|
|
"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
|
John F. Kennedy - University of Washington's 100th Anniversary (November 16, 1961)
|
| Parent | Parent Candidate |
| Contributor | Thomas Walker |
| Post Date | , 12:am |
| Description | President Odegaard, members o/the regents, members of the faculty, students, ladies and gentlemen:
It is a great honor on behalf of the people of the United States to extend to you congratulations on the Centennial Anniversary of this University, which represents 100 years of service to this State and country.
This nation in two of the most critical times in the life of our country, once in the days after the Revolution in the Northwest ordinance to which Doctor Odegaard referred, and again during the most difficult days of the Civil War, in the Morrill Act which established our land grant colleges, this nation made a basic commitment to the maintenance of education, for the very reasons which Thomas Jefferson gave, that if this nation were to remain free it could not remain ignorant. The basis of self-government and freedom requires the development of character and self-restraint and perseverance and the long view. And these are qualities which require many years of training and education. So that I think this University and others like it across the country, and its graduates, have recognized that these schools are not maintained by the people of the various States in order to merely give the graduates of these schools an economic advantage in the life struggle. Rather, these schools are supported by our people because our people realize that this country has needed in the past, and needs today as never before, educated men and women who are committed to the cause of freedom. So for what this University has done in the past, and what its graduates can do now and in the future, I salute you.
This University was rounded when the Civil War was already on, and no one could be sure in 1861 whether this country would survive. But the picture which the student of 1961 has of the world, and indeed the picture which our citizens have of the world, is infinitely more complicated and infinitely more dangerous.
In 1961 the world relations of this country have become tangled and complex. One of our former allies has become our adversary—and he has his own adversaries who are not our allies. Heroes are removed from their tombs—history rewritten—the names of cities changed overnight.
We increase our arms at a heavy cost, primarily to make certain that we will not have to use them. We must face up to the chance of war, if we are to maintain the peace. We must work with certain countries lacking in freedom in order to strengthen the cause of freedom. We find some who call themselves neutral who are our friends and sympathetic to us, and others who call themselves neutral who are unremittingly hostile to us. And as the most powerful defender of freedom on earth, we find ourselves unable to escape the responsibilities of freedom, and yet unable to exercise it without restraints imposed by the very freedoms we seek to protect.
We cannot, as a free nation, compete with our adversaries in tactics of terror, assassination, false promises, counterfeit mobs and crises. |
| Article | Read Article |
|
|
