Evening star., 1941-08-19
SAYS Cultural Freedom
Must Be Preserved
Religious Liberty Held
Essential to Survival
Of America
BU Will Durunt.

By Will Durant.
(This is the second Of series by
leading American writers on THE
World We Want to Live In" theme
of the Williamstown Institute OF
Human Relations at williams College,
August "a to 49,
Almost every American would like to
live in a world cbedient to the terms of
the Constitution of the United States;
those hard-won liberties of speech ana
press and worship and assemblage and
enterprise which we took for granted In
our youth are now things to be remem-
bered and hoped for, and possibly fought
for, in world which has apparently
grown tired of liberty and longs for sta
bility and security at almost any sacrifice
to freedom. Surely, in the world that
we desire, most of these liberties will be
reborn. There may be some doubt as to
whether all the forms of freedom that
we once enjoyed can be completely re-
stored. but certainly freedom of worship
and of cultural diversity would be an
indispensable element in any society
tOlerdDle 10 an American.
am in a mood to compromise with
the spirit of my time. Liberty has meant
more to me than to most people, for I
have lived by freedom of utterance; I
should probably suffer more than most
people in q regime where freedom Of
speech and press were seriously limited.
Nevertheless, I am driven by the in
eXorable order Of events to concede that
the age of freedoms zenith is passing
away. The complexity of our economic
mechanisms and relationships appar-
emily has reached point where unreg-
ulated individualism no longer can pro-
duce continuous functioning and widely
spread prosperity; it is our manifest
destiny-quickly in war, but only less
quickly in peace-to pass to some degree
of state capitalism in which a central
control will diminish the freedom Of
individuals in their economic life.
Naturally, being an intellectual. I
dream of combining such economic reg
ulation with intellectual freedom, but
fear that even in the mental realm we
shall not know again In my lifetime the
hilarious liberty that my own youth and
pen have enjoyed. Whether peace comes
soon or is long delayed, the fear Of
attack or the compulsions of war will
drive us into more closely knit society.
I anticipate that generation hence
there will have come an increase of free
dom in the now authoritarian states,
and an increase of regulation in the
new hbertarian states. AS Hegel would
have said, the struggle of opposites does
not lead to the elimination Of one by
the other, but to their merger on a
more complex plane.
Nevertheless I cannot conceive of an
America in which freedom Of religion
and culture has been destroyed. I take
1t for granted that such freedom is part
Of the essential meaning of America,
and was an essential part of the lure
that brought our fathers here. To sur
render that freedom, to let ourselves
be divided by racial hatreds and religious
conflict, would be the most cowardly
surrender of our Nations destiny.
appeal to the American people not to
give ear to any propaganda that aims
50 to divide us; to recognize it at once
as the initial strategy Of fascist schemes;
to brand it as the most vulgar treason
to the meaning and purpose Of our
country.
do not believe that a nation needs
racial or religious uniformity In order
to be strong. The most powerful empire
in history required no such uniformity;
the Roman Empire allowed to each OF
its component parts full freedom OF re-
ligion, OF language. Of education and Of
culture, and the Roman persecution OF
Christianity had practically nothing to
do with religion. The British Empire
prospered on the same basic policy. 1t is
good that there should be all sorts and
varieties of men In this world. Within
our roomy continent We can find space
for Christians, Moslems, Jews, Buddhists.
To be an American means to find room
for them, and to work with all Of them