American essays -- 20th century; State, The; World War, 1914-1918
It is as if the war and they had been
waiting for each other. One wonders what scope they would have had
for their intelligence without it. Probably most of them would have
gone into industry and devoted themselves to sane reorganization
schemes. What is significant is that it is the technical side of the
war that appeals to them, not the interpretative or political side.
The formulation of values and ideals, the production of articulate
and suggestive thinking, had not, in their education, kept pace, to
any extent whatever, with their technical aptitude. The result is
that the field of intellectual formulation is very poorly manned by
this younger intelligentsia. While they organize the war, formulation
of opinion is left largely in the hands of professional patriots,
sensational editors, archaic radicals. The intellectual work of this
younger intelligentsia is done by the sedition-hunting Vigilantes, and
by the saving remnant of older liberals. It is true, Dewey calls for
a more attentive formulation of war-purposes and ideas, but he calls
largely to deaf ears. His disciples have learned all too literally the
instrumental attitude toward life, and, being immensely intelligent
and energetic, they are making themselves efficient instruments of the
war-technique, accepting with little question the ends as announced
from above. That those ends are largely negative does not concern them,
because they have never learned not to subordinate idea to technique.
Their education has not given them a coherent system of large ideas,
or a feeling for democratic goals. They have, in short, no clear
philosophy of life except that of intelligent service, the admirable
adaptation of means to ends. They are vague as to what kind of a
society they want, or what kind of society America needs, but they are
equipped with all the administrative attitudes and talents necessary to
attain it.
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