Saving Democracy Up to U. S., Declares President

Unless America takes her place as a world power, "fully armed and prepared to fight if need be, . . . we shall not only forego the hope of peace, but the hope of maintaining the democratic and liberal way of life we all hold dear," President Conant told the members of the Southern College Conference in the Peabody Hotel at Memphis, Tennessee last night.

The address, the first of several which he will deliver on his speaking tour in the South and Midwest, had as its topic the question, "What are we arming to defend?" It is no "invariant type of political system," even though it be democracy, which this country seeks to preserve, he said, but "certain principles embodied in our constitutional form of government."

"The Golden Mean"

Among those principles, which contribute to what he described as "the golden mean between destructive criticism and complacent dogma," the President included the civil liberties which are protected by the Bill of Rights, the "political machinery which enables the mass of the people to decide through elected representatives on major issues," and the protection of minority rights.

It would be too confining to say that this country is preparing to defend "democracy," he asserted, for "democracy can mean anything from a dictatorship of the proletariat to a preservation of the status quo." America must stand firm and hold a middle course between "the disgruntled who would be revolutionists and the complacent privileged who would be Bourbons."

The "golden mean," of which our social system and way of life is the "living embodiment" is "difficult of realization," he said, for "the free way is a hard way of life. But that part is in itself a challenge, and it is a challenge which we should every day place before our youth."