Franklin D. Roosevelt address at the graduation exercises of the University of Virginia

As actually delivered by the President. Address Delivered by the President At the Graduation Exercises of the University of Virginia Charlottesville, Virginia, June 10, 1940 1499 PRESIDENT NENCOMB, MY FRIENDS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: I notice by the program that I m asked to address the classes of 1940. I avail myself of that privilege but [also take this very apt occasion to speak to many other classes, classes that have graduated through all the years, classes that are still in the period of study, classes not alone of the schools of learning of the Nation but classes that have come up through the great schools of experience; in other words cross section, a cross section just as you who graduate today are a oross section of the Nation as whole Evory generation of young and women in Amerioa has questions to ask the world. Most of the time they are the simple but nevertheless difficult questions, questions of work to do, opportunities to find, ambitions to satisfy. But every now and again in the history of the Republic a different kind of question prosents itself -- a question that asks, not ebout the future of an individual or even of a generation, but about the futuro of the country, the future of the American people. There was such a time at the beginning of our history - at the beginning of our history as a nation. Young people asked themselves in those days what lay ahead, not for themsclves, but for the now United States. Thoro was such a time again in the seemingly endless years of the Wiar Botwoen the States. Young mon and young womon on both sides of tho line asked themselves, not what trades or professions they would entor, what lives they would mako, but what was to become of the country they had known. There is such a time sgain today. Again today the young men and the young womon of Amorica ask thomselves with earnestness and with deep concorn this samo question: "Wht is to become of the country wo know. " Now they ask it with oven greator anxicty than before. They ask, not only what the future holds for this Ropublic, but what the futuro holds for all pooples and all nations that have boon living under demo- cratic forms of government, undor the free institutions of a free people. It is andorstendable to all of us, I think, that they should ask this quostion. Thoy road the words of thoso who are tolling thom that the ideal of ind lividual liberty, the ideal of free franchiso, the ideal of peace through justice is C. docadent ideal. They read the vrord and hear the boast of those who say that E boliof in force - force directed by solf-choson leaders - is the now and vigorous system which will overrun the earth. They have seen the ascondancy of this philosophy of force in nation after nation whore froe institutions and individual libertics wore once maintained. It is natural and understandable that the younger generation should first ask itsolf what the extonsion of the philosophy of force to all the world would lond to ultimatoly. No soo) today, for example, in stark roality some of the consequences of what we call the machine age. Vihore control of mechines has boon rotained in the hands of monkind as c. whole, untold senefits have eccrued to mankind. For mankind was thon the mestor; and the mconine wa.s the servant. But, in this new systom of force the mastory of the mcchine is not in the hand of menkind. It is in the control of infinitoly small groups of individunls who rule without E. single cne of the domocratic sanctions that wo have known. The machine in hands of irrosponsible conquerors becomes the master; mankind is not only the scrvant; it is the victim too. Such mastery abandons with doliberate contempt all of the