Laserfiche WebLink
<br />\Vithin the past dozen years I have had a number of intere!':ting experi- <br />ences that have taught me something about the nature of what is going <br />on. I represented my country as an official delegate to the international <br />conference held by UNESCO in Mexico in 1947; was a guest of the <br />Swedish government in 1948 to study science and higher education in that <br />cOllntry; in 1955 attended the first international conference to deal with <br />the peacetime uses of atomic energy 1 held in Geneva under the sponsor- <br />ship of UNESCO. It was at this meeting the first significant interchange <br />of information between the scientists of many differ~nl nations, including <br />the U.S.S.R., took place. I paid a brief visit to Puerto Rico as a guest of <br />the Department of Education of the University of Puerto Rico in 1958, <br />and this past summer was a member of the first scientific team from this <br />country to go to the Union of Sovjet Socialist Republics; under an agree- <br />ment arrived at between the two governments we paid a three-week visit. <br />These opportunities to [oak at several facets of the world's economic and <br />social structure have impressed certain lessons on me that may be worth <br />sharing. <br />\Vhat are these different people hoping for? In what directions are <br />they groping? Do they have some goal in common? Will their social <br />structures disappear as did those of Greece, Rome, Babylon1 and ancient <br />Egypt? Ann is there any lesson for the present in what we know about <br />the rise and fall of those earlier civilizations? <br /> <br />!. <br /> <br />I believe that I have found some of fhe clues in my impressions of the <br />areas I have visited. Let us start at home. The United States has an <br />area of about 3 million square miles, and population of 175 million. The <br />present population density of 58 to tbe square mile is increasing at the <br />rate of 1.7 per cent a year. Our country has been a melting pot for many <br />nationalities and races; blessed with abundant natural resources as a young <br />nation, and still rich.. we have begun to feel the necessity of looking beyond <br />our borders for some materials which we no longer are able to supply <br />from our own resources in adequate quantities. The United States is <br />consuming about one-half as much raw material a'i the rest of the non- <br />communist world although it has only one-tenth as many people. Rich <br />soil and highly developed agrirultnral technology enahle us to produce <br />food in such abundance that we are embarrassed with our surpluses. Our <br />people are a generous people on the whole; they were the first to set a <br />national goal of education for all.. they invested heavily in it, and have <br />profIted greatly, Today 44.5 million people--about a quarter of our pop. <br />ulation--are attending some school. Our economic system is based on a <br />modified free enterprise philosophy designed to give equal opportunities <br />to all citizens. We are a people capable of great idealism which has been <br />responsible for a continuous revision of our scale. of human values. The <br /> <br />2 <br />