Address at Transylvania College, Lexington, Kentucky

President Rose, Senator Cooper, Dr. Thomas, and members and friends of this great College:

It is my unique privilege and honor to bring to this gathering a salute from the national Government on the 175th anniversary of the founding of this institution. This honor that I feel does not find its source merely in an age which by American standards is truly venerable. It comes from many things, that this institution is a member of that great body of institutions that has two great dedications: the preservation, the enrichment, and the dissemination of knowledge; and the propagation and increase of that faith in the dignity of man, in the capacity of man that is the cornerstone of our great free system of Government.

If you will pardon me for referring to Dr. Thomas' address, and particularly allow me first to say that I am overwhelmed by the overgenerosity of his concluding remarks with respect to myself, I would want to make this point: it is indeed refreshing to have a distinguished scientist stand in front of a body of educated people and publicly proclaim that the spiritual values of America are its true values, transcending all of the intellectual and scientific and political and material progress we have made.

Now, what exactly do we mean by these spiritual values? We mean, I think, those characteristics of man that we call ennobling in their effect upon him--courage--imagination--initiative--a sense of decency, of justice, and of right. The faculty of being ready to admit that the limit placed upon our personal rights is that we do not transgress upon similar rights of others. All of which, in a very real sense, is a translation into a political system of a deeply-felt religious faith.

Our forefathers acknowledged this when they wrote, in their first great document: "We hold that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain rights." They did not hold that these rights were yours and ours today because we are born here, because of our height, or weight, or any other characteristic physical or geographical in character, but because you were a child of your Creator. They acknowledged that, in attempting to explain our Government to the world, which they stated in the Declaration of Independence, that that is what they were trying to do. They said, Man is endowed by his Creator with certain rights.

Now, Transylvania, it seems to me, shows certain of these spiritual qualities in its very founding. To come out to this country 175 years ago--and I have been doing some mental arithmetic, sitting here at my seat on the platform--I think that adds up to 1779, and if I am wrong I am sure I will be corrected by those present--but that was 2 years before Yorktown, that was 4 years before the treaty of peace with Britain, that was 8 years before the meeting of our Constitutional Convention.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is almost overpowering to think that someone at that time, coming west of these Alleghenies, and before we were even a nation, before the War of Independence had been successfully concluded, was establishing here an institution to disseminate knowledge and to propagate and to promote and to sustain these great spiritual values that are at the heart of our system.

It seems to me that everybody who in the past has graduated from this institution, who today is privileged to serve in it, or to be here a student, has a great heritage of tradition and understanding that cannot fail to enrich his life as long as he shall live.

One of the great figures identified with this school is, of course, Henry Clay, a man of great courage and forthrightness, and who preached reason as opposed to emotionalism, who strove to get people to use the faculties with which they were endowed, to help solve the problems of the day, and not to give way to mere prejudice.

About 125 years ago he said, once, "Government is a trust. The officers of government are its trustees. And both the trust and the trustees were created for the benefit of the people." That statement of his is not only accurate today, but he summed up in one single sentence, it seems to me, all of the great reasons why it is necessary that Americans today stand shoulder to shoulder in defense of the values that brought about the founding of this College, and the establishment of this country, as against an institution, a doctrine which states government exists to direct people, and people are mere pawns of government, although they clothe their purpose in their rather euphemistic slogan, a dictatorship of the proletariat. It is still dictatorship, and the exact antithesis of the definition given to us by Clay.

Now the point I want to make, again I refer to the address of Dr. Thomas, when he talked about the terrifying power of the atom bomb and the hydrogen bomb. But let us remember this: in a democracy, there is only one truly great force, an overwhelming public opinion.

Woodrow Wilson put it this way: "The highest form of efficiency," he said, "is the spontaneous cooperation of a free people." If you will consider the force that can be generated by the vast majority of 160 million people, with the highest level of education in the world, with the greatest material prosperity and productivity, and with the greatest understanding in their hearts of what freedom and the dignity of man means, if you will try to get some conception of what that force can be, my friends, you will realize that they can conquer the atom bomb and hydrogen bomb, or anything rise in this world to which they set their minds and their hearts.

Now, great power can be used for good or for evil. As Dr. Thomas explained, the atom bomb and the scientist's laboratory may produce the force that spells destruction for a city. But it can also produce, or they can also produce, things of vast benefit for all human kind, to make life richer and happier.

Now, so can public opinion. If not based upon fact--fact as seen in its proper perspective--then it can go wrong. So again I think it is--we can repeat, the function of such an institution as this is to place the facts before us in proper perspective, then to relate those facts and that perspective to the faith by which we live. Out of those two things will grow this public opinion that will insure the safety and security of America.

In the kind of understanding, in the kind of power of which I speak, then we would understand that no nation can live alone today. Just as so many others are dependent upon the products of our laboratories, our factories, and our farms, so are we very definitely dependent upon many of the materials that we use.

All of the original atom bombs, for example, were made of material brought almost exclusively from central Africa. But tin and tungsten and rubber and platinum and many other items used in our daily lives, we do not produce.

We cannot live alone. Understanding of these facts, and again our dedication to freedom and liberty, are bound together, and they begin to emerge into policy as this happens. The words "Dien Bien Phu" are no longer just a funny-sounding name, to be dismissed from the breakfast conversation because we don't know where it is, or what it means. We begin to understand that in a far-off corner of the globe is an agony of conflict, where no matter how it started, has become again a testing ground between dictatorship and freedom, a desire on the one side to give a people the right to live as they shall choose, and on the other side to dominate them and make them mere additional pawns in the machinations of a power-hungry group in the Kremlin and in China.

And then we begin to understand why the special conflict is of such importance to us. When we begin to picture the possibility of more hundreds of millions, starting with this neck in the bottle in Indochina, spread over all Southeast Asia and through the great islands of the Pacific, then we begin to get an understanding of what your representatives in international conferences are striving to preserve for you: basically the same freedom that your Founders brought to this spot. That Lincoln came here and talked about. That Jefferson Davis and others imbibed here. Understanding of the facts, coupled with the faith in America--the spiritual faith that all things are possible to us, if we unite behind them, and they are decent and right.

I should like to make clear, before I say goodbye, that when I talk about united, I do not mean united behind special labels or behind the political doctrines of any particular figure. I am not talking about the details of taxes, which none of us likes. I am not talking about anything that must be argued out freely in our public forums, if we are to reach democratic answers. I am talking about the basic ideals of America. In fact, the kind of thing that, when we stop to think, would be the richest heritage we could pass on to our own children--and I am old enough to talk in terms of grand-children: a faith in this country, and in our God, in themselves, that they can proceed down the road of time, doing all and more than all these past great figures that we today revere, respect, and salute, have done for us.

For the very great courtesy you have paid me in the invitation to appear before you, my profound thanks. If, through you, I could extend my thanks, also, to every person who gave me a smile on the streets of this city, and in the sections I have traveled today, I would be grateful indeed.

Thank you.