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| VOL. 19 | OCTOBER, 1928 | NO. 7 |
| Page | |
Wonder-working Rays, ’Abdu’l-Bahá | 203 |
Editorial, Stanwood Cobb | 195 |
Each Hour Is Yours, a Poem, Ruth Ellis Moffett | 197 |
President Thomas Masaryk, Martha L. Root | 198 |
The Problem of Youth, Rosa V. Winterburn | 204 |
Children's Purposes and Education, Genevieve L. Coy | 208 |
The Dual Nature of Man, Walter B. Guy, M. D | 212 |
Lighted Lamps, a Poem, Sophronia Aoki | 215 |
Educating the Personality, Keith Ransom-Kehler | 216 |
'Abdu'l-Bahá in America, Dr. Zia Bagdadi | 218 |
Phylis Wheatley–An African Genius, Mary Church Terrell | 221 |
World Thought and Progress | 223 |
of Dr. Zia M. Bagdadi; preserved, fostered and by them turned over to the National Spiritual Assembly, with all valuable assets,
as a gift of love to the Cause of God.STANWOOD COBB | Editor |
MARIAM HANEY | Associate Editor |
MARGARET B. MCDANIEL | Business Manager |
Subscriptions: $3.00 per year; 25 cents a copy. Two copies to same name and address, $5.00 per year. Please send change of address by the middle of the month and be sure to send OLD as well as NEW address. Kindly send all communications and make postoffice orders and checks payable to Baha'i News Service, 706 Otis Building, Washington, D. C., U. S. A. Entered as second-class matter April 9, 1911, at the postoffice at Washington, D. C., under the Act of March 3, 1897. Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103 Act of October 3, 1917, authorized September 1, 1922.
--PHOTO--
President Thomas Masaryk, called the “George Washington” of Czechoslovakia, a constructive builder for a better civilization, born into this world to be a statesman. (See page 198.)
| VOL. 19 | OCTOBER, 1928 | NO. 7 |
and illimitable. The Love of God, the Beauty of God is everywhere and exists for man if he will but rise to spiritual heights, open his spiritual vision and behold it. All souls have capacity for enkindlement by the Spirit, and as we may all be assisted by Its Divine Power,
we must will to receive it.”-’Abdu’l-Bahá.BEAUTY AND PERFECTION surround us at all times, but become manifest only upon occasion and in response to the fulfillment of certain conditions.
Journeying home from Green Acre (Eliot, Maine) by automobile, I stopped for a brief rest at a wayside gas-station in an out-of-the-way section of New Jersey. The immediate environment was humble, lacking in refinement and beauty. But suddenly, as I sat on the porch, I heard exquisite music–a cello with piano accompaniment playing Liszt’s “Liebestraum.“ It was of course a radio which thus made possible a half hour of well-rendered classical chamber music in the midst of a somewhat tawdry setting.
Reflect upon this miracle—for it is nothing short of a miracle. From somewhere unknown was being conveyed to me music of great beauty. I did not see the performers, did not know at first who they were, or where they were. Nor was it nececessary for me to have any such information in order to enjoy the beauty of sound reaching ray ears. I did not need even to understand the mechanism of the instrument which was making this enjoyment possible; nor could I understand, (I wonder if any one really does understand), that peculiar nature of the atmosphere by which it can be charged for immense distances with
vibrations not in themselves sound, but creating sounds when meeting with the right conditions. If these radio-vibrations can travel a thousand miles in one direction, it stands to reason they are traveling in every lateral direction for the radius of some thousand miles. This means that the air above us, to what height we do not know, is charged, not only with infinite number of vibrations of the wave-lengths whose reception we are listening to, but with as many other wave-lengths as the present art of emission makes feasible.
Literally, there is music in the air. Invisible, inaudible,—that beauty yet awaits our listening mood and power of reception, once we fulfill the necessary conditions. Across immense space comes this bit of joy to us. And yet, however intimately it seems made for our especial enjoyment, it has within itself the infinite power of giving equal enjoyment–personal, intimate, privileged—to as many millions of people as desire to fulfill the necessary conditions of reception.
IN EVEN MORE infinite and mysterious a way does the sun emit its warmth and light for our comfort, enjoyment, and sustenance. How is it possible that the sun, (with perhaps, as modern science inclines to believe, undiminished energy) pours out from itself across millions and millions of
miles of space that special ray which so intimately greets us, cheers us, and warms us. We, in accepting the joy, the comfort, the health-giving qualities of these rays, are by no means diminishing for any existing being the possibility of deriving equal benefit from that celestial benefactor.
Most marvelous of all, is the fact that the sun’s heat and light do not travel across the vast interplanetary space in the form of heat and light. There, in the upper ether, all is dark and cold—more than three hundred degrees below zero, the scientists tell us. It is only when the hidden vibrations from the sun strike the atmosphere of our planet that they become transformed into light and heat. So, anywhere within the limits of our solar system, any planetary mass which fulfilled the right conditions could derive equal benefit of heat and light from our mysterious solar luminary.
LET US apply this analogy to that contact between humanity and God which we understand to be due to the action of the Holy Spirit. From some Source hidden, infinite, there reaches across space to us an infinite power of tenderness, care, of upliftment, encouragement, and guidance. From time to time, out of that vast mystery, the Cosmos, comes the voice of an Announcer who tells us of the Program and of the Distant Player. This Performer, Whose music is Infinity, we may never behold—any more than in person we could approach the Sun and exist upon it, But the Infinite Music of God reaches us in its own mysterious way. Out from that Central Source emanate vibrations which when reaching human hearts become transformed into courage, faith, love, unselfishness, illumination, radiance.
It is a pity—when the Cosmos is so charged with this Infinity of Spirit—that humanity does not more avail
itself of its power of receptivity. Think of the immense stores of Riches going to waste, while man keeps himself poor, through not utilizing the opportunities, the gifts, of the Spirit! This is a cosmic tragedy! It is for this, and for naught else, that “the dwellers in the pavilion of glory and the celestial concourse bewail and lament.”
Just as the purpose of the sun is to bestow life-giving warmth and illumination to planetary inhabitants—so the purpose of the Divine Essence is to bestow the means of spiritual life and growth upon all souls. “And My purpose in all this was that thou mayst attain My everlasting dominion and become worthy of My unseen bestowals.”
IT IS NOT at all necessary that man should understand the nature of God, in order to receive His blessings, any more than man needs first to understand the secret power of the sun before enjoying its benefactions. In fact, it is not possible for man, the finite, to understand the nature of God, the Infinite. All speculation as to the nature of His Essence is not only misplaced energy, but is to a certain degree a form of blasphemy.
Just as one must lower the eye from before the august power of our planetary luminary, so one must humble one’s spirit in approaching the concept of Deity. Not in a spirit of intellectual arrogance, of attempted philosophic analysis, but in the modest spirit of the needy who ask for help, of the thirsty who crave life-giving water, of the lover who dies for want of the beauty and joy of his beloved,—thus should man, with his heart and not with his mind, approach the Infinite to partake of its Beauty, its Life. Not the intellect, but the soul, is the receiving instrument for the emanations, the vibrations, of the Spirit.
Better by far it were that man
should busy himself with the science of Spirit, than with the science of Matter. Better to do without radio music, cheering though that be, than to deprive ourselves of the Infinite bestowals. “Heedless thou didst remain, and when attaining maturity, thou didst neglect all My bounties.”
The very wealth and profusion of man’s discovery of hidden resources of nature today tends to make him heedless of the values and mysteries of the spirit.
The shepherds of ancient Palestine, primitive though their modes of living were—perhaps for the very reason that nothing existed between them. and the stars–learned marvellously to conceive the universe in terms of God. Not that we should go back to the simplicity of living of that patriarchal age, but that we should above all things maintain in the midst of the modern richness of environment,
that humility and simplicity which enables man to be a receiving station for the divine emanations.
The point is that it is not at all necessary that modern inventions should blind man to the realities of the split. This increased beauty and possibility of joy and comfort which has come into our lives through the blessings of modern science should by no means wean us from the Divine Source of all blessing, but rather heighten our perception, our realization of that Mysterious Power which underlies and upholds all existence.
The very fineness, delicacy and resoluteness of man’s analysis and conquest of the forces of nature may, let us hope, become a step toward discoveries in the worlds of the spirit, discoveries most potent in value for enhancing the stability, the harmony, the joy of living.
- The days of life are passing swiftly by,
- Ne’er to return.
- Each hour is yours to do with as you choose,
- To spend in pleasure and in idle talk,
- Or you can be constructive in your thought,
- With no undue concern,
- Or you can watch the moments as they fly,
- With head bent low,
- And think of all the things you might have done,
- If you had but a chance as others had,
- Forgetting that he reaps well who takes due thought
- What he should sow.
- Or you can each day conquer, step by step,
- The inward strife,
- Perform each duty well that lies at hand;
- Climb higher from the sense world to the soul,
- And learn the lessons well the Master taught—
- To live the life.
ONE thinks of President Thomas Garrigue Masaryk founder and first President of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, as an humanitarian with some qualities like Tolstoi’s, as a psychologist of peace with some traits like Woodrow Wilson’s, as an analiser of the motives of men not unlike Shakespeare. Americans always think of him as the George Washington of Czechoslovakia, and all countries think of him as one of the greatest living figures that have come out of the world war period. He is a constructive builder for a better civilization and he has based every effort of his life on a spiritual, liberal foundation. He was a Professor, and how great a Professor is proved by the youth who, fired by his inspiration, have become moulders of thought and action in Europe today. However, his being a Professor is like a by-product of his life, if one may be permitted this expression, for he was born into this world to be a statesman!
This Prague Professor, a man over sixty years of age when the world war broke out, saw the opportunity to bring again to spiritual and democratic unity his people, held back by three thousand years of servitude. He comes from Slovakia, from the race of Jan Hus and Comenius, and always the gleam of those great Czech idealists is lighting the hearts of their people. Professor Masaryk held the vision of his illustrious countryman, Comenius, who had said: “I, too, believe before God, that when the storms of wrath have passed, to thee shall return the rule over thine own things, O Czech people!”
It is an event in one’s life to meet President Masaryk. The writer had that great bounty on March twentieth, 1928. Waiting in the President’s
home, the historic and magnificent Hrad Castle, the crowning triumph of Prague where many kings have ruled in past centuries, she was in the Secretary’s office a few moments until exactly the appointed hour eleven o'clock. The capable Secretary said to her: “Tell him about these Principles of Bahá’u’lláh for world peace. He doesn’t wish an interview, but he will talk with you.”
This kind and very efficient Secretary, Mr. Vasil K. Skrach, went down with the writer to the doors of the President’s Library. In that little journey through one of the greatest palaces in Europe—with only six hundred rooms!—perhaps both were thinking of the tumultuously dangerous, yet fearless and noble life of this remarkable and spiritual diplomat of Europe. “O God, how he has suffered to bring this work to fruition!” was the writer’s thought. How little the externals mean to him! He has come up through poverty, he is a liberal given; he belongs to that small group (in words he once used) with clear heads, knowledge, firm wills, fearlessness of death which give giant strength. Swiftly the visitor recalled in succession many incidents of this man she was so soon to meet. She remembered that his wife had been American, Charlotte Garrigue, and how tenderly he had written of her birthday, 1918: “By a happy chance I sailed for home on my wife’s birthday. My daughter Olga and I kept it quietly amid roses as ever, and memories—no, not memories, for the thoughts and feelings of two souls which, despite distance, cleave to each other, are something more than a memory.” How beautiful that this beloved wife lived long enough to see her husband’s success,
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The great Castle with the church in the centre is the “White House” of Czechoslovakia, for this is the residence of President Thomas Garrigue Masaryk.
to see the Czechoslovak Republic firmly established, though she passed on so very soon after! She endured persecutions with a fine heroism during the time her husband was in exile with a high price placed on his head. The enemies in derision sent her a coffin for a present. His dear daughter, Dr. Alice Masaryk who lives with him in this beautiful castle facing the sun and the river and the hills, courageously iad gone through many months of imprisonment while Czechoslovak was being welded into a state.
The writer too, remembered the great love President Masaryk had for his great Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr, Edward Benes, how he had always praised his work, and when the Czechoslovak Republic gave the President a gift to try to show him just a little their devoted love and gratitude, he immediately gave a good part of it to Dr. Benes. This President has stood not only to make a state, but to develop it phenomenally in
a very short time. All matters are given consideration by him. Only that morning the writer had heard of President Masaryk’s love for the Jews and how he had sent a gift to a new Jewish University in eastern Czechoslovakia, sending it not from the government but from his own private purse.
So this is the man who so graciously had said he would receive the American Bahá’í, the journalist. The writer and Mr. Skrach who have come almost silently through the broad halls each with his own thoughts of President Masaryk, shake hands, smile the friendly smile of two people who mutually admire this great President, and the doors of the library quietly are swung open for the announced guest to pass through.
President Masaryk stood in the center of this library, very tall, very fine looking dressed in a smart riding suit, he had come in from his usual morning canter; he shook his guest’s hand firmly and cordially.
--PHOTO--
Dr. Alice Masaryk, daughter of President Thomas Garrigue Masaryk of the Czechoslovak Republic.
Power and dignity, genius, a penetrating mind flashing like a searchlight, and a spirit rare and beautiful, these are his qualities which shine out, all unconscious of their shining. The atmosphere of his room was a fitting background for him, though one hardly took time to notice it. His Library is one of the finest private libraries in the world, at least the collection of spiritual books is. There amid the books were framed portraits of his friends, Tolstoi, Woodrow Wilson, Whitman and others. Near his desk were the pictures of his wife and children. The room was redolent with lovely roses and rare flowering plants, Czechoslovakia had lovingly seen to that. Some of the white azaleas, blue hydrangas and orchids undoubtedly had been gifts for his birthday which had been fittingly celebrated throughout the Republic on March seventh. Czechoslovakia may have different political parties but when it comes to
a President they stand solidly one party, one vote.
Now this is what occurred: after President Masaryk had asked the writer to sit down by one of the tables, he too seated himself and one of his first remarks was: “Tell me about Bahá’u’lláh’s Teachings for peace. I have read the two books you sent me and I have talked with Mr. Benes about these peace principles.” Then later when the conversation turned to Geneva and the peace work there, he said: “Geneva is very good, they are working hard at the League of Nations, but the League of Nations must be backed by the peoples of all countries. The diplomats alone cannot make the peace. It has been a great thing for diplomats of different countries to meet one another in Geneva, to talk together and to come to know one another. Each sees that the other is a man just like himself.”
The President next showed very closely how the “pockets of the world” are beginning to speak to make peace in these days!
The writer asked President Masaryk what he thought was the best way to promote universal peace and he replied: “Do what you are doing. Spread this teaching of humanity and not wait for the diplomats. It is a great thing that official people are beginning to talk about these universal peace principles. Take them to the diplomats, the Peace Societies, the universities, the schools, the churches, and also write about them. It is the people who will bring the universal peace.” He spoke about the “Peace Society Chelicky” in Prague, saying that Peter Chelicky in the fifteenth century in Bohemia taught against violence and fighting. The whole Bohemian Brotherhood is the offspring of Chelicky’s doctrine.
As military training is a question about which hundreds of thousands of young men are asking, the writer had been urged to bring this matter to
President Masaryk, particularly the cases of a few who had been ordered to prison. The President replied that many use the excuse of conscience to run away and not serve, “They must behave” he said,” and they also must use discretion and tact in their public utterances. Often their propaganda among their followers creates results which are not peaceful. They are not killing anybody when they are practicing. Then if war came, the men who won’t touch a rifle would be given other work as much as possible. We do not treat the boys badly, we do all we can to help them, but they must train, they cannot run away from duty.”
“My view is this: defend yourself, but do only what is necessary. Take your hands and throw the knife away, use it only for defending and not for violence. I would be a hypocrite to say I love my enemy. On the whole I do not. If he is a devil, I don’t like him, but I try to be just to him. I always liked Confucius’ saying about being just to your enemy.”
But President Masaryk is an indefatigable worker for peace. He believes in educating the world to peace and that ail countries must lay down arms simultaneously. During a very recent conference of former soldiers from three countries in which forty thousand Czechoslovak Legionaries assisted, the writer, in one of the Prague papers, has seen his address to these soldiers. He had said to them among many other things: “Peace is the foundation of the Republic and the greatest element in its consolidation. Our desire for peace must not and will not be taken as an indication of weakness and cowardice. It will rather, be taken as an indication that we understand the new political order that has come into being in Europe, and that we believe in justice and in the regulation of difficulties by other means than war.”
One ought to read President Masaryk’s
book, “The Making Of A State” to understand his careful study of the causes and results of the great world war, and his views on universal peace and religion, “The Czech Question” and “Havlicek” are considered books of gold by the people of Czechoslovakia. In these books is contained first of all, President Masaryk’s religious faith for President Masaryk’s whole life is religious. If one would read his book “Suicide, An Epidemical Social Phenomenon of the Modern World,” one would see that religion is the key to successful living.
President Masaryk has also been a world known journalist and he continues to write. It was the high prices paid for his articles quite as much as his Professor’s salary in London which helped to support him and his family while he was working to make Czechoslovakia into a state. We spoke that morning of the Muhammadans and the Chinese who whenever they see a piece of paper with writing on it, preserve it with respect, the Muhammadan because he thinks it might contain an extract from the “Quran” and many Chinese because they so admire and adore learning. President Masaryk said: “I think that a journalist should endeavor to place on paper such words as will secure the respect of all who read them. Besides, a writer does not write for the present only, ‘Littera scripta manet!’”
As the writer is an enthusiastic Esperantist, she asked President Masaryk what he thought of Esperanto as the universal auxiliary language as a way to promote peace. In his next few remarks she intuitively felt he was not at all ashamed of the important role Czechoslovakia is playing in the Esperanto world. He said: “We have a great many Esperantists in Czechoslovakia and they have their own paper. You must meet them. I have thought a good deal about Esperanto. I doubted whether an artificial
language can be taken up by a nation. I often ask myself if Goethe’s “Faust” could be translated into Esperanto, if Shakespeare and Byron could have written their masterpieces directly into Esperanto.”
The writer replied that Professor Charles Baudouin of Geneva, poet and well known man of letters, had said to her one day: “I find I can write my poems in Esperanto quite as easily as in French (his native tongue).” The President said he was glad to hear this. She also explained how hundreds of the world’s greatest classics are now translated into this universal auxiliary language, that this is possible because this new language has a spirit, the spirit of this new universal epoch.
President Masaryk said: “Probably if a person knows six or seven languages well, he could learn Esperanto Grammar in six or seven hours.” The writer told him that Tolstoi learned Esperanto in three hours so that he could read and write it. (The guest knew that this President is one of those wonderful linguists who knows twenty languages and writes well in at least a dozen, but he did not mention that he speaks anything except English!) He said very pleasantly that he would accept Esperanto if it can help bring better world understanding.
President Masaryk is like the Scotch who do not say much but who do things. He and Dr. Benes had actively helped the “Universal Conference For the Teaching of Peace Through the Schools,” held last year in Prague. In that Congress Esperanto was made the official language for translating. Speeches could be given in any language but the translation was made in only one, Esperanto.
Or visa versa, if given in Esperanto it was translated into one language. International Congresses this year are adopting it. To Prague belongs the honor of this remarkably successful experiment.
Again the conversation turned on Bahá’u’lláh, His life, His cruel persecutions and long imprisonment for teaching peace principles which today are being studied with keen interest. Glancing up to the picture of Count Tolstoi, the writer told President Masaryk that his great friend Tolstoi had been attracted to the Bahá’i cause though he did not hear of the Teachings until late in life. When he did hear, he sent and bought all the different books of Bahá’u’lláh that he could get in English, French, German and Persian. Later he wrote: “We spend our lives trying to solve the riddle of the universe. There was a Turkish Prisoner, Bahá’u’lláh, in ’Akká, Palestine, who had the key.”
Bahá’u’lláh’s little book, “Seven Valleys” was spoken of—the journey of the soul to become free. Professor Baudouin had said of this little volume, that it shows Bahá’u’lláh not only to be a great world teacher of peace, but to have been one of the greatest poets who ever lived. The President said he would be glad to read this book.
The hour with President Masaryk, like all mountain-top moments passed very swiftly. When he shook hands with his guest as she was leaving, he said: “I wish you every success in your work!” and the beautiful audience with him was the magic wand that made the wish come true. For when an earnest worker is received by President Thomas Garrigue Masaryk of the Czechoslovak Republic, success in that country does come!
“The Divine Reality is far removed from man. It is absolutely remote and independent in its essence; beyond the comprehension of abstract, limitless, impersonal.
“Man is limited, weak, incapable, poverty-stricken and helpless. The Divine Reality represents the power absolute, capacity for all things, fulfillment of all the needs of man.
“The Divine Reality is to man what the sun is to the earth. The sun is life, radiance, heat, energy, power. The earth is dead, inert, helpless, incapable of initiative or change. It is poor, cold and without resources.
“The sun in its remoteness could never reach the earth, and the earth—wretched, inefficient clod—could never attain to the glory and splendor of the sun. In order that one may reach the other, that life and fragrance may come to the helpless ball floating alone in dim space, there must be an intermediary. In some way the radiant, life-giving power of the sun must be brought to the sodden earth, and this becomes possible through the media of light and heat. Through their means the glory of the distant luminary is transmitted to the dark ball of earth, and instantly it becomes the home of fragrance and blooming life. The glory of the great source of light touches this dim planet and banishes death and darkness,
“As there must be an intermediary to transmit to the earth the life-giving power of the sun, so there must be an intermediary to bring God to man, and this is found through the ever-present power of the Holy Spirit. As the media of light and heat carry fragrance to the earth, so the intermediary of the Holy Spirit brings to man warmth, perfection and inspiration.
“The wonder-working rays of the radiant sun fall upon the dull earth, carrying there richness and glory. The earth alone is but a senseless clod; touched by the sun, it becomes life, energy, bedding and blooming wealth.
‘“So the Holy Spirit touching the heart of man wakens him to eternal life. Like the sun to earth, it brings to man warmth, energy and perfection. It gives him all possibilities. The cause of life widens before his eyes, eternity opens to him and becomes his, he no longer knows fear, for the wealth of God is his and every moment is his inviolable possession. Limitations disappear, and as he becomes more and more sensitive to the teachings of the Holy Spirit all things are his own.
““The earth alone without the sun is the habitation of death, and would remain forever in its frozen clasp were it not for the intermediary of light and heat stirring its inert mass and transforming into budding energy and accomplishment all its repellent hardness.
“So, without the intermediary of the Holy Spirit man would remain dull, helpless and deprived of all attainments. But touched by that Divine Elixir, he becomes tender, loving, responsive and capable of every perfection of life.”
In this second article by the author dealing with the problems of youth; (the first, “The Promise of Youth,” was published in the September number), Dr. Winterburn presents some thoughts on the training of modern youth in spirituality.—Editor.
THE spirituality of this new age is old, yet it is also very new. There is in it an intimacy of power, a promise of achievement, a knowledge of Divinity that in earlier ages has been comprehended by only a limited number of souls. The bigger promise of today can be fulfilled because mankind has evolved until it can bear more than it could even in the times of Christ, Hence far more of this spiritual power and understanding is to be granted man in this era. The Bahá’ís who are already old in the faith have become accustomed to this belief. They may no longer fully realize, or stop to consider, to what extent the nature and reality of the new spirituality is unknown to the world in general. For youth especially it is a new realm. Many young people have never learned to understand the old spirituality of the past ages, and are, of course, still unconscious of the spiritual possibilities for today.
It is then a new field that we wish to present to young people, and the most of us know that it is no superficial matter to present to young people a new subject that we are specially desirous they shall accept, and do it in such a way that they are attracted to it. There are, however, sure ways of exerting that “magnetic” attraction of which ’Abdu’l-Bahá speaks which surely draws all those who are spiritually minded. There are doors of knowledge which we are promised shall be opened to us; knowledge that gives surety of step. There is that “intuition that surpasses all tuition,” which may be ours through the development
of our spiritual senses. There is power, power of word, of thought, of self-possession, of human guidance. There are the vast reaches of scientific development that are being approximated in the material world today, that with spiritual knowledge shall be limited only by the confines of the human world. There is the Spirit that speaks to the artistic soul in the beauties of art; to the statesman, in convincing thought; to the social worker, in the upliftment and evolution of man. Our whole life is vivified and assured by knowledge of the Spirit. There are so many examples around us in everyday life of the fulfillment of this promise; there are so many convincing illustrations in the lives of human beings like Lincoln and Jane Addams of the transforming power of the Spirit, that once started on this line of teaching few young people can resist its truth and compelling attraction.
Character analysis and self analysis are helpful methods of opening the eyes to a knowledge of the importance of spiritual guidance. Young people are joyously eager for the character development that proclaims power, influence, service, even martyrdom. They dwell on the beauty of loyalty, justice, self-sacrifice to duty. Even in the adolescent age they are still easily swayed by such beauties of life. They respond readily and sensibly to a study of how these traits of character are neither mere educational reactions to training nor the result of exercising mental abilities, but that they abide in the superiority of the spirit. They begin to
differentiate between the mental traits and those higher spiritual powers and emotions that are expressed in honesty, loyalty, reverence, obedience, law-abiding order. They gladly associate happiness with love, service, justice. They appreciate the connection between guidance and faith, love, and obedience. They see in simplicity and directness of life a basis of health, physical, mental, and spiritual. It is true that seeing is not believing, and both together are not necessarily doing. But we older ones, too, must have faith, not only in our God but in our young people. They know if we have faith in them, and they are usually true to it. Such convictions of life, based not merely on the assertion of some older thinker but upon quiet personal reasoning will not pass out of their lives. With most of our children these convictions will grow steadily, or they will reassert themselves in days of emergency and trial, provided the teaching of the truths has been clear and persistent.
The advance to the higher level of spiritual evolution may come almost unconsciously, or it may require a period of mental struggle and conviction. This step to greater heights is the conscious and willing acceptation of a divine origin of this nobler life of man; the realization that man’s spirit is wholly dependent upon the Divine Spirit. Our highly developed individualism sometimes combats fiercely the fact that man is not all-sufficient unto himself, Again the devolpments of modern science help the mind to grasp the existence of an Infinite Being whose immensity can not even be conceived by man. The unsolvable facts of the universe, with its numberless solar systems and its immeasurable distances; the mystery of man himself, and of human birth, life, and death,—all help the earnest teacher to show sympathetically and convincingly to the majority of young minds the existence of a power that is
vaster, more intelligent, and more commanding than man can ever hope to be. The marvels of electricity are a great aid in making understandable the existence of an unseeable and untouchable spiritual essence that is far more marvelous and dominant.
Once there has been gained a willing acceptance of the reality of such a Divine Power, or Essence, all else seems easy. The succession of the Manifestations of God take their place in history as a sensible care for the education and progress of man. Surely, as man develops and becomes more capable, he has need of a new teacher who will open to him a new book of knowledge and power. A Divine Being cares for this progress by a succession of Manifestations who steadily lead mankind into higher and higher reaches of life. The spirit, being man’s highest power, is the means of communication between the Divine and the human. Young minds that have already learned and accepted the antiquity of mankind, know also the persistence of religious faith. Various as are its forms, its presence is conterminous with man. The co-existence of spirituality with individual and national honor and progress, and of materiality with individual and national evil-doing and downfall should be a regular lesson for young people to consider. Thus it becomes apparent not only that man has always needed God, but that again and again through the ages some Manifestation of God has brought a divine message to illumine man’s way to higher progress and civilization.
The acceptance of the fact of such a Manifestation dwelling in human form, speaking with human tongue, and externally living a human life is always difficult; but it becomes somewhat easier when attention is called to the great variety of powers granted to different persons. Only a few men are creative in any line,—music, art,
poetry, science, invention, human leadership; they have many followers, many students who are inspired by the great teachers, but it is only the occasional mind that has the profound insight into his art that makes of him the real leader. The same is true of the spiritual power. To only a few is there granted insight into the divine knowledge and will, and they are the Spiritual Teachers. Since the spirit is the highest phase of existence, such inspired souls are in reality Manifestations of God, for the Spirit of God speaks directly through them. Man can not assimilate these spiritual teachings rapidly. There must be many followers of these Manifestations, many lesser students and teachers of spiritual truths before the level of the knowledge brought by every Manifestation can be grown up to by the majority of the men to whom the message was brought. Hence, while musical leaders may be fairly frequent, divine Manifestations of spirituality come but seldom to the world.
Once real faith in the Divine Being and in His Manifestations has been accepted, there is awakened the insistent demand to know how to learn, how to act, how to progress by one’s own spirituality. Then must follow lessons in faith, prayer, and understanding, study of the divine teachings. It is easier today than in all the past ages to comprehend prayer. Radio messages, conducted through the atmosphere, make it easy to grasp intelligently and scientifically the possibility of a Divine Essence surrounding us at all times, and of man’s ability to communicate with this Essence if he is a properly attuned instrument. Prayer takes its place as man’s “tuning in” with the Divine. Answer to prayer no longer seems a superstition, an impossibility, or an emotional vagary. It becomes a fact of spiritual science; and surely the laws of spiritual science cannot be less exact than
those of material science. The reality of intuitional knowledge follows the same line of reasoning; and as a multiplicity of scientific uses become me unquestionable evidence of physical or material science and its laws, we reason on out to the superiority of the spiritual science and its laws, for the Divine Spirit is superior to and master of the physical forces. So divine guidance and intuitive knowledge come to be as easily explainable—or acceptable while still unexplainable—as radio.
Fortunately for the world’s prosperity and happiness all people can not accept the same teachings in the same way, nor can they react to the same methods of instruction. There are all grades of intelligence because there are all grades of work and service in the world; and all are needed. God calls them all to Him. Brilliant souls, students, investigators, leaders are comparatively few in numbers. They must have leisure, or they must be able somehow to make the time for their studies and services. They are the natural teachers and guides for the many who have a more limited range of development. There are millions of just ordinary souls, whose hours are absorbed by the insistent needs of this material world, working for themselves, caring for their families, producing goods for consumption by the many, raising children for the furtherance of the world.
These many millions are the very salt of the earth, and they must learn how to really make “the daily work an act of worship” to the Lord. They are the foundation on which the structure of life is built. Their sons and daughters go on building humanity, divine or evil. They produce those who march upward into the ranks of students and leaders, or sink into degeneracy, or just continue the humble producers of the world. I am always deeply concerned for this class, the honest, earnest workers (material
workers). Thinking about one of them, a sincere, lovable, pure-minded man, whose daily work was twelve hours long, and whose years of life passed steadily on with never a lay-off or a vacation, I asked the daughter of ’Abdu’l-Bahá what such a man could do in this new dispensation. How could he best “live the life?” How could he help build the new era? Thoughtfully she answered. I can not give her exact words, but their substance has never left me. Let him read every day a few words from the teachings of 'Abdu’l-Bahá or Bahá’u'lláh. Let him learn and use regularly some daily prayers. Let him live his life in accordance with these teachings. He will be a servant of God. The great deserts of our Southwest in the arid, parching summer heats are barren stretches of scintillating sand. But if, in the springtime, abundant, gentle rains have fallen, there awaken to life among those grains of sand myriads of tiny seeds, and far as the eye can see are glorious stretches of vivid colored blossoms. Many of them, picked individually, are so tiny that they are like a snowflake on the palm of the hand; but massed together on the surface of the desert they transform it to the rarest flower garden of the world, blossoming for their own short day and bringing into existence seeds that in some future favorable springtime shall again make the desert blossom like the rose. Such are the great masses of our human workers. Individually, their lives seem but quickly passing atoms, finger-touches upon the vast stretches of life; but when all these lives blossom together with some tiny touch of Divine life and color, the desert wastes of human sin, vice, ignorance, selfishness, and crime blossom into a glorious springtime of God.
Then there are other human beings, the low, the weak, the morons, the sub-normals, the defectives. God willing, we of today will diminish greatly
the crime, poverty, and ignorance of the world, but these lower grades of humanity will still exist. Indeed, they may be one of the seedbeds out of which, through passing generations, there will rise a slightly higher grade of man. Much of the so-called drudgery of the world is done by this class. We all know the difference between a simple-minded worker, a moron, who is honest, eager to serve, and true hearted in his efforts and loyalty, and one of similar mentality who is tricky, vicious, jealously envious, even criminal. The one has received from some source at least a dim light of spirituality; the other is still animalistic. There are millions of these people, and their numbers increase relatively more rapidly than those of more highly developed classes. Without spiritual guidance they become an alarming menace; with it, they become a needed, helpful group of brother men and a possible source of slowly developing evolution. They can be neglected, scorned, left to get their teachings from their own weak-minded kind, or they can be taught the simpler processes of religious faith. Once they are started on the road to vice and crime it is very difficult to persuade them to leave it; but if they are early taught to believe in divine power, they cling to it tenaciously. So what now so often becomes a poisoned and dangerous flotsam of life can be infused by Divine grace with usable life values.
Another of the very important lessons to be learned early in life is that man is possessed of free will, a power of deciding life problems for himself. Of all created beings he alone can say “I will” and walk the road to glory and everlasting light; or he can say “I will not” and go down into eventual despair and impenetrable darkness. This gift of free will which man accepts so nonchalantly is his most dangerous possession, as it is also his greatest happiness. If he understands
its use, it can bring him eternal bliss; if he uses it ignorantly or selfishly, it can bring him measureless distress> If “the winds of desire and self prevail” they will extinguish “the lights of reason and conscience within the hearts.” “Knowledge is divided into two kinds:—Divine knowledge and Satanic knowledge. One appears from the inspiration of the Ideal King; the other emanates from the imaginations of darkened souls. The teacher of one is the exalted God, and the teacher of the other is sensual suggestion. The explanation of one is ‘Fear God and God will teach you,’ and the definition of the other is ‘knowledge is the greatest veil.’ The fruits of one tree are patience, longing, wisdom, and love; and the fruits
of the other are pride, vain-glory, and conceit.”—” The only fruit of this tree is injustice and iniquity, and it yields no crop but malice and hatred. Its fruit is deadly poison and its shadow is a destructive fire.”—“Consequently the breast must be purified from all that has been heard and the heart sanctified from all attachments, so that it may become a recipient of the invisible inspiration and a treasury of the mysteries of Supreme Knowledge,” thus speaks Bahá’u’lláh.
Eventually man must decide for himself on which road he will travel, “the high way or the low.” He may have friends, guides, teachers; but he must say his own “I will,” then turn and keep his face resolutely to the Light which will never fail him.
“There are some mothers who have a strange, inexplicable love for their children. One may call it the inversion of love. . . . The mothers must not think of themselves, but of the progress of their children, because upon the children of today–whether boys or girls—depends the moulding of the civilization of tomorrow.”—’Abdu’l-Bahá.
THIS past summer at Teachers College, Columbia University, a Reading Clinic was conducted by the department of Kindergarten—First Grade Education. The majority of the children studied in this clinic were seven years of age and had been in the first grade a year, but they had not learned to read. In comparison with the average New York City child of that age they had learned not more than ten percent of the first grade reading work. None of the children were below average in intelligence, and two or three were definitely above average. It was the purpose of the clinic to learn why these children had not learned what other
children of their age and ability had learned. We found that many causes had contributed to the lack of success, but two causes were outstanding. One had to do with the fact that these children had been introduced to the difficult and complex task of learning to read, when they were not emotionally and socially ready for it. The other serious difficulty lay in the lack of harmonious and helpful emotional adjustment in the home.
These two factors which were hindering the educative process in the case of learning to read are very important in the whole process of the development and education of children. To be “ready” to do a thing
or learn a thing implies a certain preparation for the activity. Part of the preparation has to do with externals, with the environment; part has to do with the condition within the child, with his purposing to do this particular thing. The part which the teacher can do is simply to help provide the right type of environment in which the child’s natural purposes may realize themselves.
It is only within the last ten or fifteen years that the word “purpose” has had an important place in the education of children. There has been in the past much talk of learning and teaching, but when the word purpose was used, the purpose of the teacher was almost always intended. Now, however, we are much more concerned with the purposes that the children have.
It has long been realized that the quality of an adult’s work is markedly affected by his purpose in doing the work. The man who works to fulfill a plan of his own making brings to it much more energy than the one who, step by step, obeys the orders of another. One of the great advantages of a vacation is that it gives one time to carry out some of one’s very special purposes which so often have to be put aside while one follows the important purpose of practicing one’s vocation and earning a living. I remember that when I was eight and nine years old I was required to help prepare fruit for canning. It was a most distasteful task, for it seemed to me very monotonous and it also interferred with my own plans. Now one of the most cherished purposes of my vacation is to spend two or three hours wandering through the fields, picking wild blackberries, and then to come home to the farmhouse beneath the big oak tree and make the berries into jam for next winter’s New York breakfasts. I should never dream of counting that as work!
We were talking the other day of two children from a large city who had spent six weeks at the farm on the hill above the blackberry fields. Their aunt said, “It was such a joy to them not to have to wear city clothes all the time, or to have to keep too clean. Keeping very clean does interfere with so many of children’s purposes.”
If we more often inquired as to what a child's purpose was in a given act, we should probably less often call him “naughty.” Five-year old Tom carefully propped the screen-door open, allowing many flies to enter the house. It looked as though he were very perverse. When questioned, he said, “I fixed the door so that Kitty could come in whenever she wanted to!” So we decided that we could forget the flies, and remember only his thoughtfulness for the kitten’s happiness.
We have still almost everything to learn about what are the purposes which children of various ages naturally pursue, in different types of environment. We can be fairly sure, I think, that the average child under twelve years of age seldom naturally engages in activities which keep him sitting still for four or five hours a day. His best thinking will be done while he is actively engaged in such activities as constructing, or observing, or dramatizing.
This idea that the effecting of purposes needs to be an important part of a child’s education implies that we must judge the efficiency of education by how intelligently a child plans, and by how efficiently he puts his plan into action, rather than by how many facts he has memorized. In this connection we should remember that it is quite possible that the child who best plans and works will prove to be the one who has “learned” most.
In order that a child shall be able to put into action a sufficient number
and variety of purposes it seems to me essential that at least a third or a quarter of his waking hours shall be spent with other children. This applies to the child of two or three years as well as to the one of five or six. Even though the three-year-old spends much of his time at individual activities, when other children are within sight and sound, his ideas of desirable things to purpose are widened by the things the other children are doing. It is also essential that very early the child learn not to interfere with the activities of others, and this is best done through association with other children. Their purposes are of a sort that he can appreciate. He can understand the annoyance that comes when they interfere with what he is doing much better than he can comprehend the prohibitions that grown-ups impose.
If there are four or five children in the family this need for association with others of a similar age may be taken care of within the home, If not, the child should be placed in a nursery school for several hours of the day. Here he not only has the advantage of association with other children of his age, but the environment is so planned that he will be able to carry out his own interests, and there need be the minimum of adult interference.
One of the greatest dangers to the only child who stays at home all day with mother or nurse is that he will become too dependent on adult affection and approval and attention. Or perhaps he suffers from adults’ fears or angers. A boy of seven and a half who was in the Reading Clinic this summer was so surrounded by his mother’s fears that there is danger that his whole life will be disorganized unless she can change her own attitude. Several years ago another son died after only a day of illness. The horror of that experience still follows her, and she lives in continual
fear of what may happen to Dick and his sister. Although Dick was a well grown boy for his age, he was not allowed to come alone the four or five blocks to school. He was never allowed to play with other children, for fear he might learn something bad from them; his mother took him to the park, and he had to play there alone. She was so eager to have him a child of exemplary conduct that she continually scolded him, and as a result he felt that he never could please her. When that feeling that, no matter what he did, he would still be blamed, was added to his realization of his mother’s fears, there was no sense of peace or security in his life. He had no freedom to follow out his own interests and purposes, and he seemed to be in a continual state of inner revolt against almost every aspect of life. Had this boy been away from his mother in nursery school and kindergarten for part of the days during the years from two to six it is probable that he would have been a happier and better balanced boy.
Another of the boys in the reading clinic was suffering from a mother who was overly fond of him, and who was expecting more of him than he was likely to realize. At one moment she indulged his every whim, calling him her “angel child”. The next moment she might be telling one of the reading clinic staff, in his hearing, that his father thought he was so stupid that he would never be able to aspire to any vocation except that of a street-car conductor. His mother hoped he would become “a scholar”, and she was constantly worrying about his lack of success in school. The truth with regard to his ability was that he was neither stupid nor outstandingly intelligent. His intelligence was just average for his age, and what he most needed, we thought, was association with other little boys of his own age in an
environment where he could carry on the activities which boys just seven most enjoy. The thing he needed least was too much attention from his mother, and the sense that he was the subject of contention between his father and mother.
A third boy was probably hampered by the fact that his home life had very little purpose in it. His father was not living, and his mother believed in living a happy-go-lucky existence from moment to moment. Sometimes Hal had no breakfast before he made the one-hour trip to school. Then his mother gave him some money and he bought crackers and milk along the way. His mother said, “‘Hal is just like me, he cannot eat unless he is hungry. When he comes to me and says he wants something to eat, I know he is really hungry, and I give him some money and he goes and buys something down at the grocery.” The kitchen at noon was filled with dirty dishes and soiled clothing. The whole atmosphere was that of a household in which no one ever made an intelligent plan and carried it through to completion. It was no wonder that Hal was never able to keep his attention on his work for more than five minutes at a time. This was true whether the work consisted of a game with words and phrases, or the making of a cage for the zoo the children were constructing.
Aside from providing wholesome food, adequate shelter and comfortable clothing for children, I believe that parents are most helpful to their children when they provide these things:— (1) an environment which allows much physical activity, and provides the raw materials which children can use in constructive plays; (2) much opportunity to be with other children of similar age and ability, in situations where a trained adult is present on the side-lines; (3) friendly association with parents who
are themselves free from fears, angers, hates, and over-fond affections.
When the children enter first grade they still need opportunity to carry on activities for which they are “ready”. To force a child to begin learning to read when he has no interest whatever in doing so, is perhaps the worst possible introduction to the treasures books should later hold for him. It is probably almost as bad to withhold from him an opportunity to carry on a given interest, when he is ready for it. If the very intelligent five-year-old is eager to learn to read, it may be harmful to keep the opportunity from him.
Teachers need to realize more and more how much of their work should consist in providing children with the materials they need. In order that children’s purposes shall develop, they need experience with different sorts of materials, and with many different environments. To see a flour mill in operation, to visit an airport, to spend a day exploring a shallow brook, are all useful ways of acquiring new purposes. For a child to be keenly interested in whether the activity he is carrying on will “work” is probably a much more wholesome attitude than wondering whether the teacher will give him a grade of “‘A” on a piece of work, or will say that he has done the best work in the class.
We often read in the Bahá’í teachings that we should be “free from praise and blame”. Many of us who became Bahá’ís after a childhood and youth in which much of our effort was spent in avoiding blame and winning praise, find it very difficult to acquire an attitude of not giving undue importance to what other people think and say of us. Even though we are fully convinced that the only Voice of praise or blame to which we should give heed is that of the Divine Educator, we find that the habits of early years are very persistent, and we tend to do the things that will
win admiration from our fellows. But if we can be wise enough to so train our young children that they are not too eager for our praise nor too concerned by our blame, we shall perhaps have given them a little help on the road to real freedom and happiness,-the freedom of those who know for themselves when their work or their play has been well done; the happiness that comes when one loses one’s self utterly in an activity which
calls for the highest effort one can give. The person who actively purposes, and who carries those purposes through to the best of his ability, who then goes on to do the same thing with another purpose, is he who is happy. Our children need more opportunities to put their purposes into action, and more chances for acquiring new purposes. So shall children and grown-ups alike acquire more joy.
This is the sixth chapter in the series on “Healing—Spiritual and Material.” The author who has given many years to the study of these various forms of healing, combines the essence of them in these articles.—Editor.
MAN combines in himself the nature of the divine and the animal. Subject to the forces of the lower kingdoms, he is also subject to the laws of the higher realms. Man, the highest expression of the evolutionary forces in the physical world, carries on to a higher form of consciousness, the designs of the creative principle.
If evolution were to stop at man, if there were no higher kingdom than the human kingdom, life would be an endless cycle of futility, The snake would ever swallow its own tail, and creation would be purposeless, useless, and inane.
No, the Universe is formed by creative thought, by the Mind of God. Even in the mind of man, thought is beyond the limits of time and space. At one moment his thought can center on the sun or uttermost star, at the next it may be concentrated on a minute detail. At one time man can create out of the invisible world, an unknown machine, a play, or book, or discover unknown laws and truths. Again he deals with the necessary duties
pertaining to animal existence. Likewise, there is no end to the Mind of God. There are no bounds to His Love and Power; no limit to space, time, or His eternal existence. We, the creatures of His creation, can but humbly recognize the supreme Greatness of the Divine Architect, and ever humbly bow in reverence to His Majesty and Glory.
Man desires happiness, health and attainment; therefore, he must conform to the law of his existence, and as his vehicle must be in harmonious relationship with the laws pertaining to the lower kingdoms, for physical health, so must his mind be in harmony with that spiritual Power by which we move, live, and have our being.
If Love for Love created the Universe, and all therein, in order that Love might be expressed in His creation, His creation should give back in myriad tongues of praise, its adoration and gratitude.
Man, the highest expression of creation, must align himself with Love; that by love in all his works and deeds
during his physical existence, he may grow in harmony with the Divine Law, and evolve by an ever increasing demonstration of the power of Love to a nobler and greater likeness of the Divine One and His attributes.
Common humanity, alas, fails to see this great truth. It is indifferent to the upward striving of its spiritual essence, and does not see that the welfare of the individual depends always upon the welfare of the whole. So, poor and desolate, it is out of harmony with the surging urge pulsating from the Heart of the Universe, and is a prey to disharmony and ‘dysfunction,’ disease, spiritual sickness and death. At one time fear dominates and paralyzes the glandular and circulatory organs, at another, grief and despair inhibit the spiritual powers. Hate causes excess of blood in the various tissues and poisons the secretions, jealousy rends and destroys the functions of the digestive tract; uncontrolled lust perverts the creative and reproductive forces, and hope destroyed, leads to suicide, and death. With such disturbances set up by these injurious impulses, the power of decomposition becomes manifest and both organic and inorganic ‘dysfunction’ makes itself evident in the world of humanity. The ductless glands no longer pour into the blood stream their normal secretions; the normal balance we call health is upset, the natural immunity of the blood and tissues is lowered, and the various bacterial and microbic lives start their work to disintegrate the human organism.
Briefly, soul sickness is behind many, so many instances of those cases that frequent the agencies and centers of medical cults, that harass the lives and wear out the patience of true physicians, and fatten the purses of the commercialized drug and drugless healers. These cases of soul sickness are found on every hand, in every hospital and sanitarium.
They claim to be paralyzed, to be crippled, to be deaf, dumb, and blind—sufferers from disturbed digestion and other disturbances of the digestive tract; oftimes complaining of pains, palpitation of the heart, headaches, and other hysterical symptoms,—and too frequently, with minds deranged and confused, are found in institutions for the insane.
Poor suffering humanity! No wonder the Prophets of God weep and despair! Humanity is chained by selfish desire, and bound by the cords of its sins to the wheel of mortal life. It groans in sorrow as it travels the road leading to the grave of mortality.
Man, in contrast to the animal world, is subject to a vast number of afflictions and diseases. Their number is legion, and it is constantly increasing. Almost every day fresh infections, or variations of classified diseases are reported, and medical science seems continually striving, as it were, to bale out a bottomless ocean in its endeavor to master and control these various forces of decomposition. No sooner is one group of diseases brought under control, its laws of origin, action, and propagation made evident, than another one seemingly more virulent than the former becomes manifest.
In one decade the malarias and yellow fever are brought under the dominion of man; tuberculosis and typhoid becomes controllable; and still, cardiac disease, syphilis, and malignant growths becomes more and more destructive to the human race. Disease may be likened to an onrushing flood, no sooner do we dam one channel than it breaks through another, and carries on its work of devastation.
What then, is the origin of this force of destruction, these multitudinous afflictions, that carry into an early grave so many babes, youths, maidens, and immature adults? Why
these countless germs; why these malignant bacteria; why these tropical micro organisms so increasingly prevalent amongst mankind?
With the advent of the microscope and discovery of microbic life, and perfected methods of staining and differentiating of these organisms into the recognized varieties, it was expected that in time, by perfected methods, the whole kingdom of microbic life would eventually be brought under control. But, to the dismay of the scientific world, many organisms, if they exist at all, are ultra microscopic, or in other words invisible to even the highest powered microscopic vision. So, we find that there are invisible filterable viruses of poisons capable of setting up fresh invasions of disease both in animal and man.
As scientific medicine, both curative and preventive, goes forward in this war against disease, ever fresh difficulties are discovered and new phases of infective organisms are found. Therefore, not in this way can freedom from disease be secured, just as it is impossible to secure world peace by an increase of standing armies and navies.
The question, how can freedom from sickness and early dissolution be secured by mankind, is on the same plane with the question of securing universal peace. Both questions are alike in having to do with the manifestation of the universal forces of composition and decomposition.
Armies and navies at war are just as destructive to humanity as malific microbic life. In fact, infectious disease during the Spanish-American War killed off many more soldiers than did the enemies shot and shell.
What is the remedy then, that shall bring universal peace? Nothing more nor less than that mankind should live by, and obey that ancient Law of God, viz: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Nothing more and nothing less. If
this were literally obeyed by all mankind, war, tyranny, slavery, injustice, and poverty would vanish in a very few years from off the earth. And in the same way, the same answer can be applied to the problem of sickness and disease. Obedience to the Laws of God, that is, to the moral laws laid down by every Prophet in every age.
Sexual immorality brings in its full embrace the venereal plagues, Poverty with its slum life fosters diseases of nutrition and vice, Alcoholism and drug addiction are responsible for much crime, insanity and moronic offspring. Again, ignorance and prejudice with its low standards of life, cause many other difficulties. Overeating of animal life is, also, prolific of many disorders of mankind,
In short, obedience to the Laws of God; a greater love for each other; purer and simpler dietetics; outlawry of ignorance and poverty, will in a few short decades abolish sin, consequential disease, and early death.
When, however, man becomes normal in all kingdoms—when a proper balance is maintained in the diet, activities, and environment; the mind in harmony with the cosmic urge; the soul attuned to celestial harmonies; the desires in accord with the Divine Will; then physical existence will be joyous and serene, and at the end of his mortal reign, his reality will be crowned by immortal attributes, and he will find an everlasting, spiritual progression, and unfoldment from perfection to perfection far beyond our mental capacity to understand. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for them, that love Him.”
The following is from one of the addresses of ’Abdu’l-Bahá, which He gave in New York, in 1912:
“The body-politic today is greatly in need of a physician. It is similar to a human body afflicted with severe
ailments. A doctor diagnoses the case and prescribes treatment. He does not prescribe, however, until he has made the diagnosis. The disease which afflicts the body-politic is lack of love and absence of altruism. In the hearts of men no real love is found, and the condition is such that unless their susceptibilities are quickened by some power, so that unity, love and accord may develop within them, there can be no healing, no agreement among mankind. Love and unity are the needs of the body-politic today. Without these there can be no progress or prosperity attained. Therefore, the friends of God must adhere to the power which will create this love and unity in the hearts of the sons of men. Science cannot cure the illness of the body-politic. Science cannot create amity and fellowship in human hearts, Neither can patriotism nor racial allegiance effect a remedy. It must be accomplished solely
through the divine bounties and spiritual bestowals which have descended from God in this day for that purpose. This is an exigency of the times and the Divine remedy has been provided. The Spiritual teachings of the religion of God can alone create this love, unity and accord in human hearts.
Therefore, hold to these heavenly agencies which God has provided, so that through the love of God, this soul bond may be established, this heart attachment realized, and the light of the reality of unity be reflected from you throughout the universe. If we do not hold fast to these divine agencies and means, no result will be possible. Let us pray to God that He will exhilarate our spirits so we may behold the descent of His bounties, illumine our eyes to witness His great guidance, and attune our ears to enjoy the celestial melodies of the Heavenly Word. This is our greatest hope. This is our ultimate purpose.”
- Our souls are lamps created to give light,
- Each vessel shaped in different design,
- And it is ours to keep them polished bright,
- That they may shine.
- Some lamps are alabaster, softly pure;
- Others are antique silver choicely wrought.
- Here one is crudely done, a simple ewer,
- But all are naught—
- Without that Holy light of knowing Him,
- The flame which feeds upon the oil of prayer,
- And all may see, in lanterns never dim,
- That He is there.
IT is difficult for man to grasp, at the beginning of a dispensation, all the imports and relationships implied in the untried order, According to the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh when the great Prophet returns to the world from age to age, He not only reveals the next step in man’s social advancement but releases into his soul the divine energy that enables him to take that step. It does not test the imagination to fancy some Roman philosopher or statesman’s saying to an early Christian enthusiast, “This is a beautiful dream you are cherishing that all men are equal in the sight of God; that slave and Emperor must be brought to a level of legal and political equality; but of course it is highly fantastic to think that a developed social order that is not based on a slave civilization could exist. It does no harm to entertain these ideals; they are lofty and ennobling but common sense constrains us to acknowledge that they could not possibly come to pass.”
And still today the world witnesses the accomplishment of that great step, pointed out through the guidance of Jesus, for chattel slavery has been abolished and democracy established.
In like manner looking forward from the incipience of Bahá’u’lláh’s principle of Universal Education it is difficult to imagine all that it implies. We are inclined to accept it literally as meaning that all children must be literate and have increasing access to the organized knowledge of the world. But does this really constitute education? Looking at the matter casuistically, let us say that at the end of twenty years everybody in the world would be educated according
to existing standards; would any of the really grave problems of life be solved thereby? Of course one of the serious problems of life is the subjugation of nature to the needs of man, but of necessity this can only be accomplished by those few specialized beings who are temperamentally predisposed to science.
Most of our grave problems lie within the realm of the personality. Taking the fundamental relations of life, (those between parents and children or husbands and wives for example), what is there in existing education to correct and finally to resolve, between these groups, those brusque, vulgar and impudent invasions of the personality that check spontaneity, cool enthusiasm, and plant the seeds of dangerous resentment? Moral platitude certainly will not do it, and to those who do not respond to the tyranny of good breeding, there remains nothing but the increasing knowledge of psychology, unless the heart be stirred by the heavenly teachings of ’Abdu’l-Bahá, and we extend only the hand of love to soothe the wounds of life. To have mastered the infinitesimal calculus or exhibited the growth of the sun—myth amongst primitive men offers no assurance that we will become less greedy, insincere or arrogant than we were without this knowledge. Surely all parents will agree that the most pressing problems of education are not within the realm of the mind for often the highly educated are crafty and unscrupulous, insincere and anti-social.
Surely the Universal Education to which Bahá’u’lláh summons us includes things loftier than the training of the mind, fundamentally important
as this certainly is. The mind, in this dispensation, is to be freed from dogmas, but the mind alone cannot free the heart from prejudices. Dogmas are beliefs that are not subjected to intellectual scrutiny; but prejudices are emotions which intellectual scrutiny alone will not resolve. Just as dogmas inhibit and obscure our highest intellectual development, so prejudices taint and stultify our highest social development.
That phase of Universal Education that should assume increasing proportion in the New Day is the education of the emotional life that will quite naturally inhibit in the child native aspects of aloofness and segregation spontaneously producing ideals of service and good-will.
The sociologist and psychologist may say that such ideals can result only from arduous training, but there are two phenomena which indicate the untutored appearance of deep and far-reaching changes in human life.
The first is the focus of the attention. Gustave LeBon in pre-Freudian and pre-behavioristic days, and Everett Dean Martin more recentiy, have shown the profound and inescapable influence upon whole ethnic and social groups of mere words or symbols. The exhibition of such symbols as the flag or the cross; the repetition of such words as “Mother” “home” “country” supercedes all mental training. Once the attention has been rivetted upon an object or an idea infusing into it certain implications, loyalties and significances, it continues to exert influences more profound than any personal consideration of selfish well-being. The sacrifice of life is an example of this under either patriotic or religious fervor.
The other is what the Germans poetically call the Zeitgeist which in the Bahá’í Movement is called the Prophetic Cycle. Bahá’u’lláh has given an entirely new and irrefutable interpretation to history. He points
to the incontrovertible fact that the great forward movements among men are initiated and directed by a Revelator of the Will of God, Who comes with periodic regularity, summons man to His Standard and to obedience to His Command, destroys ancient superstitions and inhibitions and with superhuman might changes the existing trend of history and revaluates the set of attention. At the end of three or four generations the idolatrous and barbarous Arabs of the Hedjaz had taken on an entirely new mental, political, social, moral and religious life under the guidance of Muhammad. We see similar changes in the social and political structure of Rome under the impact of the teachings of Jesus. This mighty Prophet whenever and wherever He appears rolls up the heavens of man’s outworn beliefs as a scroll and melts the rocks of hard human hearts with fervent heat.
Profound revulsions thus occur, from age to age, that are not due to training, to difficult human processes, or to slow growth, but to a sudden and unexpected efflorescence into changed social forms. The student of biology will liken this to “mutations” the following of a definite pattern in creation. A Manifestation of God speaks, and His utterance enthralls the waiting soul of man. At once he becomes the center of veneration and of command. All preoccupations and preconceptions are demolished in our hearts, where new allegiances, new values, new and untried faith appear.
The education of the personality inheres in the spiritual consciousness of social responsibility. Out of unity of interest and of ideal, springs that mutuality and common accord on which the welfare of humanity rests. The Bahá’í Movement not only provides for but initiates a vast new social program that, challenging the imagination with its wide scope of human
betterment, is focussing the attention of millions throughout the world on that Superb Figure Who whenever He appears in history produces from the hidden store of His Wisdom and Guidance the impetus that leads man still closer to his highest aspirations and noblest ideals.
The Universal Education of the future will not only make popular the codified information and organized
knowledge of the world, but because its pursuit has been enunciated with the same superhuman power that has characterized the teachings in every religious epoch whenever it has been established before, will humanize, intensify and cultivate those profound social relationships that lie entirely within the realm of the personality and that alone can produce a true spiritual culture.
This story of ’Abdu’l-Bahá’s visit in America is based on material and notes corrected by ’Abdu’l-Bahá Himself, and which He had turned over to Dr. Bagdadi at the time He was leaving this country. The two-fold purpose of this series, which will continue for several months, is, in the words of the author, “First to bring back to the memory of the believers the time of the incomparable days of ’Abdu’l-Bahá’s visit to them and to remind them of His words, His instructions and His admonitions; and, secondly, to give a picture of His visit, so that later believers who did not have the blessing of seeing Him, may benefit by reading a brief history.”—Editor.
June 7, 1912. A very unfortunate event happened through the malicious act of one who was supposed to be a friend, causing not only trouble to ’Abdu’l-Bahá but increasing greatly the strain of His daily work. The writer has witnessed on many such distressing occasions how ’Abdu’l-Bahá would never say even a word to the offending person, for He was the essence of mercy, the source of compassion and the ocean of forgiveness. He always covered the faults in His masterly way, and often would shower more kindness upon those who wronged Him. However, before retiring that night, He said. “The purpose of the appearance of the Greatest Manifestation of Bahá’u’lláh; the endurance of calamities and disasters; the martyrdom of the holy souls and the ordeals of the sanctified temples,
were for the purification of souls and the spirituality of the friends.”
June 8, 1912, In the morning, Ábdu’l-Bahá spoke at the Unitarian Church 15th St. and Girard Ave. and in the evening at the Baptist Temple.
June 9, 1912. On this day a remarkable Tablet was revealed by ’Abdu’l-Bahá for M. Hippolyte Dreyfus-Barney of Paris, France. In it He referred to His visit in Philadelphia and of the confirmations of the Kingdom of ABHA which were all-encompassing.
Speaking of the days in Bagdad, ’Abdu’l-Bahá said, “The Blessed Beauty (Bahá’u’lláh) after leaving the ‘Abode of Peace’ (the city of
Bagdad) and also Adrianople, did not speak at public meetings. The style of His talks and His blessed utterances were wonderful, peerless and incomparable. But for the sake of reverence, I do not choose to speak in that same style.”
June 10, 1912, ’Abdul’-Bahá was not feeling well, and that was a sure sign there was inharmony somewhere among the friends, For He always declared that His health was in the hands of the friends. In their unity He received health, and in the lack of it He would be ill. So on that morning He said, “Bahá’u’lláh has closed the doors of discensions. He referred affairs to the Supreme House of Justice, and whatever its decision may be, all must obey. He even said that should two divisions be formed amongst the Bahá’ís and each one establish its House of Justice and oppose each other, both of them would be false. And before the establishment of the House of Justice, He appointed and confirmed the Center of the Covenant and said whatever he does is right. With the blessed pen, He wrote His Covenant.”
In the afternoon, ’Abdu’l-Bahá went to the home of Mr. Topakyan, the Persian Consul-General. Then He returned home where the friends were eagerly awaiting Him. When some one inquired about the significance of dreams and the power of spirits, He replied, “It is certain that there is a great connection between the human spirit and the realities of existing beings or things. Thus sometimes whatever one sees in a dream, the same takes place on awakening. Nay rather while one is awake and when the heart is free from troubles, certain things make an impression that later will materialize in a physical form. Therefore there is a spiritual relation between the human memory or mind and physical forms. And the spirit possesses the power of discovery or unfoldment.
When this power is known, these questions become easily understood. Nevertheless, here is an interesting thing. while the materialists are denying the spiritual power, they themselves are occupied in discovering the layers or strata of the earth (geology) and are submerged in the spiritual power and claim to know the happenings of the future.”
Another friend asked, “In the Tablets it is stated that we must be severed and detached. In another place it is stated that we must learn a trade or profession. Do not these two statements contradict each other?” ’Abdu’l-Bahá replied, “In the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh, it is incumbent upon every soul to acquire a trade and an occupation. For example, I know how to weave or make a mat, and you know some other trade. This, in itself is an act of worship, provided that it is conducted on the basis of utmost honesty and faithfulness. And this is the cause of prosperity. Yet, in spite of being so occupied,—if the heart is not chained and tied to this world, and is not troubled by current events, neither hindered by wealth from rendering service to mankind, nor grieved because of poverty,—then this is human perfection. Otherwise in a state of poverty, to manifest generosity and in a state of weakness to claim justice—this can easily be said, but it is not a proof of man’s attainments and alertness.”
Some one asked, “How can we recognize the person with selfish and insincere aims?” ’Abdu’l-Bahá replied, “I have spoken on this subject before. Christ said, ‘By their deeds (fruits), ye shall know them.” Those who are related to me, shall be known by their deeds.”
June 12, 1912. On that day friends and visitors took ’Abdu’l-Bahá’s headquarters by storm, all eager for private interviews. For this reason, He said, “Whosoever has not yet had a private interview, or if any one has
very important business, let them come in, but the rest we shall meet at the general meeting. For it is impossible to meet all, one at a time.” Later at the general meeting, He spoke on the subject of true refinement and declared that, “One of the special laws of Bahá’u’lláh is the one prohibiting cursing and defamation, and that all should seek forgiveness for their enemies. Though the nations and people are physically related together in the world of spirit and heart they hold aloof from each other. But those who have spiritual relationship, and unity of conscience, are always ready to sacrifice their lives for one another, even though they have no physical relationship.”
“In the traditions of the Shi’ites (the second largest Muhammadan sect) concerning the coming of the Promised One, it is stated that Knowledge consists of twenty-seven letters. All the Divine Manifestations who came, from the first to the last, have revealed only two letters.’ Aside from the true meaning (of this tradition), the victory and power of the Cause of God, the appearance of wonderful signs, the explanation of divine questions, the unfoldment of the secrets of the holy books, and the all-encompassing knowledge of this Most Great Manifestation in the world of the Cause, are a hundred times more than that. Also, outwardly speaking, the wise people of this age have acknowledged that the sciences, arts, industries and wonders of this century are equal to more than those of the past fifty centuries, nay rather, even greater than that.”
June 13, 1912. Speaking of the bitter days of persecution, ’Abdu’l-Bahá said, “Notwithstanding all these persecutions and ordeals, the Cause of God was victorious and irresistible, even though the Committee of Investigation and its members every hour inflicted grave injustice and brought forth false accusations at the city of
’Akká. After joining and conspiring with the deniers and enemies at ’Akká to crush and destroy us, and while they were still on their way to Constantinople, the wrath of God overtook them. The whole matter was changed. Ali the oppressors became degraded. Some of the members of the committee were put to death and some had to run away. Finally one of them went to Egypt and begged food of the believers to save himself from starvation.”
The reader may know perhaps that in 1907 the enemies of ’Abdu’l-Bahá aroused the fear of Abdul-Hamid, the Sultan of Turkey, and turned him against ’Abdu’l-Bahá. So he sent a committee to investigate some serious charges, namely, that ’Abdu’l-Bahá was going to make Himseif a king, and other false accusations. While at ’Akká, the committee met ’Abdu’l-Bahá; and then returned to Constantinople with the intention of asking the death sentence from the Sultan for ’Abdu’l-Bahá. But before the committee reached Constantinople, one day the Sultan was talking with the chief of the Moslems at the door of the Mosque, when a bomb that was evidently intended for him exploded and he had a very narrow escape from death. He fainted. About three hundred lives were lost by the explosion. Then soon afterward, the Young Turks came into power; Sultan Abdul-Hamid was deposed and cast into prison and 'Abdu'l-Bahá, was not only freed from danger by the Young Turk Party, but also from the Turkish prison.
Speaking upon the subject of discord among the friends, ’Abdu’l-Bahá said, “Bahá'u'lláh declared that whenever the people of Bahá have discord, even though on behalf of Bahá’u’lláh Himself, both sides are to be rejected.”
After taking a short nap, He returned and said, “I was tired. I slept a little. I dreamed that I was talking
to you, and it was so clear I was awakened by my voice. One of the words of that dream was the word, ‘distinction.’ Therefore, it is befitting that we speak on the subject of distinction.” (And this talk is published in full in Volume 3, of the Star of the West).
June 14, 1912, the sad news of the death of Agha Seyed Taghi Minshadi, one of ’Abdu’l-Bahá’s old secretaries, was received. ’Abdu’l-Bahá said, “The Station of Agha Seyed Taghi Minshadi will become known in the future.”
Speaking of Bahá’u’lláh, Abdu’l-Bahá said, “Notwithstanding that the Blessed Beauty (Bahá’u’lláh) was in prison, His blessed tent was pitched on Mount Carmel with the utmost
dignity. From a purely outward point, His power and might was in such a great degree that the governor of ’Akká tried for five years to see Him and visit the holy threshold, but he refused and never paid any attention to him.”
Speaking of His own public addresses, in churches, etc; ’Abdu’l-Bahá said, “They are according to the capacities of the souls and the exigency of the time.” Then He declaimed a verse from Persian poetry, to illustrate this point “Though the father may sing to the baby ‘Tee-tee’; in his own mind, he may be drawing an architectural plan.” We gather from this bit of illustrated verse how infinitely beyond the powers of audiences to grasp are the images and cosmic visions of the Prophet.
When you call George Washington “First in peace”, please remember that a young slave girl was the first person in the world, publicly, to refer to him in that way. It was Phyllis Wheatley, a young African poetess, who wrote a poem in his honor and in one of the lines addressed him as “First in peace and honours,” several years before the Declaration of Independence was signed.
If you had been walking down the streets of Boston, Mass. one day in 1761 you might have seen a poor little black girl, wrapped only in a piece of carpet, shivering with the cold. If you had asked “What is your name, little girl?” She would not have understood you, and even if she had understood and answered your question, her name would have sounded very queer to you. For she was a little
foreigner. She had been born in Africa, had been stolen from her native land, packed like a sardine in a slave ship with many others of her countrymen, and suffered the horrors and tortures of what was called “the middle passage”, and had been brought by white men into this country to be sold as a slave.
A lady who wanted to train a young woman servant to take the place of an old one who was growing too old to work, went to the slave market in Boston to see what she could find in that line. The pathetic face of the shivering child appealed to this woman so strongly that she bought her in spite of the fact that her little body appeared so frail.
Sixteen months from that time she was reading the most difficult passages in the Bible. Six years from
the day she was sold she had become so proficient in speaking and writing the English language she had written a poem to the University of Cambridge, nine years from the day she had been bought as a slave she had published a poem on the death of a distinguished clergyman, and twelve years after entering Mrs. Wheatley's service her volume of poems was published in London.
Phyllis was very fortunate in having Mrs. Wheatley as her mistress. Let us pause long enough to give a rousing, rising vote of thanks to that lady. The law did not force her to be merciful to the little slave and nobody expected her to give the girl a chance.
In her new home Phyllis became the special servant of Mrs. Wheatley's twins, Nathaniel and Mary, who were ten years older than their slave. One day Mary saw the little African trying to form letters on the wall with a piece of chalk. She doubtless thought it would be great fun to teach her. She tried and the progress made by her black pupil was the sensation of that time. What a debt of gratitude her race and the whole world owe to Mary Wheatley! Very soon Phyllis began write poems “for her own amusement,” the preface of her book states. “As to her writings, “says her master, “her own curiosity led her to it.”
Phyllis did not know when or where she was born. She only knew she came from somewhere in Africa. She must have been born either in 1753 or 1754–not later than 1754, it is thought. She was probably between seven and eight years of age when she was dragged more dead than alive from the slave ship in Boston.
When she was twenty years old her health began to fail and her friends thought a sea voyage would do her good. Mr. Wheatley happened to be going abroad on business and he took Phyllis with him to England
where she had the time of her young life. She was the guest of the Countess of Huntington, was received by the Lord Mayor of London and by Lord Dartmouth, was feted, petted and honored by the culture and aristocracy of Great Britain. Her book entitled, ”Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, by Phyllis Wheatley, Negro Servant of John Wheatley of Boston in New England”, was published during this visit in 1773. It was dedicated to her English hostess and patroness as follows “To the Right Honourable the Countess of Huntingdon, the following pages are most respectfully inscribed, by her much obliged, very humble and devoted servant, Phyllis Wheatley.“ Thus it was that the Wheatley family became immortalized, for it would long have been forgotten, if it had not been for the genius of a slave.
In order to prove to those who would doubt that the African girl really wrote the poems Mr. Wheatley had some of the most distinguished citizens of New England vouch for this fact. In one of the preliminary pages of the book, his excellency, Thomas Hutchinson, governor, and the lieutenant-governor, together with sixteen other representative citizens signed their names to the following statement: “Phyllis, a young Negro girl, who was but a few years since brought an uncultivated barbarian from Africa, has ever since been and is now under the disadvantage of serving as a slave in a family in this town, has been examined by some of the best judges and is thought qualified to write them“.
On the day Phyllis received a letter from George Washington, then commander-in-chief of the army and the future president of the United States, in which he complimented her upon the poem written in his honor, she must have been very happy indeed. He addressed her as “Miss Phyllis“, and declared she exhibited striking
proof of poetical talent”. “If ever you come to Cambridge or near headquarters”, he wrote her, “I shall be happy to see a person so favored by the muses and to whom nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensation. I am with great respect, your obedient, humble servant, George Washington.”
When she was about twenty-five Phyllis married John Peters, a man of her own race, and seems to have been unhappy. She lived only five years after her marriage and was working
in an ordinary boarding house when she died, Dec. 5th, 1784, in her thirty-first year. This poetess was a full-blooded African, so that her talent and attainments cannot be attributed to the mixture of Caucasian or any other blood in her veins.
If any other human being, black white, yellow, red or brown, has ever made such marvelous intellectual progress and achieved such great literary success in such a short time under similar circumstances as Phyllis Wheatley, the records of history do not show it.
FRANCE AND GERMANY for the third year have exchanged school children for good will vacations. A group of 60 German children came to spend a month in French homes and took back with them a like number of French children for a month in German homes.—The Evening Star, Washington, D. C.
THE CARNEGIE professorship of international relations, newest chair at the University of Hawaii, is to be filled each year hereafter by a distinguished professor or lecturer from one of the foreign countries bordering the Pacific. Dr. Rokuro Nakaseko of Doshisha University, Kyoto Japan, will be the first to occupy the chair. He is a specialist in the history of science in the Orient.—The Evening Star, Washington, D. C.
“MIGRATIONS OF students from country to country in search of education is one of the most valuable factors in the establishment of better international relations.
“These students return to their native land with a sympathetic understanding
and appreciation of the country in which they attended college and act as ambassadors of good-will.
“There are today in America 10,000 foreign students attending colleges and universities. Of this number the Pacific area has contributed more than 3500. There are about 2500 Chinese, 1000 Japanese, 100 Filipino and 50 Hindu students attending American universities.
“This migration of students to America has assumed large proportions and many are asking whether it is a good thing. There is not a single factor in international relations which is more important than this migration of students.”-Dr. Stephen P. Duggan, director of the Institute of International Education and professor of political science of the College of the City of New York.
“CONTINUAL PEACE and ensuring economic prosperity have brought about a number of changes, one of which being the spread of education. If I can say anything boastful I think the outstanding success of modern Japan is the spread of popular education.
In a few decades Japan has reduced her illiteracy to less than five per cent of her entire population and school attendance of the children of school age is something around 99 per cent. Therefore, Japan may be said to have fought one of the greatest enemies of humanity.“–Yusuke Tsurumi, author and publicist.
AMONG political-minded men who talk most, the world seems moving in the direction of an exaggerated nationalism.
Among practical-minded men who work most, the world seems moving in the direction of an evolving internationalism.
I have before me as I write a calendar of various international conferences that were held or are to be held during 1928. Its three closely printed pages present a vivid picture of a real internationalism that is growing up despite a rhetorical nationalism that hugs ever closer to the alters of tribal gods. A look at this calendar gave me more of an actual sense of the interrelationship of all nations than any dozen volumes I have read. Let me list a few of these adventures that ignore frontiers.
Sixth International Congress of Doctors, Naturalists, and Engineers. Prague.
International Press Exhibit, Cologne.
International Congress of Geologists. Cophenhagen.
World's Dairy Congress. London.
International Association for the Study and Improvement of Human Relations and Conditions in Industry. Cambridge.
International Technical Congress. Tokyo.
International Conference on Bituminous Coal. Pittsburgh.
International Conference for the Protection of Plants. Rome.
International Agricultural Institute. Rome.
International Congress of Tropical Medicine. Cairo.
I have taken these meetings more or less at random from the list. The list does not include many less heralded agencies that are monthly considering the realities of world life in world terms.
Maybe, after all, a creative internationalism is to come from the professional men rather than from the politicians.–Glenn Frank in “The Japan Advertiser“.
CECIL RHODES'S munificence to his old University is not exhausted by the grant of scholarships, and in the near future Rhodes House will be completed at Oxford, and will take its place as one of the finest of modern Oxford buildings.
It is sometimes suggested that there is much snobbery at Oxford, that the English public school boy tends to ignore those not of his own kind. But the Universities at Oxford and Cambridge are today no mere adjuncts of the public schools. They can claim to admit all, irrespective of race, color, creed, nationality or sex. The word "University" is a much more apt description at Oxford today than it was thirty or forty years ago.–By an Oxonian, in the London Telegraph.
SIR THOMAS LIPTON has a plan for the advancement of international amity through the exchange of visits among selected boy citizens of the world powers. Speaking at a meeting in New York Sir Thomas said the project would be put into operation next year with 25 specially chosen young British subjects visiting the United States, and a like number of young Americans spending some time in England. Within a few years the series of visits may be broadened to include not only America and England, but also all the continental countries.–Washington, D. C. Post.
