The Chronicle-star combined with the Moss Point advertiser., 1945-06-01
KNOWLEDGE Is A Nations Strength


This week the Pascagoula High school sent eleven d-
plomas to young men who are now in uniform, and the Moss
Point High school sent five. In a symbolic sense, these
certificates mean that these youths have completed their
basic training for, the battle of life in a civilian society and in
a world not at war. Now the majority of them are in bases
and environments receiving their basic training for survival
and success in the dangerous and abnormal world of war
fare.
More than likely the majority of these young men will
see action in the Pacific. Therefore for the next few months
or years, the combat training will be infinitely more import
ant to these boys than the bits of history, cvcs, languages
and mathematics they had to learn to get their high school
diplomas. And yet. neither these young men, nor the older
soldiers, nor the nation itself, should lose sight of the fact that
the world of war is an abnormal world and that the soldier
can no more go through life in later years on the basis OF his
battlefield education than the nation can carry on a peacetime
life and economy by producing and shipping nothing put
arms and explosives. When the ferocity of the conflict is
over, then comes the task OF repairing and healing our
wounds. The individual soldier must put together the pieces
of his early life, and the nation must put together the Gle
ments that made it strong and stable in the years OF peace.
Both will be changed, inevitably, both individual and nation;
neither will return to precisely what it was, for the stresses
and strains and wounds always leave some ineradicable
mark. But for each the opportunity is to build anew on the
to cut away the old conflicts and follies and impedimenta
wherever possible, and to make a new world, as individual
in decency, a world in which peace will have a better chance,
so that the next generation will not have to face the waste
and agony of war that this one was called upon to endure.
Certainly among the best elements that we can build
upon are our national resources of education and general
enlightenment. and the Christian tradition that men are
not instinctivelY providing beasts of prey but rather part
OF a common brotherhood beneath the fatherhood of God.
A soldiers certificate that he has completed basic train
ing is important in the matter of fighting and winning
wars-but in the long run. a youths diploma attesting
that he has gone at least through high school and gotten
his first introduction to the best tradition and thinking
of Western civilization. is more important in the struggle
against warfare itself. The Nazis tried to forge a nation
out of the first kind of education alone, and the savsgerY
and treachery of battle became the national philosophy
and religion. And yet behold. the Reich that a criminal
founded for "a thousand years" has already gone down to
the most disgraceful and inglorious failure of history.
leaving only a stencil in the nostrils of civilization that
will last not only for a thousand years. but for all time.
In the first hours of battle the sword NAV become miQhtor
than the pen; the heiling. emptY-headed. empty-hearted.
young Nazis may overrun a crumbling nation like France.
or the little ignoramuses at the controls of the Japanese
bombers may paralYze our fleet at Pearl Harbor. But
even at the moment this is happening, the ignorance of
these criminal young fools has already betrayed them;
that seems inevitable to them. they have already signed
the death warrant for their nation.
The young German was beautifully educated in the science
Of murder. But of Western culture, that great and rich ira
humane thought of the Greek and Roman and Medieval
philosophers, and out of the infinite treasury of modern sci
nothing. Questions asked by our army psychological experts
among German prisoners showed a sickening ignorance
OF even the honorable parts of German history.
We are not a militaristic nation. Neither are the
British. In peaeetime we give more attention to the free
interplay of ideas and the free flow of commerce than
we 90 to housekeeping and the parade ground. Maybe
that is why we win wars and the most SAVAGE nation
beginning. but in the end we look a lot better than the
Germans. And one reason for this is that W make
reasonable decisions. and know our own strenqth, while
the Germans. lacking the sense of balance and LACKING
a normal culture. go plunainq after mad and impossible
military goals which inevitably bring them to disaster.
Probably in all of Germany in the past ten wears. not
a single youth acquired the elements of a free and liberal
education which was open to the young soldiers and sailors
VINO nave Just been given diplomas by our local high schools.
Our young men for the next year or two NAV tuck their
Pascagoula and Moss Point diplomas away and forget about
them during their war experience. But the symbolic mean
ing remains, and these certificates of a free education really
represent their margin of victory over the incredibly ignorant
Japanese they go off to fight. The diplomas are SYMBOLS of
freedom, OF open-mindedness, of a culture strong in the
elements of decency, of soundness and balance. And these
are the elements which are the secret weapons behind them:
me elements which motivate their generals, and the national
LIE, and which lead them slowly and patiently to victory
over the banzai charges of a fanatical and ignorant army
winch Is still IN the dark ages despite its technical skill.