rness and sanity makes an enviable
contrast with the pathetic propaganda of the German intellectuals.
Similarly, the work of our Columbia scholars of the Legislative Drafting
Bureau proved of great value in formulating and, perhaps more important,
in discouraging legislation.

In general, however, I think we ought to face the fact squarely that our
scholarship in man's relations with his fellow men, in his understanding
of himself and his fellows as contrasted with his mastery of physical
things, cannot claim so clear-cut a decision. Even in science we should
not set too great store by ourselves. Professor, late Colonel, Millikan
writes: "The contribution of the United States in research and
development lines was less, far less in proportion to our resources and
population, than that of England or France, and this in spite of the far
heavier strain under which they were laboring." And yet, with us,
science was better mobilized, better equipped, and can make a better
showing than the humanities. Part of this can be readily explained by
the statement that preparation for war is after all engineering on a
huge scale. But we must not prove too much if we are to profit by the
lesson. For example, the war found us utterly unprepared in
foreign-language knowledge; and we are still unprepared. How many real
Americans, I don't mean recent immigrants, but men and women with our
traditions and our point of view, can speak Russian? How many can speak
the languages of the Near East or Far East?

Excellent work has been done by individual philosophers, economists, and
sociologists in labor questions, in welfare work, on the war-time trade
and industrial boards; but as a whole our scholars in these fields did
not dominate the situation as did the men of science in theirs. Of
course, their task was infinitely harder. For one thing, though we may
be ready to confess our ignorance of calculus or colloidal chemistry or
thermo-dynamics, we all believe in the validity of our off-hand
judgments in politics and morals, and indeed in all the springs of human
conduct. Yet when all allowances are made, the fact remains that there
is a scholarship in these matters and we have American scholars in them,
but that with distinguished exceptions these professionals permitted the
man in the street or the man in the editor's chair, or in Congress, or
in the Cabinet, to proclaim his amateur pronouncement and to get away
with it. Indeed, I will go furthe