THE PEOPLE: Freedom--New Style

(See Cover)

A model sportswoman, the late Mrs. F. Ambrose Clark, used to counsel new horse owners: "Win as if you were used to it and lose as if you liked it." The U.S. today shows little elation over its abundance, or even over the dawning realization that a disastrous depression is never again likely to halt the march of productivity. At the moment in history when this unique economic achievement was recognized, the U.S. lost its long security against heavy enemy attack; it became the first in the line of paramount nations to live in the knowledge that between any nightfall and morning a fifth of its people and a third of its production centers could be destroyed. Over this prospect the U.S. does not grieve or tremble. In a field of tension between unprecedented poles of security and insecurity, this superlatively blessed and threatened people stands with apparent aplomb. Mrs. Clark would be proud of her countrymen.

Or would she? What seems to be modesty and courage in the present U.S. mood (or lack of mood) might also be a numbness in the body social. Being a sportswoman, Mrs. Clark did not mean to play down the zest and pride of achievement, or to mute the challenge of possible failure. Restraint of expression is different from lack of response and inability to express.

The Pace that Outdates. A society, like an individual, can get out of touch with itself. It "makes sense" or not, depending on the relation between what it is and what it thinks it is and wants to be. In a generation of change so rapid that the pace cannot be appreciated, the American self-picture has gone out of focus. The intellectuals, to whom a society looks for its picture, understandably failed to keep up. In the 1930s they were looking backward at the ruin that war, depression and fascism had made of the 19th century's high confidence in rationality, progress and perfectibility. Some clung stubbornly to fragments of the exploded dream. More, resolving never again to be taken in by progress, settled for a program of anti-regression; economic stability and antifascism were timid goals. Since World War II, the intellectual climate has been changing. Social scientists, drawn back to the exciting and challenging present, have begun to update the future.