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[Page 79]

WORLD ORDER

JUNE 1938

PRICE 20c

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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

JUNE 1938 VOLUME 4 • NUMBER 3

A DIVINE ECONOMY • EDITORIAL .................................................... 81

THE APPROACH TO RELIGION • A. G. B. ...................................... 83

THE PROPHET OF NUR, Poem • ALICE SIMMONS COX ............ 88

THE ROAD TO PEACE • PHILIP NASH ............................................ 90

PUBLIC FORUMS IN THE U. S. • CHESTER S. WILLIAMS, BAXTER M. GEETING ... 96

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE WORLD • GEORGE ORR LATIMER ... 99

EXPANDING OUR HORIZONS • STANWOOD COBB .................... 106

EDUCATION IN MEXICO • BEATRICE IRWIN ................................ 111

STEPPING STONES TO A NEW WORLD ORDER • EDNA ROHRS EASTMAN ... 113

EDWARD BELLAMY SPEAKS AGAIN, Book Review • HELEN CAMPBELL ... 119

VIEWING THE WORLD AS AN ORGANISM

Change of address should be reported one month in advance.

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, Marjory Morten and Horace Holley. BUSINESS MANAGER: C. R. Wood. PUBLICATION OFFICE: 135 East 50th Street, New York, N. Y. EDITORIAL OFFICE: 119 Waverly Place, 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. Entered as second class matter, May 1, 1935, at the post office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. Contents copyrighted 1938 by BAHA’I PUBLISHING COMMITTEE. Title Registered at U.S. Patent Office.

June 1938, Volume 4, Number 3

[Page 81]

WORLD ORDER

June 1938 Volume 4 No. 3

A DIVINE ECONOMY

THE anchored ship can not reveal the full movement of wind and tide; its restless tossing registers resistance to their dominant trend as long as the anchor holds. In the same way, social institutions anchored to the past are incapable of manifesting the real implications of those larger movements which from age to age seem like a night of storm to descend upon the world. The more their historic aims and methods are assailed, the firmer they seek refuge in their connection to past conditions and past needs. A progress-resisting civilization will turn back every fundamental alteration in human conditions until the limit of its brittle strength has been exceeded.

No student is able to estimate what might have happened at times of storm and stress in the past had the new movement been hailed as the sign of some new and larger possibility in the life of man rather than denounced as a revolution and given only a revolutionary and destructive outlet. In fear and rage and violence great groups deal with crises which a more profound understanding would realize as offering the dynamic power necessary for some beneficent readjustment in human relations or some vital extension of human knowledge.

The ship of state in all countries today is dragging anchor under the impact of the most sinister tempest which has ever assailed the pillars of civilization. The darkling storm is sinister, that is, when viewed as a threat to time-honored sovereignties in the social and psychological realm. The situation has become so desperate that it no longer seems possible to stop and consider exactly what newly-arisen power has been perverted and transformed from a force of progress into a force for destruction. Yet, if that profounder understanding is not attained, whatever men do will augment their problems and intensify their suffering.

A divine Mercy interposes itself from age to age in the collective life of man to establish that quality of spiritual understanding which can alone penetrate the gloom of the apparently sinister and realize the high possibility which otherwise would inevitably be betrayed. The Prophets, [Page 82] each in their time, have enacted the sublime miracle of history: the transmutation of the significance of events from blind catastrophe to illumined purpose. The degradation of the Roman Empire, representing nothing but overwhelming fatality to its citizens, was transformed by the Christ into a Providential instrument for the triumph of faith.

In “The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh” our own day has its mirror reflecting a Divine will and purpose uncorrupted and unobscured by the fiery smoke of world revolution darkening the modern horizon. Here is that point of unmoving Purpose around which the tempest circles but which it can not overthrow. Here is that quality of profound understanding which illumines the true meaning of what else would be nothing but the struggle of armies, the clash of classes, the onslaught of races and creeds.

“For Bahá’u’lláh . . . has not only imbued mankind with a new and regenerating Spirit. He has not merely enunciated certain universal principles, however potent, sound and universal these may be. He . . . has, unlike the Dispensations of the past, clearly and specifically laid down a set of Laws, established definite institutions, and provided for the essentials of a Divine Economy. These are destined to be a pattern for future society, a supreme instrument for the establishment of the Most Great Peace, and the one agency for the unification of the world, and the proclamation of the reign of righteousness and justice upon the earth.”

To that great body of people who consciously realize the futility of economic and political programs to direct and control the mighty perturbation of our times, this work, interpreting the possibilities of a regenerated spirit of faith in God, will bring light and peace.

He who goes farther in his study of the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh will learn not only that organic form and conscious spirit which the Creator has given for uniting the world, but likewise will suffer poignant grief in perceiving how ignorantly such a beneficent Mercy, resisted from the hour of its appearance on earth in 1844, has been made to appear a scourge and a calamity for mankind. Bahá’u’lláh summoned the people of the world to recognize the oneness of God and the progressive character of Revelation. He ended the separation of Muhammadan, Christian and Jew, of East and West, of rich and poor, of white and black. The persistence of the attitude of denial and repudiation, and this alone, has blighted every effort toward unity and cooperation and assured the final breakdown of a society which chose to substitute tradition for life, and prejudice for the universal Laws of God.

“For the revelation of so great a favor a period of intense turmoil and widespread suffering would seem to be indispensable. . . . Into such a period we are now steadily and irresistibly moving. . . . Through the generating influence of the Faith announced by Bahá’u’lláh this New World Order may be said to have been conceived. We can, at the present moment, experience its stirrings in the womb of a travailing age.”

H. H.

[Page 83]

THE APPROACH TO RELIGION

A. G. B.

“Love Me that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant.”—Bahá’u’lláh.

HOW simple it all was at the beginning! “‘Simon, lovest thou Me?’ ‘Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee.’” A few poor obscure men, followers of One, their Master (as poor and obscure as themselves), Whose requirement, His new commandment, was that they should love Him and one another and that this love was to inspire all their thoughts, to fortify the whole of life and so fill their hearts there should be no room left anywhere for anything but love.

How simple it all was then.

And from that beginning how immeasurably and unimaginably vast have been the developments in nineteen hundred years!

“A new commandment I give you that ye love one another.”

“By this shall men know that ye are my disciples if ye have love one to another.”

“If ye love me, keep my commandments.”

And in memory of Him when He was dead they kept a sacred Love-Communion, a Feast of Love.

How simple it was! And what results have flowed from it—what great systems of doctrine and philosophy and law—what mighty organizations and institutions—what famous masterpieces of architecture and painting and poetry and music—what labor of scholars and devotion of missionaries —what a mighty, complex, long-lived, far-stretching civilization—all having its first inspiration in that quickening of divine love in the human heart.

“‘Lovest thou Me?’ ‘Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee.’”

That simple question and answer gives the cause of all that has been constructive, all that has been progressive, all that has been beautifying and beatifying in the achievement of Christendom. Nothing that has been great or good has been added by the extraneous efforts of mortal man: all had developed out of the one root: out of Christ’s love- [Page 84] quickening power.

“‘Lovest thou Me?’ ‘Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee.’”

Love is the heart, the moving power in Christianity: God is love, and all commandments are contained within the commandment to love God and one’s fellowman. The apostles in word and deed passed on this message: love for Christ became their strength and through that strength, in spite of danger and difficulty and distance, the glad tidings was carried through the earth.

Not Christianity only but other world faiths, older than it and younger than it, have given with the same emphasis the same command of love and have shewn the same power to quicken love in men’s hearts.

Buddha had taught that—

“All the means that can be used as bases for doing right are not worth one sixteenth part of the emancipation of the heart through love. That takes up all those into itself, outshining them in radiance and glory.”

Of the Sublime Moods through which every earnest student could develop himself, the first was the sentiment of love, and the second and third (pity and sympathizing joy) were akin to love.

In all moral behavior and all moral progress love, he taught, had its part to play.

“Let a man overcome anger by love . . . for hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love, that is an old rule.”

“If a man foolishly does me wrong, I will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes from him the more good shall go from me.”

DESCRIBING the activity of his own divine and universal love he said that he “let his mind pervade the four quarters of the world with thoughts of love. And thus the whole wide world, above, below, around, and everywhere will continue to be filled with love, far reaching, grown great and beyond measure.”

In the Bhagavad Gita, centuries earlier, Krishna is recorded as teaching that “(The Lord) is verily sweet Love. Having got this love alone the soul becomes blissful.”

And again Krishna says “To them who are earnestly attached to Me and worship Me with love, I give that direction of will by which they come to Me. Out of mercy to such alone I, seated in their heart, destroy the darkness born of ignorance by means of a brilliant spiritual illumination.”

As in the past, so in the present: love once again is the cause of Revelation and is its first command.

Bahá’u’lláh radiates now the same ancient and eternal love. With a new fulness of utterance and in His own authenticated words He reveals the creative power and the dominion of love in religion and in life. All happiness and peace, and all real attainment in this world and in every other begin with man’s response to the outpoured love of God.

Love moved God to create the worlds. “I loved thy creation, hence I created thee. Wherefore do thou love Me that I may name thy name and fill thy soul with the spirit of life. . . . Love Me that I may love thee. [Page 85] If thou lovest Me not my love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant. . . . Thy heart is My home; sanctify it for My descent. The temple of being is My throne; cleanse it of all things that there I may be established and there I may abide. . . . There is no peace for thee save by renouncing thyself and turning unto Me. . . . I desire to be loved alone and above all that is.”

ALL that He created He designed for the service of man, save one thing only. One thing only has He reserved for His own exclusive possession, His own exclusive use. The heart of man is God’s and God’s alone. Not the highest heaven, but the heart of man is God’s dwelling place. God made it to be His home. Until man of his own will permit God to enter and abide in it, he cannot know peace or rest. God is a jealous God. He will not share man’s heart with another. He must dwell there alone; and alone He must reign there.

Love is and long has been a magic word. It charms the fancy. Men like to talk of it, to think of it, to write of it. Love forms the most popular theme in fiction; poets delight to sing its sweetness and its tenderness, and the subject seems to give them their truest and finest inspiration.

But the love of which the secular world hears so much today does not resemble in its object or its range or its quality the love which God demands or which His prophets quicken. The words Christ used of love are strange, startling, challenging; and the words used now by Bahá’u’lláh not less so.

“He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” —Mtt. 10.37. And again, “If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”—Lk. 14.26.

“If thou lovest Me,” commands Bahá’u’lláh, “turn away from thyself. If thou seekest My pleasure regard not thine own. . . . Turn thy face to Mine and renounce all save Me. . . . Forget all save Me and seek no other helper. . . . Walk in My statutes for love of Me and deny thyself that which thou desirest if thou seekest My pleasure.”

God demands for Himself His creature’s love without any reservations. Nothing is to be held back: everything is to be given—the whole heart in its entirety. Nothing is to be allowed to chill the warmth or to cloud the light of love, nothing is to be left to separate man from his Creator, his Lord.

“For everything there is a sign. The sign of love is fortitude under My decree and patience under My trials. . . . The true lover yearneth for tribulation as doth the rebel for forgiveness and the sinful for mercy. . . .

“If adversity befall thee not in My path, how canst thou walk in the ways of them that are content with My pleasure? If trials afflict thee not in thy longing to meet Me, how wilt thou attain the light in thy love for My Beauty ?”

God uses no compulsion. One who [Page 86] temporises or who qualifies or refuses this love is free to do so. He must pay his forfeit; that is all. There is no coercion. But God will not withdraw nor shorten His demand. He requires a willingness, an eagerness to sacrifice all for love of Him.

He who founds a World Religion, a Krishna or a Christ, is empowered by the Eternal to quicken in men this love. By this quickening power He becomes a Revealer. Men awake and respond. But soon men weaken and slip back and forget. The way of divine love is difficult and narrow; and bypaths are many and illusive. Therefore it is—says Bahá’u’lláh— that God sends Age after Age successive Revelations, and many Prophets one after another, to quicken love again in men and draw them back to love’s way.

In Christ’s time men sought darkness because their deeds were evil; they could not comprehend the light that shone in their midst. Christ found many to hate Him; and only a few to love Him. But those few were able because their love was quickened by God to overcome the selfishness of mankind.

As nineteen hundred years ago, so now, the earth is shrouded in discord and tumult; men cannot comprehend the New Light that is shining in our midst—they turn away and follow after deeds of darkness. But once again God’s immemorial question has been asked and the true answer given—

“‘Son of man, lovest thou Me?’ ‘Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee.’”

Already there are throughout the world more than a few who love Bahá’u’lláh. Because their love is quickened by God and is a reflection of God’s love it will overspread the earth; nothing can stop it; nothing can resist it. It will change the atheist to a believer; will turn doubt to knowledge, sorrow to joy, hatred to love—for it is the very fire of heaven itself.

Man’s heart is grown cold and irreceptive. It is slow to open to the new sweet influence poured upon it from heaven. It does not heed that solemn adjuration—

“Love Me that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant.”

But God’s Word spoken by a Prophet is creative. It cannot fail of its effect. Sooner or later men’s hearts will open to the warmth and the light of New Love’s Springtime. As it was of old in the Era of Krishna or of Buddha or of Christ, so shall it be now. And from the Fountain of Love, how great a river of revelation and life will flow!

In ancient times when the world was young the best love mankind could give to God was like that of a child. Nothing surely can be more tender, more exquisite, more winning than a child’s love; but the love of a grown man is richer, ampler far, able to inspire and sustain an effort of which childhood could not conceive. The great heroisms recorded in history, the masterpieces of the creative arts, the systems of thought worked out by the human mind, and all that has been most precious and enduring [Page 87] in human happiness, have been the product of a manhood animated by love.

Now in this late time, in this twentieth century, humanity is drawing near to full age and in its maturing power is capable of a deeper stronger love than in the past. Through that larger love it will be lifted to achievements impossible and undreamed of in the bygone years of infancy and childhood. Bahá’u’lláh has come to build the whole world anew. The hopes, the dreams, the fairest prophecies of the past are to find fulfilment in fact. The old order is to pass away for ever, and a new and better order to take its place. The marriage of East and West is to be celebrated and throughout an undivided world the reign of justice and peace to be established for ever.

But the beginning of it all and the support of it all will be the same as in the Dispensations of the past: the outpouring of God’s love upon His creature and His question, “Lovest thou Me?”—and the answer of each adoring happy heart—

“Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee.”

---

WHEN they asked Jesus concerning the signs of His coming, He said unto them: “Immediately after the oppression of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the earth shall be shaken; and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven. . .” As to the words—“Immediately after the oppression of those days”—they refer to the time when men shall become oppressed and afflicted, the time when the lingering traces of the Sun of Truth and the fruit of the Tree of knowledge and wisdom will have vanished from the midst of men, when the reins of mankind will have fallen into the grasp of the foolish and ignorant, when the portals of divine unity and understanding—the essential and highest purpose in creation—will have been closed, when certain knowledge will have given way to idle fancy, and corruption will have usurped the station of righteousness. Such a condition as this is witnessed in this day when the reins of every community have fallen into the grasp of foolish leaders, who lead after their own whims and desire. On their tongue the mention of God hath become an empty name; in their midst His holy Word a dead letter.—BAHÁ’U’LLÁH.

[Page 88]

THE PROPHET OF NUR

ALICE SIMMONS COX

“Who maketh effort for Us, in our way will we guide him,”

But, “He who turneth his back when once he hath listened” . . .

This pondered two envoys in Islam who set forth together

To question with fairness the claim of One who had risen

As Day-Star in Persia, as Guide for a world long in error;

“And whoso turneth his face to the backward—what import?”

Asked Ab’ul. “Does the Prophet fail one who really seeks guidance

And then on the threshold of morning must pause for an instant

And true be to self before he submit to commandment!”

“Ah, no,” answered Abbas, “if men have not glimpsed of the dawning.

A difference lies here: The gods give of mercy and patience;

Our Allah is kind to souls that see not, yet temper

Each nerve of their beings to find some link with Perfection,

Some hidden and loving rapport with all that existeth.

Suppose on the morrow we find when we meet Husayn-Ali,

A seer, or the Promised of Ages; not frail finite teacher,

But Prophet, whose knowledge transcendeth our leader’s,

Whose grace reflects God and whose claims seem truly well-founded—

“What then be our action? Forget our old fealty and follow?

Would I give my life’s blood to completely surrender? No not

To one who now is my teacher, though great is his learning,

And much I admire him. My soul is my own! and I’m loyal

As you to the center of glory, the master within me. . . .

But, beloved! I’m suddenly shaken! What means this enchantment

That lures now our spirits on tides of volition and power

Beyond our own choosing? With consciousness light and ecstatic

We move, as it were, toward a vortex of Truth and of Beauty!”

“Should now we resume our fond ways though call of remembrance?

[Page 89]

I swear by Muhammad, I will not! Should old ties compel me,

What joy would I lose that now charms my being

And whispers I near the white Shrine of Fulfillment!

Am I blinded as Saul, or bewitched as the wandering dervish

Who sings on the highways of Islam his love for this Master?

But haste! Let us go, with fairest of hearing and judgment.

With question and judgment. My heart repulses that phrasing.

If judge we this Man, does it seem we might forfeit our heaven?

“Oh, we seek Him to know! though our sun be an ember and dying.

Perhaps I o’er rate Him this moment of transcendent feeling,

My hope greatly praising, though eyes of my mind have not seen Him,

Or ears listened well to His vast rushing torrent of speaking

That sweeps down the mountains of Nur and convinces the people.

But if we should Know Him, my Ab’ul, and then turn us backward,

Bereavement would shroud us as pall o’er the soul of the Judas,

Who loved and rejoiced, and then closed the window of Knowledge.

“Man’s mystery I show,” Ab’ul heard in sacred Communion,

When later he knelt at the feet of the Teacher whose chanting

Illumined his reason and woke him,—as harps in high chancels

Might summon the angels to singing—then tuned his whole spirit

To godly emotion. Tears rose to his eyes and swift-flowing,

Revealed his submission, a well-spring of reverence within him.

“Return to the Mulla, I cannot,” he told his companion;

“I stay here to learn, not to question, the Truth that long we were seeking;

The Light that we yearned for together I find here is burning.”

“Assurance uplifts me,” cried Abbas. “I worship! I praise Him!

To return were a sign of my pride and explicit rejection;

My teacher no longer, the Mulla of Abad, who led me

To seek this bright goal, but refuses to come to the Ridvan. . .

We are true to ourselves and our mission, when true to All Beauty.

We give up the sceptre of will when thus we attaineth

Such ransom as flows to our hearts from this Master of Guidance:

He standeth within us! and we are gold beams with His Sunrise,

Clear drops of the stream that grows sweet when fed from this Fountain.”

[Page 90]

THE ROAD TO PEACE

PHILIP C. NASH

A GREAT historical scholar, Guglielmo Ferrero, recently made this statement:

“Mankind labors, from generation, in obscurity. It rests in ignorance of the work of its hands. Only when a history is complete, when men can turn and regard it from the outside, does its meaning begin to be understood. Ignorant of what it has been doing, for four centuries the human race has been laboring at the most gigantic of its tasks: the conquest and unification of the earth.

“The world today is troubled by insomnia because both Europe and Asia are sick. The instability of Europe, the muffled ferment of Asia, threaten the mechanism of the rest of the world. If the various races are a prey to reciprocal hatreds, reciprocal fears, never were they more in need of each other than now. All of them are unhappy; they fear and despise each other and play each other false when they are most in need of their neighbors. Particularly is this true in Europe, which has never been so rent to pieces, not so much in need of unity.

“The contradiction is tragic, terrible, monstrous. We should not, however, too violently decry it; fate has willed that humankind should rely for foundations not only upon mutual trust and assistance but also upon mutual hatred and injury. For four centuries the outcome of every war, unless one of the combatants has been annihilated, has been coalition. This tragic contradiction is the preparation for universal civilization, which tomorrow will dominate the earth.

“The unification of the world, accomplished by colonization, by exploration, by emigration, by universal religion, by wars, by commerce, diplomacy, railroads and telegraphic communication must lead to a civilization of a universal character.”

We who live in this troubled era, however, find it difficult to realize the great progress that is being made down underneath toward world unity, and we are distracted and made afraid by the surface disturbances, alarms and excursions, wars, mass murders, and revolutions that are perhaps the last gasps of world anarchy. As civilization has expanded, every world frontier has been a place of [Page 91] lawlessness, banditry, and sudden death until civilized men made and enforced laws under which the great majority were willing to live. The minority that refused to obey were necessarily exterminated—not wholly but to such a degree that life became fairly safe for the community. Perhaps historians five hundred years from now will look on this period of world history as a time when international anarchy was found to be too costly and dangerous to tolerate, when the unity of the world in its scientific and social aspects gradually forced a federation of the peoples in the solution of their economic and political problems.

But you say our concern is not with the great and slow movements of civilization; it is with the affairs of the moment. It is to keep us out of the war we are spending a billion dollars a year getting ready for; a war which if it should spread as did the last world war would begin an era of long dark ages in which liberty would be lost, cities obliterated, and the wave of civilization rolled far backwards towards the ocean of brutality.

WILL the neutrality laws protect us? Neutrality! What a word to conjure with. How it appeals to the multitude as a way of keeping out of trouble, but what false protection it appears when you really try to use it! In his detailed History of American Foreign Policy, Professor Latane of Johns Hopkins heads his chapters before the war of 1812 “Neutrality and Isolation” and “The Struggle for Neutral Rights.” Chapter XXV is entitled “The World War and the Failure of Neutrality.” The Yale historian, Professor Bemis, similarly records the failure of our attempts at neutrality in his Diplomatic History of the United States. “Neutral Rights and Impressment” is the title of his chapter before the war of 1812. “Neutrality again” is the title of the period 1914-1917. In the only two great foreign wars since our country has won its independence we have depended upon neutrality to keep us out. Both times it has failed.

But we do not hesitate to try it a third time, shutting our eyes to past failures, blindly hoping it will not fail again. The next time of course we shall manage it better, we say. We shall prevent our own ships from sailing, although we could not stop them in 1807 even when they gave bond not to. We shall prevent our citizens from traveling on belligerent ships, but suppose they are torpedoed on neutral ones? We shall sell no arms, lend no money, and we shall sell ordinary goods to the belligerents only when they pay for them in cash and take them away in their own ships. In the slow moving days of 1812 such an embargo lasted for two years while grass grew in the streets of the shipping centers. Then the embargo was repealed because of the storm of protest from all the maritime cities and towns. If any really great conflict should occur again, is there any reason to believe a different result would come about?

Suppose England and France were fighting another war for self preservation against Germany and Italy. Would the American people tolerate a stoppage of all their trade with [Page 92] Europe? With no loans available here the first two nations, presumably having control of the sea, would buy their cotton, wheat, and everything they could get in the way of raw materials from Russia and South America, where credits would be available. Whatever we have left of foreign trade would disappear. Our foreign trade in 1935 of four and one half billion dollars would drop to perhaps one billion dollars. What would that do to our own economy? It would paralyze every part of our economic life as no depression has done yet. My estimate is that the laws would be repealed in a month!

Take another development that is feared by some foreign experts today. Suppose Germany should find a pretext to proceed against Czechoslovakia. I see not the slightest prospect that the United States will be drawn into that war (if it did not spread) either with or without neutrality laws. But what would be the effect of the laws? Czechoslovakia would be a small nation fighting for its independence against a powerful nation that would have broken its pledges in the League Covenant and in the Kellog Pact in the belief that it must extend the Nazi rule to the eastward. In such a case our supplies of every sort except arms would be open to Germany because she could get them, denied to Czechoslovakia because she could not get them. In actual fact we would ally ourselves with the former nation, simply because it is the stronger, and we would really be siding against the nation which is wantonly attacked. No such departure from elementary justice and international decency can, in my opinion, ever bring peace to the world or to us.

ONE regretfully comes to the conclusion that our present neutrality laws will not keep us out of war if it is a general one, and if it is an isolated one the policy embodied in those laws will make us the effective ally of the nation with the more powerful navy, irrespective of any right or morality in the matter. An editorial in The New York Times of November 30 clearly summarizes the situation: “. . . treaty breaking governments and dictators have become convinced that for no cause short of actual invasion will the United States initiate or join in any effective to assure world peace. . .

“It is the assertion of the isolationist groups and their congressional representatives that, because of the gifts of nature and geography, the United States can retain its institutions and live its full life alone in a world where democracy does not elsewhere exist, even though Great Britain and France were shackled by despotisms which turn human beings into machines for conquest and consign liberty to the fallacies of the past.

“The power of these groups and their spokesmen has been in the ascendancy, as acts and events plainly indicate. In recent years they have seized upon every occasion when the American Government was seeking to express the scruples of conscience against treaty-breaking and aggression, to proclaim that, in no circumstances, would this people do anything effective to restore moral standards among the nations. . . .

[Page 93] “. . . Attempts in the name of international decency, to distinguish between honest and dishonest governments and to permit aid to nations clearly acting in self-defense against banditry, were beaten down in Congress. The world was put on notice that the United States was out to save its own skin from immediate danger; and the dictators were informed that the American group controlling policy was prepared to see the world remade on fascist lines without interference and apparently without understanding that this would mean anything dangerous to us at all.”

Well, what is the alternative? If isolation is impossible in the modern world, if neutrality is a myth, is there any policy that shows promise of keeping us out of war?

I venture to suggest one. It is the method of a world organization strong enough to prevent a war from starting anywhere in the world, and also strong enough to make possible the peaceful economic and social changes that must come in a developing world.

This is a method based on justice, on law, on the golden rule, on the slowly growing instinctive fumbling toward world unity. This is a difficult method, a slow one, a painful one, and perhaps one that cannot be accomplished within a hundred generations of mankind. It is the method of a League of Nations, which shall be universal and under which the nations of the earth shall give up their armaments as the individual states of the United States have given up theirs, all agreeing to keep only enough of an army and navy to join in an international police force to preserve order anywhere in the world if economic pressure will not suffice.

The pessimist exclaims, “What an empty dream!” The United States would not adhere to the World Court, say nothing of the League. Japan and Germany have defied the League and withdrawn. Italy has flouted the League and made mincemeat out of its timid sanctions! How can any sane person defend reliance for world peace on such a will-o-the-wisp?

Admitting all the disasters to the League and making allowance for the selfishness and shortsightedness of which our own country has been guilty as well as other nations, I still believe in world federation because it is the only way which follows the road that men instinctively feel to be honest, just, fair, the only way that looks toward that far-distant, dim goal of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all men. Every historical analogy which we can think of points to this method.

WHEN the Pilgrims were about to land in America they realized the necessity of law and organization to protect their life: “We solemnly and mutually . . . covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic for our better ordering and preservation . . .and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame (laws) unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.” A century and a half later when the little band had grown to a young and lusty nation further organization was necessary and a new document was prepared: [Page 94] “We, the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Another century and a half goes by, and again the unit is too small. The unification of the whole world is the essential step, and the covenant of the League of Nations is the answer:

The High Contracting Parties

In order to promote international cooperation and to achieve international peace and security

by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war,

by the prescription of open, just and honourable relations between nations . . . agree to this covenant of the League of Nations.

The League machinery has not been strong enough to prevent great nations from breaking their covenants, but the League is far from dead. Almost unnoticed, the slow progress goes on of bringing even the strongest nations to see that their welfare depends on international law and order. Even the bitter isolationists may soon be satisfied by actual experience that organization does not lead to war. Not a single shot has been fired at the behest of the League. The international army which policed the Saar was a brilliant and successful experiment in world police. Gradually, the method of economic sanctions may be improved. Gradually the futility of trying to make profit from subject peoples in the modern world may become apparent. Gradually nations will find, as states have already found, that organization is the only safe way of life.

Our present neutrality and isolationist policy is built on the principle of “everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost.” Such a policy in a chaotic world means that all civilization will be lost. It encourages the building of vast naval and military establishments in the vain hope that every nation can perhaps arm itself strongly enough to withstand any neighboring bandit; at the same time it encourages the bandit to attack any nation too weak to resist effectively in the knowledge that no one will interfere. It breeds war, not peace.

What then is a feasible program for the millions of people in this country who really want peace, and what shall the peace leaders do? Such a program might include the following technique:

1. Ask the American public continually to study these vital questions. It is said that one or two influential individuals temporarily kept the United States out of the World Court, but it is unreasonable to suppose that public opinion can permanently be dominated in this way.

2. As the pendulum swings back toward a more realistic attitude on foreign affairs, encourage the signing of the optional clause agreeing to arbitrate any legal disputes we may have with other countries.

[Page 95] 3. Ask Congress to give the president authority to join with other nations in protesting against aggression against innocent nations going so far as to join in complete economic sanctions if necessary.

4. Work out plans by which some part of the billion dollars we spend in war preparations each year might be used to repay United States citizens in event of loss of economic sanctions on an aggressor nation.

5. Proceed rapidly with the Hull program of trade treaties.

These definite steps would go far to encourage similar attitudes in other law abiding nations. As the new techniques are slowly worked out, some aggressor nation in the not far distant future will find real economic sanctions slapped on it by a considerable portion of the world. When that is once successfully done real progress toward world peace may follow.

The author is President of the University of Toledo.

---

THE universe is pregnant with these manifold bounties, awaiting the hour when the effects of Its unseen gifts will be made manifest in this world, when the languishing and sore athirst will attain the living Kawthar of their Well-Beloved, and the crying wanderer, lost in the wilds of remoteness and nothingness, will enter the tabernacle of life, and attain reunion with the heart’s desire. In the soil of whose heart will these holy seeds germinate? From the garden of whose soul will the blossoms of the invisible realities spring forth? Verily, I say, so fierce is the blaze of the Bush of love, burning in the Sinai of the heart, that the streaming waters of holy utterance can never quench its flame. . . . Therefore, O brother; kindle with the oil of wisdom the lamp of the spirit within the innermost chamber of thy heart, and guard it with the globe of understanding, that the breath of the infidel may extinguish not its flame nor dim its brightness.—BAHÁ’U’LLÁH.

[Page 96]

DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC FORUMS IN THE U. S.

CHESTER S. WILLIAMS and BAXTER M. GEETING

THE friends of New Germany were massed in the balcony. They had come ostensibly to heckle the forum leader and break up the meeting. As the speaker mounted the platform hoots and catcalls greeted his introduction. He stopped, sat down, and waited. A strange silence descended on the demonstrators who had been expecting a forceful protest. The speaker smiled and in a friendly way addressed those in the balcony inviting them to come to the platform and present their point of view with regard to Germany. He felt that the audience would be interested in their position, and this forum, like any public forum, was open to all who had an idea to express.

He sat down again and waited. None came. Finally the speaker rose and said, “The American ideal is to guarantee all freedom of speech. Your expressions are welcome. Remember, however, my friends, if you were in Germany and were not in harmony with the speaker you would not enjoy the same privilege.”

As the friends of New Germany filed out, one indignant man said, “Why didn’t we call the police and have them thrown out?”

“Yes,” the speaker replied, “we might have done that. But that would have interfered with our education— and theirs!”

Last year over 1,000,000 people had the experience of taking part in a pure democracy. Through the medium of public forums, sponsored by the Office of Education and directed by the local public school officials, these people took part in molding public opinion, “the American way.”

Forums are not new. Much of the progress of American civilization has been made in the heat of discussion, when mind has met mind, opinion has conflicted with opinion, and there has been a healthful agitation of public thinking.

The New England town meeting was the first expression in this country of the dynamic power of public discussion. When one goes to the town records of the New England communities [Page 97] and reads the dramatic stories connected with the time of the Revolution, he begins to realize the influence exerted by the town meeting.

On one of the last days immediately preceding the Revolution, Old South meeting hall in Boston was densely thronged and included among the audience a large body of British officers who had come with the intention of precipitating a conflict. They were invited to take front seats and crowded up onto the platform stairs as the speaker rose to denounce the “ruinous tendency of standing armies being placed in free and populous cities in time of peace.” As he proceeded a British captain held a palm full of bullets in front of his face. Quietly, he dropped a handkerchief over them and continued with his declaration that “it is the hand of Britain that inflicts the wound.” Amid grim tension the speech was finished without mishap. The tenacity with which these pioneers clung to the ideal of freedom of speech, even when threatened with violence, assured American liberty and civil rights.

IN the early part of the nineteenth century a great leader was traveling up and down the Eastern coast reviving the cause of free speech and adult education. Josiah Holbrook, in order to further his work, established throughout the new states lyceums for the dissemination of learning and improvement of the public school system. Wherever he went he encouraged small groups to band together for the purpose of discussion and study. Public opinion generated by these lyceums made possible the great improvement of the public school, created demands for public libraries, established training schools for teachers, and further engrained free speech as a fundamental right of the American citizen.

Within four or five years lyceums had spread to every state of the Union and over 3,000 small villages and towns had their discussion and study groups. These sent delegates to the national lyceum which directed its work toward the establishment of a national association to further the cause of public education. This was accomplished in 1839 and the lyceum, for the most part, ceased to exist. It had fulfilled its function in promoting a better educational system in the United States and in inaugurating a national association of education to carry on the work.

Modern public discussion groups trace their ancestry to these important dynamic forces for social action.

During the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early nineteen hundreds, several inspired leaders were furthering the cause of public discussion through forums. Ford Hall and George W. Coleman, Cooper Union and Charles Sprague Smith, New York Free Lectures and Henry M. Leipziger are great names connected with this movement.

In the early part of the present decade, John W. Studebaker, now United States Commissioner of Education, was recreating and extending at Des Moines, the work of forums in the field of adult civic education.

Recent trends have been toward [Page 98] making the public forum a permanent part of the public school system. This would assure a continuous process of public discussion for all who would desire to participate in it. Under the sponsorship of public schools throughout the United States, the Office of Education has endeavored during the past three years to develop patterns of administration which would be economical and suitable to all types of communities. Demonstrations have been held in large metropolitan areas as well as in small communities of less than 1,000. Programs have been developed costing anywhere from $100,000 to $500 a year.

The most recent experimentation engaged in by the Office of Education concerns itself with bringing forums to small associating communities where five to ten towns are clustered within a small area. There are some 20,000 communities in the United States that might be observing the development of this program with an eye to bringing it to their local situations. There are actually some 115 communities participating in the current demonstration program. They are demonstrating that it is possible to evolve an inexpensive plan of forums offering well qualified leadership. They are demonstrating that it is possible for a group of towns to cooperate and share the time of a forum leader. They are demonstrating that it is possible to associate towns not in the same school district although they should be fairly close geographically.

This year, the Office of Education is providing highly qualified leaders and the demonstration communities are providing suitable meeting places, transportation for the forum leaders, and promotion of the idea within the local situations. Already, several communities have indicated a desire and interest in continuing a program of this kind without Federal assistance.

It is hoped that by continued stimulation from the Office of Education and other interested agencies, local communities will inculcate in their public schools a program of adult education through public forums, thus preserving the strengthening the great American tradition of free speech.

Mr. Chester S. Williams is Assistant Administrator of the Federal Forum Project.

[Page 99]

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE WORLD

GEORGE ORR LATIMER

“FOR what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” This gospel of Christ given two thousand years ago is just as applicable today as it has been down through the annals of human history. It is the challenge to the age-old problem of the relation of man to society. It raises many questions as to the origin, extent and nature of man’s personal freedom in this present-day era. By what right can the individual be subjected to external compulsion under the forms of law? In whose hands and by what right does this power to compel obedience reside? If the individual, against his own will, is coerced into conformity, is he merely forced to be free? Does man have the right to justify civil disobedience when he feels the legal or ethical limits of sovereign power have been exceeded? Are sovereign states the creatures or creators of legal and civil norms? Is man free to choose his world outlook in matters of religious faith, social philosophies and governmental theories? These are but a few of the many questions that have perplexed and bewildered the mind of man groping to find an adequate answer to the problems of social control.

At the present stage of inquiry, we find that a divided loyalty has arisen wherever the individual lives under a state and church duality which maintains separate and even competitive ideals. The rapid rise of the absolutist state, whether in the form of communism or fascism, on the one hand, and the changes in constitutional governments (democracies) due to the pressure of new social theories, on the other hand, have completely altered the nature and values of human experience, nay even the very right of existence. The individual is faced with the sacrifice of his spiritual reality. He is already rendering unto Caesar more than belongs to him. Must he also lose his own soul in this exchange? The next few years will witness the answer to this engulfing problem. Meanwhile, it is still man’s obligation to strive to preserve and promote a civilization based upon personal right and responsibility [Page 100] to God and to society.

Space does not permit the discussion of man’s evolution from the prehistoric age, where his conduct was governed by “The Primal Law,” down through the family, tribal and ultimate national groupings. The Primal Law is closely linked with the Patriarchal Theory in the history of the Israelites as depicted in the Old Testament which furnishes the evidence of this link with the tribe and to the nation. Here, according to S. Hutchison Harris in his book “The Doctrine of Personal Right,” “is the story of the interweaving threads of Kingship, of priestcraft and idolatry, and of the prophet and the aspiration of the dignity of man embodied in personal right.” During this long period, man’s development was slow. He was torn between two impulses. Fear of the unknown and Greed for the things of the material world. He was not motivated by conscious thought for as Brooks Adams points out in his “Law of Civilization and Decay,” “another conviction forced upon my mind by the examination of long periods of history, was the exceedingly small part played by conscious thought in moulding the fate of men. At the moment of action the human being almost invariably obeys an instinct, like an animal; only after action has ceased does he reflect.”

However, today we find that the individual is far more conscious of his duties, responsibilities and relationships to society. This awareness is not due so much to the increasing contributions of numerous individuals or of the masses to humanity’s advance but rather to the inspiration and guidance of the prophet. This point is the theme of Christianity, Islam and of all Faiths. When the Roman culture had reached its zenith and the decline had set in, Guglielmo Ferrero points out that “Christianity brought about the most audacious, the most original, the grandest spiritual revolution the world had ever seen. It completely reversed the ancient point of view, affirming that the fact of a State being good or bad, just or iniquitous, wise or foolish, is a matter which is important only for those who govern and who do the evil, but is comparatively immaterial to the governed who have to suffer from the misdeeds of those in power. The supreme object in life is the moral and religious perfection of the individual; each can attain to that perfection by his own effort, no matter whether the government under which he lives and its institutions are good or bad.”

WHEN the government, as in the case of Constantine, adopted the doctrine of Christ to sustain its military expansion and bureaucratic Empire, it was regarded as the defeat of Paganism by the early Christians. This was the most fatal victory ever won by Christianity according to Mr. Harris, for it gradually stifled the self-consciousness of the individual who, by his Stoic philosophy, had felt that he was a part of a divine system created to maintain the freedom and dignity of the human soul. In its place came the yearning of the masses for dominating leadership. Thus the fertile soil for dictatorship was cultivated. A Julius Caesar arose as “the cleverest party leader the world has [Page 101] ever seen” in the view of Ferrero. It has been a recurring feature down through the middle ages to our present era with a Napoleon, a Bismarck, and their successors, each asserting his leadership.

During this same period man was likewise subjected to the varying fortunes that followed the struggles between the church and the state for the control of human destinies. The next great stage in man’s political evolution was marked by a century of struggles from 1680 to the end of the Revolutionary War in America. During this period, the famous Bill of Rights was passed in England in 1689, the Declaration of Independence culminating in the Constitution of the United States was ratified in 1788, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man was adopted in France in 1789. These were the outstanding efforts at constitutional safeguards of personal right.

A brief survey of the American Constitution which consolidated the separate states, which had been the protectors of individual liberty, into a united nation, will show the extreme care taken to secure the respective liberty of the individual and protect rights of states under a balance of power by the separation of the executive and legislative branches of government, with a powerful judiciary system, the Supreme Court, to interpret and construe the Constitution and also the laws passed by the Congress. In discussing the importance of this division of power Mr. Robert W. Chapin emphasizes the need to provide for the growth and development of individual initiative for “personal liberty and personal responsibility had come to the earlier settlers on the North American continent by the fact of their going there. The desire to secure permanently this personal liberty was one of the forces that brought into being the Constitution of the United States. . . . To a large proportion of the men who founded the United States personal liberty meant freedom to develop without restraint from church and class regulation, and with as little interference by the Government as possible, and that freedom has been and is the fundamental keynote of development in the United States.” Contrasted with the permanence of the American Constitution with its comparatively few amendments is the frequent change of system in France where it was maintained that the nation had the right to alter its constitution and since the Revolution of 1789 France has had twelve constitutions. Yet in all these changes, the French Constitution like that of Great Britain and the United States has maintained the liberty of the press, worship, public meeting, labor, contract and exchange, individual property and the equality of all men before the law.

During this period of political enfranchisement there arose the growth of the liberal opinion in religion, with such leaders as John Locke, Adam Smith, Burke, John Wesley and William Penn. The Puritan insisted upon the soul’s right to determine its own relation to God; the Pilgrim chartered the Mayflower in 1620 to sail away from religious persecution; the Society of Friends was formed to counteract the “loose and unchristian [Page 102] lives of the clergy.” Mr. Harris gives an interesting contrast between the political and religious forces at work during this particular period. He likens the nature of a Constitution to the branch of a tree which has to the outside appearance a tendency to grow hard and gnarled and dead, in itself it has no more than a sustaining and retaining character and its growth is dependent upon other forces, while the individuals, as the leaves of the tree, tend to adjust themselves severally to secure as much light and moisture as possible and thus at the same time contribute to the greatest wellbeing of the whole, “are now engaged, while reflecting a large proportion of the bounty of heaven, which is too great to be fully absorbed, in extracting from it such nutriment as they can carry in their individual capacity and situation.” In his deeper vision of the spiritual world the individual has advanced to a fuller expression of his emotional impulses. He now substitutes Aspiration for Fear and Provision for Greed. With the sense of personal right in freer expression, now comes the feeling of greater individual direct responsibility to society and the world in which he lives.

WITH the decline of liberalism a new factor in human relationships made its appearance. Through the ingenuity of man’s inventive faculty rapid changes took place in the industrial world resulting in the development of a class consciousness. Owing to the rather slow evolution in morals during a long period when there was no great spiritual light in the world, the individual found himself ethically unprepared for so great a bounty that the machine age is ultimately to provide for human welfare. We commence to see the beginnings of new philosophies of human relationships. Karl Marx appeared with his interpretations of international socialism. As industrialism and mass-production increased, the breach became wider between the worker and the employer. Strikes ensued, as the means of livelihood became concentrated in the hands of the few. The individual worker no longer insisted upon his personal prerogatives but he banded together with fellow-laborers for mutual protection, thus forming the Trade Unions, Guilds, Associations and Syndicates. The class struggle had arrived. It still continues at its height in the “laisser-faire” or democratic countries of the world.

Yet one more great influence in the lives of men needs mention in this brief historical record, the international revolution, the war of the nations, that started in 1914 and which after a breathing spell of some twenty years, apparently is destined for another outbreak. It is not the war, itself, but the resultant changes in the make-up of nations that have affected the fate of peoples. The rise of the absolutist state with its coercive methods of control has superseded the free elective franchise in certain countries and the political theories of communism and fascism have supplanted democracy, thus intensifying the spirit of nationalism. The rule of the minority has once more dominated the affairs of the people in government, [Page 103] business, even in matters of religious belief.

In his thesis, “The Goal of A New World Order,” Shoghi Effendi points out that viewing the conditions both in the light of man’s individual conduct or in the present relationships between nations, “humanity has strayed too far to be redeemed through the unaided efforts of the rulers and statesmen of the world.” He sums up the startling conditions of the world in these cogent words: “On the continent of Europe inveterate hatreds and increasing rivalries are once more aligning its ill-fated peoples and nations into combinations destined to precipitate the most awful and implacable tribulations that mankind throughout its long record of martyrdom has suffered. On the North American continent economic distress, industrial disorganization, widespread discontent at the abortive experiments designed to readjust an ill-balanced economy, and restlessness and fear inspired by the possibility of political entanglements in both Europe and Asia, portend the approach of what may well prove to be one of the most critical phases of the history of the American Republic. Asia, still to a great extent in the grip of one of the severest trials she has, in her recent history, experienced, finds herself menaced on her eastern confines by the onset of forces that threaten to intensify the struggles which the growing nationalism and industrialization of her emancipated races must ultimately engender. In the heart of Africa, there blazes the fire of an atrocious and bloody war—a war which, whatever the outcome, is destined to exert, through its world-wide repercussions, a most disturbing influence on the races and colored nations of mankind.”

THUS in every phase of human life—social, economic, political or religious—on every continent of the earth, a universal ferment of unrest is taking place. What can man do to avert the expectant calamity of world chaos? Shoghi Effendi points out that the unification of the whole of mankind,—world unity—is the goal towards which a harassed humanity should strive. This teaching of the Oneness of Mankind is the basic principle of the Bahá’í Faith as expounded by its founder, Bahá’u’lláh, Who states that “Religion is the greatest of all means for the establishment of order in the world and for the peaceful contentment of all that dwell therein.” A new order in the life of man is needed. As the late Professor George D. Herron asserted: “It is not the salvation of the old but the creation of the new to which we are now called. It is neither reformation nor spiritual recovery that awaits us; it is the utter new birth of mankind”; and he adds, “nor will another and new order be any more able to stand, no matter how radically it differs from the old, unless the motive of its laws and machines be the enabling invocation of the soul.” A world commonwealth that will safeguard the personal freedom and initiative of individuals, protect the autonomy of sovereign states, adjust racial differences on the basis of justice and promote international [Page 104] trade relations will be the result when mankind acts as one planetary family and one spiritual entity. Only the spirit of religion in the last analysis can create in man the will to accept this new responsibility. Herbert Spencer saw that it was impossible by any political alchemy to get golden conduct out of leaden instincts. Religion transmutes the baser elements of human nature into higher perfections. It adorns the body of mankind with the mantle of justice and wisdom and this robe in the word of Bahá’u’lláh “is the Revelation vouchsafed unto it by God.”

In suggesting that man must act as one spiritual entity in a federated world, it is not to be inferred that he is to be considered as identical with all other men. A planetary unity does not mean uniformity of mankind. Dr. Alexis Carrel in “Man, the Unknown” proves that the great achievements in science, art, literature have been accomplished through the initiative of individuals. The fault of modern society, with its planned social economy, lies in the fact that it ignores the true relationship of man to the world. He states that the fundamental error of our industrial civilization has been the standardization of men. In a country that has adopted a form of socialistic fascism, the state assumes that it is “the people” and all men must fit into the molds created for social security, by its dictates. The “rugged individualist” finds it difficult to fit into this scheme of control by a minority at the expense of the great majority. He still feels, according to William H. Bishop, that “individualism at its worst serves all of the people better than collectivism at its best.” A Thomas Edison did not wait for the state to provide him with economic security before starting his experiments in the electrical field of research. He sacrificed his means, his all, to bring a great gift for the use of mankind. Even though the individualist still supports Thomas Jefferson’s theory that “the government governs best which governs least,” he is aware of the complicated changes that have brought about the present social problem and is willing to accept a new order of adjustment in its solution. He wants to have his part in working for it as long as his energy lasts. He is not a pensioner. He likewise realizes he is not independent from other individuals and from the world.

IN the divinely conceived Administrative Order of Bahá’u’lláh, the evils inherent in democratic government, autocracy, dictatorship and theocracy are avoided, but the wholesome elements of each are reconciled and assimilated. It embodies universal suffrage and makes the elected representatives of the people responsible to God. The evolution of the political state has been likened to the endowment of the earth with a new life by the blowing of the spring winds, the April showers and the warmth of the bright summer sun. In a like manner, avows ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “when the sincere purposes and the justice of the sovereign, the knowledge and perfect political efficiency of the ministers of state and the ambition and enthusiasm of the people are all realized at the same time, then indeed, [Page 105] the millennium of progress and human perfection, the consummation of the glory and the prosperity of state and nation will be accomplished.”

When the individual frees himself from the pressure of society in its present organized state, and acts from motives of inner conviction inspired by a new spiritual faith, the questions of coercion, compulsion and limitation will disappear. He will not only achieve the highest sense of personal freedom, but he will find in the expression of that freedom, that his well-being, whether it be material, mental or spiritual, is dependent upon the welfare of all other individuals. He fulfills his earthly destiny in a unified society. He becomes a citizen of the world. The disintegrating influences that have blocked his progress will vanish before the onslaught of the integrating force of a spiritual faith that has already made a deep imprint on the hearts of many souls in every continent of the globe with its unfolding system of world polity. Such is the hope vouchsafed to every individual in the Religion of Bahá’u’lláh. Man finds his true station in the world.

To awaken man to his ultimate obligation to himself, to the world in which he lives and to his Creator, no finer exhortation can be found than these words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá:—

“The nobility and glory of man consist in the fact that, amidst the beings, he is the dawning place of righteousness. Can any greater blessing be imagined by man than the consciousness that by Divine assistance the means of comfort, peace and prosperity of the human race are in his hands?. . . How noble and excellent is man, if he only attain to that state for which he was designed. And how mean and contemptible, if he close his eyes to the public weal, and spend his precious capacities on personal and selfish ends. The greatest happiness lies in the happiness of others.”

The fourth article in a symposium on the subject of The World Outlook.

[Page 106]

EXPANDING OUR HORIZONS

An Address to Graduates

STANWOOD COBB

MAN has been described as a thinking animal. However, it would be nearer the truth to call him an animal with capacity for thought. The average person has developed very little his powers of thought, and lives on a plane hardly above that of the animal. For animals can think and reason toward their concrete ends. Recent experiments with chimpanzees and other species of simians have proved this without a shadow of a doubt. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the human race confine their mental efforts to this same kind of concrete thinking in connection with their struggle for a living, and in the satisfaction of their wants and desires. In this respect they are hardly more than highly evolved animals, not at all attaining those glorious intellectual heights which God has destined for humanity.

Man has been given a power infinitely above that of the animal— the power to think abstractly, to conceive what is going on out of his sight and reach; to picture the past and envisage the future; to delve into the hidden things of nature and discover her secrets. It is by this power of abstract thought that man has discovered what the sun and stars are made of and the laws which they obey; the structure of the earth we live upon, its chemical composition and physical laws. More important still, man is able, once he has discovered the laws of nature, to bend these laws to his will, in such a way as to rule nature, use her for his own purposes, and recreate his natural environment to suit his needs and desires. The thinking man thus assumes a regal position over nature, in contrast to the unthinking savage and the animals, who remain the abject slaves of their natural environment.

By his power of thought man also has learned how to analyze himself and to understand his own psychology. By thus knowing tendencies, his powers, and the dangers of his temperament, he is able to develop his abilities, improve his character, and avoid the pitfalls into which his weaknesses [Page 107] might otherwise lead him.

By the power of intellect man has known how to recreate the past history of humanity around the keystone of the great arch of progress. And greatest of all uses of the intellect, man is able to form a vision of a more perfect state of humanity, and to work courageously and persistently toward the achievement of that glorious vision.

How lofty and noble are the intellectual powers of man, when developed and employed for the better understanding of existence, and for its perfectioning. Man is not worthy of the title “man” until he has gained these intellectual powers which distinguish him from the animal. In the slow march of humanity onward and upward from that primitive creature who, like the ape, lived amid trees and knew not the use even of fire, humanity slowly reached a point where its intellectual development can be said to have really begun. Even during our historic period of six thousand years, there have been but few thinkers in proportion to the masses living in ignorance and as intellectually undeveloped as the animals which grazed their pastures. Not until the art of printing was developed, making possible the wide circulation of knowledge, and education became more universal, did intellectual development begin to reach down into the masses.

NOW, in this century and in this country, the development of the intellect is a possibility within every person’s reach. Education is universal. Newspapers, magazines, books, radio present an infinite amount of opportunity for the acquisition of knowledge and the perfecting of powers of thought.

The opportunities lie before us, but how far do we take advantage of them? Do we dig earnestly into these mines of knowledge in order to acquire all their precious values? Or do we skim lightly over the surface, content to acquire only the minimum amount of learning? Perhaps our schools are partly at fault here, in that their method of memorization and cramming tend to alienate youth from learning and to destroy in him one of the greatest gifts of God to man—a curious mind eager to absorb new things.

If education could only keep alive in us that precious spark of intellectual vitality and eagerness, it would send us out into the world with truly intellectual and cultural attitudes toward life, eager and ready to absorb knowledge as it came across our path.

Francis Bacon, one of the five greatest intellects this world has produced, said some three centuries ago, “I take all knowledge to be my province.” Since that time the amount of the world’s knowledge has tremendously expanded, so that it is often stated by educators that this slogan of Bacon’s is no longer applicable to youth; that it is impossible for any one person to master the world’s knowledge. But those who so state are in error. It is still possible for a human being of intellectual intent to master the world’s knowledge. Can it be possible that man is able to create a body of knowledge greater than he can understand and know? No! Man can never [Page 108] create a thing which he is not potentially capable of mastering.

But how can one master all the knowledge of the world today! Plainly it must be by a process of selection, of elimination, and of condensation. We can get to know something in many fields of knowledge. The important thing is, what that something is. It is not a mere smattering of miscellaneous uncollected facts which I am advocating, but a condensed abbreviated view of whole fields of knowledge.

H. G. Wells did a tremendous thing for us in this direction when he proved the possibility of condensing the whole world’s history into one volume actually attractive to lay people. This sort of condensation must be achieved in every field of human knowledge. Wells attempted it again in his “Outline of Science,” but failed there because he made his treatment too miscellaneous. Thus a great opportunity lies open for someone else to create the ideal resume and condensation in the important field of the natural sciences.

Many universities are now attempting to condense great fields of knowledge and learning into brief panoramic courses for college freshmen, known as orientation courses. These orientation courses cover, or intend to cover, the whole field of the physical and social sciences. Their purpose is so to acquaint the college freshman with the vast scope of human knowledge that he can intelligently choose for himself the fields that he will specialize in during his subsequent college and university years. The purpose is good, and the courses have their value. But as yet this attempt to acquaint the college freshman with the whole field of human knowledge is a bit abortive and imperfect in its organization and achievement. One reason is that the youth come to college not eager-minded in their attitude toward knowledge, but sadly alienated from learning by the routine methods of secondary education, and chronically averse to intellectual effort. They thus present a poor field for the development of these courses in universal knowledge. Secondly, within the college structure itself, there is lacking the proper academic equipment for the presentation of such courses. The specialists in each field dislike to abbreviate their knowledge and bring it within the comprehension of the freshman mentality. This attitude of theirs is a mistaken one. There could be no greater use of their intellectual powers than that of awakening the mind of youth to the gigantic and absorbing potentialities of these respective fields of knowledge.

IF I had a college of my own in which to experiment at will, I would enlarge such orientation courses into a general presentation of universal knowledge running through the whole four years. I would see to it that the college student, upon graduation, had a good bird’s eye view and understanding of the great basic principles of all important fields of human knowledge. He should know the nature of the sun and stars and the laws that they obey; the structure and history of the planet we live upon; the story of life upon this planet; the [Page 109] chemical structure and the physical laws of matter. He should also know the story of human life upon our planet; the formation and evolution of human organization into societies, peoples and nations; the development of civilization; the laws, insofar as we understand them, of man’s social, economical and political life.

A person so educated, thoroughly aware of the great fields of human knowledge, ardent-minded, eager to learn more from year to year—him only I should call a truly educated and cultured personality. The amount of his knowledge need not be large. The scope of his knowledge and his interests should be universal.

This, then, is what I urge upon you. Go forth to college or to life intent upon so enlarging the scope of your knowledge as to include all that is of importance to humanity. Make consistent and intelligent use of all the great avenues of learning that lie about you,—newspapers, magazines, books, lectures, radio, conversation with people of achievement. Go on ever learning, ever expanding the horizon of your knowledge. You will have many years upon this planet during which to apply knowledge. May your appetite for learning never become satiated. As in the case of all true thinkers, may you be as eager-minded at 80 as you are at 18.

THERE is a truly spiritual quality in learning, in the unfoldment of man’s intellectual powers.

Man’s power of reason, and its use in discovery, invention, and creative work of all kinds, is due to a divinely creative force with which God has endowed him—that same force and power through which God has created the universe. The Creator places a faint reflection of this cosmic force in man, that he may have the power both of understanding and of improving the universe he lives in. Think you that man could come to learn the secrets of nature hidden to the animal and to the savage, but patent to the scholar, if he had not in him a spark of that infinite power which created nature and her hidden laws? Truly this power of the intellect has a spiritual dignity, raising man from the plane of the animal and making him akin with the divine. The universe— that infinite creation of Infinity itself —is brought within the comprehension of man only through the light of the holy spirit which God, in His grace, causes to descend upon the mind of man to fructify and to illumine it.

True learning, then, should bring us nearer to God rather than obscure Him from our vision. It is only false learning, the dry dust of human vanity, which, in the words of the great French positivist “Chases God across the boundaries of the universe.” The more we learn of the great laws of nature and the universe, the more we broaden the horizon of our knowledge, the nearer we come to perceiving that majestic and divine Force which creates, sustains and guides our universe. The greatest scholars are the most humble in their human awe before the grandeur of that power which they perceive as the Unknown Planner of the universe.

Let your acquisition of knowledge, therefore, run parallel with, and not [Page 110] counter to, your spiritual development. Let all your learning enhance your spiritual conception of life and the universe. May it bring you nearer to God and nearer to your fellowmen. May learning make you more humble, more intuitive, more deeply spiritual, more kindly toward your fellowmen.

I have unfolded to you one of the great purposes of the training of the mind—the purpose of self-realization and self-development. But there is a much greater value and purpose in the training of the mind and the acquisition of knowledge, and that is its use in furthering human progress. Bahá’u’lláh said, “Study not those subjects which begin in words and end in words, but study those things which pertain to human progress.”

It seems incredible that humanity had not developed a concept of progress until very recently—about 300 years ago. It was in the intellectual awakening of Europe—during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries —that the concept of human progress arose. Then for the first time, thinkers began to study history from the point of view of human progress; and they began to look ahead in the way of planning and achieving more perfect patterns for human society. Then in the nineteenth century came the great discovery of evolution, which still further strengthened the tendency of thinkers in every field of human knowledge to focus upon the concept of progress, development and evolution within their respective fields.

Were it not for this possibility of human perfectioning, the acquisition of knowledge would be little more than an idle fancy informing itself of curious facts about the past and present. It would be of no more real value than is prowess in picture puzzles, cross-word puzzles, chess, or the solutions in detective plots. Such byproducts of the intellectual life of man are legitimate, but they are merely recreational. The real purpose of our intellectual development should be the attaining to a knowledge and power capable of advancing human progress.

Develop your intellects to the utmost, not only for your own sake, but for the sake of humanity. Go on ever increasing your powers of intellection. And dedicate these powers not solely to your self-interest, but also to the progress of mankind. Be idealists. Let your years of life count something for humanity as a whole.

You stand today as beneficiaries, not only of your parents, but of all who have in the past and present helped to advance the world and make it what it is today. If you make use of these great blessings, achieved by thinkers and toilers of the past, only to enhance your own self-interest, you will be selfishly disloyal to humanity and you will misuse and betray the great expenditure which the public has made in giving you an education.

But I know you will not prove thus disloyal to your educational trust. I know that the ideals you have acquired in school will ever urge you on and stimulate you to perfect yourselves in order that you may aid in perfecting humanity.

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EDUCATION IN MEXICO

BEATRICE IRWIN

THE complexity and diversity of Mexico’s educational problems is very involved, and one can hardly grasp even its outline until one has lived for awhile in this evolving patch of earth, this heart of the Americas, so weighted with traditions of the past, yet so urgent in its desire to be free of them.

The torrid ferment of these conflicting conditions is bringing much scum to the surface, yet the light of a new day glitters in this rising tide that is sweeping rapidly on to its destined end.

Mexico is in process of rebirth by virtue of its own internal struggles and convictions, and education is the master key to the solution of her travail. Other lands have a greater unity of traditions, a more harmonized mentality, disciplined by common interests and aspirations. But in Mexico, as yet, there is neither cohesion of purpose nor unity of outlook and the problem is complicated not only by geographic and ethnic elements, but by the fact that for nearly four centuries, divergent cultures have lived in a close physical proximity, harboring secret resentments and resistances. This process has developed massive crystallizations on both sides that are being laboriously shattered, to make way for the cleansing tides of progress that are fertilizing the future by their inundations. The revolutionary tempo is incessant and drastic.

Geographically Mexico is a country of wide valleys, sheltered and subdivided by mountain ranges rendering communication difficult, even in these days of plane, motor, and new highways.

Each state is still in a measure isolated within the area of its natural and psychological boundaries and is absorbed in its individual interests. This accounts for the varying expressions of language, industry, arts, crafts and costumes that obtain in this fascinating land!

These variations, though highly interesting from an esthetic and cultural angle, create human repercussions which make the unifying and nationalization of the intellectual process a very complex matter.

One has also to remember, that for [Page 112] the past two thousand years or more, Mexico has been the camping ground of diverse tribal migrations whose influences linger on. The Huastecas, Zapotecs, Mixtecs, Totonacs, Mayas, Toltecs, Aztecs and the Spaniards, are among the highlights of humanity that have passed this way, and added their dust of dreams to the conduct of life in these parts. The present Mexican government is devoting a maximum of economic and intellectual resource to the solution of the educational problem which they rightly consider the key to the foundation of a unified Mexico. Their program is sweeping in its scope and humanitarian in its philosophy.

IT was not until 1865 that rural education was established in Mexico under government control, but by 1878 the schools numbered four thousand. In spite of this fact, at the close of the Diaz régime, only three per cent of the children were attending schools.

At the present time there are fifteen thousand schools on which the government spends over twenty-three million pesos a year. This makes education possible for fifty per cent of the children of Mexico. There are the rural as well as the city schools, and in the former, prominence is given to agricultural knowledge. Methods for improving the soil and the handling of modern farm implements are both taught, also dancing, singing, and drama, with the object of developing a fuller community life, and raising the standards of living and communication. Such a type of education fits the peon to be a skilled farmer and to make good use of the land which the agrarian movement is now restoring to him. The learning of Spanish has become a compulsory item in all schools, as by the establishment and use of a common language it is hoped to unify thought and expand intercourse between all the States of the Republic. At the present time, there are large areas where Spanish is not as yet spoken.

Religious teaching is excluded from the Government curriculum.

According to the six year plan, the Government has undertaken to establish two thousand new rural schools in 1938 and three thousand in 1939, which means that out of its budget, seventeen to twenty per cent of the total national expenditure will be used for education in these years.

From these facts we see that the rebirth of a nation is taking place through the development of literacy, and that the campaign is being carried on with nothing less than the fervor of a crusade. This enthusiastic activity is the more to be admired on account of the stubborn and unwieldy obstacles that it has to overcome.

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STEPPING STONES TO A NEW WORLD ORDER

EDNA ROHRS EASTMAN

I—The New Age

Do you realize in what Day you are living? Do you know in what Dispensation you are alive?” Thus apostrophizes us ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the great Persian sage and philosopher. Do we? What has happened in the world in the last few years— what great dynamic force has been loosed and been made so evident that even those who run may read?

Why are we confronted on all sides with a realization of the new day in which we are living? What is it that causes even makers of reducing agents to advertise, “A New Era in Weight Control?” That phrase, New Day, or New Era, faces us wherever we turn. There is no escaping it.

We are, so the philosophers tell us, living in a new world. Moderns say, “Oh yes, this modern world.” What is the significance of this phrasing? Do we ever stop to think of it in connection with the oft-quoted verse from the Bible that there shall be a new heaven and a new earth? Has this new earth been born so gradually that we do not recognize its appearance in the realm of phenomenal things?

Even the astrologers are in line. They tell us that we are living in a new sign or age—the age of Aquarius or the man. Has this any meaning taken in connection with that verse in the Gospel which states so clearly what will happen to the world “when the sign of the son of man shall appear in the heavens?”

In short, every sign to which we can point cries aloud its message. Whether we turn to Bible prophecy, to astrology, to science, or to our own common-sense observations, we are indeed living in a new world. A world so vastly different from the world of a hundred years ago that there is no comparison. In the realms of material things alone, such an advance has been made that our mode of living and thinking does not even remotely resemble that of our parents [Page 114] or grandparents.

That there are greater things in store for us we do not even question. We know that many wonderful inventions are even now lying dormant —that the men to whom they are known are afraid to give them to humanity because of the destruction and absolute chaos they would cause at the present stage of the world’s spiritual development. A great English scientist has made the statement that unless the spiritual development of the world soon equals that of the material, destruction must be the outcome.

How can we be given the knowledge and inventions which mean emancipation from hard long hours of labor for all, until men cease to be so greedy for wealth? Do you think a great “baron of industry” will permit knowledge of something which spells apparent disaster for his business to become known to the world, no matter how beneficial it may be to mankind? Not yet has man learned his lesson—even the present depression has not entirely conveyed to him the message of altruism toward his fellowmen.

And on the other hand, would it be wise to give the masses too great freedom from hours of work until they are ready to use their leisure in a constructive way? Has not the enforced idleness of millions shown us just what too much leisure can do in the way of harm and utter demoralization? The time is here when man can be freed from all necessity for hard toil—when there is more than enough wealth in the world to provide for each and every one of us, and no one should have to starve—or even worry about a comfortable living. But until man is ready to accept this state of affairs and use his newfound freedom from work and worry to advance the good of all humanity, it cannot be realized.

We joke about our present civilization —was it not the former King Edward VIII who said about civilization that it was a great idea and someone ought to try it? Well, it’s just about time that it was given a fair trial. Time that we turned from the false gods we have been following to the real values in life and thus establish the true spiritual civilization which alone can save the world from utter destruction in the next few years.

THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

Many centuries ago Pontius Pilate startled the world with a question fraught with deep meaning. Ever since, that momentous inquiry—What is Truth?—has challenged mankind. All down the ages it has been acquiring strength and momentum. What indeed is truth? Is it confined to religion alone? Is it confined to material science alone? How be sure that one has found it? Is truth absolute or relative?

For more years than we like to admit, the generality of mankind has concerned itself only too little with this question. Independent investigation of truth is the crying need of the world today, in every one of its departments of life. Who can say how much harm, how much needless bloodshed and cruelty can be laid to the fact that people simply would not inquire into the truth of a matter. [Page 115] How many utterly unscrupulous men have gained and held great power because the masses were too lazy to inquire into the truth?

Centuries ago men of great intellects undertook to tell the masses what they should believe—to outline their theology for them and then force them to accept it. Little by little they drew the people away from the teachings of the prophet himself until nothing was left but a mass of ritual. And each time this has happened in the known history of the world, God in His great mercy and wisdom has sent another Great One into the world to renew the pure teachings of Divinity.

When will man learn his lesson? When will he come to know God, Truth, for himself, and not depend on any other person to tell him what he should believe or what he should do and how.

The old systems of religion have no doubt served their purpose in the evolution of mankind. Today, however, man has reached his maturity and he must think for himself. The time has come when each one of us must be a “high-priest unto God” and worship Him in the spirit and in truth. That this realization is beginning to permeate the consciousness of the world is more and more apparent. Let us not be too quick to condemn anything that is in the world today. Let us seek rather to find out what is behind all the movements that are whirling us about in dizzy confusion. May not even the freest and most unmoral ideas have their part to play in a distraught world? The pendulum swings from one extreme to another and this is necessary that in the end the center may be found.

Independence is what is needed more than anything else today, in religious thinking as well as in science. It is fatal for us to accept the beliefs of our forefathers simply because they felt a thing to be so. There can be no absolute truth in this world of ours —at least not for a long long time— because all of truth is not known to us. That which we believe to be true today is tomorrow obsolete—nay even proven to be false. Truth, or perhaps one should say, conceptions of truth, are constantly changing and evolving and he would be foolish indeed to hold that so-called truth in religion is not as susceptible to change as so-called scientific truth.

The world has always, of course, had its independent thinkers—the trouble is that they are so few and far between. It is these thinkers, these Luthers, Calvins and Swedenborgs— that have brought about all the advance that has been made in our present day thinking. True they brought down upon their heads all manner of wrath and persecution—but they accomplished something and left the world better today for their living. Any man who dares to be different will bring down upon himself a storm of abuse and criticism even now—yet these men are the only ones who accomplish great things for the good of mankind. And today it is so very much easier for us to be different from all the rest—we have so much that men never had before. The world is growing used to free thinking and much, much more tolerant [Page 116] than it has ever been before. Wake up and think for yourselves and see what a difference it can make in your lives to stand on your own feet and fight for what you believe to be truth and right.

THE world today is ablaze with new discoveries and knowledge in every field. The horizon is constantly broadening. Science is bringing untold marvels into our ken. Think not that in religion the same thing is not happening. Religion grows with man. God has never failed to send to man a new and more far-reaching revelation of Himself when man was ready to comprehend more than he already had. And since God is ever-present, a loving and kind Father, surely He will never cease to reveal Himself unto man. Throw away all man-made laws and ordinances that are not a part of the real teachings of any prophet. Discover for yourself that all religions are basically one. Then discover God in yourself.

Shall I tell you the four standards set up by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the great Bahá’í teacher, as the only ones by which we may know the Truth? He said that our four criterions of knowledge are: sense perception, logic or reason, scripture and tradition, and direct inspiration. But since it is easily proven that the senses may be wrong —as witness the illusion of the mirage —that standard alone will not suffice to prove a truth. And since the philosophers of all ages and countries do not agree it cannot be said that logic or reason is a final judgment on truth, else had they all arrived at the same conclusions. As to the third standard—scripture and tradition—are these not interpreted by human reason? Who can understand these Holy Books? Do all men agree as to what they mean? Then how can they be a proof of truth? And since “direct inspiration” comes through the heart, and the heart is prompted by human fancies, who can be sure that his “inspiration” does not come from the satanic rather than the heavenly source? Therefore, it is evident and proven that since no one standard of knowledge is reliable there is only one way to prove Truth. It must pass all four tests. If it will do this there is no further doubt of it.

PREJUDICE

All prejudice is the outcome of ignorance in one form or another. If this seems to be a pretty broad statement, stop and ponder over it awhile and see the truth contained in it.

How few really educated people there are in the world today in spite of all our advance in education. Is there one in the world who can truly say—and prove by his actions—that he is free from any prejudice whatever? Yet this freedom is an absolute pre-requisite of true learning and culture.

One of the commonest forms of prejudice—and one that is being subtly fostered every day by dishonest men all over the world—is so-called patriotism. Nationalism is perhaps a better word for it. Each country in the world today is wholly engrossed in proving to its own people as well as to the world at large that it is better than any other; that its claim to supremacy [Page 117] must be acknowledged and maintained by any means necessary to the end. War looms large upon the horizon simply because men are too selfish to see ahead—too intent upon furthering their own private interests to see that the welfare of the individual depends upon the welfare of the masses.

Present conditions all over the world point clearly to the fact that no nation can hope to prosper unless it has harmonious relations with every other nation. And unless every other nation is prospering how can there be mutual harmony and confidence? We have outlived the day of competition. Today the watchword for all is cooperation and until that lesson is well learned there will be no peace.

Another important form of prejudice is that of race against race. Why should there be any classification— any distinction made between any of Gods children? Why is the human family divided into the so-called superior races and the so-called inferior races? Ignorance based on fear—or fear based on ignorance.

Do you really believe that the color of your skin has anything to do with your station in life? Is it a fact ingrained in your consciousness through centuries of erroneous training that a white skin makes you better than a dark one—or vice versa? Then study ethnology and learn the true origin of the races. Not that ethnology which is commonly taught in the schools, but the real scientific facts of the matter known to scholars. Learn why some men have a dark skin and large nostrils while others have a pale skin and small nostrils. Discover the latest findings of men who have delved deeply into this fascinating subject and find out what they know concerning the origin and development of the different races of men.

Then go out into the world, without fear, and meet the people of other countries and races. Find out for yourself if they are any different from you and your family and friends. If you think the colored man as found in America is so inferior to you, go and meet him on his own ground. Do not judge him from the ignorant among him, any more than you wish him to judge you from the ignorant among your race. And never forget the immense strides he has taken toward culture and refinement in the few short years since he has been freed from abject slavery.

Is the race prejudice of white nations based on fear? Are they afraid to act with justice toward the dark nations of the earth because they fear the end of their own domination? If they are really superior what have they to fear? What need of force is there? Fear based on greed is the answer, apparently.

Away with all this childishness. Let each nation take its place under the sun—let each make its own unique contribution to the evolution of mankind to its spiritual culmination. In the many, many things which all have in common learn to understand each other—different processes of thought and different modes of living will then find their own solution and heaven will indeed come to pass on earth. There can and must be unity in diversity.

[Page 118] The third of the three great divisions or kinds of prejudice is that of religion. Again, ignorance. Great headway has been made and is being made against this particular form of injustice through the study of comparative religion. In America and on the European continent people are slowly beginning to learn that perhaps they haven’t after all got a monopoly on God. That others besides themselves know about the one true God even though they may call Him by a different name. What difference does it make what the name, if the concept be the same? Shall we say that the Muhammadan does not know God because he calls Him Allah? Do not Europeans have different names for Him also? Does the Englishman call the Frenchman an infidel because one says God and the other Dieu?

WHEN all men come to know God—when they all learn that each and every one of the great religions of the earth teach the same fundamental truth—then they will all meet in brotherhood and amity. There are in the world today seven versions of the Golden Rule. One in each of the seven great religions of the earth. Let each man follow his own version of the Golden Rule and so live in love and unity with all his fellow men.

(To be continued)

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THEY that tread the path of faith, they that thirst for the wine of certitude, must cleanse themselves of all that is earthly—their ears from idle talk, their minds from vain imaginings, their hearts from worldly affections, their eyes from that which perisheth. They should put their trust in God, and, holding fast unto Him, follow in His way. Then will they be made worthy of the effulgent glories of the sun of divine knowledge and understanding, and become the recipients of a grace that is infinite and unseen, inasmuch as man can never hope to attain unto the knowledge of the All-Glorious, can never quaff from the stream of divine knowledge and wisdom, can never enter the abode of immortality, nor partake of the cup of divine nearness and favor, unless and until he ceases to regard the words and deeds of mortal men as a standard for the true understanding and recognition of God and His Prophets.—BAHÁ’U’LLÁH.

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EDWARD BELLAMY SPEAKS AGAIN

Book Review

HELEN CAMPBELL

FIFTY years ago Edward Bellamy wrote Looking Backward. It was a prophetic picture of American life in the year 2000. In this amazing story Bellamy foretold the use of radio and telegraph, traced the development of capitalism, and pictured a society when man will have solved the problem of want in the midst of plenty. Looking Backward was translated into more than twenty languages; millions of copies were sold. It brought Edward Bellamy immediate and lasting fame.

Such a book should not lie forgotten, and so it is very fitting at this time, when some of Bellamy’s prophecies have already been fulfilled, that Edward Bellamy Speaks Again! should be published. This book is made up of articles which appeared in the magazines of his day, two addresses delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston, a biographical sketch, and an appreciation called “Is The Prophet Dead?” by the historian John Clark Ridpath. These writings are gathered together for the first time and give more concretely the plan for an ideal state described in Looking Backward.

In the first article, printed in The New Nation, January 1894, Bellamy says that we need a new nation. In the old nation, he writes, “the system by which the work of life is carried on is a sort of perpetual warfare, a struggle, literally to the death, between men and men. It is a system by which the contestants are forced to waste in fighting more effort than they have left for work. . . . In this old nation, a million strong men are even now vainly crying out for work to do, though the world needs so much more work done. Meanwhile, though the fathers and husbands can find no work, there is plenty always for the little children, who flock, in piteous armies, through the chilling mists of winter dawns into the factories.” To shape the new nation which Bellamy visioned there grew up what was called the Nationalist movement. The Nationalist and The New Nation were its periodicals.

In another article, this one published in The Nationalist, May 1889, Bellamy states his goal. He begins, “The principle of the Brotherhood of Humanity is one of the eternal [Page 120] truths that govern the world’s progress on lines which distinguish human nature from brute nature. The principle of competition is simply the application of the brutal law of the survival of the strongest and most cunning. Therefore, so long as competition continues to be the ruling factor in our industrial system, the highest development of the individual cannot be realized.” But in applying the principle of brotherhood in place of competition Bellamy did not advocate a sudden change. He knew that a better state of society must be brought about not by war but by education and understanding, not by revolution but by evolution.

At Tremont Temple, May 31, 1889, Bellamy spoke at length on Nationalism, by which he meant “the union of a people to use the collective strength for the common protection and welfare.” This, he said, involved the “nationalization of industry and the placing of the livelihood of the people under the national guarantee.” In December of the same year, he again spoke at Tremont Temple. This time he discussed the growth of capitalism, the crowding out of the middle-class business man, and the need of restoring the republic which he felt was being overthrown by the “money power.” He proposed the nationalization of the railroads, telegraph, telephone, coal-mining business, and the municipalization of public utilities. Bellamy held that every citizen able to work for the nation must work and that the nation must guarantee the livelihood of every citizen, whether he was able to work or not. The result would be he said, “a great joint stock company to carry on the business of the country for the benefit of all equally, women with men, sick with well, strong with weak.” Under Nationalism a man able to work but refusing to work would be made to work in an institution and under discipline prepared for such cases. “The principle of Nationalism,” writes Bellamy in The Christian Union, “is: From all equally, to all equally.”

The chapter, Looking Forward, discusses the spirit which the author believes necessary in order to put across his plan. Unselfishness, or brotherhood, he places first, then tolerance, patriotism, and an orderly and progressive development. In the chapter, Why I Wrote Looking Backward, the author explains that he had no idea of writing a serious contribution to social reform. His plan at first was to write a fantasy.

So half a century ago did Edward Bellamy prophesy a nation based upon the realization of complete democracy—the “Republic of the Golden Rule,” as he called it. Whether or not the reader agrees entirely with Bellamy’s plan, he must agree with his ideals. He must realize that today—fifty years after Bellamy spoke—we still need cooperation and not competition; that without the brotherhood of mankind, advances in science work only toward man’s complete annihilation; that the goal of personal advantage is a false goal, for in this closely-knit world there can be no advantage of one person, group, or nation at the expense of another person, group, or nation.

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