Time for New Franklins

On toward week's end, the setting changed. The steel-grey Hudson and its heroic cliffs gave place to the Nittany Valley of Pennsylvania, rolling placidly southeast from the low green humps of Bald Eagle Ridge. Skies turned to unspectacular grey, and as the President dressed in gold-tasseled cap and gown walked out onto the campus of Pennsylvania State University to receive an honorary doctorate of laws and address a second graduating class, it was raining--not a downpour, but a thick, unspectacular drizzle.

If it had gotten much worse, Dr. Milton Eisenhower, the President's youngest brother, trusted adviser and president of the university, would have had to move the exercises indoors to the recreation building.

But the drizzle did not get worse, and it was on open-air Beaver Field, before 20,000 people in sodden coats or academic gowns, that the President of the United States accepted his degree and delivered this speech: "You men and women venture forth into a world where human nature differs little, if at all, from human nature in 1915 or in the age of Pericles. Human relations --the art of getting along with the people who work beside you and with those who live thousands of miles away--does not change . . . But the age of nuclear energy, in its industrial and economic aspects, will likely bear no more resemblance to the age of steam than a jet-powered plane to an old-fashioned box kite . . .

"On this campus this morning;, I had the privilege of inspecting the first atomic reactor of its kind established under university auspices . . . The extent of the economic and industrial changes that we can anticipate is indicated by estimates that world sources of uranium potentially available contain as high as 20 times the energy of the known world reserves of coal, petroleum and natural gas combined . . ." Look to the Atom. "Our nation has no desire for a monopoly on the knowledge and practice of these possibilities. We want the world to share--as we always have . . .

"We have developed two new programs that I shall submit to the Congress in the conviction that they reflect the spirit and intent of law and of the American people.

First: we propose to offer research reactors to the people of free nations who can use them effectively . . . The U.S. . . . will contribute half the cost. We will also furnish the acquiring nation the nuclear material needed to fuel the reactor. Second: within prudent security considerations, we propose to make available to the peoples of such friendly nations as are prepared to invest their own funds in power reactors, access to and training in the technological processes of construction and operation for peaceful purposes . . .

"The people of the U.S. instinctively reject any thought that their greatest scientific achievement can be used only as a weapon . . . While we build atomic-powered ships for war--because we must --we have the desire, the determination to build atomic-powered ships for peace. And build them we shall. While we design bombs that can obliterate great military objectives--because we must--we are also designing generators, channels and reservoirs of atomic energy so that man may profit from this gift which the Creator of all things has put into his hands. And build them we shall." Look to the Mind. "As for the social and political problems that will accompany this development, their outlines can be foreseen but dimly . . . The normal life span will continue to climb. The hourly productivity of the worker will increase. How is the increase in leisure time and the extension in life expectancy to be spent? Will it be for the achievement of man's better aspirations or his degradation to the level of a well-fed, well-kept slave of an all-powerful state? "Indeed, merely to state that question sharply reminds us that in these days and in the years ahead the need for philosophers and theologians parallels the need for scientists and engineers . . . In this country we emphasize both liberal and practical education. But too often it is a liberal education for one and a practical education for another. What we desperately need is an integrated liberal, practical education for the same person . . . Hand and head and heart were made to work together. They must work together. They should be educated together.

"In colonial Philadelphia, there was a printer who was likewise a scientist, and who was hailed as the wisest man of his day . . . In 19th century Illinois, there was a rail splitter who was likewise a lawyer and who was hailed a champion of humanity . . . Education today can nurture for us the possibility of a thousand Franklins and a thousand Lincolns in a generation, where before we were fortunate to have one."

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