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  • Faith of an Educator
  • Henry W. Nordmeyer
  • Journal: PMLA / Publications of the Modern Language Association of America / Volume 77 / Issue 2 / May 1962
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2021, pp. 1-9
  • Print publication: May 1962
  • View extract

    It is difficult for me to express in so many words what I feel as I am standing here before this august body of scholars and teachers to address you as your president—in this particular year 1961. It is not only the honor as such that is crushing, an honor which in all humility I accepted for the greater glory of my beloved University rather than as a nod to my own modest talents. No, what is really crushing is to be called upon to address you at this particular juncture of world events, described in the words of President Kennedy as “the most dangerous time in the history of the human race,” in the eery light of the fact that “the events and decisions of the next ten months may well decide the fate of man for the next 10,000 years.” Even one year ago, nobody would have prognosticated in such terms. The German problem, the causa movens of it all, has been with us, and with this society of American humanists, for quite some time. In 1917, it was the noble lot of Kuno Francke to strike the balance of cultural values, and, in 1941, John Walz had a similar task, of incomparably greater magnitude. In 1957, when by H. Carrington Lancaster's presidential forecast of 1939, a third World War might have been upon us, Taylor Starck held this high office. Well, the year 1957 was remarkable enough, setting a milestone also in our affairs in the advent of Sputnik I. But at least we were spared the apocalyptic visions of a thermo-nuclear Armageddon with which we have become but too familiar in this, the year of the Lord 1961.

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