Address at the Opening Session of the White House Conference on Children and Youth, College Park, Maryland

Mrs. Brown, delegates to the White House Conference on Children and Youth, fellow citizens, and our guests from foreign lands:

It is truly an honor to greet you here tonight in the Free State of Maryland, one of the oldest of our family of States in America. It seems fitting, also, that we are gathered on the campus of one of the Nation's many great universities. An educational institution symbolizes the never-ending effort of society to help our young find the knowledge and the understanding through which they can move forward in the ongoing life of tomorrow.

I am not here, of course, as one pretending to any expertness on questions of youth and children--except in the sense that, within their own families, all grandfathers are experts on these matters. So it is not my purpose to advise you on what you should do at this conference, but it may be appropriate to suggest a few reasons why, to me, your mission here is so important.

First, then, you are working with the most precious resource of our Nation--indeed of the world: a whole generation who will someday make their country's policies and dispose its great power. The very life of America depends upon the wisdom and resourcefulness which they will bring to the basic problems with which they will then be confronted. And the responsibility for their early preparation belongs to the older citizen, not to the younger one.

Now second, this process of preparation for tomorrow's leadership grows increasingly difficult as rapid and momentous changes alter the look of tomorrow's world.

Half a century ago, when the first of these conferences met at the request of President Theodore Roosevelt, the automobile was just beginning to be a fairly common sight on the landscape of America. Radio was a laboratory toy, and television was yet even a dream. Bleriot had still to make his famous flight across the English Channel. Wars, though destructive, were so confined to particular areas that the remainder of the earth was only indirectly affected by their outbreak. Events, and news of events, moved slowly, and there was a feeling of permanence and stability in the world that people born in this century have never known. Parenthetically, may I say, this last change is the particular one that I feel to be the most significant of all those I have witnessed during my lifetime.

Now, in contrast, the world fairly shakes with the heavy tread of humanity on the march. Tonight, as I speak to you, an American space vehicle 2,310,000 miles away in its orbit around the Sun is telling what it sees and feels on its cosmic journey. Who can predict what miracles may be witnessed by those who sit at the Youth Conference ten years from now?

A billion people have been added to the earth since the first Youth Conference, a half billion more will arrive before the next one convenes. In America we race to prepare for the surge of children--fifty million of them--who will enter our homes during the next decade. Jet aircraft have shrunk our world by half during the past five years, and we no longer see anything unusual in lunching in New York and dining, the same day, in Lima, Peru. As this shrinking and crowding proceeds, the world--certainly the free world--must learn better how to live cooperatively together to the mutual benefit of all peoples. Clearly the rising generation must become more internationally minded and more diplomatically skillful than the one to which I belong.

A final reason I cite why your mission is important is because within the great context of change and accommodation there are certain great values which must neither be changed nor abandoned.

Young people today are, of course, the heirs to the greatest fund of knowledge and the most opulent store of material advantages any generation ever received. The high school student has vastly more information at his command than any of the early settlers of this land, no matter how brilliant. The student lives longer and more comfortably than did medieval royalty, and moves about in an environment increasingly devoted to his convenience and enjoyment.

Yet we know that these things are not the essence of civilization. For civilization is a matter of spirit; of conviction and belief; of self-reliance and acceptance of responsibility; of happiness in constructive work and service; of devotion to valued tradition. It is a religious faith; it is a shared attitude toward people and living which is felt and practiced by a whole people, into which each generation is born--and nurtured through childhood to maturity.

Now no sudden, perfunctory transfer, from parent to child, of these enduring doctrines and traditions is possible, for their usefulness depends upon the degree to which they are understood and appreciated. Their inheritance is a matter of patient and loving instruction on the part of the parent, and of the slow but consistent spiritual and intellectual growth on the part of youth.

Growing in these concepts, drawing strength from these beliefs our children understand, as we did not in our own youthful days, the need-now approaching the absolute--for peace with justice.

The universality of the hope for peace and the imperative character of its need cannot fail, around the globe, to develop in our youth the qualities of the heart and mind that will surely, one day, be inscribed on the permanent pillars of peace in freedom.

In this hope, among the things we teach to the young are such truths as the transcendent value of the individual and the dignity of all people, the futility and stupidity of war, its destructiveness of life and its degradation of human values. This kind of understanding will help make of them not only useful members of societies, but will increase their effectiveness in pursuing the goal of world peace. Through patient education in our homes, churches, and schools, free and peaceful societies will be perfected and perpetuated. Problems and circumstances change, priceless human qualities and values must never be lost. To assure this is also another part of the mission of this Conference.

Now there is a specific problem that could never be ignored in such a study as you are making.

Juvenile delinquency has increased each year for the past ten years, and has become not merely a local, but a world-wide, concern. The causes for this condition are multiple, and multiple measures must be used to weed them out.

Yet we must beware of a tendency to generalize pessimistically about our youth--to attribute to the many the failures of the few. Such terms as "lost, .... misguided," or "off-beat," have had their counterparts in earlier generations.

I have an unshakable faith in the overwhelming majority of fine, earnest, high-spirited youngsters who comprise this rising generation. They possess a more intense intellectual curiosity than we of my age exercised when we were their age. They are wise for their years and they are fast learning the relationship between physical and mental fitness on the one hand, and satisfaction in accomplishment on the other. We strive to make certain that the number of failures is held to a minimum. And in this effort we have developed appropriate programs--physical, recreational, educational, moral, psychological, occupational. Underlying all these as both preventive and cure is a happy family; one that finds its greatest enjoyment as a group in such things as the family picnic, family games, the "cookout," or the home movies.

From the play pen to the campus our task is not to provide the conditions of an affluent existence for the young, but rather to teach them that such things have real value only as they are earned. We must see to it that our children grow up in a climate that encourages response to intellectual challenge, in self-reliance, initiative, and a healthy regard for hard work and the dignity of man. To do otherwise is to do a disservice to the young.

So as you enter into your deliberations beginning tomorrow, you will take note of the many changes and resulting problems that affect our well-being. You will discuss solutions for these problems. Guiding you constantly will be your overriding purpose--to expand the creative potential of our children and youth in freedom and dignity.

As the person responsible for calling you together, I felicitate our Nation on your readiness to undertake and persist in this noble task. I assure you of my deep appreciation of your effort. May every success attend you.

Thank you very much indeed.