TRUTH SEEN VICTIM OF BLIND CREDULITY

Dr. Fosbroke Deplores Ready Acceptance by Many of Disloyalty Charges in the D.E.A.

            The very Rev. Hughell E. W. Fosbroke, dean emeritus of the General Theological Seminary of New York, attacked yesterday, in a sermon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the credulous acceptance by great numbers of people of the “far-fetched charges of disloyalty, which have been bandied to and fro”.

            Dr. Fosbroke, who retired from the seminary in 1947, is an honorary canon of the cathedral.

            “It is this credulity, this refusal to face up to responsibilities of freedom of thought and speech, that is playing no small part in producing the atmosphere of suspicion, intolerance and fear that prevails so widely today” he declared.

            “Freedom of speak carries with it a responsibility to speak the truth. Can we, who have so long enjoyed this freedom, be thought of as truth-loving people?”

            The sadly reckless disregard the truth, with which interests of one kind or another carry on their propaganda, and the disloyalty charges made in the name of the defense of our freedom are not so much in question here, Dr. Fosbroke observed. What is sadder still, he said, is the readiness of so many to believe anything, so long as it is said often enough.

            “The truth that freedom brings with its inescapable responsibility is writ large on our life as people”, he continued. “We pride ourselves, and rightly, on our possession of freedom of speech. This, of course, is inevitably bound up with freedom of thought. For freedom of speech means the right to say what we think, but any thinking that is worth the name involves the effort to get into touch with reality – to see things as they actually are.”

            “The health and promise of our national life, as well as its ability to take a worthy part in world leadership, depends upon the readiness, at all costs, to maintain unfailing contact with reality”.

            Freedom that is not thought of as a mere negative always looks beyond itself, Dr. Fosbroke declared. Freedom means opportunity, he continued, and opportunity brings with it responsibility.

            “We must answer for the use or abuse, that we make of opportunity”, he added. “Either we obey the demand that opportunity makes upon us, or subordinate opportunity simply to the attainment of our own selfish devices. And we are to that degree shut within the prison house of our own self-centered existence, worlds away from that sharing in a life larger than our own, which can make for creative living”.