The people's voice. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1939-1969, 1945-11-30

This is not the point in a speech, t
be sure, at which one usually quote
poetry. That usually comes at tn
end; but after | return to the Mon
tana scene what | have to say will
not be the sort of thing which lends
itself to verse.
Matthew Arnold was a teacher ant
school administrator. This poem deals
with his visit to the mountain of Char
treuse, in France, and the monastery
established there nearly 900 years age
| ly austere Roman Catholic order cling
ing to primitive Christian piety
which even in Arnold's day had long
since ceased to represent the way oil
life of the church. The poem, though
written 20 or so years ago, seems to
me to express very well the dilemma
in which we now find ourselves; in.
deed, it could we'll have been written
the day the news of the atomic bomb
burst upon a Mortified world - and
upon an America which is just now
beginning to realize that it was not
as Mortified as it should have been.
This is how Arnold, addressing the
teachers of his childhood, explains his
sympathy for the silent and forgotten
monks of the Grand Chartreuse in
their hair shirts:
For rigorous teachers seized my youth,
And purged it's faith, and trimm'd it's
fire,
Show'd me the high white star of
Truth,
There babe me gaze, and there aspire;
Even now their whispers pierce the
gloom:
What dost thou in this living tomb?
Forgive me, masters of the mindl
At whose behest l long ago
So much unlearnt, so much resign'di
/ come not here to be your foe
l seek these anchorites, not in ruth,
To curse and to deny your truth;
Not as their friend or child | speak!
But as on some far northern strand.
of his own gods, a Greek
In pity and mournful awe might stand
Before some fallen Runic stone
For both were faiths, and both are
gone.
between two worlds, one
dead,
The other powerless to be born,
With nowhere yet to rest my head,
Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.
Their faith, my tears, the world
deride;
come to shed them by their side.
The Harvard report, Meiklejohn,
Barzun, Livingstone and many others
are concerned about this same loss
Of faith, loss of moral judgment u
about the failure of American educa-
lion to teach human values in addi-
ion to scientific truth, or vocational
skill. "Just as it is wrong to split
he human person into separate parts,
says the Harvard report, $50 would
t be wrong to split the individual
rom society We must resist the |
prevalent tendency, or at any rate |
to interpret the good life
purely in terms of atomic individuals |
engaged in fulfilling their potential |
ties. Democracy is a community |
If free men democracy must rep
esent an adjustment between the val |
les of freedom and social living" In |
,ther words, as Barzun puts it, the |
lge of the scholar and gentleman is
zone; that of the scholar and citizen
las begun. The atomic bomb, he |
POINTS out, is a product of the atomic
,rain, mind cut off from all concerns
tut one; it is an achievement, but
If it is not under the control of NOR
i judgment, political skill, and relig-
Gus convictions, (it) is quite simply
ccursed."
One is reminded of shrewd com.
nent by st. Thomas Aquinas: "The
virtues make a mans
work good; the moral virtues make
lis work good and the man good, too"
1.-THE most terrifying question with
which present-day education is faced"
avs Meiklejohn, arises from the fact
hat whereas there may have been a
ime when the common beliefs of our
american communities were so force
ully held and so articulately ex-
ressed that they could influence the
Individual citizen, today 1--WE are no
,nger certain what nation or state
r county or town or village believes,
indeed it believes anything. And