Photo by Bachrach

dustcover information:

A PROFESSOR AT LARGE By Stephen Duggan As Director of the Institute of International Education, Dr. Stephen Duggan's work has brought him into nearly all the countries of the Western Hemisphere, most of the countries of Europe, and some of Asia. But although he has seen at first hand a great deal of recent world history in the making, this is not primarily an I-saw-it-happen book. Instead Dr. Duggan digs beneath the surface of epoch-making events, and in the political, social and especially cultural conditions of peoples finds national incentives which make world affairs an essential part of every person's daily life. Here one will find a fascinating interpretation of foreign cultures in terms of American civilization, for the book appraises the transition from the time when culture in the United States was chiefly the result of influences from abroad, to that when our country's cultural forces became to a large degree responsible for new life in the Old World. The book is packed not only with information but with anecdotes of personalities whom the author has known---men and women in high position as well as ordinary citizens ---so that, although it is a serious record of observations and conclusions, the general reader should find much of interest both in content and in style.   DR. STEPHEN DUGGAN Author of "A Professor at Large" Dr. Duggan, now Director of the Institute of International Education, was formerly Professor of Political Science at the College of the City of New York and Lecturer on International Relations at Columbia University. In the field of foreign affairs he has had a most distinguished career and is, at the present time, a director of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Advisory Committee to the State Department on Cultural Relations, and Chairman of the American Committee to implement the Buenos Aires Pact for the exchange of students and teachers with the Latin American countries. He is also a member, and in some cases an officer, of the most important scholarly organizations of the United States, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Historical Association, American Political Science Association, National Education Association, Phi Beta Kappa, and Kappa Delta Pi. Several times he has represented the United States at the Geneva meetings of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation. Dr. Duggan has frequently visited most of the European countries (in Soviet Russia), all the South American, and some of the Asiatic countries on educational and cultural matters. As a result, he is well known in both academic and scholarly circles. For his services he has received a number of honorary degrees from American colleges and universities, and decorations from foreign countries: Commander, Order of the Crown of Italy; Officer, Legion of Honor (France); Officer, Order of the White Lion (Czechoslovakia); Officer, Order of Merit (Hungary); Commander, Order of the Star (Roumania), and Member, Order of Merit (Chile). He has written several books, is on the Editorial Board of Foreign Affairs, and contributes frequently to it and to other magazines such as the Political Science Quarterly, Yale Review, and Harper's

THE AUTHOR

Stephen Duggan, Ph.D., LL.D., Litt.D., L.H.D. (to give him all his degrees), has been Director of the Institute of International Education since it was founded, February 1, 1919. Previous to that he was Professor of Political Science at the College of the City of New York. His duties as Director of the Institute have brought him into every state in our Union, almost all the countries of Europe, all of the countries of South America, and a number of those of Asia. In nearly all the foreign countries he has delivered lectures at many of the important universities and addresses to scholarly organizations. In recognition of his services to the cause of international culture he has received honorary degrees from several institutions of higher education in the United States and decorations from several of the European governments. He has written the following books on foreign affairs and international educational relations: The Eastern Question, a Study in Diplomacy, 1902; A Student's Textbook in the History of Education, 1916; The League of Nations, The Principle and the Practice, 1920; The Two Americas, An Interpretation, 1933. He has also been a contributor to numerous periodicals.

THIS is not a war book, although the content is brought up to date. The book was begun before the war broke out. Nor is it an autobiography, though incidents of a personal nature are described in each chapter. It is autobiographical only with respect to my activities as Director of the Institute of International Education. I believe that intelligent Americans may be interested in the story of the recent expansion of international cultural relations in which the Institute of International Education was a pioneer and which has had a real influence in making the peoples of different countries better understand one another and one another's culture and problems. Though the book is primarily devoted to cultural affairs it also considers the political, economic, and social conditions of countries I visited, because these largely determine cultural attitudes. In only the first two chapters are my experiences in the United States considered in any detail. Not all the countries I visited are discussed, but virtually all those of crucial importance in the present world crisis come within this purview.

The experiences described are those of a plain American who was brought into contact with ordinary foreigners, though his mission, which was of a cultural nature, resulted in his meeting with many prominent people especially among scholars, publicists, and university professors. The book is written from the standpoint of democratic liberalism and has an underlying objective, namely, to interpret the transition from the period of United States dependence on foreign cultural influences to the more recent period when American culture has penetrated throughout the world. The objective of the book naturally requires some repetition but I earnestly believe it has been reduced to a minimum.

By permission of D. Appleton and Company I have used in this volume a small amount of material from my History of Education, and by permission of Charles Scribner and Sons a somewhat greater amount from my book on The Two Americas. By permission of the Editors of Foreign Affairs, Harper's Magazine, The Yale Review, The Political Science Quarterly, and the New York Times, I have also used some material taken from my articles that appeared in these publications.

Several friends read chapters with whose subjects they were particularly familiar and gave me the benefit of their criticism. This is not true of the first two chapters which are the most autobiographical. The third chapter, "Foreign Influences upon American Culture and Education", was read by Professor Marjorie Nicolson of Columbia, Professor Howard Mumford Jones of Harvard and Professor I. L. Kandel of Teachers College. The chapter on England was read by Sir Angus Fletcher, formerly Director of the British Library of Information; Dr. Henry Allen Moe, Secretary General of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; Mr. Willard Connely, Director of the American University Union in London; and Sir Norman Angell. The chapter on France was read by the late Professor Henri Focillon of the Sorbonne, Albert Guérard of Stanford University, and Dr. Horatio S. Krans, Director of the American University Union in Paris. The chapter on Germany was read by Professor Carl Friedrich of Harvard, Professor Robert Fife of Columbia, and Professor Walter Kotschnig of Smith College. The chapter on Italy was read by Count Sforza, formerly Italian Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and Professor Dino Bigongiari of Columbia. The chapter on Russia was read by Boris Bakhmeteff, formerly Russian Ambassador to the United States; Michael Karpovich of Harvard; and Joseph Barnes, expert on Russia for the New York Herald Tribune. The chapters on Latin America were read by Professor Ernesto Montenegro, the Chilean journalist; Professor Dana G. Munro of Princeton; Professor Clarence H. Haring of Harvard; John I. B. McCollouch, Editor and Publisher of The Inter-American Monthly; and Dr. Samuel Guy Inman. The chapter on the Philippines was read by Major General Frank Ross McCoy, President of the Foreign Policy Association. And the chapter on China by Mr. Chih Meng, Director of the China Institute in America; Professor L. Carrington Goodrich of Columbia, and Mr. Eugene E. Barnett, Secretary of the International Committee of Young Men's Christian Associations. Dean Carleton Brownson of the College of the City of New York read the chapters on the Philippines, China, and Russia; and Professors Nelson P. Mead and J. Salwyn Schapiro of the same institution, most of the chapters. President Paul Klapper of Queens College advised with reference to objectives. To all these friends I am greatly indebted. Their criticisms were very valuable. They are not, however, responsible for the contents of the book or the opinions expressed. Those are my own. Also the inevitable mistakes.

To two friends I wish to express particular gratitude: Philip Curoe, Professor of Education at Hunter College, and Randle Elliott, my associate at the Institute. They read the entire manuscript and I profited greatly by their frank criticism concerning content and structure. Mr. Elliott made invaluable suggestions as to the organization and arrangement of materials and also read the proof. Finally, to my secretary, Miss Agnes Dowd, who typed the entire manuscript, checked the accuracy of many statements, and read all the proof, no words can express too warmly my great indebtedness.

STEPHEN DUGGAN          

THE one immutable problem that has always confronted mankind, whether he was organized into aboriginal tribes like the Australian bushmen or into complicated societies like the United States, is: "How much freedom should be allowed the individual and how much control should be retained by the social whole?" Each people of the past and of the present has had a solution of this problem, but the extremes of difference in the solutions are to be found in the East and the West. In the later nineteenth century the idea of the unity of society was tenaciously held in the Far East, where the individual was suppressed because his destiny was controlled by some force external to himself, such as ancestor worship in China or the caste system in India. Society in the East, therefore, was conservative. The farther one moved westward, the more the individual was exalted and the more progressive society became. There was more individualism in Russia than in India, more in Germany than in Russia, more in England than in Germany, and most of all in the United. States. The recent development of totalitarianism in Europe is a throwback, a retrogression.

There are two factors in the education of the individual: namely, heredity and environment. The Nazis emphasize heredity and make much of blood and race; the democracies emphasize environment. We know almost nothing with certainty about the part heredity plays; we know a great deal about the part environment plays. When the term "education" is mentioned the mind almost instinctively thinks of an institution, the school, and of a period of life between the ages of six and twenty-one during which the individual attends school. But the school is only one institution of many which mold the individual. Others are the home, the church, the library, the newspaper, the radio, and the theatre. The education of a person is not condensed into a definite period of years; it is a life process. He is never free from the transforming influences of these institutions. This fact has been recognized only recently and adult education has become a necessary supplementary influence in society.

Of all the institutions which educate, the school is the one which the collective whole, the state, deliberately employs to make sure that the individual will be readily absorbed into the body politic and not become an irritant within it. Throughout history there have been liberating states and enslaving states. Today the United States represents, among others, the liberating state; Germany, the enslaving state. The state transmits to the individual the traditions and ideals which have enabled it to survive in the past and the objectives it hopes to attain in the future. The liberating state does this by allowing and providing access to all sources of information and maintaining methods of teaching which permit the individual to question acts of the state. The enslaving state demands unquestioning acceptance of its viewpoint. In this case the teaching is direct indoctrination and the resulting product is a man who is not free. The educational value of the traditions and ideals held by the different nations of which I write in this book, and the degree of indoctrination pursued by them, have had much to do in determining the conclusions I have drawn. I regard education in its narrow as well as its broad sense as the most important function of the state and the chief determinant of its way of life. This view is held with great conviction by the modern totalitarian states, and they have pursued ruthlessly and relentlessly their objective of regimenting the minds of their citizens. The attitude of the democracies as typified by the United States has been one of laissez-faire, and they have only just now awakened to the values of their own liberalism and the dangers inherent in the methods of indoctrination.

Human progress has never been a continuous evolution forward. It has usually been a matter of two steps forward and then one back. We took two long steps forward when we undertook the crusade to make the world safe for democracy and put an end to war. And then we took a long step to the rear by turning our backs upon the rest of mankind and refusing to enter the cooperative scheme to accomplish the very ends for which we entered the war. We isolated ourselves from other nations and gave complete vent to the acquisitive instinct in a wild speculative scramble for riches. The result was inevitable. Few countries suffered more than the United States in the world economic depression after the speculative house of cards crashed upon the sands of Wall Street.

The experience of Americans since the founding of their government has made of them intense individualists. In Europe necessary reforms in social conditions have come from the government. In the United States they have come from individuals or organizations of individuals. Here the government takes over a reform usually after it becomes a demonstrated success. From the beginning of our national history practically all Americans---farmers, business men and others---have resented interference upon the part of government. But the new situation occasioned by the depression of 1929 was unprecedented. We had sustained economic crises in the past but they were minor and affected only those living on the economic fringe of society. In this depression our whole population suffered: banks suspended operations factories shut up, unemployment among the skilled as well as the unskilled increased by leaps and bounds. If absolute destitution was not to be forced upon millions of our people, there was only one recourse, the federal government. But interference and control by the federal government would be in conflict with all our political instincts and traditions, with states' rights and individual enterprise. Nevertheless if our way of life was to be preserved with its focus upon the human being whose life, liberty and happiness were to be maintained, a campaign for the re-education of the American mind would be necessary.

The re-education of our people at home, having as its objective the development of a more humane interpretation of the "general welfare", was carried on at the same time with their re-education in their relations with other nations. The objective in the latter case was to convince our people that science and technology had reduced the world to so small a compass that no nation could live alone in isolation, that all nations had been made neighbors dependent upon one another for their very living, that all might live together in harmony as good neighbors or in strife as bad neighbors. It is unfortunate that before the process of re-education in this matter was complete we were compelled to enter World War II. The New Deal at home required but little interference in the life of the average individual; the war demands a daily increasing interference which will probably result in an almost total control of the individual by the state before the war is over. That will almost without question leave behind a residue of greater control by the state in peacetime and a change in the status of individual liberty. In both domestic and international affairs a "new order" is inevitable. We shall not as individuals or as nations return to the conditions of life that prevailed in the pre-war days.

The history of the United States is the story of the widening of the domain of freedom, of interpreting the phrase "the general welfare" to include more and more individuals and groups in the enjoyment of increased opportunity for material and spiritual advancement. This has unquestionably been an inspiration to peoples in other lands. Millions of immigrants have written home to describe their higher standard of living, their freedom from police espionage and government interference, and their participation by means of the ballot in making decisions on questions that would determine their future way of life in the New World. This was a great educational activity of a spontaneous nature, not directed by any person or group, devoid of the element of premeditation.

Even when Americans deliberately engaged in educational work in other lands it was wholly without any tinge of cultural imperialism such as was true of similar activities on the part of practically all the other Great Powers. The schools and colleges established by Americans in China and the Near East were not spearheads for political and economic exploitation. Our government had nothing to do with their organization or support. That is why today they are practically the only foreign educational institutions in those countries not regarded with suspicion by the native peoples. It is true, they taught our way of life and unquestionably stimulated a desire for greater individual freedom, democratic institutions, and national independence. But when the world beheld that one generation of American control in the Philippines had to a great extent converted the Islands to comparatively speaking a modern democracy after three and a half centuries of Spanish medieval feudalism there, it, is natural that in the unprecedented crisis which confronts mankind today it should turn to the dynamic civilization which resides in the United States for leadership in finding the way out.

When this war is finally ended by the defeat of the Axis powers, all the combatants will be in a state of exhaustion, many in chaos. The campaign of relief, rehabilitation, and reconstruction that must of necessity be undertaken will strain the resources of philanthropy and statesmanship of the United Nations. Reconstruction cannot this time be confined to material things as it was at the close of World War I. Reconstruction of attitudes toward all human problems---political, economic, social, and international---will be necessary if this holocaust is not to occur again. The people who have had most experience in the change of attitudes resulting from educational reconstruction are the American people. For their own welfare as well as the welfare of all mankind, Americans must participate in this great work of reconstruction. We must, moreover, participate as leaders---not to impose our view of life upon any people but to inspire in all peoples an understanding of our common destiny, to place our experience at their service in the hope that they, like us, will want to help build the better world in which liberty and security and justice shall prevail.

It is to the story of the more recent world-wide expansion of American cultural influence, in which the Institute of International Education has played a pioneer part, that this book is devoted. The chapters which follow recount the reflections of an exponent of liberalism, a former college professor, whose work as Director of the Institute brought him around the world and into contact with many men and women who were shaping world policies.