Repository: UIHistories Project: Convocation - 1942 Winter-Spring [PAGE 68]

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!if< mam of oui brighter contemporaries hav< nei r 1 Yel ii is profoundly true and pertinent -it this time. This word high-throning Wisdom knows I That ciily he deserves his lif< . his freedom, Who \\ ins them e> erj da) anew. We had been assured thai tin last war had made de:n< for u> at least, and we were bitterly disillusion I when W (

this was not the ease. As a result of mistak 5 then made and the c all international order to which they uitribut 1. u • in< urselves today fighting again to prote< t the very rudimentdecent civilization against the enemy that has c me 50 near t troying it. It is not an easy time to talk of ideals, and of new buildin \\(\ better world that is to he. We heard all that before, and 1 \ us now. Vet the cynicism of this easy disillusionment is hardly less SO] moric than the earlier optimism against which it protests. \ \ mi: have known very little of the sluggishness and greediness and stuidity of the human animal if we suppos< 1 that the battle for fre or would not have to be fought again, and many time-—not always with the same weapons, perhaps, or on the same fronts, but against the nemy, greed and arrogance and fear, and with many defeat- and dis ppointments. Yet it is the glory of the constructive forces in hun life, not that they have ever triumphed completely, or ever will. I it that in the face of failure and cynicism, the collapse of old assurance and the disappointment of long held hopes, they go on buildin.. in l nd knowledge and just social relationships, the goods in which life is justified and made complete. If that he "idealism"—and it is assured! not the llitlerian variety—it is the idealism of the earth itself that u many winters blooms again and is alive and beautiful. If totalitar ism is wrong, it is because there are still forces in human nature th can grow and build like that, and can shape life reasonably to fulfill the good of which it is capable. I believe that there are such forces, I I hope that yon believe it too, and are prepared both in this \ nd the peace that is to follow to act on that belief.