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REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT

of a recurring transition in the history of modern times. They have,
to our tragic cost, equipped us with only fragmentary views of human
beings and human society. The universities are often slow to meet the
needs of the age. In the transition from mediaeval to modern times,
with its focus of forces involving the disintegration of the feudal
order, the commercial revolution, and the religious revolt, the univer-
sities tardily admitted to curricular equality the revived ancient
learning which was the intellectual ferment of it all. Close to the
beginning of the last century the Western world stood in the presence
of the steam power revolution. The universities were slow to give
cultural equality to the new sciences which, in their own laboratories,
were to rediscover and conquer the earth, and refound the techno-
logical basis of modern society. Modern democracies stand face to
face today with communist and fascist dictatorships. The people of
the Western world, already in the midst of the social challenge of the
electrical and gas power revolutions, find themselves overwhelmed
with three other great influences: the consequences of the World War,
the world moral confusion, and the world economic depression. The
stakes are too great and catastrophic developments are too swift for
the universities to stand aside or wait upon tradition for their course
or vested interests for their cue. In the face of revolutions, dictator-
ships, and catastrophe, America, through the schools, colleges and
universities, must learn to be true to her inner Americanism of free-
dom of the mind and equality of opportunity for all people.

What the classics meant intellectually in Renaissance times, and
what the natural sciences have meant technologically in the industrial
age, suggest something of what the social sciences in the twentieth
century can mean humanly in the making of a nobler America and
more beautiful world in which men and women can do their day's
work and dream dreams for their children. Scholars of the first rank
in all nations enlisted in high research can lay out the groundwork
for the better cooperation of the nations in international diplomacy,
disarmament, finance, commerce, culture, scientific and social mas-
tery, and catch the imagination and heroism of youth in the high
adventures of the human spirit for the saving of the nations and
the succor of the peoples of the earth who ask for the chance to earn
their daily bread.