“That if they are considered incapable of rational judgment upon theories presented to them, the solution lies in further training in scientific method rather than in quarantine from ideas, and
“That a reputation for fearless open-mindedness is more to be desired for an academic institution than material prosperity.”
Also the Harvard students are waking up, under the influence of the Liberal Club. They have been discussing the subject of education, calling in various professors and deans to address them, and last spring the members of the corporation and the board of overseers were the guests of the club, to consider inaugurating the English tutorial system at Harvard. Also Harvard has a cooperative society, with three students upon its board of directors, and the Barnard students are planning a cooperative book-store, to be run entirely by themselves.
Such things as this have a way of spreading; they are spreading rapidly in Germany, where there is a movement of insurgent youth, taking steps to form a “World League of Youth,” to make over the thinking and the social life of mankind. You will no doubt admit that the youth of Germany have justification for being discontented with the management of their Fatherland. Let me quote from their manifesto:
“Comrades! We are united in the hatred of the institutions of our social life and of our time. We ask ourselves: Whose fault are these institutions, this civilization? On whose conscience rest these political systems, these schools, these churches, these politics, these newspapers[newspapers] and so much else? The ‘adult’ people....”
Again, here is a statement from one of the leaders of this new and vitally important movement:
“The unifying characteristic, indeed the only sense of the youth movement is this: we no longer want to obey laws, coercions, customs that come to us from the outside and that have aims without a living, inner meaning to ourselves. We want to form our lives in accordance with laws that are within us, laws toward which alone we feel a responsibility.”
Our own country has been more fortunate than Germany; we have still a great measure of prosperity, we are not yet in the pit of hell with Central Europe. But we are sliding, and sliding fast, and those who run our country do not know how to stop the process. I have shown you the League of the Old Men, suppressing thought and wrecking the world; and now here is the answer—the League of Youth! The Old Men were raised in the old order, their thinking is bound by its limitations. But we, the youth of the world, live in a new age, and have new problems to deal with. We cannot well do worse than our elders have done; we may very easily do better. Since we have longer to live in this world than our elders, we have surely the right to save it if we can!
CHAPTER XCIII
THE OPEN FORUM
I am writing in a time of reaction, but already the streaks of dawn are beginning to show. We are soon to witness the social revolution in Western Europe, and it will not be possible to keep these ideas from stirring the minds of young America. Our politics will change, and with that change will come freedom in our state universities, and the privately endowed institutions will be forced to come along. Just what will happen in the great centers of snobbery, such as Columbia and Princeton and Pennsylvania, I do not attempt to predict; perhaps their faculties will wake up and take control of their own destinies, or perhaps we shall see in our political life some violent revolutionary change, which will sweep the plutocratic endowments out of existence all at once. I am not advocating such a procedure, but I see our ruling classes doing everything in their power to force it, and if their efforts should succeed, we may see very quick reforms in American higher education.