174. ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1946 
persons trained to keep the work coordinated. These range from 
typists to administrators. Of those whose over-all view of the needs of 
society is adequate to guide wisely an industry or the growth of a 
community there is an acute shortage. 
The result is more students wanting more extensive education in 
schools and colleges. Professional schools are becoming graduate 
schools. More research men will want to carry their studies beyond 
the doctor’s thesis. The interruption of our college education during 
the war places our Nation at a temporary disadvantage with regard 
to highly trained young men and women and is for the moment 
keeping down the enrollment in our advanced classes. All indica- 
tions are, however, that the postwar pressure on our institutions of 
higher learning will increase and continue. There is growing interest 
likewise in all aspects of adult education as our citizens strive to 
keep themselves abreast of the rapid changes of the times. 
The third and perhaps the most remarkable trend is an increasing 
concern that one’s activities shall contribute to the welfare of society. 
It is more difficult to establish this trend by citing examples than it 
is to show the increase of cooperation and of education. But it is, 
I believe, no less real. The ancient high regard for the “holy man” 
who retired to a monastery and separated himself from society finds 
little sympathy in our modern life. Reading of American colonial 
history shows that the freedom for which our forebears fought was 
primarily the right to live their own lives in the pursuit of happiness 
without unnecessary restrictions, not primarily the opportunity to 
shape a better society. Now both capital and labor strive to justify 
their position in terms of the usefulness of their contribution to 
society, and our Nation has fought a war with unparalleled unanimity 
because our loyalty to the common cause made us ready for any 
sacrifice. 
We have not had in this country prominent movements similar to 
that in Germany, where the youth was whipped to patriotic ardor by 
the call to lose one’s self in the greater good of the state. Nor has 
any “cause” in this country perhaps met with the wide response the 
Russians have given to communism as a political system in which 
each person consciously works for the good of all. Yet Americans 
respond to many calls to service. As members of scientific societies, 
we are aware of our own increasing attention during the past genera- 
tion to the social responsibilities of science and scientists. The 
present active concern of the scientists about the political disposition 
of the atomic energy problem is apparently only a representative 
example of the anxiety of everyone in the Nation that with the great 
issues with which humanity is faced his own actions may help rather 
than hinder a good solution. The greater powers placed in our hands 
