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IN THE FULLNESS OF TIME 579
more a topic which, both in its original form and as "Freedom of the Screen," was so long my daily companion.
Glancing back across more than half a century of adult life— and what a half century in the world's life!— one must ask himself: "How do things look?" Never were contrasts sharper: between peace and war; between our national prosperity and great regions of poverty; between order and chaos; between West and East. But it seems to me that a striking thing is happening. In the midst of blatant confusion and atheism, a quiet undercurrent of faith seems to be left. Among the best-selling books, more than once the majority recently have been books with a clear spiritual message. Several could have shared the title that had such an appeal— This I Believe. On every side thoughtful men have been voicing the same conviction: what the world needs is a return to God.
In this conviction one of our strong Indiana newspapers, the Indianapolis Star, ran a series of articles in its Sunday magazine under the general heading "I Believe." Eugene Pulliam, the editor, asked me to contribute a statement which appeared in April of 1951 under the title "Faith Is the Key." Because it was so truly autobiographical I want to quote a few words of the opening:
I am grateful that I always believed in God. It has seemed perfectly natural. At any time in my life— as I look back through the years— it would have been a struggle to give up that belief. Trying to live in a world without God would have been unthinkable.
In the autumn of that year there occurred a journalistic event that seemed to me significant. In an editorial in the Star on Sunday, November 4, 1 95 1, it was announced that the paper had changed its motto from "Fair and First" to "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, There is Liberty."
Lately I encountered another statement of the American ideal that struck me as so eloquent and so true that I asked Dr. Francis Pendleton Gaines, president of Washington and Lee University, for a copy. I want the privilege of quoting a few sentences, since they express my own creed too:
In the perspective of the centuries, the contribution of America is to be not cloud-piercing architecture, not unprecedented gadgets for the comfortableness of life, not military prowess diverting the current of history. The contribution of our country is an idea— the American idea. . . .
The essence of the idea is the substitution of an inner aspiration for outer authority. An educator might define it as "the incentive philosophy of a free people. . . ."
This freedom translated into the great world is the promise of the American idea— freedom boldly to dream, mightily to struggle, richly to achieve. . . .