If we wish democracy to survive we must be constantly alive to the many-sided battle we wage. Take the question of freedom of religion. That was established in our Constitution. We are a nation of many races and yet there is feeling against the Negroes. I have heard different derogatory names applied to various other racial groups, and this scorn of different races is tied up closely with religious intolerance.
All intolerance is based on fear, and fear is usually a lack of understanding.
The elimination of these threats to our freedom requires a continuous battle on our part for the principles of democracy. I feel, therefore, that young people who have worked and played and lived together in groups in communities or in camps for the period of a year will understand one another better throughout their lives. There would be no strikes, for instance, in which the public would not know on which side it stood, and would not speedily force a conclusion through the weight of public opinion. The fear which now seems part of the psychology of the young people, as well as of the older generation, would speedily depart from their consciousness. They would realize how little real security there is in the world unless we create it, and that that security is bound up with the better cooperation which must exist between all individuals in the community, in the state and in the nation.