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Show TW 3- (Mteoi . . . Author of Atom Plan Sees Many Tomorrows j Clouded bY Threat of Terrible Holocaust Bernard M. Baruch, who long has been consulted on world affairs by American presidents, reveals his personal creed. This is one of a series of statements by thinking, useful people in all walks of life. "This I Believe" appears in this paper every Thursday and is presented by Edward R. Murrow over KSUB at 6 p. m Monday through Friday. By Bernard M. Baruch Elder Statesman When I was a younger man, I believed that progress was inevitablethat in-evitablethat the world would be better tomorrow and better still the day after. The thunder of war, the stench of concentration concentra-tion camps, the mushroom cloud of the atomic bamb are, however, how-ever, not conducive to optimism. All our tomorrows for years to come will be clouded by the threat of a terrible holocaust. Yet my faith in the future, though somewhat shaken, is not destroyed. I still believe in it. If I sometimes doubt that man will achieve his mortal potentialities, I never doubt that he can. I believe that these potentiali-t potentiali-t ties promise all men a meas-, meas-, ure beyond reckoning of the joys and comforts, material and spiritual, that life offers. Not Utopia, to be sure. I do not believe be-lieve in Utopias. Men may achieve all but perfection. Paradise Is not for this world. All men cannot be masters, but none need be a slave. We cannot cast out pain from the world, but needless suffering we can. Tragedy will be with us in some degree as long as there is life, but misery we can banish. Injustice In-justice will raise its head in the best of all possible worlds, but tyranny we can conquer. Evil will Invade some men's hearts, Intolerance will twist some men's minds, but decency is a far more common human attribute and it can be made to prevail in our daily lives. I believe all this, because I believe above all else in reason in the power of the human mind to cope with the problems of life. Any calamity visited upon man, either by his own hand or by a more omnipotent nature, could have been avoided or at least mitigated by a measure meas-ure of thought. To nothing so much as the abandonment of reason does humanity owe its sorrows. Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed, whatever follies I have witnessed in private and public life have been the consequence of action without thought. Because I place my trust In reason, I place it in the individual. indi-vidual. There is a madness in crowds from which the wisest, caught up in their ranks, are not immune. Stupidity and cruel-ty cruel-ty are the attributes of the mob, not wisdom and compassion. I have known, for who has not, personal disappointments and despair. But always the thought of tomorrow has buoyed me up. I have looked to the future all my life. I still do. I still believe that with courage and intelligence intelli-gence we can make the future bright with fulfillment. . . The Twinkler's Club will meet Monday, Mar. 15 at the Masonic temple. |