Arts and Manners

Eisenhower’s Children’s Crusade

Scientists are people who first build and then buy the Brooklyn Bridge. That much we know. What we do not know, or don’t fully comprehend anyhow, is that our scientists in particular, and our intellectuals in general, are also unteachable. The youngsters who signed up for the Children’s Crusades of another day—those, that is, who survived—presumably reached later a state of intelligent maturity. But no amount of experience helps our contemporary intellectuals to outgrow the kind of Children’s Crusades in which they unfailingly engage whenever the magic whistle blows.

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William S. Schlamm

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Eisenhower’s Children’s Crusade

Scientists are people who first build and then buy the Brooklyn Bridge. That much we know. What we do not know, or don’t fully comprehend anyhow, is that our scientists in particular, and our intellectuals in general, are also unteachable. The youngsters who signed up for the Children’s Crusades of another day—those, that is, who survived—presumably reached later a state of intelligent maturity. But no amount of experience helps our contemporary intellectuals to outgrow the kind of Children’s Crusades in which they unfailingly engage whenever the magic whistle blows.