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January 2011
Those who look for parallels between the past and the present may draw some rather gloomy conclusions from this statement by Professor Gerald F. Else, director of the University of Michigan Center for Coordination of Ancient and Modern Studies. It appeared in a recent issue of Humanities magazine. In answer to the question “If you were a guest lecturer addressing a Political Science class, what would you say to arouse their interest in studying the Classics?” Professor Else replied: I might say this: Once upon a time there was a young republic which had onlyminor interest or importance in international affairs, devoting herself instead to internal development. Then came a day when she played a leading role in the victorious effort to defeat an aggressor who was threatening the entire free world. In gratitude, the other members of the victorious coalition acknowledged her leadership, through various treaties, and she became by far the richest and most powerful state in the free world.
On March 18, 1947, at 2:15 A.M. , William Crapo Durant, founder of General Motors and Chevrolet and the “leading bull” in the great stock-market boom and crash of the late 1920’s, died at his New York City apartment with his wife and nurse in attendance. His last fortune had evaporated in the Depression of the 1930’s, and he had been an invalid for several years. People were already beginning to confuse him with Will Durant, the popular historian of philosophy. Within a few weeks Henry Ford, whose automotive career strikingly paralleled Durant’s, was to die too—rich and famous but also ridiculed and despised. “Billy “Durant, on the other hand, left a public image that was clouded but untarnished. A eulogy in the Detroit Free Press said : “There was nothing of the ruthless pirate in Durant for all of his financial manipulations. Despite his fortunes and his power he was always a simple, human person, with a consciousness of the problems of the little fellow. … W. C. Durant typified the courage of American business, of free enterprise and initiative. If all of his principles are no longer acceptable, there are elements in his character that America badly needs today.”
In September a statue of Nathan Hale, martyr-patriot of the Revolution, is to be unveiled near the main entrance to the CIA headquarters in Washington. A similar statue has stood for some years next to the headquarters of the FBI, and there are other copies of it in New London and Bristol, Connecticut, and at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. Hale was hanged by the British in New York in 1776 while on a behind-the-lines espionage mission for General Washington. It has been claimed that he was betrayed by his first cousin, a Tory—and a Harvard graduate.
Thomas Jefferson had just turned seventy-nine when he was asked his opinion, by a Mr. D. B. Lee, on man’s being able to devise a means of flying. Here is his reply:
Monticello April 27-22
Sir
your letter of the 15th is received, but Age has long since oblidged me to withold my mind from Speculations of the difficulty of those of your letter, that their are means of artifical buoyancy by which man may be supported in the Air, the Balloon has proved, and that means of dirrecting it may be discovered is against no law of Nature and is therefore posible as in the case of Birds, but to do this by macanacal means alone in a medium so rare and unresisting as air must have the aid of some principal not yet generaly known, however I can realy give no oppinion understandingly on the subject and with more good will than Confidence wish you Success
Th Jefferson
The engaging artifacts on the preceding page are, for all their quiet simplicity, survivors of an extraordinarily harrowing career. More important, they are part of a national treasure that is now threatened and dwindling almost daily. They are patent models, and each of them is a small monument to the native genius for invention that has put its stamp on all our national development.