Men, Money and Missions in the Far East

"Given the best system of education and business, given the best philosophy, given the best opportunities, all of which we in America have, why don’t we get the best results?"
Rockford, Il • April 27, 1958

Today it is easy to make headlines. A few colorful cracks at American education can almost guarantee a top spot on the front page to any Admiral or General or Scientist. Any business man who predicts the recession will get worse is sure to receive attention and respect. Any politician who views the Pentagon with alarm, or castigates our foreign aid program is almost certain to receive applause. Today is the heyday of the pessimist, the man who’s against everything, the man who sees nothing but calamity ahead.

Under these circumstances I cannot hope that my speech tonight will be popular. I come to this magnificent meeting of patriotic members of the 4th Degree K. of C. with a very simple, but optimistic, message. It is this:-

Everyone who lives in America today has plenty to be patriotic about, plenty to thank God for, plenty to inspire him or her to work harder for the success of our kind of democratic government.

True, we in America have problems. But so do the Russians, and the English, and the French, and the Japanese. No one has yet repealed the sentence God gave to Adam and Eve when He evicted them from the Garden of Eden. We shall always live in a “vale of tears"; we shall always work by the sweat of our brow; we shall always find that the flesh wars against the spirit. But it’s not the war, or the sweat, or the tears, which matter. It’s our fortitude and courage in meeting our problems, as well as our success, which make the difference. And today, my friends, we Americans, I repeat, have much to be patriotic about, much to be proud of, and what’s even more important, we have a whole world waiting to learn how we have achieved such success.

Let me explain and illustrate what I mean, - First, by reminding you of some unusual things here at home, things we frequently take for granted in the U.S.A., but which are truly unique in the world.

Secondly, I’d like to mention some things being done by our American representatives in the Far East.

Third, I’d like to point out a few of our current problems, and

Finally, I’d like to suggest some solutions to these problems.

Let me start by emphasizing that America is still the land of opportunity - the place where opportunities, especially educational opportunities, are the best.

In the United States we have compulsory education -- to 16 years of age in Illinois; to 17 or 18 years of age in many other states. Every boy and girl in America has a complete opportunity to graduate from high school, free of charge. Compare this to the situation in the Far East. In Korea there is compulsory education only through the sixth grade. In Japan, only to the 9th grade. In Hong Kong there is no compulsory education whatsoever. These conditions are typical of all countries in Asia. The net result is that thousands of children throughout the Orient get no education at all. The best literacy rate is in Japan 85%. In the United States it is 98%. India has 20% literacy -- Laos, 15% -- Indonesia, 30% -- Viet Nam, 25%. -- The Philippines, 56%.

In the Far East there are practically no vocational schools.

In the Far East there are few, if any, special schools such as schools of agriculture, forestry or metallurgy.

In the Far East there are few institutions for training teachers.

In the Far East, high school is still a privilege granted to the very few. In Viet Nam, for example, a country with 12,000,000 inhabitants, more than the entire state of Illinois, there were only 1500 high school graduates in 1957. There is only one university. By comparison, here in Illinois alone we have almost 30 colleges.

There is no doubt about the fact that Asia, and especially the Far East, has few of the educational opportunities available to Americans.

America has also created the world’s greatest system of mass education.

For example, our educational plant and facilities are the world’s best. In fact, they are the envy of the world. Any country, including Russia, would trade its school buildings and equipment for ours.

Ours in the only country where local people control local schools – what’s taught in them, where they are built, how they are financed. In Japan every decision about schools and school buildings is made in Tokyo. In France all decisions are made in Paris. In England all decisions are made in London. Only in America does the local community control and support education. Ours is the only grass roots system of education in the world.

Ours is also the only system which truly recognizes the right of all people to receive the maximum education of which they are capable. Don’t forget the millions of slave laborers when you read all the compliments for Russian education.

And as Catholics we can be profoundly grateful that our system of education and our government have always recognized that parents are the first educators of children, and are responsible before God for the effectiveness of the education they provide. This belief has permitted parochial schools to increase and grow strong. It has permitted healthy competition between public and private education. It has guaranteed that the United States will never have a centralized, lock-step, monolithic, educational system.

In all these respects it is fair to say that our educational policies and doctrines are unique in the world, and probably the best in the world.

Our free, competitive business system is another unique American creation which we often take for granted. It has provided a higher standard of living and greater opportunities for personal advancement than any economic system in world history. And it is less socialistic than any economic system now in existence.

And finally let us not forget the American system of free trade unions. In many countries trade unions have been infiltrated with Marxist theories, or actually, by Communists themselves. Labor has been prostituted to political objectives. Only in America, because of the leadership of men like Samuel Gompers and Philip E. Murray, have the trade unions been able to develop as true representatives of the working man’s economic needs and ambitions.

These are only some of the fabulous things for which all of us in America can be thankful. Only in this country does the average man have the benefit of all these great sources of freedom, - economic, educational, spiritual. In themselves they give us plenty of reason to be patriotic.

Now let me shift to the second major point:- the work being done by our American representatives in the Far East. We have much to be proud of there.

In Korea and in Viet Nam, for example, the American Army has been successful in freeing more than 35 million human beings from the despotism of communism. When we wonder, as we all sometimes do, what we have bought with our tax money in Asia, we can remember that American money and American manpower have purchased complete security for South Korea and South Viet Nam. This military security in Viet Nam costs us about $100,000,000 per annum, but, this is far less than the $800,000,000 we used to spend in the same country to support the French war effort. Today, instead of war, we have created a peaceful situation. People can now develop themselves industrially, improve education and public health, to build homes and roads and schools.

Our tax money has also financed educational missions, cultural missions, economic missions, to all the countries of Asia, and in each case, the results are inspiring.

In Viet Nam our dedicated American educators are developing an elementary school system from the ground up. Today in Viet Nam, there are 1,400 villages where no schools exist. Our people are creating the schools for these villages. Our people, in cooperation with the Vietnamese, are building the school buildings, writing the text books, developing the curriculum, inspiring the support needed to provide this entire country with an elementary school system. Rarely, if ever, in history has one Nation done as much for another.

In Thailand and Korea, our educational experts are developing the first vocational school system ever to exist in these important, free nations of Asia.

Our own Bishop’s War Relief in Asia is achieving tremendous results. I have never been more inspired in my life than the day I visited ten refugee villages, and orphanages, in South Viet Nam. All of these villages were built and are supported by Catholic, Missionary men and money. Bread lines in America are a relic of the distant past, but in the Southeast Asia the generosity of American Catholics has made possible the feeding of hundreds of thousands of refugees from communism. I saw them with my own eyes lined up in the morning to receive the bread, cheese, and dried milk sent to them through your generosity. And, it is a soul-stirring experience, I can assure you, to stand in a room facing 200 destitute orphans from Red China, and hear them singing in their shrill, piping voices: “God Bless America, Your Home Sweet Home.”

All of this is true. All these things in the United States, and all of our work abroad, are achievements of which every patriotic American can be proud. To paraphrase Winston Churchill. “Never has one nation, with so few people, done so much for so many!” Remember, we are only 170,000,000 people in a world population of 2-1/2 billion. Only 6% of the world’s population.

At this point, I can imagine, that many men here tonight, are saying to themselves: What good is all of this to America? Don’t we have problems here in the United States to concentrate upon? What about the need for our schools, and our highways, and our jobs? Why should we be spending so much money in those far away places?

These are honest questions and deserve, I believe, honest straight-forward answers.

There are four reasons, in my judgment, why it is important for the United States to continue helping the nations of the Far East -- Japan, The Phillippines, and Southeast Asia.

First: - If we lose the Far East, we lose the industrial strength and huge natural resources of that area -- over 90% of the world’s natural rubber, more than 60% of the world’s rice products, and more than 1/2 of the world’s fibres such as silk, wool, jute, etc. In fact, about 35% of our imports of critical and strategic materials come from this area. The United States can ill afford to permit all of these natural resources to fall into communist hands.

Second: - If we lose the Far East, we lose the money we now make from exports to the countries of the Far East. One out of every 14 jobs in the U.S.A., today, depends on those exports.

Third: - If we lose the Far East, we lose a huge, potential market for our goods and services. This market is composed of 500,000,000 people.

Fourth: - If we lose the Far East, we lose the millions of ardent Catholics and God-fearing members of other religions, whose traditions and ambitions are on our side.

It would be the height of folly to surrender these assets to communism without any effort on our part.

Vice President Nixon describes the situation in these words:-

“...If the Communists ever gain control over ...the billion people who live in Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Near East, they will have won the battle for the world.”

These stirring words, “The battle for the world,” bring us, gentlemen, to the third important point we must face tonight.

It is this:- Instead of being pleased, and satisfied with our efforts to date, we must put aside past achievements and act aggressively to find new answers to the new problems which are confronting America in the Far East, and elsewhere in the world.

Problem number one, in my judgment, is this:-

How can we reach into the minds of millions of people in Asia, tell them our story, and win them to our side in this titanic struggle with communism?

Some people call this a problem in formal, schoolroom education. Some call it a problem in communications. I say it’s a problem in both education and communications, and I suggest there is a new way to solve it.

The new way is television. In television we are miles ahead of the Russians. We have TV in the Far East. They don’t. Television is a cheap and quick form of communication by comparison to roads, railroads, telephone or telegraph. It is more effective than radio, which the Russians are exploiting to the best of their ability in Asia. And we have access to the TV Stations in free Asia, whereas the Russians do not.

In the Far East, I discovered an unusual interest in teaching -- by-television Educators were fascinated by my description of the TV courses we produce in Chicago. They were eager to get our TV courses in English, biology, physics, social sciences, mathematics, and history. They were delighted to learn that high school and elementary school courses are available, in kinescope, from other American cities St, Louis, Pittsburgh, Hagerstown, Maryland.

My thought is simply this: - Why not lend these films to TV Stations in Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia?

The chance of communicating our ideas about government, religion, and economics, to millions of Southeast Asians, the possibilities of teaching them social sciences, all via TV, are breathtaking. I shudder to think what propaganda uses the Russians would make of TV if they had the chance we have in Asia.

Another problem facing America in the Far East is the job of explaining how the American system works. Calvin Coolidge once said: - “The Business of America is Business.”

If so, we certainly have been unsuccessful in exporting it.

Korea, for example, needs some men who can show them how to run a first-class garage. In their biggest city, you can’t get a muffler on an automobile fixed in 4 weeks. They started a bottling company out there to bottle their excellent beer for export. In the first week they broke 92 out of every 100 bottles, so they closed the plant. They didn’t need Mr. Pabst or Mr. Budweiser to help them. They needed a production man.

We have financed exchange scholarships for professors, economists, educators, soldiers -- but we haven’t exported any practical business men, or labor leaders, or practical political experts who could show Asia that we have a few ideas, successful ones, too, on how to organize society. Instead of practical ideas, we have exported only money and hardware -- guns, trucks, bricks and mortar. Now, I think it is time to export the grass root ideas, the down-to-earth system on which American society is based.

I think this, too, can be done in a new way, a way which would challenge the imagination of Asia. I propose that we send American businessmen, American labor leaders and American political leaders to the Far East, not as individuals, but as teams, teams of three men each. Their job will be to demonstrate how America has managed to develop cooperation between labor, capital, and government, how American free enterprise, free labor, and free governmental institutions work together. Most people in Asia don’t even know there is such a thing as peoples’ capitalism. They have never heard of a country where the public owns all the great industries like A. T. & T., or the Railroads. They think there’s some magic in socialistic, governmental ownership of industry because they have never dreamed they themselves could own such enterprises. They still think that capitalism in America is like the capitalism denounced by Karl Marx. Young business executives, young labor leaders, young politicians, working together would astound Asians as much as the sight of a man from Mars.

Another crucial problem in America today is best expressed in a question: - Given the best system of education and business, given the best philosophy, given the best opportunities, all of which we in America have, why don’t we get the best results?

Tonight I should like to suggest that it is not our schools which are at fault, nor our school system, nor our business, nor our form of government.

We have failed to get the best results in America because each, and all of us, have failed to fulfill our own responsibilities for leadership and guidance, to our children and to our country. We have failed to produce the moral fibre in our children, the moral stamina in ourselves. Moral qualities are the ones we look for and find missing.

John Gunther in his recent book, “Inside Russia Today”, writes these words:-

... “The Russian people,...more than any other I know, give the impression of striving for fulfilment, and have too much force, discipline and faith, in spite of their bleak totalitarian surroundings...”

Those three words -- force, discipline, and faith - give a better indication than Sputnik of why Russia is strong.

The same is true of Japan. In Japanese schools 70 or 80 children in one classroom are not unusual. In Illinois we average about 35 or 40. But in those Asian schoolrooms, discipline was perfect. You could hear a pin drop. Children were attentive. They concentrated. In elementary schools, they were working hard on foreign languages, and they were learning more about those languages than our youngsters do in high school.

I was impressed, too, by the respect school children show for teachers, parents, and older people. Good manners have not been forgotten, or declared out-of-date, in Asia.

I was impressed, too, by the high academic standards required in schools throughout the Orient.

Those qualities of discipline, respect for teachers, hard work, and high standards need to be re-emphasized in American homes and schools. They are essential if our boys and girls are to compete successfully with the Russians, the Japanese, who are determined “to go places” in the 2nd half of the 20th century.

These reflections about Russia and Japan bring me to my final thought for this evening. It is this: - If we have failed in America, our failure has been to produce great hearts rather than great minds. We have failed to turn out enough men and women with profound faith, conviction and courage.

During my trip in the Far East I was struck by the extraordinary fact that almost every country, on the side of the free world today, is on our side because one great man with courage and moral strength has put it there, almost through sheer force of character.

If a great convention were called tomorrow and to it came the leaders of the free world, I ask you to look at the kind of men who would be assembled.

Look at Syngman Rhee of Korea, 83 years old and exiled from his country for 30 years. A voice crying out in the wilderness for Korean independence; an ardent Presbyterian; a man who has been ridiculed for his steadfast devotion to the idea of Korean independence. In his Presidential Palace I heard a foreign Ambassador refer to Korea as “Little Korea.” I heard Syngman Rhee at 83 years of age, thunder: “Little Korea? Never say that. Korea is the 12th biggest nation in the world in terms of population. It is much bigger than the Scandinavian countries and many other nations whose voices are heard and respected in the United Nations. The day will come when Korea, or “Little Korea”, as you call it, will take its rightful place in the Council of Nations. Its voice will be respected on terms of equality with all others. We do not seek to dominate, nor will we tolerate any country which seeks to use gangster methods on us.

We seek only a free and equal voice in the Council of Nations, and that we are determined to achieve.”

Look at Konrad Adenauer. A man subjected to prison under the Nazis, and to ridicule by the Communists. He stands in Europe as the principal bulwark of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A professor, an intellectual, a patriot, and a deeply religious man, the man who more than any other is responsible for the free world’s fighting front in Europe.

Look at Mahatma Ghandi and Pandit Nehru, two intellectuals, two egg heads, if you will; two men, both of whom spent year after year in British prisons, firm in their conviction that India one day would be free. Jails did not frighten them, nor did wars. They were men of conviction, stamina and determination. They are the men who have created modern India.

Consider Roman Magsaysay, the savior of the Philippines, Aleide de.Gasperi, Winston Churchill.

Throughout the Orient and throughout the free world, our fate and even the destiny of mankind, is held in the hands of great men such as these.

We need men like them in America. But we don’t have them -- or, at least we don’t have enough of them, because we have concentrated on the wrong things.

Today the appearance of our cities and towns is being transformed. Steel and glass skyscrapers have replaced old-fashioned masonry structures. Streamlined buses, scenicruisers, dream cars fill the streets. Super-markets, super-aircraft carriers, super-shopping centers, super-highways -- yes, even some men who think they are super-men, appear not only in the comics, but in the Kremlin. But I’ve rarely seen a super-church, or a super-school, with super-students and super-teachers.

I long to see such schools, and churches, because I think they will mean we have turned in the right direction, that we have finally begun to emphasize adequately the things that count: - the home, the church, the school, and the community.

Here in Chicago and in Illinois, it is said we are located in the “Heart of America.” It is, perhaps, our special responsibility to make known the true nature of that heart, -- a heart dedicated to the enlightenment of man’s mind and the inspiration of his soul. The people in this room can do as much to assure such a development and revelation as any group in our entire state. If we want Illinois to be famous for its churches and schools, we can guarantee that result by our work.

Paris is famous for its University, for Notre Dame, and Sacre Ceour, and for the Louvre; London is famous for St. Paul’s, the British Museum and Parliament; Athens for the Parthenon and for its philosophers and teachers of ancient days.

In the future, will Chicago and Illinois be famous still, and only, as “Hog Butcher to the World, the City of the Broad Shoulders?” I hope not.

Great and good as our former achievements have been, let us dedicate ourselves to future accomplishments based on the mind and soul of man, not on his stomach or back. Then we shall be fulfilling our main purpose and true vocation. Then we shall be providing educational and religious opportunities of greater quality, to greater numbers of children, of all men, of all races, of all creeds.

Peace requires the simple but powerful recognition that what we have in common as human beings is more important and crucial than what divides us.
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Sargent Shriver
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