The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-06-23
Liberal Viewpoint
DIR. HARRY ELMER BARNES

by DR. HARRY ELMER BARNES
THERE was much cogent common sense in
the brief commencement address Of Chan
cellor Harry WOODBURY. Chase of New York
university.
In spite Of the menacing development OF
Facism abroad many Americans have created
for themselves a sort of fools paradise on the
assumption that what has been happening in
Europe can not take place here because this
is the United States.
Chancellor Chase exploded this benign but
dangerous illusion:
state after state has come to seek efflci-
ency and security through the subordinaton
and RECOMMENDATION of the individual to central
lied and deSpotic authority. 1t is no Satisfac-
tory answer to say that all of this is happening
IN Europe and this is America.
America, after all, has not been guaran-
teed eternal democracy by divine fiat. There
are no international barriers against the con-
tagion of ideas. 1t is not impossible to regi-
ment the American people. Great sections of
them have been regimented more than once IN
our history And when we are regimented we
can be both violent and cruel
The history of what happened to the
southern states during reconstruction, the
course of the Ku-Klux Khan movement a dec
ade ago. are two reminders Of that fact. The
problem of RECOMMENDATION is one of destiny for
Chancellor Chase, as a well-known liberal
educator, stated very effectively the crucial
problem in the relation of education to regi-
mentation and dogmatc instruction:
" A T the heart of the problem lies the signif-
"A cant choice: Shall we set out arbitrarily
to create a social order and then indoctrinate
and drive individuals into submission to it, or
shall we center our efforts on the making of
men and women who are themselves competent
and disposed, as free agents, to do what should
be done?"
Chancellor Chase's answer is characteristic
and to the point:
1T is not the business of universities to be
instruments of indoctrination and propaganda
1t is not their mission on the one hand, to
evolve theoretical utopiaS and then to condition
people for participation in them. Nor is it, on
the other hand, their mission to become apollo
gists for the dogma that whatever u.s. SIS right
Their concern is rather to open and develop
the minds of men and women; to give them
understanding, knowledge of the truth, appreci-
alton of the processes by which it is arrived at
so that, as open minded informed free people,
they may look at and take part in life as
intelligent, reasonable human beings"
MO sensible person will be likely to quarrel
Y with this urbane and logical pronounce
ment by Chancellor Chase, but we may be sure
that our American reactionaries will play up
the address in sorely distorted fashion Taking
advantage of headlines they will hail it as a
timely blast against the menace of the Roose-
welt administration and the Vaccinations of
the brain trust.
If one has any realism or insight, he must
recognize that if the Roosevelt administration
is to be criticised in connection with the issue
of RECOMMENDATION, it will have to be con-
demned because it has not gone far enough with
its economic planning. 1t has attempted more
than the minimum believed necessary to save
us from the ravages of the rugged individual
ism that has brought ruin to the American
economy.
Any attempt to escape from the very slight
and moderate degree of RECOMMENDATION in
volved in the New Deal is the surest way to bring
about the certainty of much more complete reg
imentation in the future.
If the Roosevelt administration fails to reha-
bilitate our economic life, it will be on account
of its upwillingness to go far enough in the sys-
tematic bordering of our business and financial
life. If the New Deal does collapse and we do
not push capitalism entirely into the discard,
the only immediate alternative is FaScism with
all the RECOMMENDATION that Chancellor Chase elo-
quently condemned.
Many Americans, including myself, would like
to be pretty thoroughly free from governmental
restraint But whether we like it or not, we
have come to live in the most critical period of
a complex economic system which calls for
either planning or perdition. We now have come
to parting of the ways where it is, for the time
being, choice between the New Deal and castor
nil