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[Page 119]

WORLD ORDER

JULY 1938

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[Page 120]

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

JULY 1938 VOLUME 4 • NUMBER 4

RESPONSIBILITY • EDITORIAL ........................................ 121

THAT DAY IN TABRIZ • MARZIEH NABIL CARPENTER ............. 123

YOUTH AND INTERNATIONALISM • SHIRIN FOZDAR ............. 127

THE NEGRO IN AMERICA • JAMES A. SCOTT .......................... 130

A PHILOSOPHY OF INTERCULTURAL RELATIONS • RACHEL DAVIS-DUBOIS ... 138

STEPPING STONES TO A NEW WORLD ORDER, II • EDNA ROHRS EASTMAN ... 143

THE BAB, Poem • BEATRICE IRWIN .................................. 148

THE AWAKENER • ADA LUARDI .................................. 149

WHEN IS LIFE REAL? • DALE S. COLE .......................... 152

MOVEMENT IN ITS SIGNIFICANCE • WILLIAM ROESSLER ...... 157

WORLD ECONOMY, Book Review • DALE S. COLE ............... 158

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 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.

July 1938, Volume 4, Number 4

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WORLD ORDER

July 1938 Volume 4 No. 4

RESPONSIBILITY

THE great central law of of the universe is responsibility. Everything in the Cosmos, animate or inanimate, must obey this law. Man cannot escape it. Every human being has to acquire and practice responsibility or pay the price in a chaotic and unhappy, if not eventually tragic, existence.

Responsibility is not equivalent to altruism. It is a debt we owe to the existence we are staged in—a debt that must be paid if we would live a free and wholesome life. It is a law of our own development and fulfillment —a law we have got to recognize eventually, if not in this life, then in the next.

Nature is kind to us, in initiating us gradually into ordered and responsible living. The infant and the child recognize no responsibility, and are taxed with none. Youth owes but mild responsibility to any other task than that of self-unfoldment by means of education. Maturity brings its life-problems, which are intrinsically problems of responsibility. These problems, and the tasks derived from them, stimulate and develop from year to year the conscience and the habit of responsibility.

Those adults who chronically avoid responsibility remain to that extent immature and imperfect souls. They may make alibis for themselves, and their family and friends may accept these alibis. But God does not. The order and equilibrium of the universe must be maintained. That mysterious equilibrating Force, the attribute of God called Justice, causes pain and suffering to attend as consequence of every chronic neglect of cosmic law and order. Hence those souls who fail to mature here will have to mature in other existences, at an even greater price than they should have paid here.

The artist frequently chooses and claims for himself exemption from this law of responsibility. There is no necessity, in the nature of things, for such exemption. No creator need be conscienceless. The irresponsibilities of the artist are in part an expression of self-indulgence, and as such are spiritually unpardonable. There have been great artists who have proved that the creator can share the general responsibilities of humanity without [Page 122] in the least degree marring his art— Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Joshua Reynolds, Plato, Francis Bacon, Milton, Tennyson, Browning—these great creators have asked no exemption from the normal claims life makes upon them, and their art has not been less therefor but greater and more ruggedly noble.

ALL religions inculcate the fundamental virtue of duty, and through the development of a spiritually sensitized conscience aid in the private and public performance of duty. When individuals thus accept and adequately perform their responsibilities to family, mart and country, society prospers and government has equilibrium and security. When, on the contrary, religion wanes and with it disappear the sanctions of revealed truth and the compunctions of conscience, then duties fail and disorder and insecurity spread throughout society.

Into such a stage of retrogression the world has today fallen. Bahá’u’lláh warned humanity of the chaos that was ensuing from the spread of irreligion, and called upon the world to turn to God and seek again His ways before destructive and calamitous results should ensue.

It is already too late to avoid chaos. The world is now immersed in a general disorder greater than any it has known since the Middle Ages. No remedy will prove efficacious short of the fundamental and causal remedy which religion can bring to bear upon society. The sequence is plain and proved. Confucius stated it clearly: that when individuals practise mutual loyalty, courtesy, and duty, and perform sincerely their respective responsibilities, the state is in tranquility and society prospers.

To the general responsibilities which life on this planet entails for us, the dawning period of a new religious consciousness adds one more —the grave responsibility of sharing with a Prophet the colossal task of spreading a new religious message and of reforming human hearts on a universal scale. To this task all sincere Bahá’ís are dedicated, accepting as their major responsibility in life the winning of the world for God and for Bahá’u’lláh. No work, no achievement is so great as this, said ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’—no, not even if one could construct a railroad from the earth to the moon! It is human engineering that we need today. Upon Bahá’ís, as inspired social scientists, rests the responsibility of salvaging the world.

S.C.

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THAT DAY IN TABRIZ

MARZIEH NABIL CARPENTER

A PERSIAN will sit for hours under a tree by a stream, watching the water flow by. The Chinese, they say, like glassy water, flat and pale; but a Persian likes the struggle of a narrow white stream.

He may have a clay jug of wine cooling in the water. He sits on a rug, slanting on the hill: out of perspective, like the Persians now dead, who sit in the miniatures. He has a dish before him, lined with mulberry leaves, piled with apricots. He sings to himself, a verse from Háfiz perhaps, who lived long ago in Shíráz, and whom they call “The Tongue of the Invisible”: “I have hooded my eyes like a falcon from all in the earth, That my eyes may be fixed on naught else but the light of Thy Face.” Around him the yellow desert; and he under a blossoming cherry tree, or perhaps a willow, because this is away from the town; and behind him, miles away, the bare, shining, Venetian-glass mountains.

His eyes are drugged by the wine and the verse, or more likely by the pull of the stream. He can touch the pale green down that rims its edge; this last is what ‘Umar-i-Khayyám refers to in the quatrain:

And that delightful herb whose tender green

Fledges the river-lip on which we lean—

Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows

From what once lovely lip it springs unseen!

This green, poets tell us, is like the first down over an adolescent mouth.

Persians like to leave the city, because in the city one sees only walls; honey-colored walls of sun-baked mud. Within the walls are pools, and sweet-lemon trees, and jasmine bushes; mud houses with flat roofs. In winter the roofs are shoveled free of snow, and rolled; in summer nights they blossom with mosquito-nets. Inside the houses, white-washed walls; rugs glowing like cathedral-windows, and woven from the ninth combing of the wool. There are women, too, with henna on their finger nails and pearls in their hair. In the streets, dust. Nobles on Arab horses; the royal horses white, with their tails dyed a bright purple. And there are [Page 124] beggars, their faces eaten away with sores, gathered at the gateway of a noble’s garden. These beggars are often used in Bahá’í prayers, to describe the poverty of human beings, standing at the Gateway of the Invisible.

This is Persia sometime between the last century and ours. The Báb must have seen it, something like this; He must have watched the moon come up through the acacias, as we watch it now. He must have heard the “Ḥaq” bird crying, the bird that cries “God! God!” all through the night, till—legend says—it bursts its throat at dawn.

Of the eighteenth century in Europe, William Bolitho has written: “Europe had locked itself in and lost the key. . . . Imagine an explosion in a locked room . . .” That would be a fair description of the coming of the Báb in Persia. Persia then was a spiritual prison, blacker than a Bastille, but men were looking for release and light. Traditions had been handed down, telling them not to lose hope, because a great day was in store. There was a verse in the Qur’án, in the Chapter of Adoration, and it said: “It is God who hath created the heavens and earth. . . . Ye have no patron or intercessor besides Him. Will ye not therefore consider? He governeth all things from heaven even unto the earth; hereafter shall they return unto Him, on the day whose length shall be a thousand years. . .” The Muslims knew that the last Imám had disappeared in the year 260 A. H.; they felt that in 1260, their thousand years of waiting would be over.

CERTAIN men were teaching these things to the people, just as in western countries such men as William Miller were teaching them, though using different prophecies and another Book. One day the Báb walked into the classroom where these prophecies were being explained. He sat down and a ray of sunlight slanted across Him. The teacher stopped. He looked at the Báb. He said, “The truth is more manifest than the ray of light that has fallen across His lap.”

A mosque is much busier, more lived-in than a cathedral. There are people there, praying, any day of the week. There are fountains running, for the ablutions—real water, not a shallow inch of holy water, dwindled to a symbol. The floors burn with rugs. There are men kneeling, rising, bowing down, and no statues or pictures to impede the mind in its upward search. The Báb went often to the mosque, and tears would flow from Him, and He would say, “O God, My God, my Beloved, My heart’s Desire!” He was a merchant by profession. On Fridays when His shop was closed, He would go up to the flat roof of His house, and stand and kneel in the white sunlight, worshipping as the Muslims worshipped.

He was very good to look at. Fair for a Persian; rather short, with a memorable voice. We think here of the fourth Imám, the half-Persian Zaynu’l-‘Ábidín, who would pray and chant on the roof of his house at night; it is said that even men carrying heavy water skins in the street below, would stop to listen. . . . His walk, too, was memorable. Virgil [Page 125] tells us that the gods were known by their gait; the same is true of the few great human beings who come amongst us. Once when a stranger was seeking out the Báb, and a disciple barred the way, the man saw Him as He passed and said: “Why do you seek to hide Him from me? I know Him by His walk.” The Báb was a descendant of the Prophet Muḥammad and must have looked like Him, of whom a companion has said, “I never saw anything more beautiful than Muḥammad; you might say the sun was moving in His face.”

The Báb married. A child was born to Him. The child died. The Father dedicated His child to His Lord: “O My God, grant that the sacrifice of My son . . . may be acceptable to Thee. Grant that it be a prelude to the sacrifice of My . . . self, in the path of Thy good pleasure.”

Then a handful of men were drawn to Him. He did not summon them— they came to find Him, over the desert wastes. Some rode on donkeys— white donkeys, perhaps, stamped with henna-colored hands, and wearing turquoise beads; there are still such donkeys left in Persian streets—the automobiles and the trains have not yet driven them out. These men came because they had had visions and dreamed dreams; indeed, many Americans have become Bahá’ís in the same way. Such things are for scientists to investigate, for we do not understand them in laboratory terms. We do know that at the time of the coming of a Prophet, certain disciples are waiting for Him. We know, too, that there are true prophets, as distinguished from the hundreds of “incredible messiahs” who recur through the ages—that there is a source-Being, a type of Being who reinspires every phase of human life. Carlyle says of Him, writing on Muḥammad: “Such a man is what we call an original man: he comes to us at first-hand . . . We may call him Poet, Prophet, God;—in one way or other, we all feel that the words he utters are as no other man’s words. Direct from the Inner Fact of things; —he lives, and has to live, in daily communion with that . . . It is from the heart of the world that he comes; he is portion of the primal reality of things.”

THE Báb sent these disciples out and they awakened the East, and left their bodies charred and mangled in a hundred cities. The gave their Master’s message, and no bullets stopped their lips. They gave glad tidings of the coming of a great world Savior. The Báb said, “I am but as a ring on the finger of Him whom God shall soon make manifest.” Then He journeyed to Mecca, the holiest city of Islám, and proclaimed His mission before the sacred Black Stone of the Ka‘bih, fulfilling prophecy. And He sacrificed nineteen lambs of the finest breed, as is the custom; lambs carefully decked, with sugar in their mouths, perhaps, and collyrium in their eyes. A great blessing to the poor, this sacrifice, for the meat is distributed to them. The Báb refused to partake of this meat Himself, which recalls the story of how a goat had been sacrificed in the house of Muḥammad, where usually there was [Page 126] little to eat. The carcass was being distributed to the poor, and Áyishih, wife of the Prophet, came and lamented, because all the meat was being given away, She said, “Nothing but the shoulder remaineth.” He answered; “The whole goat remaineth save only the shoulder.”

In Persia again, the Báb preached in the mosques. When He entered, men crowded around Him. It was as Sa’dí said, long ago by the water in Shíráz: “Wheresoever be a spring of sweetest water, there will men and birds and insects crowd together.” When He stood on the pulpit, they were quiet while He spoke.

And there, in the heart of Islám, He rose, and struck. He called out as men call who know they are going to die. He cried out against the clergy, the lords of all men. The mullás, who knew the Qur’án by heart, the Book which no Persian can read in his own tongue. The mullás who knew what was lawful and not; who even knew when a medicine should be taken, and a journey be made, and a daughter be given in marriage. Who knew all truth, where other men are blind. And He denounced them; just as His ancestor, Muḥammad, had denounced Arabia’s gods: “Ye rub them with oil and wax, and the flies stick on them, —these are wood, I tell you!” Just as Jesus had called the men of His time: Hypocrites—dogs—generation of vipers—adulterous.

All Persia was talking of Him now. They shut Him in a fortress on a mountain, where He wrote: “There is no one even to bring Me a lamp at night. The fruit of Islám is to accept the Báb, yet they imprison Him.” Then He wrote: “All the atoms of this place cry out, ‘there is no God but God!’” And He began to dictate the greatest of His works, heralding the coming of Bahá’u’lláh. His voice echoed down the mountain and across the valley as He chanted. He suffered cruelly from the winter cold. The water He used for His ablutions froze on His face.

And men loved Him, and sought Him out. They came, even from India, traveling on foot. He was taken away to another prison. His followers were being killed in the streets.

Then they summoned Him before the Crown Prince and the clergy, assembled in Tabríz. There was only one chair left in the Assembly Hall; one chair, reserved for the Crown Prince. The Báb took this chair, and such power shone from Him that the assembly fell silent. Then one of the clergy said, “Who do you claim to be?” He answered: “I am the one whose name you have invoked for a thousand years, the one whose advent you have longed to witness, whose revelation you have prayed God to hasten. Verily I say, it is incumbent upon the peoples of both the East and the West to obey My word. . .”

We know the rest. But these are the days of His triumph. We do not want to remember how He was hanged to a wall and shot, that morning in Tabríz. We see Him living today, around the world.

The Báb was martyred at Tabríz, Irán, July 9, 1850.

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YOUTH AND INTERNATIONALISM

SHIRIN FOZDAR

THE armistice was signed to “The War to End War,” and the statesmen everywhere voiced the resolve, echoed as a prayer in the hearts of all, “This must never happen again.” People said, “We will build a new world order based on international cooperation instead of international anarchy.”

When the world was building such castles in the air, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the son of Bahá’u’lláh, declared in 1919 that the very terms of the treaty of Versailles would be the cause of another war. He said: “This war has become the cause of hatred. For instance the Germans will not forget, the Bulgarians will not forget, the Turks will not forget. From one side there will arise the tumult of the socialists, from another the storm of the Bolshevists, from another the demands of labor, from another racial prejudice. It is clear what will happen. All of these are like dynamite. One day they will explode unless the banner of Universal Peace be raised, according to the Divine Teaching. No matter how the politicians strive, their efforts cannot bring peace. Unaided human power is of no avail.” When ‘Abdu’l-Bahá talked of Divine Teachings He had in view the Peace Plan of Bahá’u’lláh (the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith) which if studied by the politicians and statesmen of the world would lead them to their cherished goal, Universal Peace.

The fact that we love our own families best does not mean that we must therefore hate our neighbor; in every town, city and village, the community spirit is recognized to be for the good of the individual; in the United States of America, there is State sovereignty, still the states are federated under the National Government at Washington. The unit in each case gives up some local privileges for the greater good achieved by group solidarity. So too, can the countries of the world be federated, a world community, with each nation the family unit, each loving its own best, but not therefore, killing and hating its neighbors.

YOUTH MOVEMENTS

Youth movements have sprung up on all sides. Young people have not [Page 128] the old habits of thought that taught that peace was to be found through the bloody channels of war. War cannot end war, nor a blood stain be erased with blood. Young people say, “We remember our tragic childhood with starvation, terror and orphanage; our shoulders are bowed under the taxation from past wars and from the preparation for the next one; before ever we had the chance to earn our bread, we find ourselves members of the hopeless army of the unemployed. We have studied the history of past wars and we know that the consequences of one are always the cause of the next; we know that the vanquished nation ever nurses a hatred of its conquerors and dreams only of the day when it will be strong enough for revenge. On the graves of our fathers who died, as they believed, for the good of their country, we resolve instead to live for our country and strive to make it a part of a family of the nations of the world.” In these young people rested our hope and our faith for the future.

Then came economic chaos, the inevitable aftermath of war. Here in India, we have had our taste of what we term “The Depression” but not as much as in Europe, the actual battle ground. There the suffering was of course proportionately greater. Young people, hungry, homeless, jobless, demoralized, were eager, owing to their bewilderment, to snatch at any leadership that promised them any change. Communism came with bloody revolution, a legitimized short cut to their ideal. Fascism dazzled the world by cleaning the streets, building the roads, and making the trains run on time; only later did we realize that its benefits were material alone, that the minds of the people under fascism were imprisoned in a straight jacket, all freedom of the press and of speech denied, that arms were put into the hands of babes scarcely out of their teens, that militarism, and military conquest were taught to be the highest goals of existence.

A VICIOUS CIRCLE

As if a mad dog were at large, every one gathered together arms to protect themselves against new menaces to their civilization. Then the old vicious circle was started again. The piling up of arms brought increased fears, suspicions and hatreds; these in turn, brought increased armament. The world is again a gaming table, with armaments the pawns and the lives of the youth the stakes. The tinderbox is again ready for a catastrophic spark. It seems 1914 again instead of 1938 twenty-four short years after the war to end wars. One is reminded of the story of the missionary who returned to his native land after many years spent among the cannibals, trying to teach them civilized ways. A friend meeting him said: “Tell me,—did you cure them of their loathsome habit of eating human flesh?” “Well, no,” said the missionary, “At least not entirely, but I can report progress; I did teach them to eat with knife and fork.” Will our progress be refinement of the weapons of destruction?

If we study the pages of history we must realize that no new social order [Page 129] ever escaped the danger of sinking back into the evils from which it had sought to emerge. Why should we expect the millenium by special delivery?

At Rockefeller Institute scientists work year after year, trying to lessen disease. In some cases they have as yet met with no success; in others, though a preventive serum has been found, epidemics still recur from time to time. We don’t say that medical research is futile—a waste of time and money—that sickness always has existed and always will exist and nothing can be done about it. How much more patience must we have then, how much greater effort must we be willing to put forth to rid the world of a disease as insidious as war, not like physical disease, recognized by all as an evil, but fostered and fomented by those who profit by it, its ugliness masked under gay martial music, the bright panoply of parade and high sounding phrases that have been built up through the centuries by the sinister forces—fear and greed.

Youth formerly accepted war as a necessary evil: like cholera, in the dark ages, it was considered the will of God. But then some intrepid souls dared the disapproval of the reactionaries, and cleaned the drains and that unconquerable plague was conquered. If the cobwebs are cleared from our apathetic brains now, we can as surely get rid of war.

Now more and more, in colleges, schools and churches, and in workers’ organizations the conviction should crystallize that the duty of youth, the salvation of youth is to work for peace, indeed not to do so is suicidal.

Youth knows that another conflagration would carry away the most physically fit young men, and use them as so much fodder for enemy guns. The decrepit and the unfit shall stay at home to breed the future generation, and the flower of manhood shall be left shattered limbless and unfit after the conflict.

Youth formerly sat in indifference or in abject despair, accepting and awaiting the inevitable; today, youth should strip the glamorous mask from the face of war, and reveal Mars in all his stupidity, brutality and greed. War is a Frankenstein Monster whom we must destroy, or it will destroy us. Youth must work enthusiastically, millions of them, to save their lives and the lives of all the inhabitants of the world. But not only the lives must they hope to save, through the forces of humanity working together toward the single aim of universal goodwill, but their goal should be to make possible for every human being, full development of personality in terms of the highest human and spiritual values. Their vision should be to live peace, lives reflecting the concept of a loving and purposeful God.

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THE NEGRO IN AMERICA

JAMES A. SCOTT

ON November 6, 1931, at Dalton, Georgia, a young Negro woman, Miss Juliette Derricotte, member of the National Board of the Young Women’s Christian Association, Dean of Women at Fisk University, and lecturer of international repute and experience, was seriously injured in an automobile accident. Her condition demanded immediate hospitalization. Despite the fact, however, that located in Dalton was the Hamilton Memorial Hospital, up-to-dately equipped and supported by public taxation, she was not carried there because it was contrary to the policy of that institution to accept Negro patients. Instead, she was taken first to a local doctor’s office, then to a house devoid of standard equipment or professional attendance where Negroes were sent in emergencies, and, five hours later, over forty miles of road—much of it rough—to a hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The following day she died.

Because of the prominence of the victim and the consequent publicity attendant upon the incident, the spectacle of this gifted young woman dying within reach of the latest triumphs of medical and surgical inventiveness and yet unserved by them elicited nation-wide exclamation. For regardless as to whether or not she would have recovered had she received immediate hospitalization the occurrence illustrated in all its starkness the inhumanity with which the policy of racial discrimination operates even to the denial of available facilities which may save life itself.

Every day in less dramatic ways millions of other Negro Americans— thousands of them emergent to the same plane of culture and accomplishment as Miss Derricotte—experience in the course of normal living the devastating effects of a social attitude which deprives them of important privileges and opportunities for development assumed as implicit in the citizenships of their more fortunately complexioned compatriots. Wherever they go, whatever they do the vast majority of Negroes in this country are confronted by a protean monster that haunts their days, constricting their environs to undesirable sections of the community, circumscribing [Page 131] their educational opportunities, frustrating their ambitions for economic emancipation and vocational advancement, barring them from the use of public accommodations, denying them political rights, jeopardizing their health and lives, and conducing through a thousand petty exclusions and separations to circumvent their aspirations for self-fulfillment.

In the fourteen states where they live in largest numbers an elaborate though somewhat flexible etiquette deeply intrenched in law and custom governs every detail of inter-racial association. Under no conditions, it prescribes, is a Negro to be addressed as “Mr.” or “Mrs.” Never is he to sit on a bench in a public park or read as a patron in a public library. He must enter and leave a street car by a designated door—in some localities the front, in others the rear—and sit in a designated section. Unless a servant of some white passenger, he must travel in a jim-crow compartment, frequently a division of the baggage car—and at all railroad stations he must use separate waiting rooms. In those communities so small that the station consists only of two toilets, one is labelled “White” and the other “Colored.” When he has business at a hotel, he is generally required to use the freight elevator. In the matter of residence he is relegated en masse to undesirable quarters on the “other side of the tracks” where insanitation prevails and such services as garbage collections are woefully inadequate because he cannot vote. Above all, he must not commit the offense of dining with a white man.

That the form and degree of these restraints vary appreciably from community to community in the same geographical section and markedly from community to community in different geographical sections is true. The mutations and graduations of America’s discriminatory practices based on race would furnish material for a diverting doctor’s dissertation in social psychology. In some places they are less restrictive and severe; in others far more rigorous. In some they are direct and specific; in others circuitous and vague. In some there are omissions or disconcerting substitutions; in others, additions of a peculiarly local flavor. But even in strongholds of the most cosmopolitan thought the insidious pervasive influence of ofttimes subconscious racial bias like an odorless poisonous gas insinuates itself into every major concern of the Negro’s day. It is an Old Man of the Sea that climbs upon his back before his birth and will not leave him at his death.

NOWHERE, perhaps, is he more fundamentally handicapped than in the lack of educational opportunities by any stretch of imagination comparable with those provided for members of other races. In that section of the country where four-fifths of the Negro population resides, gross inequalities in this respect obtain. According to statistics issued by the Department of the Interior, the per capita expenditure for public school education for each child in the nation in 1930 was $99.00; for each white child in the South, $44.31; for each Negro child in the South, $12.57. In one state the expenditure per white [Page 132] child was $45.34; per Negro child $5.45; in another the expenditure per white child $35.42; per Negro child $6.38. The salaries of Negro teachers averaged 47 per cent those of the white. The value of school plant and equipment per white pupil in the South was $157.00; per Negro pupil $37.00. In many districts the school term was three, four, or five months; and almost universally compulsory attendance laws were deliberately ignored when it came to Negro children because if all who should do so were to attend there would not be room to house them. Whatever the explanation for these disproportions in division of funds for public education may be, the indisputable fact remains that that element of our citizenry most desperately in need of education are being greatly disadvantaged in their efforts to rise to the national standard because they are given fewer educational opportunities than those already much further advanced.

But this denial of opportunities for growth through educational means consonant with American citizenship is not merely a question of inferior public schools of the South. In its more subtle aspects it transcends geographic bounds. Frequently in the mixed schools of the North, awkwardly constrained attitudes of antagonism or prejudice on the part of teachers and fellow-pupils, administrative policies limiting the Negro child’s unconditional participation in school activities, and an atmosphere of ofttimes sympathetic disbelief in his potentialities or future prevent his deriving the fullest measure of benefit or happiness from his school experiences, and impress him with a demoralizing sense of apartness which results in his early withdrawal. In the larger universities to which he is admitted, he is all too often not permitted to satisfy course requirements in the same manner as other students —he is “excused” from taking certain courses or required to substitute other activities—and is directly or indirectly excluded from many features of the larger life of the school. And, to cite one more example, in the developing field of vocational education tremendous pressures by powerful voting blocs throughout the country prevent public officials from making available to him training in a number of types of work where his competition is not desired.

THEN in his struggle for livelihood itself the individual Negro again faces stern impediments to progress additional to those encountered by other Americans. When a white boy secures a job as messenger in a bank, he is informed that good character, ambition, industry, and study will give him a chance for eventual promotion to a higher position in the organization. But sentiment, custom, and tradition more inexorable than law decree that in our economic scheme of things all positions— whether in private business or public service—are for the Negro comparative blind alleys. So far shalt thou go and no farther, the social system says to him. As a matter of fact, the majority of race riots in this country have been outgrowths of the Negro’s attempts to ameliorate his economic [Page 133] plight by wedging his way into urban industry or throwing off the yoke of peonage slavery. In many labor unions he is constitutionally excluded from affiliation and then refused a license, persecuted as a scab or strikebreaker, or visited with physical violence if he persists in seeking work despite his non-membership. It is a tragi-comic commentary on the situation that repeatedly he has been prevented by threats and force from working on public buildings being erected for his own use. Moreover, when he is admitted to union membership assignments to jobs they are often so manipulated that he receives less than his equitable share of work. And even in the ranks of unskilled labor it is commonplace to summarize his marginal status in the expression that he is the last to be hired and the first fired.

Nor is this list of ills to which his flesh is heir complete. When suspected of crime, he is more than occasionally tortured, murdered, and dismembered by maniacal mobs which undergo no observable remorse of conscience if they subsequently learn that the offense with which the victim of their orgiastic holiday was charged was the crime of a white man who had charcoaled his face. More generally than that, where he is granted trial it is in many instances in an atmosphere so electric with mob spirit and before a tribunal so biased by pre-convictions that the whole procedure is lynching legalized. Furthermore, the prevalent policy of recreational and character-building organizations —public and private-—is to provide him no facilities whatever, to provide him segregated facilities of greatly inferior nature, or to discourage him from using supposedly common facilities to which he is nominally welcome. And most incapacitating of all, his effectual disfranchisement in vast areas of the country not only deprives him of a manhood right, but also renders him impotent to demand those essentials of decent living which—under our brand of democracy—are dispensed by local politicians on the basis of the votes they will attract.

The intent of these paragraphs has not been to compend a catalog of the Negro’s woes and grievances but rather to present an over-view of social practices which block his exertions in almost every worthwhile direction. To be sure, these practices appear in less forbidding shapes and with more moderate intensities in some parts of the country than in others. But that they exist to an oppressive degree in all is incontrovertible. In their totality they constitute the modus operandi whereby the phenomenon of racial discrimination which ramifies American life makes the Negro’s realization of his maximum potentialities in health, culture, vocational efficiency, citizenship, and character a social impossibility.

II

As the Negro’s horizon is widened by education and he becomes increasingly alive to the opportunities for enriched living in the civilization about him, he evinces an impatience to be rid of the inconveniences, dangers, and limitations to which he is [Page 134] condemned by virtue of racial identity. This sometimes assumes the form of efforts at personal escape. The details of interracial association in the United States have been such that many sociological Negroes are not visibly so. For one advantage or another, a considerable number of these light-skinned members of the group migrate temporarily or permanently across the racial line. Indeed, so sizeable has been the exodus that it is whispered stations of an underground railway nature have been established in certain parts of the country as “half way houses” at which the departing mulattos may live while they divest themselves of their ethnic pasts. Another manifestation of the impulse to escape or lighten the burden of race is the occasionally lamented tendency of some college-bred Negroes to refuse to live in the South—many of them going so far as to prefer inconsequential jobs in localities where their cultural and recreational lives are not so stringently confined to positions of leadership elsewhere. “I’d rather be a lamppost in New York than—” is a commonly heard remark which epitomizes their attitude.

In most cases, however, the sensitized Negro does not take refuge in flight. Rather, he seeks to shield himself from the barbs and arrows of outrageous fortune by studied avoidance of exposures to them. In the midst of a prejudice-ridden community, he will attempt to build a discrimination-proof world in which he can so order his life that the number of contacts which involve the surrender of his self-respect are reduced to minimum. One of the principal reasons, for instance, that he so prizes an automobile is that it obviates the necessity for riding in the jim-crow sections of trolleys or trains. And he will religiously compel his children to walk miles rather than permit them to use these accommodations. Some Negro children of the South have reached maturity without ever having been on a street-car. Keenly cognizant of the implications and connotations of segregation, he will also forego the recreation of worthwhile drama in preference to occupying the seats traditionally “reserved” for him by local play-houses. At times the educational values of a certain performance may outweigh his scruples but if he goes even under such impulsions he will more than likely be subjected to the caustic criticism of his peers. Many other examples could be cited in substantiation of the fact that as the Negro rises in cultural status he deliberately tries to remove himself from the possibilities of discrimination; and since his business or profession consists mainly of services to Negroes —thus keeping him in the interior of the race—the result is that the white world on the whole is barely more than conscious of his existence as a class.

IT is tempting at this juncture to wander afield into a discussion of additional modes of behavior— such as the Negro’s hesitancy to deliver suspected criminals of his group to the police because of the summary treatment he fears they will receive or the quaint folkway so humanly portrayed in Porgy of never telling a [Page 135] white man where a Negro lives— which are all natural responses to the vulnerabilities of his position. Yet more significant from the point of view of his eventual future than the manner in which he resorts to innumerable defensive devices to safeguard as far as he can his person and personality is the degree to which his intellectual life revolves about the problem of discovering means whereby the race as a whole may find relief from the disabilities under which it struggles. At least half the speeches made by Negroes and a greater proportion of theses submitted by them in satisfaction of requirements for advanced degrees are direct attempts to pluck out some aspect of the heart of their mystery. Again, besides mastering his speciality, the Negro professional man regards it as incumbent upon him to devote a large measure of thought and energy to the promotion of his race’s interests in the sphere of his particular activities and to formulate in his own mind a philosophy of the racial situation as a whole. And whenever a member of the group who has achieved distinction in any given direction is called upon to speak, a probable theme of his discourse will be: How I Did It as a Negro. In season and out of season, at his social clubs, in private conversation, on his commencement programs, in endless discussions everywhere the Negro puzzles over his problem and gropes for its solution.

And in his groping he is becoming more and more scientific. To an unprecedented degree, the thinking Negro is today focussing his study on factors underlying the situations of suppressed minorities throughout the world whose predicaments parallel his own. Of these he finds an array. On our western coast, the Chinese immigrant, welcomed and praised upon his arrival to do the section’s dirty work at low pay, has been —since his labor became competitive —the target of virulent vituperation and the object of sharp discrimination. There also his fellow-Oriental from Japan is legislatively prohibited from buying land, denied the right of suffrage, refused service in places of public accommodation, and labelled a peril. In this country, too, the voteless Indian has been shunted onto out-of-the-way reservations, mis-educated in government schools frequently staffed by persons of shallow insight, and so injudiciously and inhumanely treated that the process of acculturation has converted his mode of living into a degenerative compound of the vices of western civilization and the vestiges of tribal culture. In Germany, the Jew has been stripped of his citizenship, barred from public employment, herded into segregated schools and residential areas, cast out of the nation’s professional life, and physically harassed. And in Colonial Africa, the European trustees of civilization have perfected the art of ruthless subjugation to the fine point of developing a native elite to help them carry to success their exploitive undertaking of getting everything they possibly can from the laboring masses and granting them little more than subsistence in return.

At work in all of these situations the Negro discerns three noteworthy common forces. In each, to begin [Page 136] with, is to be found in the controlling element of the ascendent majority a dominant historical or present social purpose conditioning their attitude towards the group submerged. That purpose is to relegate the members of the subordinate race to certain economic niches in order to maintain a plentiful supply of labor for types of work uncongenial to or impossible for others, in order to exclude them from the possession of resources desired by members of the majority group, in order to prevent their competition for the limited number of vocational opportunities of a desirable nature, or in order to accomplish a combination of the three objectives named. Analytical scrutiny, in the second place, reveals that the entire machinery of social control is in each case directed in one wise or another towards confirming the weaker group in a status congruous with this directive aim, and simultaneously infusing in the stronger group a glow of virtue for the repressive measures it has adopted. This propagandizing process assumes a multiplicity of forms. At times missionaries go to the “benighted heathen” with a fatalistic religion of acceptance, and highly-paid ministers orate from Scriptural texts which prove to the satisfaction of their tithe-payers that the course pursued is part of God’s Eternal Plan. Almost ubiquitously, the daily press, history textbooks, the stage, the movies, fiction, the lecture platform, published research—in short all possible instruments for the spread of propaganda —are commandeered to conjure in the public mind the stereotype of an inferior creature towards whom the existent policy is humanitarianism incarnate. And in the third place, where concessions, such as better housing, are granted the underprivileged population, it is for the purpose of quieting squeamish protest or making them more content and productive “in their place.”

THE foregoing forces are precisely those faced by the Negro. Historically, he was brought to this country to meet the need for a servile laboring class on the plantations—a class which could not be lured away by attractive opportunities for exploitation of the virgin wealth of a pioneer’s continent. And from the limitations of this original mandate he has never been released. The record of his three centuries in America is in sum a story of enforced consignment to tasks which others were not willing to perform because of the possibility of greater rewards elsewhere and of exclusion from opportunities on more lucrative planes of the economic life. To the White South the magic of Booker Washington’s appeal was its apparent basic accord with this stratification; and the temporary popularity of his panacea is traceable to the general belief that ultimately analyzed, the finis ad quem of the Tuskegee scheme for improving the Negro’s lot was to make him a more contented and efficient non-competitive underdog. Similarly, the riotous reception of Northern labor agents below the Mason-Dixon line during war days was a reaction to a threat to what was felt to be a cornerstone of Southern economy. Again, to illustrate from a different angle, agitation and legislation [Page 137] against the hiring out of Negro mechanics in competition with white labor considerably ante-dated the abolition of chattel slavery. As for the present vocational restrictions imposed on the Negro, they have been outlined in a previous part of this discussion. Suffice it to point out here that the ideology behind them is not complex: There is a certain amount of disagreeable and unremunerative work and a certain amount of agreeable and remunerative work to be done. If the minority population can be made to do the disagreeable and unremunerative the majority population can then pre-empt the agreeable and remunerative—and thus live happy ever after. Of course, during periods of stress the favored class might for the time being descend to less congenial tasks and leave their displaced fellows to fare as they can.

Neatly dove-tailing with this working philosophy of race relations are the concepts of Negro life and character which obsess the public mind. They are the offsprings of a rationalizing process which completely dominates every opinion-influencing agency of our social life and a Freudian wish. To the frequenter of the legitimate theater or the movies; the reader of the daily news or modern fiction, the student of history or geography, the radio-listener or the church-goer —to all who breathe the atmosphere of contemporary America—the types of Negro character portrayed are those which justify this pattern of thinking. The haloed mammy, the faithful, loyal retainer, the happy, singing, dancing, entertaining, childlike, irresponsible dependent palpably in need of guardianship and grateful for it—these are the favored roles in which the nation permits the darker brother to cross the threshold of its consciousness. To the Negro as he has become today—a human being struggling against tremendous odds for a fairer participation in the benefits of modern civilization—there is scant allusion and what there is for the most part caricatures him as an absurdity or brands him a menace. This, despite the fact that nowhere in the world is to be found a wealth of material more suitable for sympathetic dramatic treatment than that concentering about his plight. And when to continuous exposure to distorted stereotypes of what the Negro certainly is not now and perhaps never was is added a lack of contact with what he is, one can readily perceive that in dealing with the problems of a substantial tenth of its population America is reacting to fictions of its own creation.

(To be concluded)

The author is Principal of Banneker School, St. Louis and author of “American Education and the Negro,” etc.

[Page 138]

A PHILOSOPHY OF INTERCULTURAL RELATIONS

RACHEL DAVIS-DuBOIS

THE problems of Intercultural Relations face us more immediately and extensively in the United States than in most other countries because our population is made up of representatives of practically every race, culture, creed, and nationality that exists in the world. The American has been since the beginning of our country a composite type. The records of the Revolutionary War bear the names of French, Spanish, Dutch, Negroes, Poles, Germans, Scandinavians, Jews, Czechs, Irish, Italians, and a number of other peoples, as well as Indians, English, and Scots. This diversity has been multiplied both in numbers and in types as agriculture, industry, and commerce have developed and spread throughout the new continent.

At various times in our history at least four philosophies of intercultural relations have been advocated as solutions of the problems raised by this complex phenomenon: laissez-faire, as typified by the “Melting Pot;” nationalization, as shown by our program of “Americanization;” cultural autonomism, as represented by the suggestion that each culture group maintain its integrity through the establishment of separate culture colonies; and cultural democracy, more recently proposed in the writings of Berkson, Dewey, Follett, and others.

I should like briefly to present the implications of each of these theories, first in relation to the general cultural future of the United States, and then in relation to the individual, the several cultural groups, and national unity. All of these philosophies are founded upon high idealism concerning the future of our country. Fundamentally, they differ only as to the method of attaining the objective.

Let us start with the laissez-faire philosophy, since it has had the longest history and the widest acceptance. In general, this was the Melting Pot dream: a dream that all the cultures within our country would be fused [Page 139] into a new culture, and that this fusion would take place automatically; that the normal pressures of the community, the action and reaction of these various and diverse groups upon each other, and the atmosphere of liberty, equality, and fraternity in our democracy would eventually produce a rich life for the individual, a cultural amalgamation of the various groups, and a healthy national unity. Would that this dream had come true! Even in the first years of our history, the problems presented by the diversity of our population were evident. For instance, we find Benjamin Franklin commenting upon the situation in Pennsylvania, where German settlers predominated and their language and customs seemed destined to win out over the British influence. For the most part, however, the pre-industrial climate was favorable to easy assimilation.

If immigration had continued as a small trickle, the Melting Pot would undoubtedly have achieved its purpose. But when the vast waves of immigration began in the Nineteenth Century, this normal process broke down. The rapidly expanding American economy demanded an endless stream of trained hands, and so an eager welcome was extended to farmers, miners, building workers, tailors, shoemakers, weavers—skill-groups of all kinds—since there was neither time nor occasion to train them here. It also demanded strong backs, and so the immigration of millions of unskilled workers was encouraged, yes, even solicited by paid agents all over the world. Their skilled hands and strong backs were welcome, but there was no time to worry about the problems raised through the diversities of their mores, customs, and folkways. The people of pioneer America, involved in the gigantic task of carving out of the wilderness the greatest material civilization the world has ever known, could give little attention to the non-material aspects of their own, to say nothing of other peoples’ cultures. The period demanded a rapid short-cut type of naturalization, so the Melting Pot was turned into a “dipping-pot,” in which our various newcomers were encouraged to become “Americanized;” to sluff off their cultural backgrounds as rapidly as possible and take on the veneer of the environment into which they happened to fall,—the environment of the mine, the factory, the farm, the cheap magazine, the city street, the night Americanization school, with its necessary inadequacies. It is no wonder that in their rush to adapt themselves to the Promised Land, in their desire to belong, to become “real” Americans, they seized eagerly and uncritically upon the most superficial elements of the popular culture which, like Topsy, “just grew” in the America of the hurly-burly period. This process was often hastened by the attitude of workers in the field. The story of the social worker in one of our large cities is typical: her written comment, after visiting a certain family, was “Not Americanized yet —still eating Italian food.”

WHAT did all this do to the individual? In most cases, it left him a hollow shell, living a sham culture-existence. It left him, in spite of his [Page 140] fund of American slang, his storebought clothes, and the “easy-come-easy-go” philosophy which he absorbed from the American environment, with a feeling that he did not really belong, that he was still a foreigner. This feeling was carried over to his children, in the public school, where they learned from their civics texts that the new immigrant was somehow inferior to the old and where they sang such songs as

“Their daddies may be Irish,

German, Jew, or Dutch,

But if they’re born in Yankee-land

The rest don’t count for much.”

In their anxiety to belong, these second-generation young people came to be ashamed of their parents and to despise the quality of difference in their homes, changed their names, became shy or sullen, grew into nonparticipating citizens or aggressive and flashy anti-social elements. Louis Adamic estimates that almost one-fourth of our entire population is made up of these culturally (and politically) backward citizens. In the public schools, we find that an increasing proportion of our problem-children come from such homes.

Not only has the “nationalization” theory instilled a feeling of inferiority and killed the creativeness of many members of our culture groups and our more recent immigrants, but also conversely it has resulted in their development of a vicious feeling of superiority and spiritual callousness in some members of the dominant and older immigrant groups,—a condition which is also non-productive culturally. Members of these groups and their children have in some cases gained a feeling of adequacy by pointing to themselves as the only “real” Americans—deserving first consideration —and looking upon the culture groups which differ from themselves as inferior, unequal, alien elements. The attitude of the older American was dramatized for me when I was working in some schools in the Connecticut Valley. A teacher told me that in her school a boy whose name was Berzelki won a prize by writing the best essay about international relations. A leading clubwoman in the town said to his teacher: “Isn’t it too bad the prize wasn’t won by an American? You know what I mean, one whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower.” Yet this boy belonged to the Polish group which gave us Kosciuszko and Pulaski, leaders in the American Revolution. The older Americans are just as much in need of legitimate ways of feeling adequate as are those of the second generation. Until a new and challenging mutual understanding is acquired by both, our cultural resources will not be fruitfully developed.

What has been the effect of the nationalization theory on our political integration? It has been true throughout our history that the various nations from which our citizens have come have attempted to perpetuate the emotional ties of these citizens to their fatherlands. Our soil has been fertile for such foreign propaganda. Unrecognized, unappreciated, and therefore in an essential sense unassimilated, many of our citizens, hungry for the feeling that they belong to a cause larger than themselves, [Page 141] thirsting for the prestige which comes through the feeling that they are important to that cause, have turned to their fatherlands for the satisfaction of these needs. As one second-generation girl said to me recently: “Ukrainia needs me, America does not.” We had a taste of what such a situation can mean to our country in the years preceding America’s entrance into the World War. Now that nationalism in Europe is growing apace, the danger is increasing. European nations in their life-and-death struggles are increasing their attempts to gain the sympathy and support of blocks of our citizenry. This must be prevented by a conscious effort to make our various peoples feel that they have a valuable, necessary role to play in the building of American life.

MANY implications and consequences of the nationalization philosophy were recognized in the early 1920’s. Then we witnessed the phenomenon of the post-War generation, disillusioned with the materialism which seemed to be the chief basis of that struggle, turning to the search for romantic lost-values. They moved to Greenwich Village, ransacked the East Side, made an attempt to find the secrets of Harlem, and tried to imitate the simple life of the Indian Southwest. Women’s clubs asked their Italian neighbors to come and dance the tarantella for them. There was a wave of Chinese nights, cosmopolitan festivals, and so on. These cravings flourished briefly on the theory of cultural autonomism, a belief that America would reach its cultural heights if we preserved in this country the cultures of the many groups in their pristine purity. Obviously, this was an even more impossible dream than that of the Melting Pot. It implied a Balkanization of America’s cultural as well as political life. It implied a growth of unrestricted egotism on the part of the individual and ethnocentrism on the part of the several culture groups, with resultant misunderstanding and bitterness between groups.

Let me turn now to the theory of cultural democracy, which has come to the fore in recent years. It points out that the quality of the future civilization in the United States will be superior or inferior in just the proportion that all peoples foregathered as its citizens give to each other of the best of their traditions, customs, and folkways. Cultural democracy differs from the Melting Pot theory in that it implies that this process will not go forward of its own accord but must be undertaken consciously and methodically. It differs from the philosophy of cultural autonomism by insisting that the emphasis be placed not on the individual cultures but on the conscious sharing of values among the various groups in America.

THE philosophy underlying cultural democracy is identical with that of democracy. Each group, as each individual, should have an equal right to his way of living and the pursuit of his kind of happiness. But democracy demands more than that; it demands, as M. P. Follett points out, creative experience through constant and conscious sharing of values. [Page 142] This means that for individuals and for groups the experience of all is necerrary, because each is unique and therefore inherently valuable. The tendency to become ethnocentric as one becomes proud of one’s group is overcome by putting emphasis on the sharing of values to the end that new values will emerge which have in them the best of those which have gone into the merging, into the process of acting and reacting. But this sharing will not take place unless it is based on such a spirit of equality that it will be as different from what now goes on in some of our unnatural, strained inter-group committees—as fine as they are as first steps—as different, I say, as steam is from water— and just that much more creative of socially valuable energy. We believe that through the growth of this kind of understanding and appreciation among our diverse cultural groups, there will grow up in America a unity without monotony, and a healthy political integration without sacrificing our priceless cultural resources.

Some of our best minds will say that this cannot take place until the competitive economic system has been changed both within and between countries to a cooperative system,— that the elimination of inter-group frictions waits upon that change. I recognize that economic pressure underlies and gives force to prejudice, but I do not think that it is the only cause. Man is also conditioned by his psychological relations. We do not need to wait for a new economic system in order to change the psychological factor—and even should such a change be made, the psychological factor would still have to be reckoned with. We believe that the harmony resulting from more appreciative attitudes would leave us free to devote our energies to the solution of our economic, as well as other, ills.

In our highest moments we sense the organic oneness of the human race: that the whole expresses itself in each part in a particular way; that life means to contribute to and receive from the whole; and that never to think and feel and act on a basis of equality with people who have come from different parts of the whole is not to have lived completely.

The author is Director, Commission On Intercultural Education.

[Page 143]

STEPPING STONES TO A NEW WORLD ORDER

EDNA ROHRS EASTMAN

II—Fundamental Oneness of Religion

VOLUMES could be and indeed have been written, especially in recent years, about the various religions of the world. In former days the writers of these books each sought to prove the truth of their own faith and the falsity of all others. Each held up the best that in his own faith and sought out and ridiculed the preposterous and seemingly false in all the others.

In recent years, however, thanks to a growing tolerance in all walks of life, the trend has been toward a kindlier study and comparison. Comparative religions, a new study, is fast approaching the status of a science. A new science to be known, perhaps, as the science of religion, with all its allied studies of psychology and analysis.

That much has been gained through these studies and that a truer sense of what constitutes religion is gaining headway in the world cannot be denied. But much yet remains to be done. We are, whether we wish to recognize it or not, headed toward a universal religion which will embrace all mankind, accepting the best of each religion and rejecting the balance.

What is needed for this is a still broader comprehension of the verities of all religions. It remains for us to see and understand that each and every one of the great and powerful religions of the world today, is founded upon the teachings of one of the Great Ones. Now when we realize the allness of God’s mercy and love we realize how impossible it would be for Him to manifest Himself to only the chosen few and in a way which only those few could comprehend and accept. What is necessary then is for us to understand what each of the great religion founders taught as the basic truth of his faith. Then we shall find that reality is one. That the foundation underlying all the divine precepts is one. That all [Page 144] the forms and rituals of worship are accidental and unimportant.

All superstition and all theology must be set aside before we can arrive at this truth. Then and only then do we perceive that Moses, Jesus, Zoroaster, Buddha and the others taught men the same truths, the same ethical standards of life even, if you will. Do not all religions contain the Golden Rule of conduct for the guidance of their believers?

Search the scriptures of each religion and seek to find the exact nature of its teachings. Then, after you have discovered for yourself just what each of the prophets taught his followers, follow the history of that religion down to the present day and see how much of the present-day form is truth and how much is the theology of the priests.

If you wish to study the Christian Bible, for example, decide first which you will accept as the pure truth, the words of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels, or the theology of St. Paul as recorded in his letters to the various churches. If you wish to find the truth contained in any of the religions of the world, first find out just what the founder himself said and taught. Then separate that from the later beliefs and practices of his followers. And you will be amazed to find the similarity in all of them. If you compare the fundamental truths in any religion with those in any other religion you will find them to be identical. If you present the basic truths of Christianity to a Jew he will accept them as the teachings of Moses. If you present them to a Muhammadan he will accept them as the teachings of Muhammad. And so on through the list. What then are men quarreling about? Might we not better ask what men are worshipping? Are we worshipping the truth that was brought to each one of us, or are we worshipping the name and personality through which that truth happened to be presented to us?

Did we say that a new universal religion is being born? It is already here. There is now growing and spreading rapidly throughout the world a universal religion known as the Bahá’í Faith. Only ninety-four years old, it has already gained millions of followers and has centers in almost every country in the world. Because it accepts only the basic truths of all religions and acknowledges the greatness of the prophet and founder of each, it has succeeded in uniting the followers of all religions under one banner. East and West “meet and embrace each other as lovers” and all men of whatever nation, color or creed live together in harmony. It has no ritual, no ordained clergy or priesthood. And it puts into practical everyday living the brotherhood of man.

THE ONENESS or MANKIND

Ask any good Christian what he thinks about the brotherhood of man and he will tell you that he certainly should know all about it. That our Lord Jesus the Christ taught it nineteen centuries ago and men have been practising it ever since—that they sincerely believe that since God created all, all are brothers. What a beautiful theory this is, that men really [Page 145] believe in brotherhood. And a theory it must surely be since it is not carried into everyday life, for that which is sincerely believed is practised, inevitably.

Why, in this enlightened age in America do we find separate churches for the colored and the white peoples who call themselves by the same denominational name? If we fully believe that all men are brothers why do the so-called Christian churches themselves establish distinctions—why do the white people say to the black people, “yonder is your church, go there and worship.” Nor is the blame all on one side—race prejudice exists among the dark races just as surely as among the white and with the same disastrous results.

Modern inventions are daily making it more and more difficult for races and nations to isolate themselves. And the easier it becomes for man to communicate with his brother on the far side of the globe, the easier it becomes for him to travel and see how his brother lives and acquire a sympathetic insight into his mode of living and the reasons therefor, the more difficult will it be for him to harbor any feeling of racial superiority.

Scientific research is daily bringing to light long lost facts—data of long forgotten races and countries which have contributed much to our present day, although we have no remembrance of what they left to us, so merged is it in our daily lives. If we try to point to any one race on the face of this earth and say it is superior because it has contributed such and such a thing to civilization, every other race will at once arise and point to some achievement equally great or even greater. Truly God is no respector of persons or races and His favors have been well divided among men.

Paul Radin in the “Racial Myth” says that the only race which has not made distinctive contributions to the civilization of mankind is the colored race—and then he goes on to point out that the colored man is the only one who has produced on the North American continent a new form of literature and music.

Not long ago an eminent scientist, in a radio talk, stated that it was his belief and that of his friends and colleagues that there was only one salvation for the world in its present chaotic state and that was the birth of a super-race of men, to be bred from a mixture of the best elements of all. In this intermixture of blood he foresaw a new race which would combine the best traits and characteristics of all and press forward with renewed strength and energy to the rebuilding of the world’s structure, not only in the human sense but in all the changes which the superman will be enabled to bring about in the purely physical world also.

Regard the birds and the animals. Do they make any difference about color? Does the gray dove refuse to have anything to do with the white dove? Does the brown dove shy away from a purple one? No, on the contrary all live together in the utmost peace and harmony. The same is true of the animals—dogs, cats and horses of different colors all fraternize as one family regardless of color. If the birds and animals sense the futility [Page 146] of color discrimination, shall man, who is admittedly above them, fall below that bird or animal in this one respect?

Let us be just to one another—let us usher in a New Era of real brotherhood. An era in which all men shall be recognized as equal, not only before God but before men also. When a man will be estimated at his true worth and intrinsic value and esteemed no matter what his race or color.

A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

Would it not be a wonderful thing if all the people in the world could understand each other? How much it would lessen the tension between nations if each knew just what the other was trying to express—could through the medium of a common language arrive at each other’s real thought.

The world today is growing so small——the morning papers bring us the happenings not only of our own country but of all the countries. A famine, an earthquake, a pestilence, a revolution in some far country affects our lives as well as those immediately concerned. Through improved means of travel and communication we know at once what is going on everywhere. But because of differing languages we cannot understand and interpret what it all means.

A machine has been invented which helps to some extent. Can you imagine a huge convention of men from all the larger nations sitting in a large room each provided with a pair of headphones to which is attached a wire leading to the microphone on the speaker’s desk? No matter what the language of the speaker or what the language of the listener, the speech comes to the listener in his native tongue. A truly marvelous machine this, which is able to take the language spoken and deliver it into these headphones in many different languages at the same time. Such a machine has been used with great success. Yet, marvelous though it is, it fills only a small part of our need today.

What we really need is a universal tongue—one that shall be invented perhaps, such as Esperanto—and taught in all the schools of the world as a required subject in addition to the mother-tongue. One which will not only enable all men to speak to each other without the necessity of interpreters, but which can also be written in a uniform script so that all the literatures of the world can be translated into it. Think what gems of oriental literature could be brought to the western world—what great philosophical treatises could be ours through this medium. And think how much western civilization could be given to the oriental world through this medium. How else could we possibly promote so easily an understanding between these so remote peoples?

The transatlantic telephone companies feel more than any other no doubt the increasing need of some means whereby their operators may talk to operators in all other lands easily and get their call through with a minimum of trouble. Is it possible that this will be the means of establishing such a language as we are here [Page 147] discussing?

The world today is moving slowly yet surely toward unity and universal brotherhood. Yet universal peace can never be established until all men are able to understand one another.

If we find it difficult to make ourselves understood always even when we express our thoughts in our mother-tongue to those who understand that language, how can we possibly hope to make ourselves and our meanings clear to those who use a vastly different mode of expression? We need so very much a better comprehension of our fellow-men—one that can only come with a higher and more spiritual understanding; but, before we can hope to establish this we must first find words which shall tell all men what we mean.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION MUST AGREE

For many years the controversy between science and religion has been raging and only recently have we seen signs of a truce and perhaps an ultimate understanding and sympathy between the two. Yet until this is established there can be no true advancement in either realm. They are like the wings of a bird—without both working in harmony man cannot attain perfection.

One reason for the spread of atheism in the world today is the utter failure of modern science to conform to orthodox religion. The fundamentalist insists that the world was created in six days and that only six thousand years ago. Yet science proves incontrovertibly that the world is millions of years old and could not possibly have been created in six ordinary days of twenty-four hours each. Many other instances could be related which have kept the two apart—yet if we cannot prove our religion how can we honestly believe it? And if we can prove it then it must be in conformity with science. What is needed is more tolerance and understanding on both sides.

Recently a great scholar stated that search as they might the scientists could not isolate the germ of life, nor could they manufacture it themselves. They were forced, he said, to believe in some great creative force which they could neither find nor explain and to which they must attribute the universe as we know it.

There is no valid reason put forth by any fundamentalist why the theory of evolution does not fit in with God’s plan for man. In their own hearts they must own that they could not possibly believe literally the words of the Bible regarding the story of creation and other disputed points. A very simple illustration may be of some help. You may say that God created everything perfect and in its finished state, while I say that God created man potentially perfect. Have you ever stopped to think of the difference between a thought-creation and the object objectivised? When the artist sees, mentally, the picture he wants to paint, that picture in thought is already finished and perfect. Yet, it may take years of hard work to bring that picture to completion and perfection on the canvas. May not this explain evolution in a very simple and crude way?

Scientists are ceasing to scoff at real [Page 148] religion, which they can understand and prove rationally. And what other sort of religion is worthy of acceptance by any thinking man or woman? Let us not take the beliefs of our forefathers to our hearts as truth merely because our parents believed them—ancestor worship has accomplished enough harm in this old world of ours.

Broad-minded, intelligent clergymen all over the world are beginning to realize what the scholar is doing and are increasingly looking for points of explanation and contact. Since these men know that it is impossible to explain the Bible literally and that human reason cannot accept that which it cannot explain logically they are finding every day how easy it is to interpret the Bible in the light of present-day knowledge if only they will open their minds to truth and see that which is presented to them with an understanding heart and a seeing eye.

(To be concluded)

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THE BÁB

BEATRICE IRWIN

Transcendent Star, past mortal ken

The glory of your Life through all the spheres

Bathes the unending vista of the years.

The radiance of the Light you brought to men

Has purified the planet’s heart anew!

Your blood was poured upon its dearth like dew,

Ichor of God’s decree, let each drop shed

Raise up the nations, and the living dead,

Revive the vision of the spirit’s youth:

Auroral is the fountain of your Truth.

[Page 149]

THE AWAKENER

ADA LUARDI

ONCE upon a time, there lived a king who reigned over a beautiful country called “The land of Halcyona.” In his kingdom, hatred, envy and strife were unknown. The Halcyonian’s life was one of constant interest and enthusiasm and their end was like a summer’s evening, when the gold light fades into silver and the celestial altar-lamp is lighted in the Hour of Silence.

In this land, rose a mountain so high that it really reached Heaven. So, when their hour had come, the inhabitants of Halcyona were carried into Heaven by their friends at sunset. From the mountain-top, they were laid on the last sunbeam and slid over quite smoothly to Heaven’s landing-place. Though the landscape there was of infinite beauty, there was a rumor that the real place was still more wonderful.

The Halcyonians, having seen their friends safely landed in Heaven, had no anxiety or sorrow on their behalf. And perhaps did their happiness come from the fact that they never had to worry about death.

But one day, there befell a great catastrophe. One of the Halcyonians had just come to an early end of his happy life. He was a beautiful youth with eyes through which glided the golden caravan of dreams. His friends had brought him to the mountain-top at the sacred hour and launched him on the last sunbeam. It had always to be done with great celerity. What happened? Did they wait a second too long to let him go? No one ever knew.

Anyway, the sunbeam gave way and the Halcyonian, the beautiful youth, fell through unfathomable spaces until he reached a poor, dull-looking country. He saw men and women there, busily running about and he asked them where he was. They laughed at him and said: “You must be of the strange family called the poets to put such a question. Why, young man, you are on earth.”

Somehow, the sound of that sentence struck him as rather harsh. He began to look around. . . .

Feeling lonely and hungry and cold (all impressions quite unknown to him in his native country) he started singing. Now, this is the most [Page 150] reasonable thing to do when one is lonely and hungry and cold. After a time, the unpleasant impressions had left him and he felt once more like a real Halcyonian.

Of course, he could not quite well find out how from this low-land, he would be able to catch the last sunbeam and arrive in Heaven and find God, but as soon as he sang the old joy came upon him and filled him with the certainty of final success.

So he sang, and many of the busy Eartheners paused and listened and some followed him wherever he wandered.

One day, they all reached a dim forest. It was in November, the earth was hard and frost-bitten and when the wind stirred the leaves, they uttered a forlorn wail. A barren gloom hung over the autumn-woods. The young Halcyonian began to sing. He sang of his native country, of the last sunbeam. He sang also of the land he was going to, of which he had caught glimpses when he had carried his friends to the mountain-top at the Hour of Silence.

And while he sang, a strange thing happened. The forest ground began to shine. At the magic of his lay, from all the dead leaves burst forth once more the gold of October glory and a thousand rays danced and glittered in the light.

Suddenly appeared a hermit who bowed to the beautiful youth and said: “Hail! Hail! to the Awakener.”

The young Halcyonian answered: “Oh Father why callest thou me an Awakener? I do but sing.”

But the hermit said: “Ye all, listen to my words.” And he told them that in everything on earth is enclosed a hidden light, is inbosomed an unvoiced song. He told them that as the Prince awakened the Sleeping Beauty, so the young Halcyonian awakened and kindled all the dormant rays that were waiting . . . . waiting.

He said that none but the Awakeners and the Kindlers knew of the buried diamond’s longing to be set free from the dark earth and when the time had come, to glitter in the sun.

And when the hermit had ended his speech, he said once more: “Hail! Hail! to the Awakener,” and then vanished from their sight.

The beautiful youth took up his song again and gradually the whole world he lived in became iridescent and scintillating and he lived in a golden universe. The more rays he freed, the more perfect became his song and the more like a message from the mountain-top.

And one day while he sang his heart stopped beating and in the golden and enchanted world he fell dead. And from his heart sprang forth a ray of light that reached the last sunbeam so there was a bridge of light from earth to Heaven.

Those who stood round the singer with the glowing heart said: “We must keep his heart so as not to lose the ray on which we can reach Heaven.”

So they carried him to a sacred spot on their highest mountain and there they took his heart from his breast and it glowed more and more brightly. They launched the singer on the bridge of light and he reached [Page 151] the celestial landing-place quite easily, but he arrived in Heaven without a heart.

AS a rule, heartless people are not admitted there, God being of the opinion that they would not be happy in his kingdom. So when Heaven’s keeper saw the singer arrive, he refused to open the golden portals saying: “The heartless cannot enter here.”

The poor singer asked: “What must the heartless do to acquire a heart?”

The keeper answered: “I think that the quickest means is to drink the bitter water of the river that runs through the Vale of Sorrow and to cross the ice-covered Wastes of Loneliness.”

The poor singer was so longing to enter into Heaven and to see God that he returned to earth by the next sunbeam to seek the river that flows through the Vale of Sorrow and the ice-covered Wastes of Loneliness.

He found them easily. And he drank of the bitter water but to his surprise, he found that it tasted sweeter than any honey. He entered on the ice-covered Wastes of Loneliness and at once they began to flower with such radiance that the singer thought: “Even Heaven cannot be more beautiful.”

The barren steppe had become an edenic garden and the singer walked in this garden and suddenly there he saw God.

And God said to him: “Wherever I am, it is Heaven. I will fill your breast with a new heart, a heart that cannot die. For to those who have enriched the earth with the gift of a heart of flesh, is given a heart immortal.

“That was what, unknowingly, you came to seek when you wandered, singing, on earth and when you returned there to drink of the bitter water of Sorrow and to tread the barren Wastes of Loneliness.” . . . And God did as He had said.

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IF Religions did not change and alter, there would be no need for renewal. In the beginning the tree was in all its beauty, and full of blossoms and fruits, but at last it became old and entirely fruitless, and it withered and decayed. This is why the True Gardener plants again an incomparable young tree of the same kind and species, which grows and develops day by day, and spreads a wide shadow in the divine garden, and yields admirable fruit. So it is with religions; through the passing of time they change from their original foundation, the truth of the Religion of God entirely departs, and the spirit of it does not stay; heresies appear, and it becomes a body without a soul. That is why it is renewed.—‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ.

[Page 152]

WHEN IS LIFE REAL?

DALE S. COLE

IF we are to make the most of this life, be effective and happy, we know that we must live in accordance with Divine Law, not just once in a while, but as constantly as we can, minute by minute and hour by hour. We know that the Divine Law for the “here and now,” as well as for the indefinite future, is the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, and that therein we are admonished to shoulder our full responsibilities in the affairs of this life but to be detached and severed from them. This means that we must be able to recognize the realities, as well as the Reality.

But just what is real and what is unreal in life’s experiences? It is questionable whether the human mind is capable of adequately answering, but there are many indications which may be of help if we but learn to use them. They are “straws in the wind” which may guide our thoughts and actions, and assist us in differentiating the real from the unreal, at least relatively, in so far as our capacity allows and our knowledge extends.

We have the classic explanation of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá of the great contrasts; light and darkness, ignorance and knowledge, sickness and health, good and evil. Taking light and darkness as an example, we know that light is the positive conception and experience. Science describes it as undulatory motions in a medium, the “ether,” which, entering the eye causes certain responses and finally the consciousness of “seeing.” Conversely, darkness is simply the absence of light, a negative, relatively nonexistent condition, and one which can be overcome or dissipated by light, either the natural rays of the sun or its energy transmuted into artificial light. Does darkness enter the eye? Light is measured and classified, but we do not try to measure darkness. We have no instruments for so doing. Similarly, we estimate and evaluate man’s knowledge not his ignorance, his possessions not his lack of them, except in such idioms as “poor as a church mouse.”

Is it not, then, quite obvious, that the positive, good aspects of these matters are the actualities, the realities, in the physical world?

We are told that everything has [Page 153] been created for man except the hearts of men. Is it not then apparent that as long as we live in the actual realms, those of the positive aspects— light, knowledge, health and goodness —that we stand a far better chance of being happy and effective, than if we exist in the negative phases of darkness, ignorance, sickness and evil? Hence ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s repeated admonition to “be happy,” and when not—to pray, confidently.

That these negative aspects do occur as experiences in life cannot be ignored or denied and we have to cope with them, but we have been given abilities and means of dealing with them with the help of God. They are the tests which develop character, not punishments. Living in the positive, actual, real conditions of life is living in accordance with Divine Law, in both its physical and spiritual applications.

We know that even such a beneficent and indispensable thing as fire has two possibilities for us, one good and one harmful. As long as we use fire as it should be used, it is good and helpful. In so doing we use it in accordance with certain inflexible laws. But when we transgress these natural rules, we suffer the consequences. This thought carries through most of the realms of nature and nature’s laws. We can use the forms of energy so far disclosed, heat, light, magnetism or electricity, correctly or incorrectly, obediently or disobediently to the laws which work for the improvement of mankind. In so far as our intention is right, and our actions just, we progress, even in the physical world and among the situations which arise therein.

THE real or actual aspects of life’s experiences are not mechanisms or functions of mechanisms. What is the reality of seeing as far as the human being is vitally concerned? Not any of the details of the physics of the phenomena, wave motion, frequency, reception into the eye, nervous response, etc., but the impression vision makes on our consciousness, and this act of seeing something is not a physical experience in the ultimate, for consciousness or awareness is an extra-physical experience. Therefore any knowledge gained by any of the senses must be translated into meaning for us through consciousness and interpretation before it has any real implications for us. It must pass from the physical mechanism and function into the extraphysical perception and experience.

Knowledge itself is not a physical possession by any standard. It is something more, and life’s facts and experiences have meaning beyond their physical content and suggestions. The symbols of mathematical equations, expressing physical laws, in many instances, seem to stand for that which is beyond the frontiers of earthly association, no matter how extensive the frontiers may be.

There was an old subject for debate to the effect that given a “sound,” it could not be truly a sound unless there were ears to hear it. The explanation of course depends upon the definition of sound. If it is merely a disturbance in the atmosphere, ears have nothing to do with it, for an atmospheric storm as such, does not convey the [Page 154] meanings of speech or music. The reality of sound is embodied in that which it conveys to us. The sounds given forth by an orchestra playing a beautiful symphony, when depicted by a sound-graphing apparatus, are simply a jumble of jagged, wave-like lines which do not in any sense explain the effect of joy or sadness, the association of ideas, or the pleasure which the hearing of the music may have on the listeners.

Such examples might be multiplied almost indefinitely, but is it not clear that we can, by thinking, seek out and recognize at least some of the actualities and realities in many experiences of life, and that by so doing we are inevitably led to something which is extra-terrestrial and consequently spiritual?

LIFE is much more a matter of events and experiences than it is a matter of things. Things are but instruments which contribute, in one way or another, to living. Events and experiences can always be subjected to the test—what do they mean? If we are able to answer the question, we are quite likely to arrive at the reality of a matter, that which is actual and has meaning for us.

We can become convinced of that truth of a proposition in two ways; by having “positive” knowledge of it, or by “feeling.” These two methods of reception might be designated as “intellect” and “emotion,” or as mind and heart, both of which can and do serve as receptors, or as windows through which the light of truth may enter consciousness. Even if we have what we believe is positive knowledge about any matter, we may not “feel sure” of it. Mind may say that it is so, but if a faith or confidence is not germinated, we remain unconvinced. That is why ‘Abdu’l-Bahá once said that the “heart” has a language of its own. In effect, it is the final censor.

The acceptance of a reality involves a knowing and a feeling, before assurance comes. The knowing may be a matter of search which can be carried on voluntarily, but the feeling of faith springs up within and cannot be forced at will.

The scientific method of investigation employs first the assumption of a hypothesis that something is or is not true. Experiment follows to determine facts which may be either positive or negative. Once evidence has been established the scientist considers the matter proven, and he probably has a feeling of confidence or faith in the results, which often can be expressed as a formula or equation. But his “conviction” of the rightness of the proposition is an inner experience. If this is true of physical experiences, how much more true it must be of extra-physical events.

The scientific method has proved highly successful in the analytical world and some such method may be of assistance to us in learning to recognize and appreciate the more subtle realities, hence the instruction to investigate without bias.

One of the most mysterious existences known is that of electricity. Although we have learned much about it and how to use it, its ultimate character is still a mystery. Even its utility lay dormant and unappreciated [Page 155] for a long time. It is believed to be a form of energy, perhaps the basic form, but what, actually, is energy? Does this not suggest to us that although we may not be able now to learn all there is to be known about spiritual realities, we may learn enough to be able to recognize the practical possibilities and to receive assistance from them?

Thus it now seems that all physical existences and laws have about them much that cannot be understood completely in terms of physical conceptions, and that there is a boundary beyond which the physical sciences cease and extra-physical ones must begin; that the realities of all events and experiences are spiritual and not material in their ultimate nature, and that to learn of them we must use our extra-physical faculties, thought, imagination, memory, and inspiration, without overlooking that mysterious one of “feeling.” Two elements of the requisite technique are prayer and meditation.

The process involves a passing from the consideration of what is factually real and true of any matter to a higher consideration of what is just, right and in accordance with Divine Will and Law. Perhaps if we become convinced first of the justice of a matter, the reality or truth will emerge almost automatically, thus reversing the usual procedure.

That which seems most real to me about some great painting may not seem so to you at all. We differ in our susceptibilities and receptivities. While we may not agree as to what the picture means in detail, we both agree that the meaning is an extra-physical quantity, something experienced in the consciousness and perhaps inexplicable in words, but alike to both of us in kind and perhaps in effect. We both react spiritually to it. If our reactions differ slightly, the difference does not disprove the essentially spiritual quality of the reality of the painting. Its actuality is not in the pigments or the arrangement of them, but in the idea and even beyond that, in our responses to it.

ENOUGH has been said to indicate that the answer to the question, “what is real,” about any existence or event, is a matter of analysis and response. The more subtle the subject, the more difficult the analysis.

As in the acquirement of any human skill, practice lends facility. If we inquire sincerely into the reality of this or that, diligently and persistently trying to fathom the meaning, even though we are not entirely successful, the exercise in itself is beneficial, for we are thinking in nonmaterial terms, an act which may attract Divine confirmations.

When some obstacle presents itself, the indicated method is to determine, if humanly possible, what is real about the situation. This knowledge, if gained, contributes much to the solution of the difficulty. Consultation with others helps.

When some blessing comes our way, realization of what is real about it, may prevent us from its misuse, or from its proving more of a handicap than a boon.

Those things and events are real which have spiritual significance, because human life is more spiritual [Page 156] than physical in essence. In a sense, nothing that exists is devoid of spiritual meaning because all things are manifestations of the power of the Creator. But those phases and aspects of events and things which possess the greatest degree of reality for us are those which have the greatest spiritual significance.

To become adept at recognizing that which is real, is to become more and more spiritual, and consequently to progress in the knowledge of God by learning of the components of His creation, regardless of what the components may be. One course may involve pain, another joy.

Realities exist in every thing and in every event. Some of them may be quite obvious, while others are veiled and elusive. All realities express both the letter and the spirit of Divine Law. To become aware of them is to become sensitized and conscious of the operation of that law here and now, hour by hour.

Knowledge is usually acquired by degrees. It does not burst upon us. Likewise if we can acquire spiritual consciousness of the realities of life for periods of a few minutes at a time, these periods, with practice, may lengthen into hours and days, until we truly live in a continual awareness of the actual operation of Divine Law, a station which is none other than “the way,” appreciative of realities and unbothered by unrealities, the actual living of life in accordance with the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh. Then is life real.

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THE inaction, or the movement of man, depends upon the assistance of God. If he is not aided, he is not able to do either good or evil. But when the help of existence comes from the Generous Lord, he is able to do both good and evil; but if the help is cut off, he remains absolutely helpless. This is why in the Holy Books they speak of the help and assistance of God. So this condition is like that of a ship, which is moved by the power of the wind or steam; if this power ceases, the ship cannot move at all. Nevertheless, the rudder of the ship turns it to either side, and the power of the steam moves it in the desired direction. . . . This motion does not come from the ship; no, it comes from the wind or steam. In the same way, in all the action or inaction of man, he received power from the help of God; but the choice of good or evil belongs to the man himself.—‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ.

[Page 157]

MOVEMENT IN ITS SIGNIFICANCE

WILLIAM ROESSLER

THE slightest human expression from birth to death, before and after, cannot happen except by way of movement. We have done little as a humanity so far in exploring Movement as one of the cardinal, creative, vital aspects of life. Despite our great dancers, little has been done that is comprehensive. Yoga has developed a highly ramified and oriented study of human movement control which is astounding in its scope, it is true. However, it is perhaps this very intense ramification and finite orientation that confuses the issue, so that any of the significance of Movement to humanity is lost.

No doubt if we take the material we have at hand and move on from there, we will arrive at something, and at something constructive, if we try hard enough. A great deal has been said, is being said, of Dance Education. It is time now to delve deeper beneath the surface—to explore more fully—to uncover some bases on which we can build our growth in the knowledge of Movement.

The most obvious place to begin the study of movement is in our own fine instrument for movement—our own body. Right here a point can be made to follow the thought through —in a very true sense Movement is an instrument of human expression, and the human body is, in turn, the instrument of Movement. Also, there is another drive which will urge us to the study of Movement—in ourselves —and that is the law of unity. If life is one it is the one and there can be no two ways about it. From the point of view of body and body movement—that means that body and body movement are included in the larger-infinite Man—not separate from, and to be denied a significant reality. Right in this body of ours can be discovered to each of us, and experienced, rhythmic laws, movement mechanics, and finally, movement in its significance as the instrument for creative Human Expression. No one of us but says something constantly through Movement. And it is that saying which makes our statement towards life. And, it is that saying which needs our study and contemplation if we would complete our purpose.

[Page 158]

WORLD ECONOMY

Book Review

DALE S. COLE

THE importance and inevitability of a world economy in actual operation is not, at the moment, receiving much attention from the statesmen of the nations. Championing the idea now requires courage and the spirit of a pioneer, and any such effort should interest the Bahá’í world because a world economy is included in the Divine Plan of Bahá’u’lláh for the reorganization of the affairs of mankind.

Mr. Oscar Newfang, in his recent book “Economic Welfare” undertakes a “non-partisan discussion” of “a plan for economic security for every family.” From a progressive viewpoint, the book is interesting because he expands the idea of “family” to include all the peoples of the world. After adequately sketching in the background of past economic experience, and the foreground of present conditions, he turns to the essential necessity of a “world economy.”

Quoting from the introduction, the purpose of the book is clearly expressed. “In treating world economy realistically, in the manner that it actually exists among the nations of the world, it is necessary to discuss the great question of the organization of the world for the establishment of universal justice and permanent world peace. Just as the advanced civilized nations everywhere have found it necessary more and more to regulate and restrain the economic savagery of ungoverned economy and to replace it by an economic government, so it is absolutely necessary for the economic welfare of mankind that the anarchy of the jungle of nations, devouring one another and being devoured, scheming and plotting against one another’s existence and welfare, overreaching one another, discriminating against and cheating one another, must be replaced by a system of world law and order, before mankind can arrive at the stage where every human being shall be assured of at least a minimum of subsistence, free from anxiety and free from fear of violence.”

According to the author, no true world economy exists but one must and will be evolved, in which natural resources will be treated as a common [Page 159] heritage.

“The natural resources of the earth are very unevenly distributed among the various countries. Unless these resources, which are the result of no man’s or no nation’s labor, are treated as a common heritage of the whole human race and access to them is permitted on terms that are fair and equal to the producers of all countries, the nations which lack essential resources within their borders will be forced constantly to plan for the seizure of the lands whose resources will remedy this lack, and the world must continually be agitated by threatened warfare, armament races, alliances and counter alliances, increasing debt burdens, and hampered and decreased economic welfare.”

Fair terms of international competition both as regards production and distribution, should be arrived at cooperatively, making easier and surer the enforcement of contracts and obligations, and gradually removing existing barriers to international trade. Modification in the questions of prices, currency and banking are factors of the problem.

“Fair terms of international competition must be established by world economic regulation, if the country with the lowest and most inhuman standards is not to degrade the standards of traders in all other countries to its own levels by the force of competition.”

“The gradual removal of barriers to international trade erected by practically all nations of the world, especially since the world war, is a further objective, which must be attained by world economic regulation, if the highest economic welfare of all nations is to be achieved.”

Means of transportation have changed rapidly and “equitable rulings” should be applied to transport companies of all nations.

“As a necessary adjunct to an organized world transport system there should be an organization of communications, postal, cable, telephone and radio. . . . Freedom of travel and migration is another broad field in which exclusively national regulation is inadequate and internationally irritating.”

Any world economy, to be successful, must be assured an environment of world peace. “As long as the fear of war exists, . . . the economic welfare of the citizens will be sacrificed to the political security of the state.” Fear of war raises prices and imposes severe tax burdens. The economic results of war are ruinous.

Some effort was made after the World War to achieve a measure of world economy with the League of Nations as one instrumentality.

THE results of the League’s efforts to achieve world economy, however, have fallen far short of the intentions of its founders. . . . The authority and power of the League of Nations have been proved by this time to be too weak to “promote international cooperation” or to command that ‘international peace and security’ which is the essential prerequisite of economic disarmament and a freer world economy.”

“Until the obsolete doctrine of international anarchy or unimpaired sovereignty is discarded by the nations, [Page 160] there will be no possibility of organized and firmly enforced international justice and world peace; and until peace is firmly established and assured, there will be no possibility of the world’s citizens achieving the degree of economic welfare which would result from the free and unhampered course of the world’s commerce.”

Mr. Newfang expresses the belief that abolition of war would make possible a world economy which might bring the following benefits:

1. By removing the financial burdens of war preparation and pensions, consuming power and standard of living would rise.

2. Unrestricted use of world’s resources should result in greater production, lower commodity prices, a generally improved economic condition.

3. Both worker and investor would benefit from “stabilization of business and employment.”

4. Backward regions would be developed by a freer flow of money and investment.

5. “A reasonable regulation of the world’s population in accordance with the progress of subsistence would raise living standard in all nations.”

6. Fear of poverty and violence would be removed.

“Perhaps the greatest nightmares of the human race taken as a whole are the fear of the ruthless violence of war and the fear of inescapable economic want. While the first of these fears seems to diminish with the progress of civilization and the size and strength of states, the second seems to increase with the complexity and the extent of the machinery of civilization. The firm establishment of a permanent world peace through an adequate political organization embracing all nations would remove the haunting fear of that wholesale murder which we call war; and the establishment of a world economy would go far toward the removal of helpless dread of economic destitution from causes wholly beyond the individual’s own control.”

In the concluding paragraph the author states—“With the final abolition of war, the application of the partnership system to industry, the adoption of measures for building a reserve for town and country dwellers, and with the wider distribution of concentrated wealth at the death of the holder, it seems probable that mankind can eventually achieve a condition of freedom from fear of violence and from fear of want.”

The book accents very clearly one of the elements of the Divine Plan, touching upon its ramifications in the business and economic world. It has not been written from a religious or spiritual standpoint, but its contents cannot be devoid of many spiritual nuances and associations. It is recommended to all those interested in the place of world economy in the onrushing New World Order.