James Bryant Conant

The question of a preventive war, the question of what the Man in the Kremlin will do when Russia has the homh, the fundamental and, as yet, unresolved question of how we in our free society can reconcile the use of force with the preservation of freedom — here are the deepest, the most far-reaching issues of our time. The Atlantic is proud to publish this thoughtful analysis by President JAMES BRYANT CONANT of Harvard, one of our greatest scientists and educators and a man who knows beyond any layman the awful potentialities of the bomb.

Chemist, writer, and university president, JAMES BRYANT CONANTof Harvard is faced, as is every college administrator, with the problems imposed by the armed truce in which we live. The effect of inflation on American education can be measured in teachers’ salaries and in overcrowded classrooms. The effect of Universal Military Training can be forecast and it need not inevitably lead, as some say, to war. The clear and affirmative statement which follows has been drawn from President Conant’s forthcoming book, Education in a Divided World, which is to be published this autumn by the Harvard University Press.

In his thoughtful latest book, On Understanding Science, PRESIDENT JAMES BRYANT CONANT of Harvard University has pointed out the great fallacy of trying to separate scientific theory from the groping, fumbling, tentative efforts that lead to it. Now in this clear, challenging article he calls on men of science to assume a new responsibility for maintaining and improving the unique democracy in which we live. The substance of this paper formed his address as outgoing president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

» The President of Harvard University proposes broadening the basis for selecting oflicer material for college training.

Charter Day Address delivered at the University of California on March 28, 1940.