Article August 3, 1940 Issue

Signs of the Times

Topic: Building the Future

with contributions from Walter Lippmann, R. Luman, Lawrence Stokes, Charles E. S. Kraemer, William T. Manning, David Williams

[Walter Lippmann, in the Herald-Tribune, New York, New York]

What is left of our civilization will not be maintained, what has been wrecked will not be restored, by imagining that some new political gadget can be invented, some new political formula improvised which will save it. Our civilization can be maintained and restored only by remembering and rediscovering the truths, and by re-establishing the virtuous habits, on which it was founded. There is no use looking into the blank future for some new and fancy revelation of what man needs in order to live.

The revelation has been made. By it man conquered the jungle about him and the barbarian within him. The elementary principles of work and sacrifice and duty—and the transcendent criteria of truth, justice, and righteousness—and the grace of love and charity—are the things which have made men free. Men can keep their freedom and reconquer it only by these means. These are the terms stipulated in the nature of things for the salvation of men on this earth, and only in this profound, this stern, and this tested wisdom shall we find once more the light and the courage we need.

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