Remarks at the College of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington

Mr. Chairman, Governor Langlie, My friends Jim Stack, Dr. Thompson, the Trustees and Faculty of this University:

In expressing my appreciation to the College of Puget Sound for their great courtesy in allowing us to use this hall, I want to tell you that last evening I spent a great deal of time with two of your alumni, and I learned about your undefeated football team. So I guess it's in order for me to extend felicitations.

I sincerely hope this meeting does not interfere with football practice, because I understand you don't allow rain to do that, you just put on water skis or something like that. At any rate, we are grateful.

My friends, I have come for a neighborly visit. My home for some months was Fort Lewis, and many of my old friends live in this vicinity.

Now, it would be, I think, most un-neighborly to subject you to partisan political talk this morning. Of course, I can express the very great hope that Washington as a State will show the wisdom to elect the straight Republican ticket from Governor Anderson and Governor Langlie on down.

But the few minutes that I ask of your time this morning I want to devote to another subject. I want to say a few words on a subject that I feel presents to all Americans one of the more critical challenges in the years ahead.

This subject is Education.

I have been deeply concerned with this subject for many, many years. As a citizen no less than as your President, I have for long had a number of thoughts, some of which may be worthy of repeating.

I think my first interest in education came out of my contacts with so many young Americans in World War Two. If there is anyone alive that has reason and occasion to testify whenever he has an opportunity to the virtues of the young American-his courage in adversity, his uncomplaining stamina, his devotion to his country--I certainly am that man.

I have commanded the greatest number of Americans ever assembled under one command. And from them I got nothing but inspiration.

I want to tell you something a little bit more specific about one of these young men, which is possibly not completely typical, but it exemplifies something of the reason I have such an admiration for them.

We attacked across the English Channel into Normandy, and that country is filled with a very difficult type of hedge that grows up on top of mounds. It practically stalled us. Our tanks couldn't go through. We did not know what to do, because every time the tanks started through, they would stick their noses up to the sky and the German guns could shoot through the unprotected underneath portion.

And a little sergeant named Culin showed us how we could put a device on our tanks that would cut right through the banks, the roots of the hedges, and actually it became our own camouflage and we could go right straight through with our tanks.

Moreover, he had the imagination to show us where we could get the material for these "knives" that he fixed on the ends of the tanks, and that was from the German obstacles that they had put on the beaches to stop us coming over.

Now with a young American showing that kind of ingenuity and inventiveness, you have one of the reasons why I think so much of young America. Incidentally, Sergeant Culin certainly saved many thousands of American lives.

I believe, for one thing, that education, in its full sense, can never be narrowed to simply a function of government. School stands beside church and home as a life-giving institution in its own right. It is no mere creature of legislative fiat and executive order. It is a place where the spirit and the intelligence of a whole people must act and must rule.

To act wisely and effectively, at this most important time in the history of American education, our people must be alerted, even aroused, to the problems before us. I sometimes wonder whether we really realize how extraordinarily complicated our lives have become--even within the life that has been lived by the youngest of those here present--with radar, the jet airplane, with every kind of terrible bomb that the world can build. We have come to a time when this understanding must be pushed faster. Man's scientific genius seems to have out-raced his own intelligence and judgment in handling the products of his own inventiveness. This is a gap which we must overcome.

I believe that our people are aroused today, and I believe that your government has contributed to this awakening.

Two years ago, I called a great assembly of Americans to examine our educational problems. It was the first such meeting ever called by the Federal government. Men and women from every walk of life met in thousands of communities. As parents, as educators, as neighbors, they studied and judged the issues before them. They passed on their findings to the White House Conference on Education--numbering some 1800 educational and civic leaders. These men and women, in turn, made their recommendations to me. And those recommendations guided my Educational Message to the Congress, calling for a five-year school-building program.

It would be inappropriate to the spirit in which I speak today to argue here the reasons why my requested legislation was not acted on favorably in the Congress. What matters to you--and to me--is this, and to all other Americans:

I shall again call upon the Congress to act at the beginning of the next session, and I shall support this request with all the force at my command. And I shall ask for a program of doing the job that must be done, not in five years, but in four.

By the way, my friends, someone asked me how I could speak so confidently about these recommendations I am going to make, because they said there is still some question about who is going to be there after January 20th. And I replied this: "Congress meets on January 6th, and I am in until the 20th, and I can say all I have got to say in two weeks, I assure you."

I hold this action to be essential to the welfare of the Republic.

Yet--even passage of this legislation will be only one great forward step in the series of measures that must be taken by the Federal government, by the States and the communities, by our citizens themselves, individually and in groups, to assure that American education from nursery to graduate school--may meet the needs of our people.

No one Federal law can fully achieve that objective, nor ever relieve a State or a community of its own responsibility. But the Federal government can--and will help and will lead.

With this leadership, all of us--educators and parents, teachers and professors, students and alumni--can together build an educational system true to the needs of this age and to the aspirations of America.

This--we must remember--is the full sweep and meaning of our purpose. It is nothing less than the preparation of the youth of America for their greatest labors.

First--To be alert and informed citizens, in an age when ignorance or misinformation could bring political catastrophe, an age when the guarding of our nearest communities may ultimately depend upon our knowledge of the most distant lands and peoples.

Second--To be tolerant and sensitive citizens, so that our society may not suffer the moral sickness that is bigotry and may clearly perceive the values and the virtues cherished in other societies.

Third--To be skilled and accomplished citizens, able to grasp the great levers, turn the giant wheels, of this new atomic age, as nature finally surrenders to men so many of its colossal secrets.

Fourth--To be wise and reflective citizens, thankful for the new leisure, promising a new freedom from much toil--not merely to relax in pleasure but to cultivate the mind and to nourish the spirit, to be wholly educated, in the sense that man is a spiritual and intellectual and physical being. America needs citizens strong in their ideals and spiritual convictions, healthy in their bodies, and tirelessly inquiring in mind.

And finally--To be bold and courageous citizens, knowing that strength and sacrifice are the indispensable, saving weapons of freedom, and knowing that the frontier in America, that rules so much of our history, has become in this age the frontier that is America--leader of free nations, hope of free men.

Now my friends, as I conceive the educational problem today, it is the job of every single one of us, wherever we may be, whatever we may be doing. When I think of this school and the problems that it has to solve, I realize clearly that it is perfectly helpless unless other factors and parts of our society are doing their part. And first of these, I should say, would be the home. I think it is because of our realization, in accordance with the old saying, "As the twig is bent so will the tree be inclined," that we look to the women of our land to start education properly among all our citizens. We look to them, I think, as the very foundation--the greatest workmen in the field of spiritual development.

We have long--in all civilizations--failed to recognize the true function of women in this regard, and those civilizations have suffered as a result. We have come a long ways in recognizing the equality of women. Unfortunately, in some respects, it is not yet complete. But I firmly believe it will soon be so. Certainly, if the efforts of the Federal government can do anything about it, it will be so.

And they will be--by that much--more inspired to do their part of this great task of developing our newer citizens, because this means developing America.

These young people--I think of them often in this way: Each of them at 21 owns, let us say, sixty years of America, with a decent expectancy.

Maybe I can expect to own five or ten or fifteen, or if I am lucky, twenty. How much more important it is for them, then, to see that we move forward on this great front of understanding and of knowledge than it is for our elders; how much more important it is for our elders to help them get that start so that their spiritual, their intellectual, their physical health will be equal to the task lying ahead of us.

My friends, I possibly should apologize for talking to you about such a subject, when I know that Dr. Thompson and many of your deans and instructors are so much better qualified.

My excuse is that it lies so close to my heart, and that I have such an unbounded devotion to what we so often call young America.

Thank you very much.