Radio Commencement

For uncounted millions of U. S. school children, uncounted thousands of classroom radios were tuned-in in four time zones one day last week to hear what bustling Commissioner John Ward Studebaker of the U. S. Office of Education had arranged as an "ideal commencement program." National Broadcasting contributed a network of some 50 stations. Purpose of this giant mass commencement was not to award diplomas but to hear four commencement speakers of a calibre that rural school boards could not hope to match. Commissioner Studebaker and Secretary of the Interior Ickes were piped through from Washington; Columbia University's Dr. Walter Boughton Pitkin (Life Begins At Forty) and Boston's liberal old Merchant Edward A. Filene spoke from New York.

So anxious was Commissioner Studebaker to avoid any suggestion of what Russian, German or Italian schoolmen would do with such an opportunity, that he and New Dealer Ickes were ostentatiously vague in their remarks. Commissioner Studebaker warned his small hearers that "democracy must be preserved from every attack." Secretary Ickes declared that they were "entering a world in which we must engage in great enterprises. We must harness Nature, plant forests, and generate power for the use of millions."

Surveying "The Occupational Outlook for Youth," Speaker Pitkin observed: "You must become as versatile and quick-witted as possible." Irrepressible as usual was rich old Edward Filene, the Boston merchant whose hobby for 20 years has been talking liberalism. Stormed he: "Those who made money in the last generation might drink champagne when children all over America were crying for milk which they couldn't get. That game is about over now. ... I hail the arrival of a day when power has passed into the hands of the people and we businessmen must obey."

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