Apology to No One

Idealism, in the popular sense, was in full fashion among pre-Pearl Harbor students. It both pricked and tickled a contented and complacent America in the form of New Dealers, Willkie-ites, isolationists, prophets of the Golden Age of Science, the avant-garde of the "truly American" culture--it was the product of liberal education, too much education but still not enough. War broke most of the bones of those ideals, and now they are socially quite unpresentable. But an untouched and confident corps of students are stepping up to receive their dose of the liberal arts and they will emerge with a bright new idealism: it will be very similar to the old. Meanwhile, many leaders of the former picketings and rallies and bull sessions clung to their raft of obsessions and quietly disappeared when war and contact with the raw, coarse stuff of a democratic country shook loose their inflexible grip.

What was wrong about your ideals, pre-war idealist? Was there something the matter with socialism or did you find other ways to give everyone an even break? What happened to the American Destiny? Wasn't it worth shielding from the filthy bickerings of Europe, or was its value really in that it should have been a World Destiny? How did your racial equality ideas go over with your Southern army friends? Or perhaps you found it easier not to cultivate any friends from the South.

President Conant spoke not so long ago about "tough-minded idealism." The trouble with many of the old idealists, the ones whose influence should now be approaching a peak, is that they have become tough--or perhaps the better word is "hard", and brittle--and soft inside. They are safe from the depredations of new ideas; they find it easier to chew their own fat. The man Mr. Conant is thinking of may have a tender skin, but his nerves are awake and he is well-muscled.

And where does idealism exist today at College? At Phillips Brooks House, where the Social Service Committee workers continue to believe that the ordinary citizens of the community and their children will appreciate instruction, entertainment, and help from half-educated college men (but too many volunteers lose their initial enthusiasm too quickly).

In the Administration, where a few individuals believe that learning on all levels need know no economic or geographical boundaries (although some of these few men have been sometimes called unscrupulous in their local dealings).

In the local AVC, where some still think that the idea of common citizenship can come first in a veteran's organization (but those who think so are failing more and more to speak up).

On the Student Council, where students still feel that undergraduate opinions, in spite of widespread unconcern are indispensable guides in administrative decisions of the University (and even there, apathy of others has deceptively bred an illusion of their own superior intelligence).

Among the Faculty, whose constant contact with newly discovered facts and changing trends of thought keeps a shiny finish on the surface of their philosophy (and they continue to allow their intellectual differences to keep them from uniting on practical organization of their departments).

And with the many other students and scholars who have faith in the intangible values of liberal education even though they choose not to express themselves.

But idealism is also a corpse kicked around by the Clubs--tolerated in an otherwise vigorous community because of their aversion to the light of day--who lure congenial men into the fundamental mis-conception that race, religion and "family" determine a person's intelligence, integrity or his sociability.

And it is dead for the many students who wasted their effort to gain admission through the notion that education means acquiring skill in the use of a limited body of facts, or worse still, that an A.B. from Harvard is an end in itself.

Here, it is presumed that idealism does and should exist, and it is admired even though it be imperfect or naive. One espouses it the more fiercely when he observes the conditions which allow it to die. Idealists are sometimes wrong, but always right.