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PRESIDENT'S TALK TO SCIENCE CONGRESS
We, and most of the people in the world, believe still in a civilization of construction and not of destruction. We, and most of the people in the world, still believe that men and women have an inherent right to hew out the patterns of their own individual lives, just so long as they as individuals do not harm their fellow beings.
We call this — this thought, this ideal — by many terms which are synonymous. We call it individual liberty; we call it civil liberty; and I think best of all, we call it democracy.
Until now, up to these days, we permit ourselves by common consent to search for truth, to teach the truth as we see it, and by learning a little here and a little there, and by teach¬ ing a little here and a little there to allow the normal processes of truth to keep growing — to keep growing for the well-being of our fellow men.
In our search and in our teaching we are a part of a great adventure — an exciting adventure, an adventure that gives to us a larger satisfaction, I think an even larger satisfaction than our forefathers had when they were in the midst of the adventure of settling the Americas from the Old World.
We feel that we are building human progress by conquering disease and poverty, discomfort, and by improving science and culture, removing one by one the many cruelties and crudities and barbarities of less civilized eras.
In contrast to that rather simple, rather fine, picture of our ideals; in contrast, in other parts of the world, teachers and scholars are not permitted to search for truth lest the truth when made known might not suit the designs of their masters.
Too often they are not allowed to teach the truth as they see it, because truth might make men free. Yes, they become objects of suspicion if they speak openly, if they show an interest in new truth; for their very tongues and minds are supposed to be mobilized for other ends.
This has not happened in the New World. God willing, it shall not happen in the New World.
At the Pan-American Conference at Buenos Aires and again at Lima we discussed a dim and unpleasant possibility. We feared that other continents might become so involved in war, wars brought on by the school of destruction, not con¬ struction, that the Americas might have to become the
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