just that there is something
inherent in government which makes it, when it isn't controlled,
continue to grow. So today for every seven of us sitting here in
this lovely outdoor theater, there is one public servant, and 31
cents of every dollar earned in America goes in taxes. To
support the multitudinous and gigantic functions of government,
taxation is levied which tends to dry up the very sources of
contributions and donations to colleges like Eureka. So in this
time of prosperity we find these church schools, these small
independent colleges and even the larger universities, hard put to
maintain themselves and to continue doing the job they have
done so unselfishly and well for all these years. Observe the
contrast between these small church colleges and our
government, because, as I have said before, these have always
given far more than was ever given to them in return.
Class of 1957, it will be part of the terms of the will for you to
take stock in the days to come, because we enjoy a form of
government in which mistakes can be rectified. The dictator can
never admit he was wrong, but we are blessed with a form of
government where we can call a halt, and say, "Back up. Let's
take another look. " Remember that every government service,
every offer of government financed security, is paid for in the
loss of personal freedom. I am not castigating government and
business for those many areas of normal cooperation, for those
services that we know we must have and that we do willingly
support. It is very easy to give up our personal freedom to drive
90 miles an hour down a city street in return for the safety that
we will get for ourselves and our loved ones. Of course, that
might not be a good example—it seems sometimes that this is a
thing we have paid for in advance and the merchandise hasn't yet
been delivered. But in the days to come whenever a voice is
raised telling you to let the government do it, analyze very
carefully to see whether the suggested service is worth the
personal freedom which you must forego in return for such
service.
There are many well-meaning people today who work at placing
an economic floor beneath all of us so that no one shall exist
below a certain level or standard of living, and certainly we don't
quarrel with this. But look more closely and you may find that
all too often these well-meaning people are building a ceiling
above which no one shall be permitted to climb and between the
two are pressing us all into conformity, into a mold of
standardized mediocrity. The tendency toward assembly-line
education in some of our larger institutions, where we are not
teaching but training to fulfill certain specific jobs in the
economic life of our nation, is a part of this same pattern.
We have a vast system of public education in this country, a
network of great state universities and colleges and none of us
would have it otherwise. But there are those among us who urge
expansion of this system until all education is by way of tax-
supported institutions. Today we enjoy academic freedom in
America as it is enjoyed nowhere else in the world. But this
pattern was established by the independent secular and church
colleges of our land—schools like Eureka. Down through the
years these colleges and universities have maintained intellectual
freedom because they were beholden to no political group, for
when politics control the purse strings, they also control the
policy. No one advocates the elimination of our tax-supported
universities, but we should never forget that their academic
freedom is assured only so long as we have the leavening
influence of hundreds of privately endowed colleges and
universities throughout the land.
So you should resolve, here and now, that you will not only
accept your heritage but abide by the terms and conditions of the
will. You should firmly resolve that these schools will not just be
a part of America's past, but that they will continue to be a part
of America's great future. Democracy with the personal
freedoms that are ours we hold literally in trust for that day when
we shall have fulfilled our destiny and brought mankind a great
and long step from the swamps. Can we deliver it to our
children? Democracy depends upon service voluntarily rendered,
money voluntarily contributed.
These institutions which have contributed so much to us, from
which we have received so much of our heritage, were here for
our benefit only because our forefathers preferred voluntarily to
support institutions of their choice in addition to sharing taxation
for the support of governmental institutions. The will provides,
class of 1957, not only that you receive this heritage and cherish
it, but that you voluntarily tax your own time and your own
money and contribute to these free institutions so that
generations not yet born in this country and in the rest of the
world, may benefit from this same heritage of freedom.
It will be very easy for you to say, "Well, I will do something,
some day. When I can afford it, I am going to." But would you
let an old "grad" tell you one thing now? Giving is a habit. Get
into the habit now, because you will never be able to afford to
give and contribute, thus to repay the obligation you owe to
those people who made this college possible, if you wait until
you think you can afford it. Start now regardless of how small,
and in the days to come when you are confronted with demands
for many worthwhile causes and charities I think you will find
that you will give dutifully to all the worthy ones. But here and
there you will pick one or two that will be favorites, and you can
do no better than to pick this, your Alma Mater, because you
will not only be repaying your own personal obligations, you will
be making your contribution to the very process which has made
and continues to keep America great.
This democracy of ours which sometimes we've treated so
lightly, is more than ever a comfortable cloak, so let us not tear
it asunder, for no man knows once it is destroyed where or when
he will find its protective warmth again.