Columbia student Joseph O’Mahoney, at left, looked off into future back in 1906, predicting things to come. And now, Sen. Joseph O’Mahoney, right, does it again at 50 years later. ‘Victory...and Peace’ Salt Lake Tribune Dec. 2nd 1956 A Look Into Our Future As the Senator Sees It (Editor’s note: Fifty years ago, while a student at Columbia University, Sen. Joseph C. O’Mahoney (D-Wyo) wrote an article predicting what the world would be like in 100 years. Because O’Mahoney’s 1906 article so amazingly forecast the advent of skyscrapers, vehicle tunnels, vacuum cleaners and air transportation, the senator agreed to take crystal ball in hand again and try to tell what the world will be like 50 years hence.) By. Sen. Joseph C. O’Mahoney Written for the Associated Press Looking backwards to the beginning of this century and reexamining the scientific and technological achievements which have been recorded, one is impressed by the speed with which they have transformed the world. It is extremely doubtful is the present generation has realized either the speed with which these changes have been wrought or the extraordinary effect they are exerting upon the political and social concepts under which we now live - here and throughout the world. The predictions I made in 1906 for the next hundred years have already been accomplished and exceeded in half a century. Each one of these steps of progress, however, has carried within itself the seeds of a changing social order. We now live and move within this altered order without realizing the transformation which has already taken place and which may well destroy self-government itself unless we take deliberate charge of the course of history. Our forefathers did it. We can do it, too. What I dare to predict now for the next 50 years must be predicated upon the alterations through which these years have taken us. Life upon this planet is not the local thing it used to be. THE MEANS of transportation and communication this generation enjoys have obliterated the geographical boundaries which once set men and nations apart, and thereby resulted in the growth of different habits and mores among all the dwellers of the earth. Now that people in every land have practically become neighbors, we are face to face with the necessity of establishing for all men the principles of free government first set up in this country. This struggle cannot be won by warfare, although history shows us that whenever the world has been divided between two great powers they have been inevitably locked in conflict. And one of the two has perished from the earth. Now that the weapons of warfare have been transformed by nuclear science into appalling machines that release the totally destructive secrets of nature, it is doubtful if even the most brutal of communistic regimes will not be deterred from another resort to arms on a worldwide scale. The fear of total destruction and the realization that no nation can finance a third world war with nuclear weapons, constantly becoming more expensive as they become more destructive, will make it necessary for us to devote all our hopes and fears to the adjustment of modern science to the preservation of man rather than his annihilation. THIS IS THE dilemma which mankind can solve only by faith in the freedom of the soul and by adherence to the philosophy of popular government. It reached its flowing in this nation but now enveloped in the worst threat of the subjugation of the individual by central power than mankind has ever faced. As I look forward to the next 50 years, I envision the victory of freedom and peace for the individual over concentrated political and economic power by the triumph of the moral and spiritual aspirations of millions of individuals who hate war, who love peace, and who want to live in friendship and tolerance with all the men and women God has made free. This struggle of the spiritual over the material, I do not hesitate to say, must be waged by the citizens of the United States. It may require decades for them to comprehend and to teach the world by example that the founders of this country contemplated a popular government under which the equality of the people would be maintained in both political and economic matters. If freedom is to preserved, and of course that means freedom for the individual both politically and economically, it will be necessary for us first of all to realize that the institutions of any people or nation are the institutions and practices under which they live their daily lives. Empires of the past have been built when the people were governed from the top down. FREE GOVERNMENT is established when the institutions, political and economic, rest upon the will of the people and are administered by popularly selected leaders who act under the orders of the people. The vitality of the conviction of our people that this is true and that individual members of mankind and they alone are the source of all mundane authority to be exercised over them is so deep, so firm, that I have the faith to predict for the next 50 years the triumph of popular government. This I do because the record of history proves that every dictatorial regime of the past has died. Civilizations are born, they prosper and they perish. This record of futility has been the mark of every empire and every civilization which is not founded on the great principle written into the Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Let no man imagine that the task is easy. Here in the United States we have had difficulty in retaining the faith of our fathers these lst 180 years since the declaration was written. UNLESS WE persevere in making adjustment of the material to the moral and spiritual concepts which are our heritage, this civilization may become extinct as have all previous civilizations which have relied on force rather than faith. Let us look forward during the next 50 years to the triumph of faith over force. Let us all strive for it daily as a tribute to the faith and foresight of the great men who made our nation. Ft. Ord Command Changes Hands WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 (AP) - Brig. Gen. William M. Breckenridge has been selected as the new commander of the 5th Infantry Division at Ft. Ord, Calif., an Army source said Saturday. He now is chief of staff of the 5th Corps in Germany. Breckenridge will fill the vacancy created by the assignment of Maj. Gen. Gilma C. Mudgett to the Army command in Alaska, where Mudgett reports in February.