To have been elected to the presidency of this great Association of men and women of good will, of knowledge, talent, and rare discrimination, constituting what is probably the biggest congeries of first-class brains in this country, is the crowning honor of any teacher's career and an awe-inspiring experience. Your president for 1960, as he prepares to vanish into oblivion after his one address in sovereign capacity, first wishes to express his gratitude to those who selected him, and his apologies for the pretentious title announced. In this country, from the beginning and throughout her entire history, action has prevailed. Yet the nation has never showed much aversion for words. Politicians, preachers, college presidents, generals, men of affairs spreading relaxation through warmed up after-dinner anecdotes, members of those faculty committees to whom, in these days of trial and error and perseverance in error, the Almighty seems to have relinquished the running of the world, all indulge their propensity for eloquence. Those whom Homer might have called the shepherds of people, in Moscow and Havana and equatorial Africa, strike back at our garrulous nation with massive retaliation. Torrents of words may flow in the sumptuous hotels where our Association once a year congregates late in December (just before the inebriating vigil through which we shall pray for a virgin year to wash out our unfulfilled promises and our harrowing regrets over unwritten articles). But your President is severely restrained by the petrifying gaze of the Executive Secretary, and prevented by tradition from falling back upon the worthiest of all themes for any academic address: the eulogy of his predecessor. His predecessor, whose steel whip sheathed in velvety skin had long guided this Association, is comfortably assured of immortality as it is. An in domitable Samson Agonistes whom no Delilah or Pamela can ever betray, he hardly needs our words of gratitude, however deeply felt, to pursue his wrestling, in Washington, with the “innumerable force of spirits armed / that durst dislike” the power of foreign languages in the dubious battle now raging on our planet.