Yale University - Sheffield Scientific School Yearbook (New Haven, CT)

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CLASS ORATION 83 Movements, each of them with a Plan-Student Federations with platforms of reform, Student Leagues waving banners of revolution, Youth Parties with programs of United Action. A number of these societies buzz about the Yale campus-their members intense, dan- gerous young men perpetually organizing meetings and seeing people. Certain characteristics are common to all these movements-Com- munist, Socialist, Fascist, or nondescript. They all assume to begin with that it is perfectly clear what is wrong and what should be done about it. Their furious activity, then, is all directed towards persuading a perverse and ignorant World to see the light and act ac- cordingly. No two of them agree as to where the light lies, but this in no way dampens the conviction of each that it is promoting truth. They are not looking for a plan, they have one. And each of these organizations is convinced that the adoption of their scheme will completely eliminate the major ills of the world. They have no un- derstanding of or sympathy with the evolutionary nature of the growth of society. We do not have to look far to find the explanation of this Youth Movement phenomenon in the psychology of a depression. The ten- der-minded college man looks about him and is bewildered by the complexity of events. For a time he holds to the liberal ideal of at- tempted objective analysis, but he finds this difficult and its fruits meagre. He wants some definite cause to fight for to give his life direction and purpose. A Youth Movement comes along with a plausible explanation of everything and a crusade to fight. In the face of this opportunity to embrace a creed which will give him cer- tainty, the young man is unable to maintain his skepticism, joins the Youth Movement, and accepts its program. Once he has taken this step, it is fatal for him ever to permit ra- tional analysis of the creed. For such analysis might expose flaws. He has now built his life around the hope of the Cause. If it is shown to be unworthy, his whole system of values topples. ln other words, he has adopted a faith. His belief is essentially religious rather than intellectual and hence is no longer subject from his standpoint to intellectual test. Much of the argument of the college Communists is of this nature. It is essentially an emotional, a-logical attitude which possesses these converts to Moscow. I don't imply that a rational defense of Communism does not exist, but that the defenders of the faith are seldom willing to let their case stand or fall on its logical merits.

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82 CLASS OF NINETEEN THIRTY-FIVE S. AND E. day more extra-curricular discussion of political and social problems than there was in Mr. Coolidge's paradise. My friends are probably more familiar with the front page of the New York TZ'7716! than were my older brother and his pals. But only wishful thinking or a mind peculiarly impervious to evidence could lead us from this pic- ture to the conclusion that college Youth in general is profoundly disturbed about the world and militantly determined to remodel it. It is a commentary upon the gullibility of the populace that belief in this Youth formula remains widespread though the formula has been current for many decades. Faith in the completely unusual and unprecedented promise of the current batch of Youth is apparently characteristic of every period. Very few Youths can, as individuals, gain the trust and respect of their elders, but throw the whole ag- gregate of gawky simpletons together, call them Youth Ccapitalizing the first letterj, and they are miraculously transformed into an army of heroes marching valiantly upon the forces of chaos and confusion. Generation after generation pour out of the divers educational in- stitutions of the country, each batch being duly informed in an in- spiring graduation address, that it will build a new civilization on the smoking ruins of the old. And generation after generation the ruins go on quietly smoking in brazen defiance of the armies of Youth. Either those who advise us are congenitally blind to the snail's pace of progress, or they think it better we should dream the great dream of conquering vast empires though they know it to be an illusion. But in spite of graduating addresses, most of us do not, in fact, Ht the formula. This sounds, perhaps, like a discouragingly pessimistic conclusion. But must we despair because the men of Yale are not dreaming this great dream? Must the country give itself up for lost because we have not, in our four years here, drawn up blueprints for a new Utopia? I think not. Indeed there is good reason to be- lieve that this should rather be cause for general rejoicing. For this ideal of immediate and vigorous action on the part of Youth is so shot through with naive misconceptions, oversimplifications, and ignorance of the problem that it can only lead us astray. The fact that it is not accepted by the great body of young men at least pre- pares the way for a much higher ideal, an ideal more firmly rooted in reality. Let me illustrate what I mean by reference to the futile activities of those small groups of undergraduates who do fit the conventional Youth formula. There are in the country innumerable little Youth

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84 CLASS OF NINETEEN THIRTY-FIVE S. AND E. It is for this reason that we can hope for no permanent contribu- tion from any of the groups which satisfy the accepted notions of what Youth ought to be: eager, bold, confident, and naively idealis- tic. For such contributions must grow out of a realization that the state of the world is not the result of the pathetic and inexcusable incompetence of a generation, but rather of the incredible complex- ity of the problem. Until we understand that social advance takes place in small increments, each one tested by the blast of an un- flinching rational skepticism, until we recognize that any simple so- lution is by virtue of its very simplicity suspect, until we adopt the attitude that every conclusion is tentative and subject to revision or discard, our dreams are doomed to shatter in a rude awakening. But such constant reexamination of oneis most fundamental political and social beliefs is fatal to a Youth Movement. You can't give your life to a cause if you have the slightest doubt that it is divine revelation. And so I say again that it should be cause for general rejoicing that only a negligible portion of the undergraduate body have sought intellectual shelter beneath the scrawny wings of Youth Movements. It is widely maintained that what we need in these times of stress is faith. But what does faith mean? For ever increasing numbers of people it means faith in Huey Long and Father Coughlin, faith in Hearst, faith in the Townsend Plan, faith in any scheme at all which offers hope of a speedy millennium. On the contrary, what we need is the courage to attack any and every faith mercilessly with the tools of reason, the independence to reject the comfortable certainty of a Cause for the disappointments and occasional bewilderment of ob- jectivity. My friends of the United Youth Front will accuse me of defeat- ismg sentimentalists no longer young will say I have no heart. But the steady determination to push the world a little farther along the path of reason is an ideal far more permanent if less spectacular than the hectic hope of immanent paradise. It is, of course, likewise a faith. But it is a faith not in any plan or program, but in the pos- sibility by analysis of coming to an ever better and better under- standing of the workings of society, a faith that by testing all human institutions and ideas in the crucible of rational examination, not once but again and again tirelessly, we may approach by successive approximations a harmonious adjustment of the social organism. It is not an easy ideal. It requires unflinching mental vigilance. It does not permit of relaxation into the permanent acceptance of anything. It holds out no hope of immediate salvation. We must accept the