A Living Monument

A refreshing mode has been chosen by the University of Florida, a Gainesville, for celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary. It has set up an Institute of Inter-American Affairs, designed to be a living monument rather than a mere review of past achievements. This institute, which opened yesterday, is to take the place on the program usually given over on such occasions to historical pageants, the posting of bronze tablets and erection of statues. It is a forward-looking rather than a retrospective celebration.

A wider recognition that now is the time to think and act for the upbuilding of society would bring about more anniversary celebrations of this progressive type. Incidentally, it would wipe out the reproach sometimes attaching to ultraconservative organizations which had their inception in the deeds of revolutionaries. That familiar saying, "The radicals of one generation are the conservatives of the next," would then be less often applicable.

The institute set up by the University of Florida recognizes that the interdependence of the two American continents has imposed many new responsibilities on each of the nations in those continents. As an educational institution looking out across the Caribbean, the university has undertaken to promote a fraternal understanding between the peoples of North and Latin America. In educational, cultural and social fields, It will promote an interchange of ideas students and mutual studies.

Such an activity, knitting its fabric of understanding more firmly each year, will build a monument to outlast pageants, marble statues and bronze plaques. The monument will be erected in the minds and hearts of the two peoples. --The Christian Science Monitor.