Greetings to College and University Students.

My dear Doctor Gates:

It is no perfunctory matter to send a message of greeting to the students in a great university. With the million other college and university students who are this month starting another year of intellectual adventure, you constitute the best testing ground of our troubled social and economic life. The Government of the United States, as well as the Governments of the several States, will ultimately be about what you in the decades ahead decide those Governments should be.

Therefore, I congratulate you upon your chance to prepare yourselves for the leadership you will have opportunity to exert.

Fortunate it is that university campuses these days are dominated more than formerly by a spirit of realism. Matters of vital importance in the life of today are subjects of study and discussion in classrooms where these issues may be examined dispassionately in the light of all the pertinent facts, and against a background of their historical development. Students have a chance on their campuses to examine under the most favorable conditions the plans and specifications proposed by various architects of the social structure. Real students are intellectually honest. They are freer from prejudices than their elders. One of the surest safeguards of American democracy is the fact that a million young people year by year study America's historic ideals in the colleges and universities. May I wish for you a pleasant and stimulating year of study?:

Very sincerely yours,

Doctor Thomas S. Gates,

University of Pennsylvania,

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania