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Show Today's Greatest Hazard The greatest hazard of all in these perilous days is that we will place all emphasis on the weapons race, and neglect our economic frontiers. We must become more receptive to new ideas. We must demand from our industrial leaders and our political leaders greater economic programs, both domestic and foreign. It is in this direcion that the free world's best hope lies. It is along this way that we eventually will be able to divert our major energies from weapons building to the construction of creative works and to the up-building of under-developed nations. It is on this path somewhere that we will change over completely com-pletely from the precarious policy of Communist containment to the triumphant policy of Western attainment. These have been among the points brought out in recent speeches by Democratic National Chairman Paul Butler and other leading Democrats. Mr. Butler pointed out that: "Along with the monumental tasks of world enterprise which confront us, we face at home many challenges of the first order. "We are belatedly putting our minds and hands to the work of creating in America a more congenial climate for the thinker, the scientist, the teacher, the intellectual, no less. There has been a decided change in the air since the short while ago when the Prsident was able to get a laugh with a derisive definition of an egghead as one who takes twice as many words as the ordinary person to express a simple thought. "There are some who feel, not without reason, that a considerable con-siderable part of our press lent itself to the Republican sport of egghead hunting because it served partisan purposes. But that curious episode now seems to be safely behind us. We are all grateful to our publishers, editors, reporters and writers for the fresh accent they are now placing on the importance of the men and women of brains in the American system. We are heartened too by the growing force which our press is placing behind the attack on government secrecy which has attained the dimensions of a monstrosity in our democratic society over the years. Another timely blow against this home-grown threat to freedom was struck just the other day by the Associated Press Managing Editors at their annual convention. As they noted in one of their resolutions, the denial by government agencies of the people's right to know is now "more frequent and more flagrant than ever before." oOo |
