Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

architects, and plumbers need it as desperately as ministers, schoolteachers, and psychiatrists. How to be a better human being.

True, religion can do it and it doesn't matter particularly which religion you choose. Some are less burdened with dogma than others. Some seem to get to the root of the business quicker and easier than others, with less waste motion.

But religion doesn't provide the only course of training in the development of better human beings. What about all the great things that have been said, written, thought all the way from Homer and Aeschylus and Plato to this present moment. Much of the nobler work of all mankind is there in that gamut in one form or another . . . in drama, literature, philosophy, history, theology.

As the Britannica Great Books series says, it is a great conversation which began a long time ago and has continued to the present day and will go on in the future. Sometimes the conversation lags, sometimes it becomes a tremendous chorus; but it has continued.

G

Henrik Villem Van Loon put it another way . . . the efforts of man to reach out and touch the garments of God and say to Him, "Look what I've done!"

Today, we're finding that we have difficulty talking and making ourselves understood to the people of the Far East. We have our technological triumphs, they have. few. But they do have a spiritual dedication which we have not. So it isn't just a case of our having bread and milk and butter and luxuries and their having none. It is also a case of their having a sense of spiritual direction . . . and our having too little of it.

Here we find ourselves pitted against something which we call Communism. True, Communism finds some welcome in empty stomachs and poor surroundings; but it has dedication to its purposes, wicked as they are, while the dedication to our purposes is confused and dimly realized.

So, how about thinking it over, wouldn't it be worth some thought at least... greater emphasis on training for the development of finer human beings?

First-hand knowledge does not become second-hand when used.-Anon.

[ocr errors]

The Man of the Hour

Dwight D. Eisenhower

"WHO IS THIS Eisenhower?" de-
manded the Moroccans and Alger-
ians when word came that the
Americans had landed on North
Africa. And the embattled British
at Cairo toasted the Yanks and Ike,
and added, "By the way, who is
he?"

The question, then important,
has remained so, for the man who
will undoubtedly exercise most in-
fluence on world happenings for
the next four years is Dwight
David Eisenhower, President-elect
of the United States.

To explain how the son of a pacifist family became the world's foremost general might furnish those essential clues to character by which General Eisenhower's extraordinary achievements are best understood. Yet a thousand books may tell of the "River Brethren" of Pennsylvania and how Ida Elizabeth, his mother passed out anti-war tracts on street corners, never dreaming of her son's future, and fail to divulge how iron can blend with the milk of human kindness.

Never was it more important to know the inner man, for the whole world looks to Eisenhower, as the man of the hour. Our conceptions

George Turner

must rise above campaign echoes with their cross-fire of antagonisms, for it is more profitable to weigh eulogies and words of calm appraisal. To realize in some measure what is expected from him as the leader of his people, as he assumes the most difficult tasks ever undertaken by a president, invites a tacit pledge of partnership in the national effort, be it ever so infinitesmal; for the recent election showed an aroused public conscience, out of which may be born a greater sense of individual responsibility and cooperative zeal.

There are significant traits and events in the life of every person by which his future acts can more or less be predicted. We are by no means lacking in data about General Eisenhower. How will he get along with Congress? What will he do about taxes and the budget? How will he respond to the demands of labor and pressure groups? What is his attitude on this and that social or world problem? Far more revealing than the sincere expressions made last fall are the make-up of the inner man and his habits and trends, plus the estimate of keen minds associated with him.

E

The amazing Eisenhower record shows him as a persistent, selfsacrificing worker, blessed with judgment and endurance. His physical attributes are exceptional. Five feet eleven, not over-weight, muscular, the "Kansas Cyclone" of the West Point football team has not lost his initiative or his staying powers. His registration paper showed that he had partly earned his own living for six years, and entirely for two years, as a refrigeration engineer.

During the year before entrance to West Point he worked eightyfour hours a week, so he told delegates at the CIO convention at Atlantic City in 1946. His brother Milton is reported as saying that he averaged less than five-and-ahalf hours sleep during the campaign in North Africa and showed no signs of strain. Staff members called him "a human dynamo." Day and night work for Eisenhower was habitual during the raising of America's army of 165,000 to 7,000,000.

The fact that Eisenhower can take time out these later days to paint landscapes and baby pictures is astonishing to men who have witnessed his driving capacity, just as Churchhill's brush work proved a mild shock to his colleagues. War education, art and politics produce a chord that scintillates. It smacks of scope and adjustability, the horizon of a man

who has scanned many a panorama. The professional soldier who became head of one of the largest universities and there revealed a totally new set of keen abilities, is now to adapt himself to the most multi-natured job on earth.

Those individuals who judge the President-elect solely by his amiability and disarming smile should sound the opinions of such men as Montgomery, Baruch, Churchill, Hoffman, Bradley and a score of others. There are many who remember him on D-Day, when a storm-swept English Channel threatened to nullify the whole invasion program, when 4,000 ships were ready to start, plus innumerable small boats, and 8,000 aircraft awaited the signal. Anxious officers gathered about the supreme commander. In the howling wind. the coast of Normandy seemed impossible to reach. Visibility was almost at its worst.

"Gentlemen, we will go ahead as planned," announced the general after hearing their views.

The simple friendly personality of Eisenhower became a thunderbolt at Salerno, where raw troops were bravely dying on a beachhead swept by German fire. Tenacity, courage, brilliance were needed to forge ahead. They were supplied, as in Tunisia and Normandy, later. That he has the gift of strategy was boldly indicated when he was in command at Gibraltar.

2

He ordered units of the American
forces to be outfitted for the Arc-
at
tic. The Germans, outwitted,
once improved their defenses in
Norway.

Eisenhower stands by the fund-
amentals of religion and the Con-
stitution. Politically he has seen
fit to take his position in the mid-
dle of the road, so exposed to
cross-fire. On this score he made
one of his most illuminating re-
marks in a speech at St. Louis,
in September, 1949, before the
American Bar Association, saying
"the central position . . . is the
truly creative area within which
we may obtain agreement for con-
structive social action compatible
with basic American principles.
and with the just aspirations of
every sincere American. It is the
area in which are rooted the hopes
and allegiance of the vast majority
of our people."

He emphasized to the lawyers
the fact that our enemies have
made a chief target of our most
precious possession, individual free-
dom. Destruction of any of our
freedoms leads to the destruction
of all. He added that "freedom to
compete vigorously among
selves" makes our system "the
most productive on earth."

our

In his 1949 Labor Day speech at St. Louis, Eisenhower declared "Thus, the American system in line with its principles can and does, by governmental action, prevent or correct abuses springing

from the unregulated practice of a private economy. In specific cases local governments have, with almost unanimous approval, provided needed public services so that extraordinary power over all citizens of the community might not fall into the hands of a few. In all cases we expect the government to be forehanded in establishing the rules that will preserve a practical equality in opportunity.

the

"We, in turn, carefully watch the government-especially ever expanding federal government -to see that in performing the functions obviously falling within governmental responsibility, it does not interfere more than is necessary in our daily lives. We instinctively have greater faith in the counterbalancing effect of many social, philosophic and economic forces in arbitrary law. We will not accord to the central government unlimited authority."

He further told his hearers on that Labor Day that the interests of labor and management in most situations were identical. The differences were "far more apparent than real." "No group in our country," he said, also, "is more firmly dedicated to the retention and development of our system of private competitive enterprise than is American labor."

Years before, such problems as these Cadet Eisenhower used to discuss on campus and gymnasium

NEW OUTLOOK

pr

floor. He furthermore followed events of the war between Italy and Turkey, the French-German imbroglio over Morocco, where he was destined to lead his forces; the Mexican revolutions, the opening of the Panama Canal, the thrilling discovery of the South Pole by Amundsen. He liked to exchange ideas, because he liked people, and apparently he has not gotten over it, as shown during his fellowship with the common soldier and in his presidency at Columbia University.

In recent months he has spoken often and eloquently in behalf of world peace and the indispensable effort of the United Nations. His views on national sovereignty were clearly set forth in his book Crusade in Europe on page 477: "The democracies must learn that the world is now too small for the rigid concepts of national sovereignty that developed in a time when the nations were self-sufficient and self-dependent for their own well-being and safety. None of them today can stand alone. No radical surrender of national Sovereignty is required-only a firm agreement that in disputes among nations a central joint agency, after examination of all the facts, shall decide the justice of the case by a majority vote and thereafter shall have the power and the means to enforce its decisions."

Habits of practical efficiency seemed not to have dimmed the

idealism of Dwight D. Eisenhower, as shown repeatedly in his addresses and in his devotion to his country. It glows abundantly in his public expressions made at Columbia."We cannot, of course, attain perfection in human relations even within the smallest community," he remarked in one of these addresses, "no matter how many laws we pass or policemen we hire. The rogue and the villain skulk in street corners. But as we put street lamps on these corners so that decent folk may walk abroad after dark, so we can relight the lamps of brotherhood where they have been extinguished among men."

Atavistic statism unclenched its fingers when the candidate said, "I pledge that the social gains achieved by the people, whether enacted by a Republican or Democratic administration, are not only here to stay but are here to be improved and extended," and, renewing his assurance, repeated, "I pledge to devote myself toward making equality of opportunity a living reality for every American. There is no room left in America for second-class citizenship."

Paul Hoffman, in a fervent espousal of the candidacy of Eisenhower, told the Republican convention that the world hoped for peace and for an inspiring leadership that could cope firmly with Communist pressures, the leadership of a man of unquestioned integ

« AnteriorContinuar »