H.R.L. ON HIS COUNTRY

A sampling of Luce speeches, memos and editorial musings about America:

> "The British code [at the boarding school he attended in China] violated every American instinct. No wonder that hardly an hour passed that an American did not have to run up the flag. For example, a master insists that Ohio is pronounced O-hee-ho. So, first your knuckles are rapped, then you get your face slapped--by the master--then you are publicly caned. By this time you are crying, but still you can't say O-hee-ho." May 1950.

> "As I see it, ours is an immeasurably rich and varied culture. It includes within it the beauty of truth for truth's sake and the truth of beauty for the sake of beauty alone. It exalts courage and enterprise and adventure and sings its most joyous hymn to a Prometheus unbound by any gods. And it knows no nobler language than that a man should do justly and walk humbly before his God. It has been driven by fierce compulsions--and it has been gentle as no other cultures have been gentle." June 1939.

> "The only basic principle of authority in the American nation is God. Our fathers' God, to thee Author of liberty That popular hymn answers with simple truth the basic question of politics which neither Plato nor Aristotle could answer. The American people in their first century had made no compact with godless liberty: they had made a compact of liberty under God." May 1948.

> "In that beautiful summer of 1914, something ended forever-- something very great and wonderful. . . . You might just call it Europe, or perhaps more exactly, the European system. Two and a half years later, the President of the U.S., Woodrow Wilson, sent a message to Congress asking for a declaration of war. 'God helping us,' he said, 'we can do no other.' Most thoughtful people, especially Republicans, felt that Wilson had kept God waiting long enough. Anyway, at last he did it. And that day something began that will never end until either a new world of freedom and justice is created or the whole of the existing world goes down into chaos. That something--what was it, what is it? You can just call it the U.S.--entering upon the world scene, never to depart until her name wins the respect, if not the gratitude, of mankind." November 1951.

> On the American Century: "America as the dynamic center of ever-widening spheres of enterprise, America as the training center of the skillful servants of mankind, America as the Good Samaritan, really believing again that it is more blessed to give than to receive, and America as the powerhouse of the ideals of freedom and justice--out of these elements surely can be fashioned a vision of the 20th century to which we can and will devote ourselves in joy and gladness and enthusiasm." February 1941.

> "This is the day of wrath. The thousand-odd dead at Pearl Harbor that first day were not merely the victims of Japanese treachery. They were the victims also of a weak and faltering America that had lost its way and failed the world in leadership. We have come to the end of as pusillanimous an epoch as there ever was in the history of a great people. There was no dignity in these years, and nothing of fate that we did not bring upon ourselves. It is also the day of hope. [For] we know, that however we have misused it, we are the principal trustees in this century of a great heritage of human freedom under God. Now at last the issue is joined: either our ideals as free men shall dominate in this century, or the pitiless bayonets of our enemies will." December 1941.

> "This has always been the country of easy answers--easy in the sense of being simple and straightforward rather than complicated. We're the country of the endless frontier, of the big sky, of manifest destiny, of unlimited resources, of 'Go west, young man,' of opportunity for all, of rags to riches, mass production, nothing to fear but fear itself, technical know-how, a chicken in every pot, gung-ho and can do. We have won all the marbles--and it just isn't enough. Further, the U.S. of A. knows or feels that it is not enough. We have been primarily concerned to establish a form of government--government of the people, by the people, and for the people. In this we have succeeded. But we have not been primarily concerned to build a structure of society which honors, above all, the transcendent value of the good, the true and the beautiful. So, I say, we are now called upon to create that society--to create on this continent the first modern technological, prosperous, humane and reverent civilization. We must see ourselves as pilgrims setting out now to overcome not wintry seas and forests and deserts; but far more dreadful enemies--doubt and cynicism and emptiness of soul and meaninglessness." January 1962.

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