Remarks on Receiving an Honorary Degree at American University, Washington, D.C.

It is very delightful to me to become today an alumnus of American University. I am honored also in the association with your new Chancellor which it affords.

It is a good thing for our American life that this university should be situated in the capital of the country. It is good in the opportunity which it gives to higher education to come into a more intimate understanding of the problems of what we call government; it is good for government to expand its associations with the teachers and pupils of a liberal institution.

It is, of course, natural that I should take special interest in the announcement of the creation of a School of Public Affairs by American University. Many articles have been written; many speeches are being made which seek to review and to estimate the history of the United States during the past year. I am willing to hazard the guess that few of these epitomes will stress what to me stands out as one of the most salient features of a salient year in our American life.

I speak of the amazing and universal increase in the intelligent interest which the people of the United States are taking in the whole subject of government. In cities, in hamlets and on farms men and women in their daily contacts are discussing, as never before except in time of war, the methods by which community and national problems are ordered; and war is not, in the true sense, an exception because in such case there is but a single objective.

In the broader problem of government of all kinds, local and State and Federal and international, we in this country today are thinking not merely in terms of the moment, but in terms that apply to the rest of our lives and to the lives of our children. It is true that the immediate cause of this logical and deep-seated interest was a crisis—an immediate crisis which broke over our heads a year ago. It would have been possible perhaps for all of us to have sought only a temporary cure for the immediate illness of the Nation. We can be thankful that we have studied and are engaged in the process of eradicating the deeper causes of that illness and of many other illnesses of the body politic.

In so doing, we need very definitely practical contacts between the collegiate and educational world and the operations of government. The development of our economic life requires the intelligent understanding of the hundreds of complicated elements in our society. Government needs very definitely not only the sociological and economic points of view, but also the practical assistance of men and women who represent the academic, the business, and the professional elements in the community.

We need a trained personnel in government. We need disinterested, as well as broad-gauged, public officials. This part of our problem we have not yet solved, but it can be solved and it can be accomplished without the creation of a national bureaucracy which would dominate the national life of our governmental system.

That is why I am especially happy in the announcement of the establishment .of this School of Public Affairs. I can assure you of the hearty cooperation of the Administration. In the conduct of this school the more widely you can draw on every part of the Nation for the membership of its student body, the greater will be its influence in the dissemination of knowledge of government throughout the country.

Among our universities, you are young; you have a great future-a great opportunity for initiative, for constructive thinking, for practical idealism and for national service.