ARE DANGERS IN DEFENSE
Park College President Emphasizes Ideals of Democracy
A warning that events in this country may lead to totalitarianism was reiterated September 22 by Dr. William Lindsay Young, president of Park College, in the college chapel at Parkville, MO., before an audience of students and townspeople, reports the Kansas City Star.
“It is unfortunate that so many people think of our country’s safety purely in terms of armies and navies,” Dr. Young said. “They forget that no nation is stronger than the character of its peoples. History almost shrieks its warnings that soldiers and sailors cannot save any nation when it becomes morally decadent.”
Warning on Defense
“If in the process of achieving military and economic objectives of their program, the American people should abandon the ways, the values, the ideals of democracy; if they should abolish the civil liberties, embrace the spirit of bigotry and intolerance, engage in the persecution of minorities, force an individual into subjection to the state, and establish the pattern of dictatorship; even if they should do all these things in the name of democracy – they would be achieving the speedy triumph of totalitarianism in the land,” he said.
Transcribed by Tom Giessel from The Kansas Union Farmer newspaper
Salina, Kansas
October 2, 1940