Which Third of Students Do You Belong to？

University of California，Berkeley／March 23，1962

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“Every man，”said Professor Woodrow Wilson.“sent out from a university should be a man of his nation as well as a man of his time.”

And Prince Bismarck was even more specific. One third, he said, of the students of German universities broke down from overwork, another third, broke down from dissipation, and the other third ruled Germany.

I do not know which third of students are, here today, hut I am confident that I am talking to the future leaders of this State and coun try who recognize their responsibilities to the public interest.

This has been a week of momentous events around the world.

But history may well remember this as a week for an act of lesser immediate impact, and that is the decision by the United States and the Soviet Union to seek concrete agreements on the joint exploration of space. Experience has taught us that an agreement to negotiate does not always mean a negotiated agreement. But should such a joint effort be realized, its significance could well be tremendous for us all. In terms of space science, our combined knowledge and efforts can benefit the people of all the nations: joint weather satellites to provide more ample warnings against destructive storms—joint communications systems to draw the world more closely together—and cooperation in space medicine research and space tracking operations to speed the day when man will go to the moon and beyond.

But the scientific gains from such a joint effort would offer, I believe, less realized returns than the gains for world peace. For a cooperative Soviet-American effort in space science and exploration would emphasize the interests that must unite us, rather than those that always divide us. It offers us an area in which the stale and sterile dogmas of the cold war could be literally left a quarter of a million miles behind. And it would remind us on both sides that knowledge, not hate, is the passkey to the future—that knowledge transcends national antagonisms—that it speaks a universal language—that it is the possession not of a single class, or of a single nation or a single ideology, but of all mankind.

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Therefore, there is arising the outlines of a robust and vital world community, founded on nations secure in their own independence, and united by their allegiance to world peace. It would be foolish to say that this world will be won tomorrow, or the day after. The processes of history are fitful and uncertain and aggravating. There will be frustrations and setbacks. There will be times of anxiety and gloom. The specter of thermonuclear war will continue to hang over mankind; and we must heed the advice of Oliver Wendell Holmes of “freedom leaning on her spear” until all nations are wise enough to disarm safely and effectively.