Mid-Century Audit

Sixty-one Methodist ministers from Illinois journeyed into Washington last week for a first-hand briefing on the problems of the cold war and the welfare state. Before the briefing began, all 61 sat down to answer a list of 25 questions--"an audit of mid-century America." For the next three days they shuttled busily back & forth from the State Department to a conference with Labor Mediator Cyrus Ching, to Capitol Hill to interview members of the Congress, to a friendly visit with Missouri Baptist Harry Truman. Afterwards ten of the visitors sat down and answered the same questions all over again on an electrical voting gadget. Some before-&-after results:

P: The greatest achievement of the soth Century: before, the U.N. and "growing internationalism" (41% of the 61 voters); after, science (90% of the ten voters).

P: The greatest person produced by the 20th Century so far: Gandhi, both before & after. Runners-up: Albert Schweitzer, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill.

P: The President's decision to produce the H-bomb was the "only alternative"; before, 50%; after, 80%.

P: The man best qualified to serve as President of the U.S.: before, Harold Stassen (14 votes), followed by Illinois' Senator Paul Douglas, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, Robert Taft; after, Stassen, with Taft a close second.

P: The nation which now holds the balance of world power: before, the U.S. (60%), Russia (20%); after, the U.S. (90%).

Both before their audit and afterward, the Methodists agreed that the U.S. was pursuing a "fairly intelligent" policy abroad, that the trend to a welfare state was "a little extreme" but in the right direction, and that the whole world seemed to be on its way toward "a confused state somewhere between peace and a war of annihilation."

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