Henderson daily dispatch., 1939-06-05
intellectual Freedom Is
Inseparable From Advance
OF Civilization, DR.. Angel

Dlrham. June Give shall gain
, nrmer hold on 4 saner and more
rqtional kind of liberty exactly in
uoportion to our ability to exercise
named intelligence in its determina-
hon. and our willingness to fight
tfarlcssly for its maintenance" DR..
lanes Rowland Angel, former presi-
dent OF Yale university, declared this
morning in delivering the Duke
university commencement address.
Dr. Angell said the enslavement
OF the university by the collectivist
States is extremely portentious and
II contains lesson for us in the
United States. In the last analysis.
he said, 1t is freedom of thought
(which gives all the other freedoms
their real meaning and worth. and
thought is the very essence of the
university"
The former Yale president, who
is now educational counselor to the
National Broadcasting company. de-
voted his entire address to a dis
cussion of the place of the university
in the struggle for freedom. The adj
dress was a highlight of the conclud-
ing day of Dukes commencement
which will come to a close at $50
o'clock this afternoon with the
awarding of approximately 800 de-
grees.
Dr. Angel reviewed the revolu-
tionary changes that have come
about in the world during the past
quarter century. THE changes" he
stated, "involve the complete aban-
donment OF many principles which
we have considered fundamental
and substitution for them of ideals
and policies which, should they
spread widely, would inevitably
menace our mode Of life as a nation.
And one of the first institutions to
suffer emansculation would be the
university. Xxx
However blind we may have been
TO the underlying causes of the pre-
sent upheaval in Europe, let us not
fail to measure frankly, and with
such precision as we can command,
the conditions which we face in our
own country
There is an element of the tragic
in the situation tin that much of the
chaos in the contemporary world is
a consequence of that free exercise
OF thought in the universities and
elsewhere which we are now so con-
cerned to conserve. The great
achievements of physical science are
the results of the unfettered exploita-
ton of the experimental method,
operating under the direction of un-
trammeled thought. And the result
is our modern technology, which has
given us a control over physical
nature that has in a generation rev.
OlutiOnized our manner of life and
utterly outstripped our ability to
match it with social and ethical and
economic readiustments. One has
only to mention the telephone, the
radio, the movie, the automobile,
the airplane, to bring to mind the
endless list of devices which have
transformed the whole pattern of
living.
Much of the technical advance
Sao DNCll lJClllSIl III lIlC IllSIl0SI OC-
gree. We have gained control over
many diseases which formerly de-
crimated life and occasioned suffer-
ing and sorrow. We have ameliorated
innumerable conditions of living and
have thus brought happiness to
thousands. But in the same moment
we have often wrought i'll. temporori-
ly when not permanently. Labor
saving devices have impoverished
hundreds of thousands who have
been thrown out of employment. The
machinery of warfare has been made
so terrible that another great war
mipht quite literally destroy civili-
7ation. The methods pursued where
by women and children and innocent
nOn-combatants are brutally slaugh-
tered quite as a matter of course rep
resent a reversion to sheer barbar-