Precisely such a test faced us in 1941 when our country became involved in World War II. We sprang to arms, urged on by the draft, and were moved to all corners of the earth to engage Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, two enemies threatening to destroy us and the other democracies. Death became common, but our crusade never turned back, not in the freezing North Atlantic where our ships went down by the score on their vital run to Murmansk to succor the Russians, nor in the jungles of New Guinea, nor the hellish landing beaches in Italy, nor in the deadly valleys of Guadalcanal. Moral dedication and incredible bravery assured victory that could justly be claimed to have saved the free world.
An extraordinary aspect of this cruel, grinding effort was that it was a total national one. Not once in the years 1941-1945 did I hear a single American inveigh against the war. For personal reasons this startled me. I was a Quaker and therefore exempt from military service. But I had been teaching history in a Colorado college and had been predicting to students that war with Hitler was inevitable and that war with Japan too might very well follow. Deciding that I could not avoid military service when I’d been warning my young men that they must prepare themselves for soldiering, I put aside my exemption and joined the Navy.
In 1944, while the war was still raging and I was on a lonely island in the distant South Pacific, the Navy informed us that a remarkable law had just been passed by Congress to reward those of us who were fighting. Its official title, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, was rarely used because a popular simplification took over: the G.I. Bill. It said our nation, out of gratitude for the sacrifices being made by our men and women in arms, promised a free education, or assistance in finding a place in society when peace came, to every veteran.
“A free college degree!” shouted the man who brought us the news. I myself judged the law one of the two or three finest Congress has ever passed since our Constitution took effect. As an act which represented the soul of democracy, I rank it with the curiously similar two-part law passed in 1862 during the middle of the Civil War, when victory for the North was by no means assured. On May 20, Congress passed the Homestead Act, which gave free farm acreage to any citizen who would move west, build a home and tame the wilderness. On July 7 followed the Land-Grant Act, which offered each state-present or future-huge tracts of free land to support a state university, where fees would be waived or kept to a minimum. In these days when it’s popular to deride Congress, we should remember that twice in the middle of devastating wars, our government had the foresight to pass farseeing legislation which would ensure the subsequent peace. Subtract the consequences of these wartime laws and the United States would today be a much poorer nation.
As a junior officer who saw thousands of military personnel in those years when I prowled the South Pacific, I saw the powerful effect this offer of free college had on various types of men. My friend Joe told me: “I’ve always wanted to be a doctor,” and became one. Another was tired of working for others and wanted a business education so that he could start his own small factory, and would get both. Another told me, “When I get home I want to get into politics and help clean up some of these stupid laws we live by,” and he and scores of others were elected to office all the way from sheriff to senator. Several, to my surprise, said: “I want to take flying lessons. Come the next war, I don’t want to march.” I decided to take my chances at being a writer.
I believe what we were saying was: “When we get back home, we’re going to be better citizens than we were when we left.” Our aims were high and the government supported us in them. The consequences were phenomenal. When demobilization started in early 1945, so many men and women who had served flocked to the established colleges and universities that provisional facilities had to be quadrupled as fast as the builders could put them up. These temporary eyesores still stand on many campuses, rusting Quonset huts or weathering pine buildings, remembrances of the crusade.
The number of young men and women whose careers were saved or protected by the G.I. Bill is awesome: full college degrees, 2,200,000; lesser degrees or certifications, 3,500,000; on-site training, 1,400,000; on-farm training, 700,000. Most of the veterans got first-class assistance in entering the job marketplace and, once settled, they helped revolutionize American business. They were able, confident, goal-directed and willing to work, and I take immense pride in the fact that my generation, after suffering years of hardship and deprivation, stormed back and, in a sense, fought just as bravely to build a new America.
Because they had lived overseas, they were not afraid to return to Europe and Asia as representatives of American business, and they supported the creation of a United Nations. They brought to the college professorships they earned both vigor and imagination. In business they would try anything, with amazing results in new products and ways of distributing them. Most heartening, they supported our government when Congress, acting upon the leadership of President Roosevelt and General George Marshall, invented a master plan for sharing America’s multiplying riches with the destroyed and distressed nations in Europe, an act of economic leadership which has not been equaled since.
To sum up my generation, we survived a depression, fought and won a world conflict and helped establish a new world order. In peace, our enthusiasm and energy enabled our country to become the richest and most powerful of nations. And we pioneered social innovations like accepting African-Americans to full membership in the armed services, opening opportunities for women, and laws which gave the less fortunate segments of our population better breaks. We helped to build a new kind of America. And because we had been separated from our families for protracted periods, we rushed to produce an enormous crop of babies who would form a new generation to replace us.
Since I have not been reticent in praising the accomplishments of my generation, I must in fairness admit that we failed conspicuously in meeting one vital obligation. We did a wretched job in raising the children we produced, for we did not prepare them to assume the responsibilities of citizenship. We threw them into the world as an undisciplined gang, and our nation suffered.
Starting about 1960, the flood of children born after the end of World War II and properly labeled the Baby Boom began behaving in mysterious ways. Their parents, especially their fathers who had undergone both privation and psychic shocks, were excessively lenient and indulgent with their offspring on the theory: “I want my child to have it a lot better than I did when I was growing up in the Depression.” Inspired by Dr. Spock’s persuasive teachings, these parents failed to teach their children self-discipline. Ego-centered behavior became not only acceptable, but also recommended. The young people were encouraged by a revolutionary book by a Yale professor, Charles Reich’s “The Greening of America,” which became the testament of the new order. It taught that basic structures of American life were to be held in question, which meant that our society would change radically in many directions. The book had a powerful impact on the leaders of the youth revolt.
That revolt ended not with the killings at Kent State in 1970 but later that year when radical students at the University of Wisconsin in Madison detonated a homemade bomb, destroying a building dedicated to research, scattering the results of investigations and killing a professor working in his study. The affair was so shocking, so outside normal behavior at a university, that the entire nation seemed to cry in protest: “No more! We are not going down that path. Stop it!” Campus-wide agitations did halt. National Guardsmen stopped invading student rallies with loaded rifles. And political leaders quit posturing as protectors of law and order. The nation calmed down. Dr. Spock, subjected to serious criticisms for some of his teachings, offered limited mea culpas. No more was heard of Professor Reich and his Greening of America, and Dr. Timothy Leary’s preachings about the wonders of psychedelic drugs were discredited. The violent days were over.
We are all survivors. Our generation of political geniuses in the 1760-1791 period fabricated a pattern for government which has proved itself capable of withstanding great storms and stresses. During my lifetime, it has served remarkably well, and I am content to see a new generation take the helm to protect it and help it meet the new challenges.
