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[Page 39]

WORLD ORDER

THE “MOST GREAT PEACE”

MARION HOLLEY

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A WORLD COMMUNITY

BAHÁ’Í TEACHINGS

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WEALTH AND STEWARDSHIP

CLARENCE E. FLYNN

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EDUCATION FOR PROGRESS

RALPH WESTLAKE

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(Contents continued on inside cover)

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MAY 1935

Price 20c

VIEWING THE WORLD AS AN ORGANISM

[Page 40]

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

(Continued)

LET PEACE BE KNOWN

A Poem

MARIO SPERACIO

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RACE PREJUDICE

C. F. ANDREWS

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AE ON AMERICAN CULTURE

STANWOOD COBB

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TURNING-POINT OF HISTORY

HORACE HOLLEY

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INTERNATIONAL COURTS

MANLEY O. HUDSON

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THE PROVINCIAL ATTITUDE

FREDERICK L. BROOKS

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SOCIAL TRENDS IN AMERICAN LIFE

BERTHA HYDE KIRKPATRICK

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SCIENCE TO SERVE MAN

Editorial

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World Order is published monthly in New York, N. Y. by the Publishing Committee of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada.

Editors, Stanwood Cobb and Horace Holley.

Business Manager, C. R. Wood.

Editorial Office—

119 Waverly Place, New York, N. Y.

Publication Office—

135 East 50th Street, New York, N. Y.

Subscriptions: $2.00 per year, $1.75 to Public Libraries. Rate to addresses outside the United States, $2.25, foreign Library rate, $2.00, Single copies, 20 cents. Checks and money orders should be made payable to World Order Magazine, 135 East 50th Street, New York, N. Y. Application for entry as second class matter is pending.

Contents copyrighted 1935 by Bahá’í Publishing Committee May, 1935. Vol. 1, No. 2

[Page 41]

WORLD ORDER

MAY 1935

NUMBER 2 VOLUME 1

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SCIENCE TO SERVE MAN

EDITORIAL

“SCIENCE has not been developed in the past for the purpose of human welfare,” says Professor J. D. Barnal of Cambridge University, “but partly to increase profits and partly to secure military superiority.” Professor George S. Counts of Columbia University brings a similar accusation to bear in his latest book “Social Foundations of Education”.

Science should be used by society to produce the greatest possible progress and the most wide-spread prosperity and happiness. The application of scientific discovery to industrial invention and production has, indeed, furthered progress to an amazing degree, and has increased general prosperity; but that it has caused a net increase in human happiness is open to question.

The machine, man’s greatest triumph over nature, is an invention which presumably lessens human toil, but under the industrial regime it has unfortunately been so much exploited for the benefit of ownership that it has not only failed in many cases to lessen the toil of the worker, but has even aggravated that toil and produced strain more disastrous to health than the simple arduous toil of the laborer before the machine was invented.

A member of the office force of a large machine shop located in my native town told me years ago how he had noticed the immigrants coming fresh to the shop—strong, brawny men from various parts of Europe, and how little by little their vital strength and health were sapped by the well known methods which industry had for stimulating labor and increasing production. “Fifteen years is the most I would give the majority of these laborers to live,” he said. “At the end of this period their strength is gone. One sees them succumb to various diseases, which they have no stamina to fight.” The steel [Page 42] industry as a whole, in fact, may be said to have erected colossal fortunes upon the brawny bodies of its exploited labor.

Mass production devices of industrialism for speeding up manufacture, as notably employed in the making of automobiles, brings to bear upon the workman a more terrific and continuous strain than human labor has ever endured before outside of slavery in its most heartless forms.

WHAT do we see, then, as the net result of the machine to human happiness? It may bring to the workman a slightly larger salary and the means for gratifying a desire for comfort and luxury goods, but it tends to keep him at such a strain during the working period that the hours left for recreation are not sufficiently recuperative to an overstrained physique and nervous system.

The tragic quality of modern mechanized civilization is that this magic power of the machine has not only failed to alleviate toil but has actually increased it. This is by reason of the immense greed which is operated, warping the benefits of science to the one goal of individual wealth obtained at no matter what cost to labor. The paradox of industrialism as an illusionary giver of happiness to the laborer is best demonstrated in the process which takes place when any industrial management undertakes to exploit a primitive people for labor in plantations, mines or factories. These primitives do not need or want wages, or the artificial goods produced by modern industry. Their lives are complete and rounded out in their native form, with ample leisure for the enjoyment of life. In order to entice them into modern industrial labor they have to be drugged, so to speak; and obsessed with new and insatiable desires; and placed and kept in debt to the Company store so that work may be obtained from them under a form of semi-peonage.

Is this the glorious benefit which science offers the human race in the promotion of the machine? America leads the world in technological development. But in the highly important art of enjoying life in the simple and recuperative pleasures which leisure time may offer, the Americans, it may well be said, are the most backward of all peoples. We have much to learn in this respect from Europe, and even more from Asia. What is needed is a greater spiritualization of life— leading to a more fundamental appreciation of simple joys; a moderation of greed and insensate ambition; and, most of all, a power in man to conquer the machine which up to date has conquered him.

S. C.

[Page 43]

For more than sixty years the conception of peace revealed by Bahá’u’lláh —peace attained by the soul, and peace safeguarded by a true world order —has been penetrating the consciousness of East and West, while the foundations of the old disorder have been steadily undermined.

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THE “MOST GREAT PEACE”

By MARION HOLLEY

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A NEW PHASE OF HUMAN THOUGHT

“WAR is the most preventable accident!” said ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the exemplar of the Bahá’í Faith. His words, which even twenty years ago seemed quite improbable, carry to modern ears an inescapable and terrible conviction. We recognize in them no less than a profound indictment of the nations of the world.

The history of these last years has been dominated by two tendencies intimately affecting the future of war. First, there has come such an expansion in the possibilities of human intercourse, such intensification of economic dependence, together with a wider sympathy for the habits and ideals of alien groups, that for the first time the sons of earth are drawn close enough to conceive and aspire after forms of relationship other than violence. To this new-felt need—actually an opportunity to substitute for the cruel and gross processes of war a more civilized inter-action—has been added, secondly, a fatal necessity in the guise of an “armament revolution.” Until the end of the 19th century the methods of war had “remained stagnant and unprogressive for hundreds of years.” But the conflict of 1914 brought to perfection new devices for mass murder—poison gas, air raids, tanks, heavy artillery—techniques so efficient that in four years’ time, more than twice as many men were killed as in 123 years of warfare preceding 1914. The costs of war are now so staggering that statesmen like Mr. Baldwin are impelled to ask: “Who in Europe does not know that one more war in the West and the civilization of the ages will fall with as great a shock as that of Rome?” Modern war is not only a preventable accident; it is a dreadful scourge, more to be feared than the Black Death.

This has not been true in every time. The benefits of war have often cancelled out its evils, have actually advanced the course of human evolution. For example, otherwise isolated groups used to meet upon the battle-field; and long after physical combat had ceased, the cultural ferment induced by such contact altered [Page 44] and enriched the customs of the hostile peoples. With the impact of Islam upon Europe during the Crusades, the structure of the Dark Ages was shattered and the western world entered a new phase. By revealing unsuspected horizons, war has undoubtedly speeded the progress of civilization.

Moreover, it has served to breed hardy and vigorous men, inspiring in them the will to enterprise and action. Discipline, cooperation, inventiveness —these, as well as death, sorrow, waste, have been by-products of an activity which the modern world must now condemn. For the costs have finally overtaken the profits. Today, “we see war no longer as a tragic necessity in human life, but as a horrible arrest in development.”

The figures of losses sustained by the fighting nations in the Great War, appalling as they are—ten million wounded, a total money cost of $337,846,000,000—actua11y indicate but a small portion of the destruction. The costs of war, indeed, cannot be estimated, but their significance may be glimpsed when it is remembered that, as a biologist has written, “The war question is essentially a problem in human ecology. Just as the plants and animals in an aquarium, pond, or forest constitute a delicately balanced complex, so human society is a complicated organism. War, therefore, does not affect merely the armies engaged, but the civil populations as well, not only of the belligerent nations but also of remote neutrals.”

Thus the Great War distorted every phase of modern life. Six million people were wiped out by Spanish influenza. “Nearly all Polish children under six are said to have died from starvation.” The fatalities among Armenians, Syrians, Jews, Greeks, Roumanians, Austrians, Serbians, Russians, Belgians, due to starvation and disease, were enormous. Nations jeopardized even their future health to feed this terror which coveted only the fittest human specimens. In the United States, “about 83 per cent of the drafted men who possessed defects of a probably more or less hereditary character were rejected,” to return to their homes and father a generation.

AT the same time, the economic equilibrium of the world collapsed. Factories and industries, growing up to fulfill war needs, caused dislocation and overproduction after the war. Political instability interfered with trade. High and oppressive taxation cut down the purchasing power of the public and lowered the standard of living by ten per cent. In the light of subsequent developments, it is interesting to read a post-war prophecy that “the very breakdown of modern economic society might be the price exacted.”

Yet the physical consequences— biologic and economic, together with the political disturbances created by the Versailles Treaty—were overshadowed, if possible, by the havoc worked upon the character of public ethics and private morals. No appraisal could exaggerate these factors, which in their totality form the [Page 45] damning evidence of “man’s inhumanity to man,” and predict in grim accents the terms upon which another war shall be fought. One of the strangest attitudes of our day is the nonchalance with which the common man watches his government prepare for suicidal conflict. Like blithe children the nations of the world seek arms for a tourney with Death, apparently unconscious of the merciless intent of their opponent.

There are, to be sure, thousands of persons who, through the bitter years of the Great War, acquired an aching thirst for peace, and many of these have since devoted their lives to this ideal. Moreover, it is now the opinion of an imposing number of statesmen and leaders that war and human society have come to the parting of the ways. Diverse projects exist for the consummation of this process, sustained by as many explanations of the causes and cures of war as there are fields of human activity. After fifteen years of faithful application, however, some people are questioning whether success does not wait upon the coordination of these separate enterprises.

NOW no plan, it is safe to say, so unites every contributory movement, so richly harmonizes the impulses and efforts of men towards the superb goal—world peace—as does the Bahá’í Faith. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote, “The scope of Universal Peace must be such that all the communities and religions may find their highest wish realized in it.” Comprehensive in analysis, all-embracing in scope, inviting the cooperation of every forward-looking individual and group, the Bahá’í Faith not only conforms with fact, but is enabled to enlist and conserve every authentic interest in the quest for that “durable peace” which, as President Roosevelt has said, “is the only goal worthy of our best efforts.”

Perhaps the primary and most stimulating contribution of Baha’u’llah (Father of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Founder of this Cause) was an affirmation in unequivocal terms that the case for peace would prosper. “Yet so it shall be; these fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away, and the ‘Most Great Peace’ shall come.” His words challenge at the outset the threadbare theory that war is inevitable because human nature does not change, a brand of illogic which is both untenable and futile. Failing as it does to distinguish between the instincts of individuals and social institutions, it is unable to recognize that whereas human impulses may not change, their expression-forms can certainly be shaped and guided. Happily, the opinion of an eminent body of psychologists has been recorded: “War is not instinctive and ineradicable. By a vote of 346 to 10 the members of the American Psychological Association have registered their opposition to the doctrine that war is a part of human nature and cannot be stopped.”

War, actually more akin to politics than to biology, might be defined as “a contest by force between political groups.” Arising from the struggle for existence, it is not therefore a [Page 46] necessary conclusion, but rather the most obvious and brute-like solution of this competition for life. Men— who are endowed with intellect— have often replaced natural processes with reasoned ones, especially when their very existence has been found to depend upon the latter. As one Bahá’í writer says, “Disillusion would only be justified if human society could be successfully established on the war principle.” Those who are alert to historic necessities know that war is doomed; at the same time they are prepared for a sharp and long-drawn struggle to eradicate the principle which so intimately penetrates the fabric of modern life.

‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ has said: “War is not limited to one cause. There are many kinds of war and conflict going on: political war, commercial war, patriotic war and racial war. This is the very civilization of war.” Today economic causes seem the most significant, with our world a seething mass of economic stresses and strains. Unemployment, “the cancer of the body economic,” was estimated in 1932 as affecting some fifty millions of the world’s population, unquestionably a conservative figure. Another critical question is that of population pressure and it is said that whereas “in 1800 there were probably 600,000,000 or 700,000,000 people in the world, today the number is perhaps 1,800,000,000.” Increasing complexity of economic life together with a breakdown of the system of production and distribution, (both of them problems grossly complicated by the Great War), these are the factors leading to friction and rivalries.

But—and it is a consideration fraught with importance and hope— economic causes in themselves do not result in war. Conflict springs up only when political groups, in an effort “to support the economic interests of their citizens,” clash and resort to violence. With immigration laws, tariffs, harsh trade policies, raw material monopolies, and protection of foreign investments, governments attempt to underwrite prosperity, ever guided by the unhappy notion that one nation can prosper independently of other nations, even at their expense. As a matter of fact, the World Economic Conference of 1927 disposed of this creed: “Any strictly nationalistic policy is harmful not only to the nation which practices it, but also to the others and therefore defeats its own ends.” This twentieth- century truth, still not universally known, stands as one of the basic premises of the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh.

Economic irritants are not, however, the sole instigators of a war spirit, and seldom if ever are they formally acknowledged. It is far easier to address popular fury in terms of its emotional antipathies. In other words, human prejudices form the most fertile ground for the seeds of war—prejudices national, racial, religious, class and cultural. How carefully through the ages these provincialisms have been fostered, despite the fact that “the most important step from savagery to culture [Page 47] is the emancipation of the individual man from complete or temporary segregation or isolation.” How tenaciously group-egotisms have been transferred from the first primitive tribal unit, exalting itself with the name “Men” as if other tribes were not men, to the succeeding feudal, state and national organizations.

Ethnocentrism, that loyalty which does good service in stabilizing each newly-created society, always in the end projects the social body into armed conflict. Today, disguised as nationalism, it is arousing passions which inevitably must hurtle us into another desperate struggle. Perhaps in no other school will men finally learn that: “All prejudices whether of religion, race, politics or nation, must be renounced, for these prejudices have caused the world's sickness. It is a grave malady which, unless arrested, is capable of causing the destruction of the whole human race. Every ruinous war with its terrible bloodshed and misery has been caused by one or another of these prejudices.”

These and many others are the true causes of wars. But we must distinguish between causes and that basic condition of world society Which makes war actually possible. For war is itself nothing but one method for settling disputes. It has already been dispensed with in the relations of individuals, families, states; only between nations does it remain the honored arbiter. Only between nations are there no effective definitions of law and government, no restraints to violence, no alternative courts of last appeal.

INTERNATIONAL relations, up to the Great War, were in a state of complete anarchy. Even today, after the efforts of the Versailles Treaty to establish a League of Nations, and in spite of subsequent pacts and agreements and the organized work of millions of interested people, international relations are still too chaotic to prevent the catastrophe which tempts us like a lurid shadow. Definitely, at least five institutions and processes for the prevention of war have been established: the League of Nations, the International Labor Office, the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague, the Locarno treaties and similar insurance treaties, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Actually, “every nation in the world has become signatory to some kind of a solemn pledge that it will settle its future difficulties by pacific means.”

Yet in 1935 we stand in more danger of war than at any time since 1914. The League of Nations, once seen as the hope of the world, has in the last year proved itself ineffectual. Indeed, it is in no true sense a League of Nations, since the United States, Germany and Japan—to name the most important—do not belong. And the League is powerless to stop them, it is powerless to interfere if Japan wishes to quarrel with China, it is wholly inadequate to prevent the next great conflict for which all countries are preparing with ill-disguised haste. The armaments race [Page 48] has at last been entered upon frankly although six years ago war was renounced “as an instrument of national policy.” It is a fact that the world spends enough on armaments in one year to support the total cost of the League for more than six centuries!

In a world so enslaved by selfishness, so bestial in many of its impulses, so intent upon destroying the few world institutions which have been laboriously erected, what remains to a lover of peace? In what consolation may his soul find patience and what assurance will sustain him through the coming darkness? There is only one answer. Those who cling to the bright vision of a New World Order, whose thoughts continuously encircle it and whose actions faithfully contribute to its consummation —they shall wrest sanity from the world’s insanity and peace from its bloodthirstiness.

Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, has written: “That the forces of a world catastrophe can alone precipitate such a new phase of human thought is, alas, becoming increasingly apparent. That nothing short of the fire of a severe ordeal, unparalleled in its intensity, can fuse and weld the discordant entities that constitute the elements of present-day civilization, into the integral components of the world commonwealth of the future, is a truth which future events will increasingly demonstrate.”

The outlawry of war waits upon the awakening of man’s intelligence and will. May humanity emerge at last from its blindness into the profound conviction that no less a foundation than that of undivided loyalty to a world society can ever support the structure of an enduring peace.

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In all civilized lands today we stand appalled by the tragic nonsense of misery and want, in the midst of tremendous world stocks of essential goods. Science has given us control over nature far beyond the wildest imaginings of our forefathers. But unfortunately those attitudes, religious and economic, which produced such keen scientists and aggressive business men the civilized world over, make it impossible for us to live with the balanced abundance which is now ours as soon as we are willing to accept it with clean understanding hearts.—HENRY A. WALLACE, in “America Must Choose.”

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[Page 49]

In every age, the impetus and direction of human progress finds its point of origin in the pure vision of the prophetic Leader, who embodies in His life and utterance the most creative form of truth. The following excerpts from Bahá’í literature present the new spirit of universal Peace.

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A WORLD COMMUNITY

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THE BODY POLITIC

THE human organism may be taken as an example of the body-politic. As long as the members and parts of the human organism are at peace, coordinate, and cooperate together peacefully and harmoniously, we have as the result the expression of life in its fullest form; where they differ we have the reverse, which in the human organism is warfare; and when dissension continues and discord waxes grave in the human organism, the result is dissension and dissolution and ultimately death. All objects, all created beings are contingent or dependent upon peace, for every contingent or phenomenal being is composed of distinct elements. As long as there is an amicable understanding, a unity of action and coordination among these elements which go to form this phenomenal being, there we have peace; but as soon as dissension takes place disintegration results. The purpose is this, that peace and amity are the saving factors of society, whereas warfare and strife are the factors which bring about death and destruction.

There is not one soul whose conscience does not testify that in this day there is no more important matter in the world than that of universal peace. . . .

But the wise souls who are aware of the essential relationships emanating from the realities of things consider that one single matter cannot, by itself, influence the human reality as it ought and should, for until the minds of men become united, no important matter can be accomplished. At present universal peace is a matter of great importance, but unity of conscience is essential, so that the foundation of this matter may become secure, its establishment firm and its edifice strong.

THE ONENESS OF MANKIND

SHOULD any one object that, since the communities and nations and races and peoples of the world have different formalities, customs, tastes, temperaments, morals, varied thoughts, minds and opinions, it is therefore impossible for ideal unity to be made manifest and complete [Page 50] union among men to be realized, we say that differences are of two kinds: One leads to destruction, and that is like the difference between warring peoples and competing nations who destroy one another, uproot each other’s families, do away with rest and comfort and engage in bloodshed and rapacity. That is blameworthy. But the other difference consists in variation. This is perfection itself and the cause of the appearance of Divine bounty. Consider the flowers of the rose garden. Although they are of different kinds, various colors and diverse forms and appearances, yet as they drink from one water, are swayed by one breeze and grow by the warmth and light of one sun, this variation and this difference cause each to enhance the beauty and splendor of the others. The differences in manners, in customs, in habits, in thoughts, opinions and in temperaments is the cause of the adornment of the world of mankind. This is praiseworthy. Likewise this difference and this variation, like the difference and variation of the parts and members of the human body, are the cause of the appearance of beauty and perfection. As these different parts and members are under the control of the dominant spirit, and the spirit permeates all the organs and members, and rules all the arteries and veins, this difference and this variation strengthen love and harmony and this multiplicity is the greatest aid to unity. —‘Abdu’l-Bahá

Let there be no mistake. The principle of the Oneness of Mankind . . . is no mere outburst of ignorant emotionalism or an expression of vague and pious hope. Its appeal is not to be merely identified with a reawakening of the spirit of brotherhood and good-will among men, nor does it aim solely at the fostering of harmonious cooperation among individual peoples and nations. . . . It implies an organic change in the structure of present-day society, a change such as the world has met yet experienced. It constitutes a challenge, at once bold and universal, to outworn shibboleths of national creeds . . . It calls for no less than the reconstruction and the demilitarization of the whole civilized world. —Shoghi Effendi

INTERNATIONAL LAW

TRUE civilization will unfurl its banner in the midmost heart of the world whenever a certain number of its distinguished and high-minded sovereigns—the shining exemplars of devotion and determination— shall, for the good and happiness of all mankind, arise, with firm resolve and clear vision, to establish the Cause of Universal Peace. They must make the Cause of Peace the object of general consultation, and seek by every means in their power to establish a Union of the nations of the world. They must conclude a binding treaty and establish a covenant, the provisions of which shall be sound, inviolable and definite. They must proclaim it to all the world and obtain for it the sanction of all the human race. This supreme and noble undertaking—the real [Page 51] source of the peace and well-being of all the world—should be regarded as sacred by all that dwell on earth. All the forces of humanity must be mobilized to ensure the stability and Permanence of this Most Great Covenant. In this all-embracing Pact the limits and frontiers of each and every nation should be clearly fixed, the principles underlying the relations of governments towards one another definitely laid down, and all international agreements and obligations ascertained. In like manner, the size of the armaments of every government should be strictly limited, for if the preparations for war and the military forces of any nation should be allowed to increase, they will arouse the suspicion of others. The fundamental principle underlying this solemn Pact should be so fixed that if any government later violate any one of its provisions, all the governments on earth should arise to reduce it to utter submission.

DISARMAMENT

BY a general agreement all the governments of the world must disarm simultaneously. It will not do if one lays down its arms and the others refuse to do so. The nations of the world must concur with each other concerning this supremely important subject,—thus they may abandon together the deadly weapons of human slaughter.

ARBITRATION

About fifty years ago (over seventy years now,) Bahá’u’lláh commanded people to establish universal peace and summoned all the nations to the divine banquet of international arbitration, so that the questions of boundaries, of national honor and property, and of vital interests between nations might be settled by an arbitral court of justice, and that no nation would dare to refuse to abide by the decisions thus arrived at. If any quarrel arise between two nations it must be adjudicated by this international court and be arbitrated and decided upon like the judgment rendered by the Judge between two individuals.

THE SUPREME TRIBUNAL

ALTHOUGH the League of Nations has been brought into existence, yet it is incapable of establishing Universal Peace. But the Supreme Tribunal which His Holiness Baha’u’llah has described will fulfil this sacred task with the utmost might and power. And his plan is this: that the national assemblies of each country and nation—that is to say parliaments—should elect two or three persons who are the choicest men of that nation, and are well informed concerning international laws and the relations between governments and aware of the essential needs of the world of humanity in this day. The number of these representatives should be in proportion to the number of inhabitants of that country. The election of these souls who are chosen by the national assembly, that is, the parliament, must be confirmed by the upper house, the congress and the cabinet and also by [Page 52] the president or monarch so these persons may be the elected ones of all the nation and the government. From among these people the members of the Supreme Tribunal will be elected, and all mankind will thus have a share therein, for every one of these delegates is fully representative of his nation. When the Supreme Tribunal gives a ruling on any international question, either unanimously or by majority rule, there will no longer be any pretext for the plaintiff or ground of objection for the defendant. In case any of the governments or nations, in the execution of the irrefutable decision of the Supreme Tribunal, be negligent or dilatory, the rest of the nations will rise up against it, because all the governments and nations of the world are the supporters of this Supreme Tribunal. Consider what a firm foundation this is! But by a limited and restricted League the purpose will not be realized as it ought and should.

AMERICA’S OPPORTUNITY

MAY this American democracy be the first nation to establish the foundation of international agreement. May it be the first nation to proclaim the unity of mankind. May it be the first to unfurl the standard of the ‘Most Great Peace.’ . . . For America has developed powers and capacities greater and more wonderful than other nations . . . This American nation is equipped and empowered to accomplish that which will adorn the pages of history, to become the envy of the world and be blest in both the East and the West for the triumph of its people.

UNIVERSAL PEACE

EVERY great Cause in this world of existence finds a visible expression through three means; first, intention; second, confirmation; third, action. Today on this earth there are many souls who are the spreaders of peace and reconciliation and are longing for the realization of the oneness and unity of the world of man; but this intention needs a dynamic power so that it may become manifest in the world of being. Today the divine instructions and lordly exhortations of Bahá’u’lláh promulgate this most great aim and the confirmations of the Kingdom are the supports and defenders of this eminent intention. For the power of the Word of God is penetrative and the existence of the divine Kingdom is uninterrupted. Therefore, ere long, it will become evident and clear that the ensign of the Most Great Peace is the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. For the intention, the power and the action, all three essential elements are brought together and the realization of everything in the contingent world depend upon these three principles.

Therefore, O lover of the oneness of the world of humanity, spread as much as you can the instructions and teachings of His Highness Bahá’u’lláh, so that the desired Beloved become unveiled in the assembly of humankind and cast her light upon all the people.—‘Abdu’l-Bahá

The world’s equilibrium hath been [Page 53] upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind’s ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System—the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed. —Bahá’u’lláh

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Far deeper than most current economic proposals goes this plea for the sense of stewardship—which the author defines as an “adequate sense of responsibility.” Revolution, he points out, does not take place where the sense of stewardship exists.

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WEALTH AND STEWARDSHIP

By CLARENCE E. FLYNN

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THE dollar is the corpuscle in the blood-stream of society. It is the messenger of life, moving along the arteries of trade, carrying with it the necessary materials for the continued existence of the race. Tireless and uncomplaining, it works until its existence ceases. Too, it possesses the strange property of renewal, regaining its purchasing power each time it is spent.

Of course, the mission of a corpuscle is circulation. Its business is to keep moving. It is the same with a dollar. Out of circulation it is impossible for it to do its work. Too much concentration in one place means engorgement and congestion. Too little means anaemia—poverty, devitalization, and death. The secret of health, physical or economic, is to have enough corpuscles to take care of the system, and to keep those corpuscles working.

The blood-stream may carry to the tissues the right thing or the wrong one. Therefore its work may be either helpful or harmful. It is a blessing when it carries needed food and supplies. It becomes a curse if it is allowed to carry poison. Money, too, carries all kinds of materials to the various parts of society, whether it helps or hurts depends upon what is purchased with it.

WEALTH is one of the fundamental interests of organized society. It is therefore a possible vital social problem. It is often an actual problem, one of the most sweeping and far-reaching ones we have. It affects the people, individually and collectively, in ways that cannot be ignored.

Money has been called the root of all kinds of evils and reflection upon the proposition only makes its truth more evident. Every great evil of the past and present has had a commercial [Page 54] aspect. The weaknesses of the human race have always been exploited for the advantage of evil and designing men. This is true of the slavery evil, the liquor evil, the social evil, and the rest. If they had nor been profitable they would not have come into existence. The rule holds, too, in the case of war. Take the profit out of it, and for many men all the incentive would be gone.

Money often becomes a problem by becoming the snare of the children of rich men. It likewise becomes the hard, cruel game of men who have already amassed more wealth than they need, but who have learned to enjoy money-getting for its own sake. Besides, it becomes the preoccupation of men who ought not so to waste their lives.

Is it not true that the ever-insistent discontent of recent years has centered mostly in money? Certain classes have resented the fact that they were not receiving their share of the goods of the world. The reason for this has been largely the selfish attitude of those who had the advantage.

America has heaped together such wealth as no other country has ever had. She is able to buy anything that is purchasable. In some ways this power is a blessing to her, but in others it means the unleashing of what is evil and unlovely in her nature.

ISRAEL was poor, but she gave to the world a spiritual gift that still endures. Some of her neighboring contemporaries are now remembered chiefly because their merchant ships were on every sea and because they used their profits to build up civilizations which fell and crushed them. A pioneer preacher wrote that in his travels he found the greatest measure of culture among those who were comfortable rather than rich. Goldsmith wrote of a situation where wealth had accumulated and men had decayed.

There is a way by which money often tends to fasten sin upon us. A man of unusual ability was employed to enforce the law in a large city. So long as he raided shacks and dens his work was unquestioned, but when he proposed to padlock a large hotel on a liquor charge the mayor objected on the ground that it represented a four million dollar invesrment. A judge refused an injunction against a certain piece of wrongdoing on the claim that a great deal of money had been spent in advertising, and that an injunction would prove financially ruinous to the promoters.

The tendency is for a prosperous age to become a materialistic one and materialism is a problem in its own right.

Crime commissions, prison authorities, ministers, and social agencies have long been trying to explain the rise of crime. One diagnosis is that the home has failed, one that the school has not done its duty, and one that the character teaching program of the church has broken down. Yes, but what is back of these things? Is it not materialism?

Young men see things they want but cannot afford—clothes, automobiles, purchasable social privileges. [Page 55] So they steal or borrow beyond their credit in order to obtain them. Young women see finery and pleasures they want but cannot buy, and sell body and soul to get them. Parents, absorbed in the pursuit of wealth, fail to counsel and guide their children. The result is a moral breakdown which is all the more tragic because its participants seldom realize what is happening.

The symptoms of this materialiStic age are on every hand—the craze for physical contests; the emphasis on physical appearance; the dominance of material values; the materialistic trend in philosophy, psychology, and even religion; the general disposition to rate a man by his bank account; the physical ideal prevailing in even so hallowed a thing as love; and the general tendency to the worship of things.

Such a period comes in the life of every successful nation. It is one of the prices a people often pays for its own greatness. It comes when prosperity and industrial development make possible beautiful things, and available the money with which to buy them.

Then there is the problem of too little money—the anaemia of the social body, the poverty problem.

One of the members of the French mission to the Colonies during the Revolutionary War wrote that while travelling through Massachusetts his party found one day that it had an excess of provisions. Their New England host was asked to take these and give them to the poor. He seemed hardly to understand, as he said the community had no poor. It was so in the America of that day when the spirit of democracy still controlled the distribution of wealth, but we have long since allowed the disposition to value things above men to create a poverty problem.

In a little town in the Central States recently a young man killed himself over financial worries. All he needed was the paltry sum of four hundred dollars. The other day a crippled mother of twenty-three strangled her baby to death because she could not bear to see the child grow up amid poverty and squalor. Her attorney pleaded insanity, but the cause was love cramped beyond endurance by the cruel hold of poverty— while the wastrels were thinking up new ways to spend money.

THERE is ground for grave fear that no country can remain truly great with a poverty problem remaining long or unsuccessfully attacked. The shiftless we will always have with us, but something is wrong when any honest and industrious man cannot earn comfort for himself and his family.

Money is an evident necessity and a commanding interest. It is capable of almost unlimited good or evil, according as it is used. All the people earn money and most of them want to earn more. Some have too much and others too little. Everybody needs gold to match necessity, but not everybody has it. These are the facts. What is to be done about them?

The solution of the wealth problem is stewardship—which is simply an adequate sense of responsibility. [Page 56] Wealth will become a blessing instead of a menace when we all learn that we are administrators, holding the wealth of the world in trust for the use of society—including ourselves— and responsible to God and men for the care we give it and the use we make of it. Revolution has never gone where this adequate sense of trusteeship existed. It never will.

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The “philosophy of force” retreats steadily before the advance of a science beginning to deal with the values of man and not merely with those of the sub-human kingdoms.

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EDUCATION FOR PROGRESS

By RALPH WESTLAKE

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DEVOTEES of the philosophy of force (militarism) tell us that social progress is brought about by competition between man and man, between tribe and tribe, nation and nation; and that as a result of this struggle of man with man, tribe with tribe, nation with nation, the inferior man, tribes and nations are destroyed, leaving the superior peoples to build a civilization which the inferior groups and nations were incapable of building. The militarists see human progress as dependent upon the political hegemony of “superior” nations, upon a leadership and domination maintained by force.

Science, as well as common sense, denies the truth of the foregoing tenets of the philosophy of force. Darwin and Wallace, as well as such social scientists as Huxley, Spencer and Nasmyth, maintained that social progress depends on the social virtues (mutual aid and unselfishness) and upon art and science—all of which are the products of education. “Man . . . is the most dominant animal that has ever appeared on this earth,” says Darwin, and “he has spread more widely than any other highly organized form . . . all others have yielded before him. He manifestly owes this immense superiority to his intellectual faculties, to his social habits, which lead him to aid and defend his fellows . . . The intellectual powers and social habits of man are of paramount importance to him.”

The anti-social doctrines of militarist- nationalism have sunk deep into the consciousness of the nations, but these doctrines are not grounded on scientific facts. Dr. George Nasmyth, internationally known sociologist, [Page 57] says that “the intellectual powers . . . on which man’s wonderful advancement has mainly depended, have been developed as the result of his social habits. The advantages of his erect position and his hands have been valuable only as they have been directed by the intellect, so that man’s dominant position in the world, in the last analysis, is due to his social qualities.”

Dr. Nasmyth goes on to hold that the moral law—all of which is comprehended in unselfishness—is developed by social experience, that “the moral law, which is based on these social habits, is the cementing force which holds society together,” and “thus becomes, in true Darwinian theory, the central and most important factor in social evolution.”

When we enter the domain of social evolution, Dr. Nasmyth believes, the struggle for existence—the struggle to adapt the planet to our needs—takes on a new aspect; “It becomes a struggle of societies against the physical environment, instead of individuals, and here mutual aid rises to the rank of first importance.”

Darwin recognized war as one of the minor factors in the disappearance of inferior races, but, “with highly civilized nations continued progress depends in a subordinate degree on natural selection . . . We can only say that it depends on an increase in the number of the men endowed with high intellectual qualities . . . These qualities constitute the survival factors in the struggle between civilized and barbarous nations.”

“At the present day”, continues Darwin, “civilized nations are everywhere supplanting barbarous nations excepting where the climate opposes a deadly barrier; and they succeed mainly through their arts and moral qualities, which are the products of the (trained) intellect.” Darwin points out that war is not natural but reverse selection, so far as social progress is concerned; “The bravest men perish in larger numbers . . . and leave no offspring to inherit their noble nature.” He points out further that “militarism, by preventing cooperation and the formation of larger political units, offsets high intellectual powers, such as those possessed by the pagan Greeks.”

“Shortsighted selfishness tends to defeat its own end because of the strife which it engenders,” says Dr. Nasmyth, “and it makes cooperation and social progress impossible.” Only by world cooperation can civilization go forward, believes Nasmyth, and “If any of the advantages of association are lost the social structure falls to a lower plane of evolution and the individual who is a part of society falls with it.”

SOCIAL well being and progress are therefore not dependent upon competition and hegemony maintained by force—upon laissez faire and domination by means of armaments—but upon cooperation between individuals and nations, upon mutual aid, unselfishness and the arts. At present social evolution is in process of retrogression owing to the deadlock in our educational system, which is based on the doctrines [Page 58] of laissez faire or unrestricted individualism; and social evolution will remain on the backward path unless and until there is a drastic reorientation of education, not only in the school, which is the vehicle of juvenile training, but in the press, the principal factor in adult education. Our educational system, like our religious system, is moribund, and if it refuses to evolve in step with man’s changing social needs, it will eventually perish, as did the classical Roman system, and the new Dark Ages will be ushered in.

The mastery of the technique of a profession does not constitute culture, and any civilization grounded upon this quicksand is doomed. Such training is stimulated by specific material interest; it leaves the student with no respect for true scholarship, without passion for truth, without critical attitude, without aspiration to quicken the general spirit, and without the social vision essential to world unity and progress.

THE proper task of education is to study man’s changing economic needs, to analyze and compare economic systems and theories —radical, liberal and orthodox— and to create world-embracing sympathies and interests. The creation of wider sympathies and interests would gradually humanize the competitive industrial struggle and eventually eliminate it in favor of a cooperative commonwealth of nations —a paradise of beauty and plenty wherein the advocate of force and destruction would be incarcerated and treated by psycho-therapeutic methods for criminal and social insanity!

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LET PEACE BE KNOWN

By MARIO SPERACIO

God grant us Peace—with fervent hearts we pray—

Through all the Earth let strife forever wane!

Let us behold the dawn of that glad day

When Hatred, Envy, Greed no longer reign.

O God! The Road to Right again reveal,

Coerce the dogs of War to leave the land;

Let men slay not more men with firing steel;

The law of Love teach us to understand!

In this dim hour—concede Thou Love’s rebirth,

Hate has embarked us on chaotic seas.

Thundering cannons rock the tear-filled Earth

While Death mocks madmen’s boasts of victories.

Too long the blood of martyred saints has flown,

Have pity God! let Peace once more be known.

[Page 59]

To “The Modern Review” of Calcutta we are happy to attribute this statement on race relations which regards prejudice as “an individual weakness” for the educator to remove.

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RACE PREJUDICE

By C. F. ANDREWS

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WHEN we make a study of race prejudice in history in modern times some very interesting factors become apparent. One thing is certain. Little children naturally make no race distinction. Furthermore, it can be proved, that there is no such thing as racial instinct “in the blood.” For instance, New Zealand has been colonized almost entirely from Great Britain and yet there is very little prejudice against the Maoris. To take another instance, the prejudice in England against the Jews, which was at one time very strong there, has now almost entirely vanished.

If we consider the rise of race prejudice, it has almost always some form of conflict behind it. Sometimes the conflict is for money and therefore purely economic, at other times it is a struggle for position, status and social prominence. The origin of the caste system in India is somewhat obscure. Yet there is no doubt that in its historical development ‘Caste’ has been apt to run along lines parallel to those of ‘race’. The fact that one person cannot eat with another, or inter-marry with another, leads almost inevitably to the growth of exclusiveness and aloofness. If we attempt to analyse the situation which has been produced in the modern world by race prejudice, the following factors seem to come out clear from the analysis.

THE prejudice against persons of another race, may appear suddenly anywhere in any land and people who are themselves the victims of race prejudice not seldom discriminate against others in their own country. To take one example the Japanese are themselves discriminating in Japan, while at the same time in California, they are discriminated against.

One racial prejudice will sometimes lead to another. For instance, in California, the race prejudice already existing, which excluded Negroes from White society, has now been applied to Indians, Chinese and Japanese. In the Southern States of America a new prejudice against the Mexican immigrants seems growing up, which is a counterpart of the prejudice against the Chinese.

There are many different forms of racial exclusiveness, but the one barrier which always seems most difficult to overcome is that of intermarriage. Relations that are otherwise friendly between different races or [Page 60]60 WORLD ORDER castes may still preserve the barrier against intermarriage.

Where for any reason, economic conflict, or social conflict becomes diminished and reduced, it is not unlikely that race prejudice, which had become involved in these things will become diminished and reduced also. Sometimes, however, the race prejudice will survive, even when economic and social barriers are broken down.

Whenever religion enters in and accompanies racial prejudice the evil that ensues becomes worst of all. There is no prejudice stronger than that in which difference of race, color, economic and social status are combined with difference of religion.

It is of profound interest to notice that even a deep race prejudice can in the end entirely disappear. The hostility, for instance, between the Saxons and the Normans in medieval English history has no counterpart whatever today. There is a second example of obliteration which followed the Act of Union between England and Scotland. Jokes may be passed on both sides between the Scotch and the English, but it would be absurd to call this today, race prejudice. Indeed, wherever racial differences have become matters of humor and laughter they are obviously under way of disappearance.

The most rapid methods of overcoming racial prejudices are those that come of common education and common franchise. Wherever both these exist and a common religious background is also in evidence, race- prejudices find it very hard indeed to get a permanent footing.

Since racial prejudice is usually slow in growth and development and linked up with social conditions the removal of race prejudice must not only be institutional, but also psychological. If both psychology and social structure are modified together the removal of race prejudice may come about rapidly without any reaction. But if merely institutional changes are made without any psychological change, a reaction is almost certain to occur, which may drive the race prejudice deeper.

FROM this analysis it may be gathered that when racial prejudices are very widespread they are not in any sense an essential part in human nature. They are accidents dependent on varied circumstances. They are not birth inheritances, which nothing can obliterate. In all public teaching it is necessary to emphasize this fact and to regard race prejudice wherever it appears as an individual weakness which culture and refinement should do away with rather than increase. People who possess strong race prejudices should be pitied rather than praised. Their prejudice should be seen in its proper light as a hindrance to the harmony and unity of the human race, which is the only final race of mankind.

[Page 61]

For several decades, practical men have been unsuccessfully attempting to deal with public problems. Perhaps now the voice of the intuitive and mystic type will he heard with far more respect than in the immediate past. This interview was given for publication in World Order.

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AE ON AMERICAN CULTURE

By STANWOOD COBB

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GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL, more generally known as “AE”, recently spent a few days at Washington in conference with representatives of the Department of Agriculture in discussion of agricultural community centers. During that visit I obtained from him a highly interesting and significant response to a number of questions concerning cultural trends in the United States.

1. Do you find the country vitally changed from its condition when you were last here?

Yes. I find much more serious attention being given to the problems of life. Twenty million individuals on relief rolls makes people think more passionately about life than ever before.

I was surprised to find young ladies of the type you call “flappers” discussing the New Deal with great earnestness wherever I went. It is evident that the New Deal has polarized them to think of something other than their ordinary amusements.

All these difficulties and trials that American people are going through is certainly leaving a deep impression on their character.

Flinders Petrie, in his book “Revolution and Civilization”, points out that races tend to evolve through three major epochs. The first he calls “Mastery over Plastic Arts.” This period the Americans have already passed through. They have expressed their abounding physical energy in the throwing of railroads across the continent; in the building of skyscrapers, the construction of automobiles and roads. The second period which Petrie speaks of he calls the “Literary Period.” In such a stage of development, a race becomes more critical and reflective than before, as when a boy matures to the point where he begins to think about life. The gate to this stage is the gate of trouble, of sorrow. Once a race has entered through this gate, it continues on a more mature level.

I should expect, in fifty years time, to find in the American character a deepening of the national life. Yo r literature will then have profundity and depth it has never had before.

2. Do you think that America has a destiny all its own? [Page 62]

Yes, I have always felt there was a new civilization and culture evolving here. This is not, as Spengler claimed, a mere extension of European culture. It shows, of course, a certain relation tothe ancestral culture of Europe, but to no greater extent than we find in a boy who reflects the culture of his home before he begins to develop his own individuality.

Every culture has had some root idea which gradually evolves and comes to be self-conscious in the race. The root idea prevailing in Egypt, as Spengler points out, was that of time, the eternalizing of events in monuments and the eternalizing of individuality in mummies. With the Greeks, the idea was immediacy, the art of living in the moment. With the Romans, it was law and order. With Europe it has been the exploration of the infinite universe, the attaining of new depths and perspectives in our knowledge of nature.

America, I feel, is evolving something entirely different. I will try to explain what I mean. Let us go back to Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman. You may call these writers the spiritual germ-cells of American culture. We find in these great thinkers something of a cosmic consciousness such as we do not find in their European contemporaries.

The American culture was being formed at the very time when the nerves and arteries of a new planetary consciousness was being created in the world. With the invention of the railroad, telegraph and telephone, wireless communication and air travel, the whole world began to quiver together; it became for the first time connected by one vast nervous system. A culture born at such a time, it appears to me, will inevitably manifest some kind of planetary consciousness.

And no matter how intensely nationalistic your mood may be today, a more universal consciousness will emerge by the mere fact of circumstance. Every discovery makes the planet dwindle. We know tomorrow what is done today in Tokio, Melbourne, or Bombay.

The people of America are turning to face this dawning sense of unity. Some planetary sense seems to me to be indicated as the thing that will grow in America, even though every fact in your present civilization may seem to be against this. It is through conflict with its opposite that every idea grows to its full consciousness.

It is not an American form of imperialism that I am speaking of, but rather a sense of planetary justice in the recognition that humanity is one people. You may say that England, France and Germany share in these new circumstances of swiftness of communications, but their native characters were formed and shaped long centuries before. One does not expect a large change of character in these people.

But in a young country, growing to self-consciousness, there will be a larger power of adjustment to a new world order.

All this speculation seems like going far into the future, but every people have to have a vision, or they perish. And some such vision as this [Page 63] seems to be essential, unless there is to be no world order, but a chaos instead.

3. Can America help the rest of the world to conceive and establish unity?

It will have to fight to do so, in a figurative sense. I mean, in the evolution of its own politics there will be probably many statesmen politically martyred before some great leader can carry the majority of his people with him in this movement of world unity.

The ordinary man does not conceive clearly the new root idea around which his race is revolving. But when some great leader successfully sounds the note of progress, the people respond. Sometime there must be established what Tennyson called the “Federation of the World.” Inevitably there will come a world order in which races will have adjusted their differences; a new civilization in which there is provision for a world order and yet for rich national culture and freedom.

In this country first, I think, so noble an ideal will come to fruition.

Of course this may seem rather a remote ideal to talk of when you are so absorbed in your own problems and when every fact in your country tends to concentrate your attention on yourselves.

But these other world problems await solution, too. And the country that can solve its own problems may attain thereby a power to help the rest of the world solve theirs.

I don’t expect the root idea I speak of to appear in real power for some time to come. It will evolve in the minds of idealists and gain power steadily through the coming years.

But the point is this: If there is a root characteristic for a race, it is well for the people of that race to discover, if possible, what that root- consciousness is to be. For you go ever so much faster, when you discover the law of your own being.

THE Bhagavad Gita, one of the wisest of the Indian Scriptures, says: “Let a man attend to his own dharma (duty). The path of another is full of danger.” Thus we may say every individual and race has a particular destiny marked out for it. If it departs from its path of destiny it incurs many dangers.

Einstein is reported to have said that he had simplified the principles of the universe into three factors: Mass, Energy and Light. If one could simplify the root idea of civilization in the same way to one or two ideas which include all the rest, one could make a star which would shine for all people and be a guide in an infinitely complicated era.

Your federation of States is creating within your own boundaries the idea of unity and diversity. When you comprehend the implication of your own political order, you will be able to come to the aid of a new world order.

4. Do you think there is any possibility of a working unity being established amongst the world’s diverse religions?

This is a rather difficult thing to prophesy. It may well be said that [Page 64] the spiritual thought of the world seems at present to have no vitality. It may require a new marriage of cultures to create a new Renaissance of world dimensions. The Renaissance that we know in European history was born when there was a mingling of Christian culture with the resurrected Greek and Roman cultures, and the Arabian culture. This produced a marvelous efflorescence of thought and culture all over Europe.

At present Europe, culturally speaking, seems like some beautiful vessel that was filled with a sparkling liquid from which the sparkle has died out.

It may be that by the rediscovery of Asian culture, we will get the stimulus to a new world Renaissance.

The East has made progress inwardly, and the West has made progress outwardly. Truth, in Europe, has come to mean the relation of one’s thought to the external universe, subject to verification by observation, experiments, and mathematics. Whereas truth in the East has meant the relation of allegory, myth and imagery to man’s deep inner being, to something that is eternal in the spirit of man. There must, some time or other, come a harmonization of these two kinds of truths. In much of the literature of science today, where scientists confess their failure to build a mechanistic universe, they seem almost to be returning to a mystical view of nature. When the scientist gets this thought, it seems like a preparation for the understanding of that earlier civilization which was inward, and which discovered a universal and eternal light.

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It can hardly be said, in brief, that the spiritual products of the profit- economy have been an outstanding success. Even when we grant it success as an energy-arouser, we are compelled to confess to its relative failure as a cultivator of spiritual qualifies. We are made the more uneasy, since, in our Christian civilization, the profit-economy has compelled us to live within two conflicting systems of motivation. Our religious culture has stressed a love that goes beyond self; our economic culture has stressed a love confined to self. We experience increasing difficulty in reconciling these two, and we begin to suspect that many of our troubles arise out of the fact that self- interest can no longer serve as the chief motivating force even of economic life.—H. A. OVERSTREET, in “We Move In New Directions.”

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[Page 65]

The fact that human society, and not nature, is now man’s environment, appears to the author of this article the turning-point of history—the most significant event since man appeared upon earth.

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THE TURNING POINT OF HISTORY

By HORACE HOLLEY

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THE miracle of human life is its capacity to respond to obligations and needs of infinite kinds. This capacity, however, while it exists in every individual to a certain degree, is completely fulfilled only when a social group is taken as a whole. The individual who rises above concentration upon his own personal limitations to recognize the capacity inherent in his community —a capacity which, even though unwittingly, he himself depends on and profits by—will be overwhelmed by the diversity of talents and aptitudes with which human life is enriched.

Though he may utterly lack ability in mathematics, the community, generation after generation, draws upon an apparently inexhaustible capacity to render mathematics responsive to every vital need. Though he may be unmusical, the life of the community is set to a continuous and exquisite tune. Uninventive though he be, the power of invention in others strives unceasingly to make his life more secure, more comfortable, more open to influence from the entire world. Desperately ill, he is healed by a knowledge he himself need never acquire. Attacked by robbers, he is protected by guards who are complete strangers to him personally. From childhood on, he is educated, housed, fed, entertained, inspired and continuously sustained by a community influence far transcending the individual capacities of its members taken as separate human beings, each limited like himself.

Now in the mystery of Providence the human community has been given an obligation which is utterly new and without precedent in history: the obligation to unify its component parts in a wholeness in which war and strife will have no place.

The obligation is both vital and unescapable. It is vital to the continuance of human existence the foundation of which trembles with the weight of war; it is unescapable because at present the component parts of humanity are related to one another by conflict and not by cooperation. [Page 66] Already it is too late to rest upon some hope that war will not really take place again. War is being waged incessantly without the firing of a gun; war of currency, war of trade, war of wage and profit, war of taxation, war even of social philosophies raging to control the souls of innocent children.

The peace question, so-called, has been for two generations superficial1y analyzed and presented. We have been trying to stop, on a steep grade, at number of vast social mechanisms rushing downward on a convergent line — mechanisms developed to function only one way each on its own separate track, none with brakes to check the impetus of the long line of social institutions its governmental engine has started along the track. That mighty shock of states, peoples, industries, languages, trades, cultures, and creeds cannot be avoided by mere wishes on the part of the travelers seated in a coach. World peace is nothing else than a rebuilding of the mechanisms, a relaying of the tracks to parallel and not converge.

But the community has infinite power to respond to any and every need that is truly vital to the existence of the race. If peace be an insuperable problem, man in his racial entity can create the conditions upon which the insuperable problem may be solved. He creates by his response, his infinite genius to make progress not merely in facts and in things but in consciousness and in his being. No matter how at first he gropes in blindness, no matter how long he may fail to solve a new problem by old means, no obstacle to life can ever be insuperable, because man in his reality is a supernatural form of life.

The first racial victory was achieved throughout the ages in which the human community faced the problem of controlling its environment —the forces of nature. Weakest and most sensitive of all living creatures, beset by dreaded unknown foes, scourged by hunger and thirst, man step by step learned how to make the correct response, until at last he made all of nature his servant. That response was not physical, it was a response which consisted of learning how to attune his intelligence to the cosmos so that one by one its hidden laws became registered upon the sensitive plane of the mind. With knowledge of these laws — knowledge which in itself is supernatural — the race developed from abject servitude to final conquest and control.

Man’s control of nature emerged definitely during the 19th century with the formulation of the physical sciences and their application to the needs of existence through mechanism and appliance.

BUT in the very hour of that consummate victory a new era of development lay concealed. By his control of nature through the collective resources of mind, man thrust nature away as the environment affecting and conditioning every act and every thought of his existence. Society is now the environment of man. It is upon society that we now depend for all that life requires—our food, [Page 67] our shelter, out very privilege to exist and to develop. Between us and nature stands society and its institutions; we turn to society as our ancestors turned to the plowed field, the forest, the sea.

In this rise of a totally new environment — an environment in which physical forces are replaced by the emotional, the mental and the spiritual forces of human beings — there stands a turning-point in the entire course of history. Nothing so significant has happened to the race since life on this planet first began. The new era consists in this fact: that Providence has revealed a new dimension in which the human capacities must learn to function, a new direction along which we must collectively follow the clue of destiny.

Like that primitive man, dismayed but undaunted by the vastness of the physical world and his weakness in responding to the demand for food and shelter, so modern man today stands in the unknown world of society, overwhelmed by its complexity, conscious that his existence has come to depend upon forces utterly mysterious and apparently beyond his control. Where primitive man feared famine, modern man fears war. Where primitive man groped blindly to seize his daily bread, modern man not less blindly grapes to seize an income which will be a fertile field in a desert land.

What wonder, with so long and so interminable an experience of struggle against the powers of nature, man today should approach his new task with the old mind and the old methods? Did he not succeed in his former struggle by alliance with a community organized for collective strife? Was not for ages the capacity for war the essential element in all hunting, fishing, farming and trade? Can habits of thought, intuition, feeling and action which have been selectively maintained and developed over ages and cycles be instantly abandoned by personal will or quickly put out of existence by a few legislative statutes and international treaties? First let the character of the new era be Studied and understood, then response can be raised from the plane of an inveterate racial instinct rooted in the past to the higher plane of those qualities and virtues demanded by the new, the present racial task.

THE new dimension in this task is the organic oneness of mankind; the new direction along which life flows is spiritual rather than natural law. Until we turn with complete resolution in the direction of spiritual law—that is, the law operating upon man—and enter consciously that new dimension—that is, the realm of human relationships where the end and aim is peace and not strife—we shall continue in the long blindness of primitive man, victim of famine and storm, an orphan of the universe and not the spiritual mystery of God. Our civilization is titanic as an instrument designed to give man control over nature, but as an instrument designed to unify the race and give man control over himself it is not merely inadequate: it is a disaster terrifying [Page 68] to the conscious soul. Primitive man stands in the gate of this temple, in one hand a healing herb brought from the cool forest, in the other hand a sword that drips with his brother’s blood.

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With the courteous permission of the University of Calcutta, important extracts are here published from a series of lectures delivered by Dr. Manley O. Hudson, Bemis Professor of International Law, Harvard University, on current developments in the field of international law.

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INTERNATIONAL COURTS

By MANLEY O. HUDSON

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THE creation of courts organized in such a way that they can serve the whole community of states has proved to be one of the difficult tasks of the immediate past. The idea of an international court of justice has stirred in men’s minds for many generations. Jeremy Bentham in his zeal for law reform saw the need of such a court even before the beginning of the nineteenth century, and almost all of the schemes for international organization put forward during the nineteenth century included some such suggestion. But it was not until more general interest in the development of atbitration was stimulated by the successful arbitration in 1872 of the dispute between Great Britain and the United States of America, concerning the Alabama claims, that such suggestions came within the serious notice of responsible statesmen. Popular interest in the creation of a permanent agency for arbitration continued to increase, but no nation took the step of calling a conference for the purpose; and with so little opportunity for enacting the necessary legislation, nothing was accomplished until the first Peace Conference met at The Hague in 1899. The subject did not find place among the items on the agenda of the conference even then, and it was only added after the sessions had been begun. The conference succeeded in getting agreement on the convention for the pacific settlement of international disputes, and it set up the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which since 1900 has served a very useful function. The Permanent Court of Arbitration hardly deserves that name, for it is not in fact a court; it has no judges, and it is net permanent in the sense of having a personnel of members who devote their time to any international work . . . [Page 69]

But perhaps the mere fact of the existence of such a body has proved more important than the awards which have been made. For it has focussed attention on the possibilities of peaceful settlement, it has greatly encouraged the development of arbitration and the negotiation of arbitration agreements, and it has paved the way for further steps which have been taken towards the international administration of justice. If at times false hopes have been aroused among people who did not understand the limited nature of the progress made at The Hague, the effect of their disappointment has been more than offset by the encouragement given to a belief in the efficacy of effort in this field. The older notion that nations have always fought and always will and the pessimistic view that arrangements in advance intended to facilitate peaceful settlement will always prove futile, have given way to a faith widely held that something can be accomplished by the creation of agencies and machinery, which by their very existence may make it more probable that there will be a willingness to make use of them. . .

But the shortcomings of this body were appreciated at the time it was launched, and agitation at once began for creating a more adequate international agency for the administration of justice. It was thought quite generally that arbitration differed from adjudication according to law, and hence it was argued that a new tribunal should be established which would be equipped to adjudicate international disputes by application of the established law. . .

At the second Peace Conference at The Hague, in 1907, therefore, an attempt was made to organize a new Court of Arbitral Justice. The Permanent Court of Arbitration set up in 1899 was to be continued under the revised convention for the pacific settlement of international disputes, and alongside it the Conference projected that there should be another body better manned for the development of judicial traditions. The project became far advanced, for there was general agreement on its basic idea and most of its provisions; but it proved impossible to get agreement on any proposed method of electing the judges . . .

With the close of the War, the effort to establish a new court of justice was resumed, and the creation of the Assembly and the Council of the League of Nations afforded an avenue of escape from the impasse of 1907. In the Assembly adequate account had been taken of the principle of state equality, while in the Council adequate provision had been made for the special position of certain more influential Powers. It was a very happy proposal of the Advisory Commission of Jurists which sat at The Hague in the summer of 1920, on the invitation of the Council of the League of Nations, that the judges of a new court should be elected by the Assembly and Council jointly. In most other respects, the plan proposed by that Advisory Committee was based on ideas already accepted in 1907 . . .

The volume of business to come before the Permanent Court of International [Page 70] Justice has been such as few people anticipated when the Court was established . . .

One result of the satisfaction taken in the work of the new Court has been the additions to its jurisdiction by way of special clauses in treaties providing for the reference to the Court of disputes which may arise in the execution of the treaties themselves. It has now become a common practice to insert such clauses in general multilateral conventions, and they are not infrequently to be found in bilateral treaties, particularly treaties of conciliation and arbitration . . .

I THINK it may be doubted whether the importance of giving the Court general compulsory jurisdiction has not been over emphasized. It is very easy here to be misled by the analogy to national courts. An individual is not consulted as to his willingness to appear as a defendant in a national court; but there definite forms of action are available, a definite default procedure can be invoked, and a default judgment can be enforced by a marshal. None of these things is true of international courts at the present time, nor can its development be envisaged in the early future. In our present situation, therefore, though a state may have bound itself in advance to submit to the Court’s jurisdiction, the effective realization of a solution by resort to the Court will almost always depend on the state’s own cooperation . . .

The usefulness of the Court is not to be judged solely by the amount of business which comes before it. Just as the existence of the Permanent Court of Arbitration increased the confidence of people that efforts to devise machinery for peaceful settlement were not all in vain, so the existence of the Permanent Court of International justice has tended to increase the willingness to seek some pacific way out of international difficulties. With reference to cases which flare up and never come before the Court, it is important that in public discussion the possibility of recourse to the Court at once presents itself as an alternative to force. . .

But I find one conception very prevalent which seems to me to exaggerate the importance of the Court’s influence. It is quite generally supposed that an adequate Court will directly obviate a resort to war. Some of my fellow-countrymen are eager to have a court given large powers with a view to the prevention of war. The impression also exists that if such a court were created and international law were codified, there would be no need of other agencies of political adjustment to be maintained by the international community. I think these views do not take sufficient account of the limits on judicial action. I can hardly imagine, for instance, that any of the nineteen cases which have come before the Permanent Court of Arbitration, nor that any of the disputes which were the subjects of the seven judgments of the Permanent Court of International Justice, would have led to war if those institutions had not existed . . .

But we must see the role of courts [Page 71] as it is, and the truth seems to be that the serious international differences cannot be pressed into legal equations. I think this may partly explain the reluctance of certain states to accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the new court.

It is the more important, therefore, that alongside a court the international community should have other agencies to deal with the disputes which only lend themselves to political adjustment. In a conference like the Council of the League of Nations, the same limitations do not circumscribe action; discussion is not restricted to such precise issues; differences may be narrowed, but they do not have to be crowded into legal formulae; the methods of solution available are more varied. Politicians and diplomats accustomed to responsibility are more likely to have the necessary adaptability than judges who have spent their lives in chambers or at the bar. I think it is clear therefore that the world needs such agencies as well as courts, and in the long run I think there is more to hope for from them than from courts, in the prevention of war . . .

IT is hardly more than a generation since statesmen began to give serious attention to the needs of our international community for courts of arbitration and of justice. In that short period, we have had established both the Permanent Court of Arbitration and the Permanent Court of International Justice. Each of these institutions has been more successful than most of us would have predicted when it was established. In twenty-five years of the one, eighteen arbitrations have been handled, and a nineteenth is now pending; in five years of the other, seven judgments have been handed down and thirteen advisory opinions. A greater service still has been the general encouragement they have given to the extension of pacific settlement, and the confidence they have inspired in the efficacy of effort directed to that end. If they are not likely to be called upon to handle those more troublesome disputes which might lead to war, and if the view of them as substitutes for war may be somewhat exaggerated, it is nevertheless true that they form an essential part of the international cooperation of our time . . .

But perhaps the most significant result of the work of such agencies will be their contribution to the development of international law.

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The younger generation—as this article proves—has not merely the advantage of material invention in comparison with the past, but likewise the advantage of a higher vision in relation to social attitudes and human prejudice.

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THE PROVINCIAL ATTITUDE

By FREDERICK L. BROOKS

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HANNAH MORE, the English authoress of the 19th century, struck a harmonious chord of truth when she wrote:

“In this men blunder still you find:

All think their little set mankind.”

Like individuals, groups and nations are selfish, regarding themselves as the nucleus and focal point of human society. Americans consider the United States the greatest nation on earth, and designate the presidency of their country as “the highest office in the world”. The English patriotically sing “Britannia rules the waves”, and regard their vast empire as the very essence of mundane perfection. The French loll in ecstasy over the accomplishments of their nation; and, esteeming themselves of more importance than others, 130 years ago, under Napoleon, set out to conquer all Europe. The Germans sing lustily their “Deutchsland, Deutchsland, uber alles”, and regard the Fatherland as a veritable heaven on earth. The Occident considers itself the center of culture and civilization, disparaging the backward Orient and the sterile Ethiopians of the so-called “dark continent”.

Is this self-esteem the correct attitude? No, it cannot be. Naught but sheer folly impels individuals and nations and races to regard themselves as the center of, rather than merely a part of, a great moral whole—humanity.

Ancient astronomers, basing their observations almost solely on speculation, designated the earth as the center of the universe. This theory is obviously nothing more than an externalization of the human tendency to esteem self and disparage others. The nationalistic attitudes prevailing throughout the world today are in reality no more veracious than this ancient astronomical theory. As genuine science touted the idea that the earth floated majestically in the center of the universe, so genuine knowledge of proper human relationships will rout the selfish and nationalistic concepts maintained by individuals and nations and races today. [Page 73]

We of the Occident regard ourselves vastly superior to the Chinese; and, strange to say, the Chinese regard themselves superior to us—each being just about as correct as the other. The American people, for instance, pass laws restricting Chinese and Japanese immigration, but cannot understand why these yellow peoples object to the white man’s penetration of their nations. Indeed, it is said that our automobiles invoke about as much derision in China and Japan as their jinrikishas invoke in the Occident, and that our slicked and bobbed hair seems as queer to the eastern peoples as their pig-tails seem to us.

The white man, too busy esteeming himself to consider the accomplishments of the other races seriously, little realizes that the Chinese and Japanese might well be emulated in a veritable cornucopia of instances. The Japanese, it is said, are the most courteous and congenial people on earth, this species of virtue being an essential national characteristic. A Japanese parent never strikes his children, but employs gentleness in place of violent methods of correction often utilized by Occidental parents. A Chinaman, it is said, follows the man who does him a favor to the ends of the earth in order to recompense his benefactor.

Christianity is extolled by the Christians as the criterion of all religious concepts. But what do the Buddhists, the Muhammedans, the Hindus, and the Confucianists think of it? The following story will serve to illustrate: An American was holding conversation with an eminent Chinese statesman. The conversation suddenly turned to religion; and, in less than a twinkling, the American found himself expressing regrets that his friend was not a Christian. The Chinaman, a very gracious old gentleman, couched a trenchant rebuke in words clothed with velvet softness. “What is it that you offer me?” he said complacently. “Nothing but blind opinion and unprovable speculation. You send missionaries to preach the Christian gospel over all the earth, and yet your Christian lands savor of corruption, strife, crime, greed, selfishness, religious bigotry, and revolution. The Christian nations quarrel and attempt to expunge their very next door neighbors, to whom, according to the gospel of Christ, they should be extending a helping hand in brotherly love and good will.”

The Chinaman’s argument was obviously veracious. There are half a dozen or more religions in the Orient —Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Taoism, Muhammedanism—and yet, in more than 2,500 years, the religious wars among the various peoples supporting these faiths have not amounted to a handful of sawdust when compared to the preposterous crimes perpetrated in Europe, during that time, for the sake of propagating various Christian sects. The Inquisition alone is enough to sanctify the Oriental concept of religious tolerance.

Certain of us will be surprised to learn that Christianity has no copyright on the Golden Rule. In fact, each of the above mentioned religions [Page 74] teaches the principle expounded by the Christian Golden Rule. Buddhism says; “One should seek for others the happiness one desires for oneself”. The Hindu precepts say: “The true rule is to guard and do by the things of others as you would by your own”. Indeed, the Occident is scarcely aware of the fact that the Orient has developed a truly beautiful literature, that its masters of thought have taught for ages moral precepts unexcelled by even those in the Bible itself.

Just tell a Chinaman that his country is ignorant and backward. He would probably inform you that nowhere on earth are people happier than in China—and who knows but what he would be right; for happiness, after all, is an important standard of civilization. This selfsame Chinaman might also tell you that it is dangerous to live in an Occidental country, especially in the United States, where automobiles swarm and dash along the streets like waves before a tempest.

We consider the African natives ignorant, but bring a group of Ethiopians to London, Paris or New York, and they would probably say that the white man is bereft of all reason. The African sincerely believes that he lives in Mother Nature’s sweetest sanctum of content. An American sings “sweet land of liberty” with no more fervency than the African thinks the same about his native land.

This article was written not necessarily to convince its readers that Chinese and African institutions are as progressive as European and American institutions, but to imbue into each individual and nation and race the proper concept of human relationship. No individual, nation, or race is the center of the earth’s activities—only a part of them. In this day of international communication, we must dispense with the old “earth is the center of the universe” idea, with self—esteem; and, incidentally, let us remember this, that there are only 710,000,000 white people in the world as compared with 1,040,000,000 colored people.

Human nature is proving more sluggish than any other phenomenon in developing an internationalized concept of life. Literature, art, science, music, and philosophy are leading the way. However, if these various external phenomena are to internationally converge, there must be a concomitant converging of the internal, spiritual thoughts of individuals and nations and races.

As Will Durant, the eminent American historian and scholar, says, “surely we shall walk into folly unless we can come to view history Copernically, with ourselves not as the center of all things, but as one part of a moral whole”.

Fortunately, educated people today are ceasing to consider themselves and their countries as the nucleus and focal point of human society; but I dare say that as a whole there is no nation in the world which does not still esteem itself at the expense of its fellow nations.

[Page 75]

A few years ago, under the direction of the President, a number of scholars combined in the production of a work which stands as a landmark in the development of public consciousness in America. More recently, under the leadership of Dr. George S. Counts, educators have produced a book on the social foundations of education which emphasize the personal rather than the institutional factors. This important volume is made the subject of careful analysis by the author of the following article, first in a series to be published in coming months.

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SOCIAL TRENDS IN AMERICAN LIFE

By BERTHA HYDE KIRKPATRICK

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LEADERS of thought today in America and in all the world are realizing the very new, very difficult, very dangerous problems that are facing us. In the minds of many is the question of what part America should take in helping to solve these problems. Sincere and able people disagree as to the answer. As long ago as 1878 in the maturity of his judgment Emerson wrote, “At every moment some one country more than any other represents the sentiment and future of mankind. None will doubt that America occupies this place in the opinion of nations, as is proved by the fact of the vast immigration into this country from all the nations of Western and Central Europe.”

In 1912 when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá made a speaking tour of this country he said, speaking with a world vision: “The American continent gives signs and evidences of very great advancement. Its future is even more promising, for its influence and illumination are far-reaching. It will lead all nations spiritually.” Such words place great responsibility upon America as well as a great privilege.

But whatever America’s duty and destiny in relation to the rest of the world it is evident that she has not yet achieved her own promises. She must first make greater efforts to set her own house in order. With humility and open-mindedness she must be a learner if she would be ready if called to such great leadership. Woodrow Wilson, in a speech given on July 4th, 1914, said, “America will come into the full light of day when all shall know that she puts human rights above all other rights and that her flag is the flag nor only of America but of humanity.”

If America would save herself then, and be fit to serve the rest of the world, she must, not with any spirit of pride and boastfulness, but with renewed energy and earnest purpose turn her best thought in the direction of a better, yes, an ideal [Page 76] America. This must come through the channels of education. If we would have a better America the education of our children, the builders of the America of tomorrow, must be directed to that end.

With our rapidly changing industrial and economic world our educational problems have changed. The problems now are much greater than supplying each child with the tools for making a living or even for giving him a background of the culture of the ages. He must be given a social vision. Do our young people come out of our schools with a vision of the needs of humanity, spiritually awakened, with an alert, open, questioning mind? Or are they apathetic, indifferent to any need save that of establishing themselves in economic security, unconscious of the tremendous changes taking place in our economic, industrial and institutional life?

As a basis for determining the direction of a more adequate education in America, Professor Counts of Columbia University has written his recent book, “Social Foundations of Education”. In this book the author has gathered together an immense number of facts already at hand in other publications and organized and integrated them “with the single practical aim of illuminating the educational problem in its larger social relationships.” In the eleven chapters of the second part of his book dealing with the family, economy, communication, health, education, recreation, research, art, justice, government and world relations, the author gives us an opportunity to survey ourselves in the broad light of history, to see ourselves as we were and as we are, and to note in what direction present trends are taking us. Perhaps even more important is it that he points out the forces which he believes have largely determined the astonishing changes which have taken place in America in a comparatively brief time. These forces are still at work and apparently determining the present trends of American society. They are not leading towards a better America, rather we are drifting at the mercy of uncontrolled forces. More powerful forces are needed to check the drift and actually to direct American life.

These forces are at hand. “Both the world and America are passing through a critical period in history," says Professor Counts. More than this, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá gives us assurance that there is available both guidance and power to meet this critical period when he states that we are at the “birth of a new cycle—that the horizons are flooded with new ideals—the antiquated laws are no longer valid —that a new revelation, a new light has come.” To seize these new ideals we must strive for greater spiritual insight.

More and more it is becoming known that Bahá’u’lláh, some seventy years ago, laid down in broad outline a plan, sane and practicable, to meet the very conditions we see about us today. With the vision of a seer He warned us even then of the dangers lurking in man’s newly achieved powers and inventions, pointed out the great underlying [Page 77] principles for the right use of these powers and showed that the force necessary to establish these principles must be a spiritual one. “It is now the time in the history of the world,” said ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to an American audience, “for us to strive and give an impetus to the advancement and development of inner forces.”

In the light of the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and with Professor Counts’ highly valuable work as an informational basis these quite inadequate articles are undertaken.

THE FAMILY

IN his discussion of family life in America Professor Counts would have us see that the changes in economic function of the family point toward the need of social units of cooperation larger than the family while other influences keep us static in our thinking and so individualistic and competitive.

We cannot linger over the picture —always so fascinating—which the author gives us of the colonial family, but in making this survey he would emphasize that the early American family was practically self-sustaining. It was an economic unit. Food, clothing, shelter, protection, even much of education and recreation were largely produced or taken care of by the family. In the home was a planned economy. Father, mother, boys, girls, other dependents and servants had each his appointed task. For all there was enough, often abundance, and if not comfort as we see it today, at least comparative security, even for old age.

He would have us note, too, that this was a patriarchal family. Legally and actually the father was the head of the household. He was to be obeyed and if he chose he could determine the careers and marriages of his children. His wife, too, was subject to him in things small and great if he saw fit to so use his authority.

It is evident that neither of these things is true of the family today. It is far from self-sustaining and thus has lost much of its economic importance. Paternal authority, even parental, wanes. And yet in many ways we continue to act as though both were true.

Even so early as at the end of the 18th century, Professor Counts points out, two powerful forces appeared which gradually changed and finally destroyed the self-sustaining, patriarchal elements in American family life. One was the migration and expansion of the colonies westward and the other was the rise of industrialism accompanied by the growth of cities. The first tended on the whole towards individualism, the second toward the need of cooperation. Both tended to weaken the influence and economic importance of the family.

The frontier conditions which came with westward expansion encouraged large families. Where all were facing similar conditions and experiences it was natural that democratic conditions rather than class distinctions should prevail. Religious rites and restraints tended to disappear. Banns were abolished, marriage [Page 78] became simply the affair of the individuals concerned and divorce became more easy. The ease with which new land could be acquired tended to an early breaking up of the family and a relaxing of family discipline. In general the influences were towards individualism.

It {is hardly necessary to dwell upon the rapid changes which the introduction of centralized machine industry produced. Cities grew up; women and children were taken out of the home; food, fabrics and utensils came to be made outside of the home. Little by little one industry after another became unprofitable to be performed in the home until at present we see the modern home so far removed from the pre-industrial one that a modern child or even an adult would find himself quite helpless if suddenly transferred to a home of 150 years ago.

Not only the necessities but security and protection are no longer provided by the home. Police and firemen are furnished by the state, the sick are largely cared for in hospitals, widows are aided by mothers’ pensions, children are protected (at least partially) by child labor laws, and many make use of insurance —private, industrial or state— for protection in old age.

With the passing of home industry children no longer have the opportunity of learning practical arts and skills at home and we find cooking, sewing, agriculture, carpentry and various manual skills taught in the schools.

It is evident that the influences that have brought about these conditions are towards the disruption of family unity and restraint. While they have tended to bring people together in larger groups and make them interdependent on a larger scale, the strongly inherent democratic and pioneer influences have kept people individualistic in thought. While rapidly changing outward conditions have demanded cooperation, habits in thinking have tended to remain individualistic.

The modern family, too, is much smaller than the pre-industrial one. This has given rise to small houses and apartments and less stationary family habits. The ease with which we move from place to place and the shifting from job to job means a weakening of family unity, a lessening of the controlling influences of the neighborhood. “The mobility of city life and the disintegration of the family seem to go hand in hand,” says Professor Counts.

Another influence which has lessened family unity and restraint is the waning of religion—true religion, not simply religious rites and ceremonies. This should be given paramount importance in the opinion of the present writer although Professor Counts makes it only incidental.

So far are these disruptive influences carrying us and so appalling is the amount of divorce, separation and desertion, so lightly are marriage relations entered into that some, Professor Counts says, are even questioning whether monogamy will remain the social standard in family life.

In all these and other changes in the family it is woman who has both [Page 79] suffered most and profited most. Largely by her own efforts has she lifted herself from the status of complete subordination to man, upheld by religious orthodoxy, to one in which she has won recognition in the economic and political world. She has, too, made great cultural gains. Not yet has she gained recognition of complete equality with man. Mrs. Mary R. Beard suggests that this achievement of complete equality is to be expected. Woman’s burdens and responsibilities in the gradual evolution of mankind have been equal to man’s but her labors and importance have not been given due credit by man. Mrs. Beard believes too, that the present prejudice with which women are received in industry and professions does not represent “the completed form of women’s relation to work, interests and society.” In the near future ability, capacity and expertness and not sex must be the basis for distinction and selection.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá illustrates the necessity of recognizing the absolute equality of the sexes by comparing humanity to a bird. He says, “Humanity is like a bird with two wings —the one is male, the other female. Unless both wings are strong and impelled by some common force, the bird cannot fly heavenward. According to the spirit of this age women must advance and fulfill their mission in all departments of life, becoming equal to men.”

If it is true that at present woman is the least adjusted part of the family and that the progress of humanity depends greatly upon her coming into her destined status, should we not attribute greater importance to her proper education? Womankind must be spiritually and intellectually awakened to realize that her newly found freedom brings new responsibilities. At present in too many cases, woman freed from many of the household burdens of the past when she was a definite economic asset has failed to assume any other burdens and becomes an economic parasite, idling her time away, or worse. On the other hand her less fortunate sister is found spending long hours outside the home in her efforts to share or wholly assume the burden of the support of the family. This is manifestly unjust.

WHAT part shall we expect family life to play in building a better America? It seems quite plain that as an important economic factor it has become negligible. Professor Counts says, “The individual family has been absorbed into a vast industrial society and its fortunes identified with the fortunes of millions of other families. A new configuration is forming in which the household will play a much weaker role than in the past. If men are to have economic security, medical attention, adequate educational opportunities, suitable housing and living arrangements and appropriate facilities for play, recreation and cultural development, responsibility will have to be shifted to a larger social unit.”

But Professor Counts tells us that even now in spite of the change of economic status the family is still the most important educational force we have. Unfortunately this influence [Page 80] at present tends, not to progress, but to a continuance of the status quo of society. This again points to the necessity of giving woman a broad and thorough education for upon her rests the responsibility of training the future generation in the most important early years. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says that for this reason the proper education of the girl is even more important than that of the boy. And it cannot be too greatly emphasized that his education must have a spiritual and ethical foundation. When womankind through such an adequate education, stressing our relations to all mankind, comes into the full dignity of her womanhood, the influence which she exerts both through her own activities and through the training of her children will be uplifting and make for progress.

There is evidence that the family will remain the fundamental unit upon which society is built and that with better education we shall have a better family. The social significance of the family is deep-seated, biologically, ethically, religiously. In the Bahá’í teachings, based upon renewed pure religion, we have high standards set for the family once more. Bahá’u’lláh in His pattern for a new world order enjoins monogamy, purity and chastity. Marriage is made a sacred institution entered into by the choice of the two concerned and with the sanction of the parents of both. Divorce is allowed but only after every effort has been made to heal the breach and after the man and woman have lived apart for a year. Because at present there is deplorable laxity in family and sex relations we do not need to believe that this condition is essential or permanent. There is already evidence among more thoughtful young people and in current literature of a reaction and of spiritual forces, which are turning us to higher standards.

However much the economic center has shifted away from the family it would seem impossible for the family to escape its educational and spiritual responsibilities. It is here that the ideals of the individual are largely formed and in the last analysis a worthy society must be built by enlightened individuals. When the individuals “possess a good, a pure, and enlightened heart” then may we expect these other words of Bahá’u’lláh to be followed: "O son of man! If thou lookest towards mercy, regard not that which benefits thee, and hold to that which will benefit thy fellowmen. If thou lookest towards justice, choose for others what thou choosest for thyself.”

[Page 81]

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE

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FOUNDATIONS OF WORLD UNITY

Public addresses delivered by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá during the year 1912 in Universities, Curches and Synagogues, and before members of Peace Societies, to promulgate principles of Universal Peace. 112 pages. Paper covers, $0.75.

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BAHÁ’U’LLÁH and the NEW ERA, by J. E. Esslemont

An exposition of the teachings and history of the religion established by Bahá’u’lláh for the unification of peoples in one faith and one order. This work has been translated into more than twenty languages within the past decade. 308 pages. Bound in leather, $1.00. Paper covers, $0.50.

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SOME ANSWERED QUESTIONS

Compiled by Laura Clifford Barney from the recorded explanations given her by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in 1907 to questions concerned with the significance of the Prophets, the renewal of civilization, the spiritual reality of man, and sociological subjects. 350 pages. Bound in cloth, $2.00.

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SECURITY FOR A FAILING WORLD, by Stanwood Cobb

The psychological approach to economic and political problems, emphasizing the vital need for a new spirit in humanity as well as a new order for societh. 202 pages. Bound in cloth. $2.00.

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THE PROMISE OF ALL AGES, by Christophil

The spiritual content of religion, with its evolving social implications, traced through the succession of Prophets to its culmination in the Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh. 254 pages. Bound in cloth, $1.50.

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