Nor do I propose that support for the humanities and the social sciences should be sought from governmental sources. Harvard is, or has been, a "private" Uni- versity, and has derived strength and has been enabled to provide leadership from that fact. There are reasons, too, why support in the social sciences should not come from the Government, State or Federal.

Support from such sources is likely to be oriented or restricted, and successful research and development in the humanities and the social sciences needs to be free from orientation and directional control far more than is true with respect to similar efforts in the natural sciences or in medicine.

This is a large order, I know. Nevertheless, it may be the real challenge of the universities, especially the "private" universities, in this now lengthening postwar period. We must, of course, be grateful for the developments in the natural sciences and in medicine, though both confront us with great problems in other areas.

Despite their achievements, and our reliance on them for effective defense--if only through developing that equilibrium of forces which has been called the balance of terror--it seems unlikely that the natural sciences alone will be able to save this beleaguered planet. We need, too, all the arts of understanding, of human relations, of persuasion, of negotiation and adjustment, of dealing with variables far more numerous and complex than those with which the natural sciences deal, or which are capable of resolution by computer.

In his Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard last June, Gerard Piel said: "But all too suddenly and unprepared, we have come to a fork in the road. The progress of which I speak has disclosed the noblest and most generous ends to human life and has placed in our hands the means to accomplish them here on this earth. In the command of those same means, progress has also given the power of irrevocable decision to our historic capacity for cruelty and folly."

How can we develop the best probability that we will take the right fork in the road, and keep on it? Of course there is no easy answer, and it will surely take the best efforts of countless men in many fields a long period of time. But we clearly need the humanities to develop the spirits of these men, and the social sciences to develop their understanding of the human problems and their skill in dealing with these problems and with their fellow men.

Surely the law, as the most organized and best developed of our means of ordering society, has an important place in this grand task. And surely, too, lawyers, at every level will play their part in developing and carrying out the needed adjustments. It need only be asked, for example, how many of the men carrying out current disarmament and nuclear discussions are law trained. Does that not serve to show that the best training in our law schools, the best research in our law schools, are steps along the way, perhaps important or vital steps, to the peaceful world we all so devoutly seek