World Unity/Volume 10/Issue 3/Text

[Page 145]

WORLD UNITY

INTERPRETING THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE

JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, Ed/*ur Horace HoLtey, Managing Editor

CONTENTS

Vol. X June, 1932 No. 3 Woodrow Wilson Frontispiece The Principle of Integration Editorial Poets of Peace and the Civil War Merle Eugene Curti Our Wit’s End C. F. Ansley Orient and Occident: The Social Problem Hans Kohn The Reign of Law in Nature Hugh McCurdy Woodward The Attitude Created by National Power © George Malcolm Stratton Steps Toward Balkan Union Joseph S. Roucck The Epoch of Aggessive Individualism Paul Hinner This Praying World—Greece John William Kitching Book Notes H. H. Correspondence

Round Table

WoRLD UNITY MAGAZINE is published by WorLD UNtry PUBLISHING CORPORA- TION, 4 East 12th Street, New York City: Mary Rumsey Movivs, president; HORACE HOLLEY, vice-president; FLORENCE MORTON, treasurer; JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, secretary. Published monthly, 25 cents a copy, $2.50 a year in the United States and in all other countries (postage included). THe Wortp UNITY I KLISHING CORPORATION and its editors welcome correspondence on articles related to the aims and purposes of the magazine. Printed in U. S. A. Contents copvaighted 1932 by Wortd UNity PUBLISHING CORPORATION. �[Page 146]

WOODROW WILSON Portrait by F. Soulé Campbell

�[Page 147]THE PRINCIPLE OF INTEGRATION

LSE

EDITORIAL

HAT something more is needed if we are to succeed in solv-

ing the crucial world problems, is self-evident. Good and

valuable as are the new agencies that have been created and

the new forces that have been set in motion, they do not go nearly far enough, nor do they touch clearly the primary and fun- damental need of the world today. Among all the panaceas that are being oftered and the proposals made to bring about world recovery, the supreme need is for some coordinating and integra- tive principle that shall become the directing power in this ‘new age.” furnishing new viewpoints, employing new methods and creating literally a new spirit. Efforts to balance budgets, to solve the unemployment problem, to furnish the needed relief—all these are necessary and they will succeed temporarily, but every intelli- gent person knows that these do not touch the roots of our troubles nor will they solve the really fundamental problems.

As has been said, every statesman in Europe and America and every intelligent business man knows what needs to be done, but cither they do not dare to advocate the needed thing or else are powerless to effect it. In our judgment the reason for this strange paralysis resting upon the mental and moral leadership of today, oes deeper than mere political ambitions and economic considera- tions. It grows out of the absence of any clear coordinating prin- aple that can grip the mind, arouse the imagination and compel the conscience of men and of nations. We are thrashing around helplessly in a medley of seemingly unrelated disorders and prob- ‘cms, Without the guiding principle that might relate them so in- tclligently to one another as to reveal them as parts of one complex

147 �[Page 148]148 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

whole, that cannot be separated or regarded apart from the whole.

This need is suggested in a recent address by Austen Chamber- lain of England where he says: ‘The policy of each for himself and the devil take the hindmost has failed as it always does fail. No man can serve his country well in such times who does not fecl himself something more than an American, Englishman, French- man, Italian or German; he must remember that he is a citizen of the world.” Nicholas Murray Butler finds the same basic fault with our plan to continue for half a century to try to collect war debts. The same need is voiced by the economists and business leaders in all countries in the matter of high tariffs.

Is it not clear that this new age, into which all admit we have come, demands as the basic principle of integration, the sense that we are living in a world that has become one, a world in which all interests have become mutual interests, in which we must all go forward or else backward together, where narrow nationalisms must give way to a more inclusive internationalism, a world in which the ruthless competitions of the past must yield to a more intelligent cooperation along all lines? If this realization of a genuine world unity could become the dominating principle at Geneva now, at Lausanne in June, and later in Washington when the Allied Debts must be reconsidered, how much more rapid our progress might be!

To quote again from John Dewey: ‘The greatest need of the world today is not for new organizations or new institutions, but rather for an awareness of the new relations into which we have come on this planet... What we need is a new spirit, a new con- sciousness.” It is peculiarly the function of religion to create and foster this new spirit, to awaken this new consciousness. But whether religion can rise to its great opportunity will depend upon its willingness to abandon all petty sectarianisms, its ability to be- come so possessed by the new knowledge that it will find expres- sion in terms of man’s highest and best today, its whole-hearted dedication of itself to the supreme task of building a genuine world community here on the earth.

JH. �[Page 149]POETS OF PEACE AND THE CIVIL WAR

by MERLE EUGENE CuRTI

Department of History, Smith Colleae

picturesque and romantic appeal of war; yet a few poets in

all times and places have spoken out against it. It remained,

however, for the poets of Romanticism to make of opposi- tion to war all but a major theme. Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Cowper exposed its brutality and barbarism, its false glory and glamour, and denounced it in the name of humanitarianism and democracy. Since American literature has been so largely a liter- ature of Romanticism, American poets have not unnaturally added their testimony against Mars to that of their romantic fellow poets in the Old World. Like them, they have, in condemning war, appealed to the heart rather than to the head. Like them, they have dealt in generalities. True to the canons of Romanticism, the pacifism of our poets has also been marked by a deep hatred of oppression.

American poets, however, inspired by the conditions and promise of American life, have given their pacifism a shading in some respects unique. From Philip Freneau to Jaoquin Miller American men of letters have urged that it was their country’s special mission to introduce to the world a new order in which there should be no war. In so urging, it is true, they were hardly more than dramatizing the fact that, thanks to geographical good- tortune, and the tasks of reclaiming the wilderness, America only very tardily entered the competition for armaments and empire. Kut to them America, free from standing armies, and possessing a harmonious federal system, seemed to be a model for war-ridden

149

] ITERATURE, like art and music, has tended to emphasize the �[Page 150]150 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

Europe. With buoyant optimism our romantic poets thus identi. fied the reign of peace with a new day which they believed Americ. had been destined by history to herald.

In both England and America the toughness and sincerity of the pacifist convictions of the Romantic poets were tested, dur- ing the course of the nineteenth century, by many wars. Of all the ¢ struggles the Civil War provided the most stringent test. By its very nature a civil war is a severer test of pacifism than a foreign war, particularly when it is associated with purposes or alleged purposes demanding from idealists some measure of loyalty. Be- fore the Civil War, Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman had long agitated for cultural solidarity, and the War from the beginning promised what the long period of peace had not achieved. Even more to the point was the fact that, after the Emancipation Proc! mation, the struggle took on the aspects of a crusade against slavery. tyranny and oppression. Hence the Civil War furnishes a decisive test of the vitality of romantic pacitism on the part of its leading literary exponents. It is the purpose of this paper to examine and interpret the reactions to the Civil War of our leading romantic poets, almost all of whom had pieviously denounced war and celebrated peace.

Whittier, the Quaker puct of reform, who came as near being the laureate of the American peace movement as anyone, was by reason of his religion best equipped to remain true to his peace principles. He had shown an active interest in the American Peace Society (on his death he was to bequeath to it five hundred dollars. and throughout his life he was ready on every occasion, whether it was a peace congress or the laying of the Atlantic cable, with « hymn of peace. In such occasional poems as The Peace Conventio: at Brussels (1848) he celebrated the courage of the heroes of peace and bolstered up their faith. His humanitarianism, irreconcilab!- with bloodshed, found expression in Mogg Megone (1830-1833):

Brutal alike in deed and word,

With callous heart and hand of strife, How like a fiend may man be made, Plying the foul and monstrous trade, �[Page 151]POBTS OF PEACE AND THE CIVIL WAR 1§1

Whose sickle is the reeking sword!

Intense abolitionist that he was, Whittier’s Quaker pacifism was sorely tried when the Civ., War seemed to promise the destruction of slavery. It is true that in the uncertain weeks which preceded firing on Fort Sumter he counselled patience and delay. He would neither yield eternal right by compromise, nor leap into “fratricidal fight.” But when once it was decided not to permit the “erring sisters” to depart in peace, Whittier bowed his head to the inevitable: |

It, tor the age to come, this hour

Of trial hath vicarious power,

And, blest by Thee, our present pain

Be liberty’s eternal gain,

Thy will be done!

And tf, in our unworthiness,

Thy sacrificial wine we press,

If from Thy ordeal’s heated bars

Our feet are seamed with crimson scars,

Thy will be done!

tudeed, had it not been for his allegiance to the Friends, there can oe little doubt that he would have compromised with his peace principles even more than he did. Ata Friend’s gathering in Rhode island he bade the Quakers, in a poem of reflective thought and poignant fecling, to be truc to their testimony against war. It was tor them to relieve suffering rather than to take the sword. But one wooks in vain in Whittier’s war poetry for anything like a contem- nution of the War; he does not see fit to observe that even so holy a cause as freedom might be ill-served by bloodshed. No, for Whit- tier War, unholy instrument though it is, may be used for a great cod. Hf indeed, he does not go quite so far as to say this in so many words, clearly this is his meaning.

Longfellow, the apostle of kindliness and brotherhood, inter- preter of half a dozen national cultures to two hemispheres, had, by 1861, raised his voice many times against the war system. In

ingeline (1847) no less than in The Song of Hiawatha (1855)

ic had pictured the ill-effects of war: �[Page 152]1§2 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

All your strength is in your union, All your danger is in discord, Therefore be at peace henceforth, And as brothers live together. His poem, The Arsenal at Springfield (1844), which particular]; well illustrates the pacifism of sentiment and humanitarianism, had been widely used by peace societies, both in America and England, for propaganda. The poem, which was inspired by a visit to the arsenal at Springfield on his wedding trip, led Charles Sumner to remark that it was the only justification for the arsenal. Beginning by comparing the “burnished arms” of the arsenal with the pipes of an organ, the poet then tells how, expecting to hear celestial harmonies, he is startled by discordant noises, fierce choruses, and cries of agony. To a nation lifting its hand against a brother nation. let the curse of Cain forever outlaw it from the community otf states! Longfellow, with a poet’s interests, is not concerned with concrete means of effecting such an outlawry, but merely makes a general indictment. To him war is but the result of ignorance and superstition; in suggesting that the proper remedy is a new attitude towards it, he greatly over-simplified the problem: Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and forts Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals and forts.

When the Civil War threatened, Longfellow was not at once swept from his feet. Such a conflict was “‘a bitter thought” indeed. and he had no great heart, in those early months of 1861, for ‘this ghastly war.” If contemplating in his mind “the upturned faces ot the young dcad—the agonies of the wounded,” Longfellow te! “what an infernal thing war is,” yet he could but interpret it a: a contest of “slavery against freedom, the north wind against the southern pestilence.” But, partly no doubt, because he was over whelm 1 by grief over the tragic death of his wife, Longtcllos had ne xeart to bless the war in any poem of patriotism. "He re mained silent. When at last, in 1863, Tales of a Wayside In. appeared, Henry Richard, the greatest English pacifist of the nine �[Page 153]POETS OF PEACE AND THE CIVIL WAR 193

teenth century, thought he detected in it evidence that Longfellow was trying to teach a great pacific lesson to his countrymen, who were justifying an unchristian appeal to the sword by the argument that the war was necessary in order to free the slave. For in “The Saga of King Olaf” that redoutable Norse hero, who spreads the word of God by battle, himself perishes; and Richard felt that Longfellow was trying to tell the North that the end, no matter how noble, never justifies an unworthy means—that love is a stronger instrument than the sword:

Stronger than steel

Is the sword of the spirit;

Swifter than arrows,

The light of the truth is;

Greater than anger

Is love, and subdueth! But no; Richard, who had desperately hoped to hear from some American friend of peace word of an outspoken adherence to pac- inc principles, was wrong in thinking that these lines from Long- ‘cllow were intended to be such: “The Saga of King Olaf” had been written a year before secession. Tempered by a hatred of oppression, Longfellow’s pacifism, like that of other ramanticists, was not of sufficiently tough fiber to make him openly and vig- ously protest against the War.

Longfellow’s friend and neighbor, James Russel! Lowell, found t even easier to believe that God was on the side of the North. (certainly he was less stirred by the inhumanity of this great con- ‘est than Longfellow: he blessed the War in unequivocal terms. Itus, indeed, was scarcely to be expected from one who had gone « far in his defeatism during the Mexican war as to call upon Mussachusetts to secede from the Union and to denounce war ‘self as murder. Yet on the eve of the Civil War he insisted that « was far from being a “peace at any price” man. Not only did ve tind no trouble at all in justifying the appeal to arms by the two «ctions, but in 1865 he wrote to Charles Eliot Norton, ‘a war with -ngland would be the greatest calamity but one—being afraid of Lowell found his justification for an appeal to arms in a roman- �[Page 154]TS WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

tic conception that it was a cure for national sickness. He cited. indeed, no less an authority than Shakespeare himself:

O great corrector of enormous times,

Shaker of o'er rank states, thou grand decider

Of dusty and old titles, that heals’t with blood

The earth when she is sick, and curest the world

O' the pleurisy of people! The pacifism of the author of “Ez fur war, I call it murder,” was plainly an opportunistic variety, and all the tributes he had paid to Longtellow for his Arsenal at Springfield as well as his own power. ful satire on war were forgotten,

As early as 1838 the Concord philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, had given a public lecture under the auspices of the American Peace Society. In bold terms he expressed the conviction that it was America’s special mission to sponsor the cause of peace and he favored a Congress and a Court of Nations to that end Believing that universal peace was as certain as the prevalence o: civilization over barbarism, Emerson held that war would increas ingly reveal itself to sane men as an epidemic of insanity, ‘breaking out here and there like the cholera of intiuenza, infecting men > brains instead of their bowels.” With the exception of Thoreau. no other outstanding American man of letters paid such deterenc to the idea of non-resistance. In English Traits Emerson tells us that, asked to name an essentially “American” idea, an American theory of the “right future” of the country, he pointed to non-resist ance. It was, he went on, “the gun which does not need anothe: gun; the law of love and justice alone can ecitect a clean revolution Indeed, he believed that non-resistance required the highest typ. of heroism. For if peace were to be maintained, he had once sarc “{t must be by brave men, who have come up to the same heigii us the hero, namely, the will to carry their own life in their hands and stake it at any instant for their principle, but who have gone one step beyond the hero, and will not take another man’s lite men who have, by their intellectual insight, or by their moral cle vation, attained such a perception of their own intrinsic worth th’ they do not think property or their own bed ; a sufficient good to be �[Page 155]POETS OF PBACE AND THE CIVIL WAR T$§

saved by such dereliction of the principle as treating a man like sheep.”

Yet Emerson, both as an abolitionist and as a patriot, wel- comed the Civil War! How can such a discrepancy between words and deeds be explained? T think that individualism, which was the sevnote of his pacifism, provides an explanation. Emerson had, even While maintaining that the refusal of men to bear arms and feclare war would prove that they no longer had any madness in ‘heir brains, also praised the warrior as a hero, as a real individual. it 1s true that he had been perplexed by the capacity of the soldier ‘or crime as well as for heroism; but in times of crisis Emerson was struck by the heroism displayed by soldiers that he forgot their crimes. The Civil War furnished no such display of heroism on ‘he part of those who resisted the draft as did the World War, and ‘ scemed increasingly clear to Emerson that the War made men crocs when peace had failed to do so. A study of his Jowrnals ‘ows that it was this conviction which swept away his pacifism.

War, the searcher of character, the test of men, has tried already many reputations, pricked so many bladders” that Emerson wel- med it as an educator which made men see the bankruptev of all row views; which, as a great realist, “shatters everything flimsy ad shifty, sets aside all false issues and breaks through all that is t real as itself.” War now seemed to Emerson a potent tonic, a sagnetizer, reenforcing manly power “a hundred and a thousand omes.”” Like a frosty October morning it promised to restore to individual his moral and intellectual fiber, sharpening the eves / opening the minds of men to truths that they were once for- ‘den to speak.

Atter Appomatox, Emerson, who had made so much of the ivine force of love, believed that it was well that the rebels had con ‘pounded, rather than negotiated” into peace; well that they ould remember it; well that their inveterate brag had been

bled if not cured. After all, perhaps, this was what might have cn expected, from one who, in 1863, had felt that, since the con- + was one between the highest principles and the worst, a whole craton of men, even if completely annihilated, was not too dear �[Page 156]156 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

a price to pay for victory. The War to Emerson was a great moral agent which established the conviction that right would get done: that substituted chronic hope for chronic despair, and made man lives valuable that were not valuable before.

Of all American poets, none had celebrated more exuberant! than Walt Whitman the beauties of peace and international soli. darity; none had made such a cult of the idea of universal brother. hood of man as the author of Leaves of Grass. Indeed, he had suc- ceeded morc than anyone else in making commonplace themes ot peaceful life glow with athletic vigor and an almost intoxicating heroism. Yet the student of American poetry in 1861 might with much justification have suspected that Whitman, even more posi. tively than Lowell, Longfellow and Emerson, would glorify the War. When Lowell had called the Mexican crusade murder, Whit- man, ardent patriot that he was, believed that our soldiers, b fraternizing with the Mexicans, would spread fraternity and thus justify the War! While Whittier made much of his Quaker back. ground, Whitman seems never to have taken his very seriously Indeed, he had even maintained that the peace tenets of Quakerism could never become the creed of the race, for as long as men were men they would continue to love “the pride, pomp and circum stance of glorious war.” If, moreover, Lowell and Emerson hac desired a cultural unity for the whole nation, and if they belicvec that the Civil War promised to bring about such a cultural sol: dafity, Whitman had even more reason to support the War on that ground:, no one had expressed a more ardent cultural patriotis: than he. Like Emerson, Whitman had, in the long years of peac doubted the capacity of American leaders for great passions an. deeds. Then, too, should we not expect him to be deeply move: by the sense of comradeship which common dangers and commu: suffering always arouses? He, Walt Whitman, who had so ide. ized “intense and loving comradeship,” would he not, of all pe: sons, be most easily betrayed by this very root of his romantic p.c. fism into hearty acceptance of bloody battles?

Indeed, Whitman's first reaction to the sound of the trumpc was one of exultation. Beat! Beat! Drums! could well have bee

�[Page 157]POETS OF PEACE AND THE CIVIL WAR 197

used as a rallying cry by the recruiting agents. During the whole of the time that he served as a war nurse, he never entirely excluded ‘rom his mind the thought that, if the call came-to him to shoulder a musket, he might well answer the summons. Whitman's patriotism never once Hagged, and for no very long period during the War did he fail to find something of grandeur in it. One need only read Drum Taps to appreciate this. Yet, when all this is said, it can still be maintained that Whitman's essential reaction to the War, even while it raged, was that of a friend of peace. He alone of all our pocts wrought out of it poetry which takes high rank with that of the greatest poets who have condemned war.

At the first sight of blood, Whitman felt “horrified and dis- usted”: his heart grew sick of war, which seemed to him “like a great slaughter-house and the men mutually butchering each other.” The suftering of the wounded was his suffering: he loved ite too well to justify its greatest enemy. It is no wonder that the London Peace Society circulated widely as a tract his moving poem

A Letter from Camp,” with its poignant, powerful recital of the erict of a family for its dead. Even after the Emancipation Procla- nation, Whitman, who had once said that the hideous slave trade ‘hould be, if necessary, wiped out by cannon, seriously doubted vhether the freedom of the slaves could justify so terrible and so siood, a purchase. In such poems as “A Vigil Strange I Kept,”

Adicu to a Soldier,” “Ashes of Soldiers,” and “A Sight in Camp the Daybreak Gray and Dim,” one finds compelling arguments canst war; and always they are inspired by Whitman’s passionate ove of life and his belief in its absolute sanctity. The wound- esser could not hate his enemy:

“For my enemy is dead—a man divine as myself is dead.” To this sacredness of human life—he had always opposed capital tushment—was a value far more significant than the values of

sahit and wrong by which Emerson and Lowell were guided in stitving the War.

In regard to the draft and resistance to it, Whitman was “pulled

iozen different ways in his mind,” and hardly knew what to tank or do. If he fluctuated in his feelings, he was not without �[Page 158]158 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

sympathy for those who retused compulsory service. In this ques tion, as in that of the War itself, he suffered by virtue of the con- flict in his mind, a conflict between his patriotism and his hatrec of the destruction of life. “Tt is cruel to be so tossed from pilla: to post in one’s judgment.”

Yet he could not put his intense, vigorous belief in life out o: his mind or his art:

Melt. melt away ve armies .. disperse ye, blue-clad soldiers

Resolve ve back again, give up for good your deadly arms

Others the arms, the fields henceforth for vou, or South o:

North,

With saner wars, sweet wars, life-giving wars. Whitman's pacifism is thus at once more virile and more univers. than that of men like Emerson and Whittier and Lowell and Long fellow. Thev hated war in the abstract because it seemed mora wrong; but a given war, which appeared to them right. they « costed and justitied. Whitman hated war, when he once came t know it, because it was incompatible with life. Try as he wou. to find a mystical compensation in death, he could not torget t): ritiless inhumanity of battle; he could not reconcile the mor. grandeur of war, nor his patriotism, or his exuberant love of min. tering to those who were suffering, with the plain tact that destroved the men he loved. Hence he could exclaim

Away with themes of war! Away with war itself!

Hence from mv shuddering sight to never more return

that show of blackened, mutilated corpses!

That hell unpent and raid of blood fit for wild ages of

tor lap- tongued wolves, not for reasoning men!

And in its stead speed industry's campaigns!

Whitman's pacifism, then, is related directly to his love of &: and his belief in its sanctity: this passionate faith in its integr and validity is the same love and faith which, in the World W« taspired thousands of men to resist the War at any cost. Litt

wonder that they took comfort from Whitman, and quoted in th: harassed little journal his poetry of pacifism. Since pacifism of

sort alone strikes directly at man-power, the onc indispensable ¢ : �[Page 159]POETS OF PEACE AND THE CIVIL WAR 1§y

ment of warfare in all times, it promises, in the eves of many tricnds of peace today, the most certain path to the ending of war. If thes are right, Whitman was their prophet and poct in a measure greater than other American poets of peace.

And this, strangely enough, remains true in spite of the fact that, when tested by the Civil War, Whitman faltered, confused and perplexed. A pantheist and a mystic, he was used to saving -es to life and ves to death; and war was lite and death. This habit ot affirmation made it hard for him to discriminate. Yet this very tact saved him from Lowell's complacent acceptance of the War without, apparently, a single qualm; and from Emerson's proneness to resolve a conflict by dealing only in generalities and abstract moral values. Faced with the conerete terribleness of war, Whit- man alone came near asking the fundamental question: does an end ever justify war as a means? He did not quite ask it: and in the fact that he did not squarely face this problem lies the essential seakness of his pacifism, and, in a greater degree, that of all the other romantic poets of peace. In varving degrees the pacitism ot Whittier, Lowell, Emerson and Whitman was diluted by a lovalty to other ideals, thought of as justice, heroism, and patriotism: in

arving degrees these ideals won the ascendancy when the test ame. They had talked peace in time of peace, and made war in ic of war. �[Page 160]OUR WIT’'S END by

C. F. ANSLEY

Y A process of reasoning that would not be acceptable to our more sophisticated day, Plato reached the conclusion that the right number of households to constitute a state is 5,040. Aristotle dissented, after expressing his admiration for the high authority; obviously, Aristotle thought, the number is too large. He agreed with Plato that the welfare of the citizens requires that effective measures be taken by the state to keep its houscholds from exceeding the number found to be best, whether 5.040 or some smaller number. It was a hard problem; but, Plato savs, “It after all there be an excess of citizens and we are it our wit's end, there is still the old device of sending out a colon

The state and the city then were one—a city state. Typica’s the citizen was a farmer, but he was not a business farmer. His home was inside the walls of his city or near them and he hac functions and occupations that are not combined with modern business farming. He made little money by marketing the more «: less accidental surplus of raw products of his farm. Other occ. pations viclded more money than farming, as they do still; bu farming gave the houschold the most of its livi ing and in other w. contributed to a good life.

While a houschold that farmed no land was untortunate, so also was a houschold that did not have its home within or near tay city walls. Man, Aristotle says, is more gregarious than bees. ‘The amenities of gregarious living are not now precisely what the: were when ina city no larger than Des Moines, Youngstown, of Scranton, one might stop on the street corner to talk with Socrates

Plato. or might see a new play by Sophocles, Euripides. of �[Page 161]OUR WIT'S END 167

Aristophanes. Athens, to be sure, was too large, as Plato and Ar- istotle knew and as the event proved. In our day, however, a city of 5,040 houses, or considerably fewer as Aristotle thought need- ful, may at least provide good medical and dental service, good schools, and many other things that the business farm commonly lacks. Man is still gregarious, and many American business farmers understand that their business condemns their families to be under- privileged. Professor T. N. Carver of Harvard says that “the »roblem of country life is not solved when you have made the turmer prosperous.” “Farmers are leaving the farm most rapidly where farming is most prosperous. This is borne out absolutely by statistical evidence.” Farmers move to the city, Professor Carver says, if they can wttord to. The most of them cannot move unless they can secure miplovment in the city; and some difficulty in this matter has a up the rural exodus. Metropolitan papers agree that there “too many business farmers, and men in high official stations have urged these farmers to diminish their production; but at resent thev cannot find employment in the city and must produce _thev can where they are. Many of them are assisted more or less production by refugees from the city—kins-folk or old neigh- ors. Measures have been taken to keep farmers out of cities, but Vays remain open to travel in the opposite direction. The cerprivileged are not all on business farms; many in fact prefer wt they find there to what they have experienced in the cities. Aristotle savs that “among ourselves’’—that is, in a Greek city ‘te “no one is in want.” Business farming was not an approved — Jopation, but farming to produce what the household could use 4 approved, Every household, it was held, should have an acre + two of land. Vast” estates, of twenty-five acres or even more, cre exceptional and temporary. An acre rightly managed pro- ‘uces an amazing amount, and to the Greeks economics meant i management. The husbandmen did not limit their industry to tilling the soil «1 caring for live stock. Of olives they made oil; of grapes they �[Page 162]162 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

made wine. The city state ought to be “'self-sufficing,” though no city state ever quite reached that goal. Over-production was not. recognized evil at that time, and no city state was accused of in- juring others by dumping.

After centuries of life in city states, the Greeks accepted morc grandiose ideas. The Parthenon was left unfinished, permanently. “The Greek miracle” was ended; the men who had made it wer men of city states. Greece continues, but adds no more to thy world’s orders of architecture or forms of poetry or schools ot philosophy or roster of greatest names. While the miracle lasted wit’s end was always a confident new beginning. New city states were established all through the region. Colonists took with ther from the mother city a sacred fire and verv little else. The state. Aristotle says, originates “in the bare needs of life and continue: in existence “for the sake of a good life.” So the colony origs: ated and continued.

In another connection Aristotle savs: “It is true indeed thw: these and many other things have been invented several times over in the course of ages, or rather times without number; for necessits may be supposed to have taught men the inventions which wer absolutely required, and when these were provided, it was natura: that other things which would adorn and enrich lite should grow up by degrees.” When their turn came, the Anglo-Saxon invented wats of colonizing that had much in common with the old Greck was The Anglo-Saxons became the greatest colonizers in the world their total loss of all ability to colonize occurred within the men ory of men vet living. A little while ago an American Boston ©

Windsor, though not at its wit’s end, would send out colonist to found a “'settlement”’—a New Boston or New Windsor. At it- wit's end now, an Anglo-Saxon Boston or Windsor, in England or in America, remains at its wit's end.

Like the Greek colony, the American settlement was no much concerned with business farming or with producing any thing for the world market. The soldiers of tac American Revo lution are commonly said to have been farmers for the most part. as no doubt they were; but it is safe to say that there was not �[Page 163]OUR WITS END 163

among them one business farmer as the term is now understood. Inspection of old accounts show how the business of a settlement was done. The farmer made maple sugar, or nails, or leather. tor which he was credited at the store. He bought something clse made in the settlement and was charged for it. At the end of the vear he balanced his account with the merchant by hauling wood a day and a half watn his voke of oxen. No money changed hands. The merchant, if be wished could issue scrip, as he can today, but there was seldom occasion for it. |

Whatever limitations this approximately self-sufficient com- munity had, it had adequate resistance to deflation. Want was -!most unknown, and unemployment would have been inconceiv- able: there is always something to do on an acre of land. Condt- tions seem to have been favorable to human development as in ike communities of human scale in ancient Greece and Palestine und medieval Europe. Not much is to be expected from the social cavironment of the park bench or the isolated farm.

The individualism of an American pioneer is an urban dis- covery of recent date. The American Indians were not individ: valists, and the white men could not hold their own against Indian tribes except in a compact setilement. The settlement organization continucd long after danger from Indians ended, tor it was an accepted mode of pursuit of happiness. The American pioneer pertectly understood a fact that Aristotle states: “The individual, hen isolated, is not self-sufficing.” Much of the work of the

ttlements or neighborhood was done by “husking-bees,” “quilt: nh bees,” and other community functions. The logs for the pio- LUr’s house were assembled by his neighbors in a “‘log-rolling;” rusing™ put the logs in place; the completion of the structure .as ccleorated by a house-warming.

The recent Anglo-Saxon endeavors to colonize by dispersing business farmers over waste land are ephemeral; in Canada, in Australia, in the United States, the dispersing farmers stay only as ong as they must. Like other gregarious men, they want physicians, dentists, schools, neighbors. The American government required

homesteader to live five years on his quarter section in order to

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secure title to the wild land; the government has assumed that the farmer is primarily a business man, playing the world markct. The outcome of the endeavors toward a segregated tributary agri- culture is a chronic need of farm relief.

To Roger Williams or to Brigham Young the problem of surplus population in the cities and on the farms would have seemed much as it would have seemed to Plato or to Aristotle. All these men would now be held visionary. Many things would be repeated to them; in American they would be told that land can no longer be secured, though states are spending much to hide abandoned farms by reforesting. Myths are in the way, and our Phidias or our Abraham Lincoln may keep to his bench in the park.

Planned economics are advocated, but are not accessible to the men on the park benches. No plan is approved; nobody is author- ized to draw up a plan. Russia, it is said, has a plan. A goal of that plan, “New Russia’s Primer” says, is that all shall live in cities and that ‘‘a city of one hundred thousand inhabitants will be considered too large.” ‘The difference between city and village, between peasant and workman, will disappear.” The Russian dictatorship has stated from the beginning that it is temp- orary. Presumably, then, the new cities, combining agriculture and industry, will have some measure of home rule, as the Greck city state or the American settlement had. Russia has not yet achieved its goal; it is embarrassed by disappointments in its business farming.

America is sometimes blamed for intolerance. Its record in the matter might bear inspection. It has shown that it will tolerate any community that does not interfere with others. It has not objected to communism that does not try to force communism on others: many American settlements, beginning with Jamestown and Plymouth, have been communistic. Any race or religion or political faith in America that wishes to establish or strengthen a settlement, capitalistic or communistic, would probably tind support and no opposition under our government. The revolution that is discussed, under tolerance, would probably end somehow in compelling people to live in such communities as they are �[Page 165]OUR WITS BND 165

now quite free to establish or strengthen in any state of the Union. The way of the Greek city state or of the American settlement is accessible on its own terms if ever it is preferred to park benches and wit's end. A revolution might be useless if we could not col- onize our abandoned land, and it might be unnecessary if we could.

Bankrupt farmers and men from the park benches would tind no soft life in building or strengthening a rural community. They would not be leading a soft life. A Roger Williams or a Brigham Young, with the needful divine fire, might induce some of those who find themselves superfluous to see what they could do as a community. Our founding fathers would recognize in such an enterprise the pursuit of happiness. The Greeks would have expected the aristocracy of the colony in later times, the ex patridae, to trace their ancestry back to the men from park benches and business farms—the excess of citizens, at their wit’s end, who fe- membered the old device and knew the fire. �[Page 166]ORIENT AND OCCIDENT hy

HANS RON

THE SOCIAL PROBLEM The Labor Movement

NDUSTRIALIZATION, Which Has been conspicuous in China and

India especially, has brought about a state of aifairs—in the

former country, in particular—which calls to mind the early

industrial period in Europe. The workers are rapidly learning to utilize the strike and the boycott as weapons. The union move- ment among workers in China spread swiftly. At the first union congress in Canton on May 1, 1523, only fifty delegates were pres- ent, representing 230,000 w orkers Fes twelve cities. At the second congress in 1925 there were already 230 delegates, representing 570,000 workers. The pan-Chinese labor federation was founded at that time. At the fourth congress in Hankow in May, 1y27, as many as 2,800,000 workers are said to have been represented. This pan-Chinese union movement was one of the elements contributing towards Chinese unity, just as the association of producers was. This association—organized in Tientsin in December, 1926, in op- position to the working class—included manufacturers, merchants and financiers from ail parts of China. China was the first oriental country in which the class struggle assumed modern forms. Orig: inally, even here, a co-operation of the middle class with the work- ing class seemed possible, as long as the mass movements of the working class were directed against foreign enterprise. (The strike in May, 1925, in the textile factories belonging tu ie Japanese 1s a case in point.) Here social and national motives combined, since foreign powers, in defense of their economic and social interests, 166 �[Page 167]ORIENT AND OCCIDENT 167

‘rcatened even the national sovereignty of China. The movement crst took on the character of a genuine class struggle when it began ‘a spread among the peasantry. Then the great landlords allied themselves with the middle class. The consequence was that a breach occurred between the right and the left wing of the national ‘evolutionary party of China (Kuomintang, February, 1928), with the right wing maintaining the upper hand. China aftords the first example in the Orient of the breaking up of the national movement through class oppositions of a social nature. In Turkey and in i evpt the national governments, from the start, have viewed all .tbor movements with suspicion and have nipped in the bud all questionable communistic activities.” A series of strikes in Egypt during the years after the World War, and a number of attempts towards union organization, were without lasting result. Attempts towards an organization of the Arab working class have been made only recently in Syria and Palestine.

Only in India has the labor movement spread more extensively, sithout having come into opposition here, as yet, with the middle class national movement. The number of industrial workers in India is estimated at one and a half millions. The beginning has been nitde towards legislation for the protection of labor. The first law tor the regulation of factory labor was passed in India as early as

St, but only the laws of 1911, and of 1922 especially, brought about a marked improvement in conditions, The latter establishes . maximum working-day of eleven hours, and a sixty-hour week vith a weekly holiday, and prohibits night work for women and .] factory work tor children under twelve. Protective labor legis-

uOn as applied to mines was somewhat improved in 19.23, and perators were made universally lable in case of accident. The indian Trade Union Act of 1926 granted certain rights to unions ‘coognized by the courts. The all-Indian brotherhood of unions ects annually and represents about 250,000 workers. The number 1 strikes is very great, though in only about a third of these strikes o the workers achieve their objective. As the labor movement vows the beginning of organization, and improvement of working sonditions, in all countries of the Orient, the center of gravity of �[Page 168]168 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

the social struggle in the Orient shifts more and more to the peas. antry, from which industrial workers are just beginning to separate themselves during the present generation.

The Peasant Problem

The great social struggles which the Orient is confronting arc not struggles of the working class industry, but the movement for emancipation of the peasant class. Bolshevist propagandists in China have already perceived that a social revolution in the East must be, to a still greater extent than in Russia itself, a joint move- ment of the peasant and the working classes. Because of the con. stantly increasing population in the last decade and the demand for land which this has occasioned, the situation of the peasantry in the East is becoming worse. The burden of taxation in the Oricnt falls on the poorer classes, and particularly upon the tillers of the soil, since in all oriental countries, with very few exceptions, in- direct taxation and land taxes go to make up the lion’s share ot public revenues. One of the greatest obstacles in the way of agr- cultural development is the excessive indebtedness of the smal! farmer. The means for improvement are to be found not so much in the technical perfecting of agricultural methods as in the awak- ening of initiative in the masses, sunk in lethargy by inveterate tra ditionalism and centuries of privation. The co-operative movement which has made advances in India and Egypt of late vears ofters « partial aid in this direction. But this movement, too, can attain its goal only if the peasantry is trained to a more intelligent and more active participation in economic life. The more progressive cle ments among national movements in the Orient are making this goal their objective. It is a part of that effort towards the cieva. tion of the people as a whole, which every incipient nationalise preaches. Another phase of this eftort is the struggle to raise the status of woman and make possible her participation in’ public aftairs.

The Feminist Movement

In India, as in Muhammedan countries, both traditional legis

lation and social ethics have refused to place women on a par wit! �[Page 169]ORIENT AND OCCIDENT 169

men—not only in public affairs but also in the eves of the law. Only in the last two decades has the emancipation of women in India made any important progress. A woman, Mrs. Annie Besant-—-a Luropean, it is truae—was president of the all-Indian national con- gress in. 1917. A Hindu woman, the poctess Sarojini Naidu, tol- owed her as president i in 1925. As early as 1849 a Hindu founded the first girls’ school in Calcutta. Progressive Hindus soon took up the struggle against the exclusion of women from the outer world in accordance with the Muhammedan custom, against child mar- rages and in mitigation of the evils caused by the prohibition of the re-marriage of widows. Hindu women, almost simultancously with the women of Europe, have gained the right to votc. The Indian constitution of 1919 gave provincial legislatures the right ty grant women the active franchise. In 1920 the two Indian states i oo and Jhalawar granted women equal suffrage with They were succeeded in 1921 by the provincial legislature of Madras. at its first session. Almost all the other provincial legisla- cures of India followed. In many instances this concession of the tianchise was granted unanimously. When the Indian constitution 1 1926 offered the possibility of granting women the passive fran- vie also, they received it at once in the provinces of Assam, Ma- ‘as. Bombay, the Punjab and the central provinces. In Madras a oman has been elected vice-president of the provincial legisla- ate. In the Indian states of Mysore, Cochin and Rajkot women o the full franchise also, and in Travancore a woman delegate ~ been appointed minister. In the provinces in which women . be clected to the legislature they may also be elected to the cert parliament of India, by virtue of a decree of this highest ‘iunentary body in 122. Ihe political emancipation of women is taking place more in Muhammedan countries. With the exception of the Sovict Turkey is the only country in which a full emancipation has on 2 tealiaed The Turkish republic has carricd the social and J emancipation of women through to a finish. The emanci- Con citorts of the Sovict"uthorities have frequently encountered “cr opposition in the more backward parts of the Union. In the �[Page 170]170 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

more progressive Muhammedan districts, such as Crimea, Aver baijan and Kazan, women were already emancipated immediatei: after the revolution; in Turkestan concentrated efforts in this ¢: rection were made only after 1927. A congress of working wome: and peasant women of Uzbeistan was held in Samarkand on Ox tober 1, 1927, at which the announcement was made that in the soviets of this republic there were more than 5,000 women, includ: ing twenty-five presidents of village sovicts. Outside of the Soviet Union and Turkey the process of social emancipation for Islamic women is working itself out only by degrees. Political or leg: emancipation is still far in the future. Nevertheless, women since the World War are participating in the political life of the countr in a way altogether unknown before. During the strikes and riots of 1919, Muhammedan women in Egypt took part in the demon: strations. Since that time they have formed clubs which hav: played thgis part in the national movement, and have frequent!: surpassed the men in radicalism. Muhammedan women in Syris Irag and Palestine are likewise beginning to participate in th: national movement, and to pledge themselves publicly on behalf o: their countih’s destiny. Here the emancipation of women is taking place directly trom the angle of the nation’s struggle for liberty. The struggle for the improvement of conditions for wome: is only a part of the universal movement towards social reform, directed against all those medieval religious traditions—such « poly my. child marriage, the purchase of women and the caste system—which are at variance with the social feeling of the moder: west. The penetration of modern social ideas is destroying ts oriental cosmos, loosening the soil and, along with the decom» ition of the old growths, mellowing it for a far-reaching revole tionization. Young people in particular—student bodies—are bx coming the promoters ot efforts towards political and social revo: tion. This is true even for countries like Japan. Because of her co: servative dynastic policy and her prudent and skilful regulation : the reorganization process from above, Japan seemed proot agains too severe shocks. Since 1918 “the people, so solid before the became a nation,” are beginning “to split up; the old ethics an. �[Page 171]ORIENT AND OCCIDENT I7I

customs are already severely shaken by western cultural influences, nd in the degree in which the state advanced in international ommoerce it saw itself exposed to the influences of socialism and communism also.” In 1918 the Japanese student movement seemed at the hour of dawn: as German students once fought for the iteals of their time—for the privileges of national freedom and aidividual liberty guaranteed by a national constitution—so Jap- incse students pledged themselves to fight for the new ideals of thor time. Out of a further hundred-year advance of world history these new ideals were born: to the spirit of social liberation and ‘oternational peace.” Thus, in the transformation of the Orient of today, the national and democratic revolution, which causes it to resemble the Europe of a hundred years ago, is blending with the ocginning of the social revolution, which is receiving some of its mpetus trom what is being done in Russia, just as Europe a hun- ied vears ago was receiving its impulse from what was being done i France, Student movements in Japan, China and India are sim- if in many respects to those in Russia, in which the word “free- ‘orm’ has always not only a political but also a social significance. (operating more strongly in this direction than ideological influ- ences is the steadily growing interweaving of the Orient in the siternational economic system, in intracontinental commerce and -ommunication, which has led during the last decade to the crea- “on of the economic factor for the growing unity of all mankind. �[Page 172]THE COMMON MESSAGE OF THE WORLD'S GREAT TEACHERS by HucH McCurpy Woopow arp

Deraviment of Pinlosophy ¢ bdnecation, Brigham Yourna Unives ets

THE REIGN OF LAW IN NATURE

RV we living in a universe of order, uniformity, depend. ‘stv, and law or in a universe of caprice and uncertainty: The answer to this question constitutes one of the dit ferences betwecn the lower and the higher regions, be tween paganism and the great spiritual philosophies. In the un developed groups of the race, man is full of fears. The world is which he lives presents a puzzle on all sides. Everything has a spir: within it; the trees, the rivers, the mountains, and the animal: These spirits are apt to act in any way at any time. The uncertaint of their actions fills the animist with terror. He knows he is in con tact with life, but he has no idea how that life is going to act. 1: does the best he can to satisfy these uncertain powers, but fror dav to day life is much in the nature of chance escape from tl: whims, emotions, and passions of these supposed spirits. His rc ligious ceremonies consist mostly in exercises to frighten aw. these evil spirits. Loud noises are made, great shouting, and othe disturbances designed to overcome the evil influence of these man spirits. If we were to locate the people among whom animism + most dominant, they would include the natives of Africa, man peoples of the Malay Peninsula, large groups in Southern Indi much of the East India archipelago. Some traces of it are foun. in Japan, China, and the Philippine Islands. A species of religious worship higher than aaimism is chara terized by animal worship. Such worship represents a stage of a

172

�[Page 173]THE WORLD'S GREAT TEACHERS 173

sstment where the mind has become conscious of certain great torces and principles, such as the principle of creation in the pro- creative functions, the principle of preservation of life, and of the power to destroy life. These powers and principles are identified with certain animals which become sacred. In Egy pt throngs of priests chant their ceremonies before the cat, the crocodile, the bull, and the jackal. The bull is made a deity because of his great pro- creative power. The cow in India becomes sacred, and is worshiped oecause of her power to save life. In India and Java the snake is vorshiped because of its power to kill, and so on, through a list of many different animals which are worshiped because of some sup- posed power or principle which they represent.

Through these two stages of religion science is beginning to work its way. The Medicine Man is held responsible tor results under the penalty of death. He is, therefore, forced to observe the natural phenomena around him. He observes that some piants are good while some are destructive to life. He observes the action of tue Winds and of the waves. He observes the stars and the wearing away of the rocks. Thus we have the beginning of medicine, as- ‘onuay, botany, and geology.

A third stage in religious adjustment is represented by the

sagan religions. Here the personalities behind the torces have be- ome more dignified. The pagan gods and goddesses are mostly in ‘uc torm of men and women. Through this stage of religious de- ‘clopment which, in general, is more advanced than animism of sumal worship, man has become conscious of some uniformity in ‘ae cavironment about him. His natural surroundings and the men «id women with whom he associates have become more resiable. in connection with their activity he detects some dependable prin- ples and laws but he still thinks of his gods as uncertain, capr- ious, and undependable. Much of Hebrew literature is full ot ac- cunts of the people attempting to placate their gods. These pagan ods represent all the uncertain, unreliable, and destructive emo- “ions of men. Some are kind and some are vicious. They are jcalous, cavious, selfish, and often are represented as gods of revenge.

Man gave to these gods great power which made them all the �[Page 174]174 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

more dangerous and difficult to live with. Since the gods were under no restraint and free to act according to their whims, man was in constant need of keeping them in good humor. This was done by placating them with gifts, by sacrificing to them the things precious to the heart of man, such as the best fruits of the crop and. in many cases, beautiful maidens and brave men. Most of these practices and rituals were established because of the very uncertainty which the nature of the gods produced. Into the personality of these gods man reads the things he discovered and approved in his own nature. In this stage of worship as well as in the lower forms, re- ligion is characterized by an attempt to find life and happens largely through the senuous nature. The satisfactions of lust and appetites are made part of the ordinary ceremony. The pagan gods of Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Babylon were destroyed in the indul: gence of their own lusts and dissipations.

A fourth stage of religious development might well be desig: nated as the Law Giver religions. Here the thought of one powcr- ful God gradually becomes supreme. At first he is a God of powet and authority. He is the great Law Giver. To Him man looks for commandments. This one Supreme God, in turn, has his law- givers; such as Moses, Muhammed, and others. It has not yet oc: curred te the individuai adjusting to the Law Giver system that the laws of life are laid in the very heart of nature; that the life of God is expressed in the uniform laws of nature. He still expects God to give personally His commandments direct to man as He will. On tablets of stone as with Moses, or on shects of silk, as with Muhammed, God's laws are handed down. His judgments are no: to be questioned. His word is law.

In this stage of religious development great orthodox system: are developed because the word of the prophet, or law-giver, 1: the word of God. It is sacred, and therefore, must not be changed This stage represents a marked advance over paganism, but it he not reached the highest point in religious evolution. Under thi type of response, God gradually changes from jealous, revengetul. envious, and powerful king to a loving, merciful, and sympathety Father. �[Page 175]TIS WORLD'S GREAT TEACHERS 175

In the great spiritual philosophies discussed in this volume, a new order of things is perceived. In these philosophies which prob- ably represent the highest religious adjustment of the race the mas- ter teachers of mankind seem to have risen to a plane of intelligence which sees God, and all Nature, moving forward according to law. Nature becomes dependable; God is just, because of the uniformity of His ways.

It is this vision of the Reign of Law in and through all nature which characterizes the great spiritual religions, and sets them over in divect contrast to paganism aad animism. With them there is a moral order in nature as exact as the physical order. To know the law and conform one’s life to it is the way of salvation, Morality of righteousness means to be in harmony with the great construc- uve laws of one’s own nature. The principles which underlie moral and spiritual development are as definite and demonstrable as the principles which govern in the physical world. Man, by constant and diligent quest to discover the finer elements of his own nature, can find the very essence of the divine within himself. “The King: dom will not come by observation.” It is within the individual. The spiritual life of man will come into full bloom no faster than ne becomes master of his own life, physically, mentally, spiritually, and morally. To the extent that man can conform his life to this Reign of Law in the life of God he is saved.

The very concept of the reign of law in all nature presupposes i high degree of intelligence. It is this concept of the reign of law ‘hat characterizes the modern age of science and constitutes the oasis upon which the scientific method rests. Alfred Lord White- scad, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University says: “There .an be no living science unless there is a widespread instinctive con- action of an order of things and in particular of an order ot nature.”

Surprising as it may seem to many of our western minds, this concept is not a new one. It is new to us in the West largely because

Sour ignorance of what has been taught in other parts of the serld and in other periods of history, but as far back as 1500 B.C., 0. Hinduism in all its phases rested upoa a belict in universality �[Page 176]176 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

of law in all nature. Nature to the early Hindu was dependable. Brahma was just because his ways were uniform.

Presenting the Hindu theory on this problem, Mr. Williams in his book “Hinduism,” says: “Their law is one of naturalness in nature. Thev can see the greatness in all things and the unified self is the primary benefactor to their belief. Each goes to fulfill the great law which necessarily is that powerful natural law.”

In Buddhism the principle is still more prominent. L. Adam: Beck in her “Story of Oriental Philosophy,” quotes the following “Whatever arises is inevitably the eftect of a previous cause, and therefore, law is the universal and the universal is law. Does this apply to man? Absolutely. To the mind? Again absolutely. Al. these are forces, sequences, processes, as is everything in the un: verse. Nothing is unrelated.” “All this is law. From tis law nothing is exempt; from the mightiest of the astronomical system: to the microscopic life of which science has only lately becom: aware. And all life is one in stone, plant, insect, animal, man. Buddha, in his last words to his beloved disciples, said: “But twen ty-nine was I when I renounced the world, Subhadda, sceking aite: good. For fifty vears and yet another vear since I set out; a pilgrin have I been, through the wise realm of System and Law—outsic thereof no victory can be won.”

The philosophers of India are not the only ones of an cor! day to conccive of this reign of law throughout all nature. In to: castern China 600 vears betore the Christian era, Lao Tze, the ven crable philosopher said: Go back to Mother Nature, for lving o: her bosom, you will be guided on the proper way.” "Leave wt. things to take their natural course, and do not interfere.” "AL things in nature work silently. They come into being and posse» nothing. They fulfill their functions and make no claim.” “Ma takes his law from the earth; the earth takes its law from Heaver: Heaven takes its law from Tao; but the law of Tao is its ow: spontaneity.”

Contucius, the man who has done more, perhaps, to influenc Chinese thought and Chinese philosophy than any other single in dividual, gives a system of philosophy and ethics based square: �[Page 177]WORLD'S GREAT TEACHERS io

upon the unformity and dependability in God and nature. To him even the moral law is a part of the great universal law which gov- crns planets, worlds, and men. Concerning the laws of nature with- in the individual, he said: ‘What Heaven has conferred is called THE NATURE; to be in accordance with this nature is called THE paTH of duty; the regulation of this path is called INSTRUCTION.” An ode in an early Chinese classic reads as follows: “It is said in the Book of poetry.— ‘Heaven in producing mankind, Gave them their various faculties and relations with their specific laws,’ These are the invariable rules of nature for all to hold, And all love this admirable virtue.” Confucius, commenting upon this stanza said: “The maker of this ode knew indeed the principle of our fiature. We may thus sce that cvery faculty and relation must have its law. and since there are cavariable rules for all to hold, they consequently love this admir- wble virtue.” ln the following statement Confucius makes the idea still more ‘cuinite: “The moral laws form one system with the laws by which Heaven and Earth support and contain, overshadow and canopy things. These moral laws form the same systems with the law \\ ease the seasons succeed Gach reed and the sun Levent moon

at Liws by w which all oreated thiseai are sadn end ies dose bene “ves, each in its order and system without conflict and confusion, ‘cc lesser forces flowing everywhere like river currents, while the

t forces of creation go silently and steadily on.”

In the same century tn which the Chinese philosophers were cory stulizing this faith in the universality of law in nature and in the dependability of the wavs of God, another philosopher in the west- ern world was voicing the same thoughts. Zoroaster in Persia thus instructs his people: “You have learned earthly things and heaven: things. Learn, then, that you shall not escape the laws of carth while vou are on earth, nor the laws of heaven when you are in neaven,

f �[Page 178]178 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

Of the forces which have influenced the western mind, the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth stand among the first. Mr. Henry C. King, in his ‘Ethics of Jesus,” states: “He (Jesus) has the clear sense that life is so pervasively one that there can be no accident in it, but that one may count everywhere upon great laws involved in the very fidelity of the Father.” The teachings of Jesus are fuil of such sayings as the following: “It is easier for Heaven and earth to pass than one tittle of the law to fail.” “Consider the lilies of the field how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Through his entire teachings we fecl the dependability of things, the uniformity of law, the justice of God, and the possibility of knowing these laws. ‘Know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” In fact, it is the contention of all these teachers that man can become a free being no faster than he becomes aware of these laws and develops sufficient control to adjust his life to them.

It is this faith in law, this confidence in a definite order run- ning through all things that has been the “pillar of cloud by day" and the “pillar of fire by night’ leading scientific research, philo- sophic study, and religious faith ever forward in their search for truth. By assuming an order of law man has been able to organize and use the following sciences: mathematics, astronomy, geometry, physics, chemistry, zoology, botany, and psychology. It is the principle upon which we are seeking to formulate sociology, eco: nomics, and political sciences. The same working hypothesis has made possible many more specialized sciences. By it man has come to know and control much of the physical world. The many thous- and inventions have enabled him to turn the forces of nature to his advantage. It would take much space to enumerate the achicve- ments of phsyical science due to this assumption of law. It has given man definite control of many of the laws of physical health. Pestilence and disease have been eliminated by it. Today it bids fair to do even greater work in mental health than it has accom- plished in physical health. Gradually we are coming to understand the laws which underlic permanent government and stable soci! �[Page 179]*

THE WORLDS GREAT TEACHERS 179

conditions.

The great masters of wisdom would not only agree with us in all of these modern adjustments to the physical world but they would say also that the building of a beautiful temple of character also rests upon definite principles and laws. Is it unreasonable to assume that this search for law will yet lead the mind of man to recognize those laws and principles upon which his moral, intel- lectual, and spiritual growth depend? Such, at least, is the hope in- spired in one as he reads these great moral and spiritual philosophies.

Mr Raymond Blaine Fosdick writing in The Golden Book Magazine for November, 1930, says: ‘The advance of the last three generations has been almost exclusively along the line of the natural sciences—physics, chemistry, and biology. In spite of his new weapons and increased powers man himself remains as he always has been—irrational, impulsive, emotional, bound by cus- toms which he will not analyze, the victim of age-old conventions and prejudices. The social sciences have advanced scarcely at all. This divergence between the natural sciences and the social sci- cnces, between machinery and control, between the kingdom of the world and the kingdom of the spirit—this is where the hazard lies.”

It is becoming increasingly clearer to the modern mind in cvery field of life that this important principle, namely, “Know the law and adjust to it,” proclaimed by these master teachers, con- stitutes the basis of all true plans of progress or growth. In nu- merous ways they have stated that man becomes saved as fast as he knows the law and rightly applies his knowledge. For those who must live by faith alone the teachings of these men on definite sub- ‘ects have served as a guide. It must, however, be clear to every student of these philosophies that a strong appeal is made for man to demonstrate the law for himself. In fact, the finest scientific spirit of modern times could have no more pertect goal than the thought expressed so often by these master minds: Do the works “nd know the Law. �[Page 180]THE ATTITUDE CREATED BY NATIONAL POWER by

GEORGE MALCOLM STRATTON Author of “Social Psychology of International Conduct,” etc.

VERY nation secks power and fears it. For in a nation’s own

hands power is grateful of itself and is grateful also as an

instrument useful to secure many another thing desired. But

looking out upon any other nation, the more powerful that other nation is, the more is she dangerous and the more to be feared. And so, until a better way is followed, the society of na- tions commonly runs a course whereby the more a nation is satisfied with herself the less is she liked by others, having become for them an object of dread if not of hatred. And in consequence the satis- faction in one’s own power is both embittered and endangered. For while nations enjoy being feared, they are at heart social creatures and enjoy also being praised and not hated, and enjoy fecling secure in their possessions.

In general the more a nation has power, the less is it content with what it has and the less is there of restraint upon its will to have still greater power. For this and other reasons, the greater the extent of territory already held, the greater is the “necessity” for expansion. The diminutive sovereignty of Liechtenstein or ot Andorra hardly felt as intolerably cramped before the World War as did Russia and Germany. Italy, having become unified and having gained new territory in Europe and Africa, now begins to feel suffocated by her narrow confines. The United States and Great Britain with their great possessions have almost continually felt the need of another island here and a more extended coast-line there. Their eyes are always lighting on some Naboth’s vineyard. 180 �[Page 181]THE ATTITUDE CREATED BY NATIONAL POWBR 181

With smallness there often goes a mind accommodated to being small: there being less of the means to attain political mastery, there is apt to be less ambition, less truculence.

But sma!lness gives no guarantec of inward happiness, as we know from Ireland and Albania and Nicaragua and many another small state of Eastern Europe, Central America, and South Amer- ica. Nor does great size always bring a sense of being cramped, as we know from the China of many centuries before the present dav. But in general the large countries make their neighbors most anxious; and the small countries make their neighbors least anx- ious. It is France, Great Britain, pre-war Germany, Russia, and the United States that have been given to restless expansion. No nation that stands in the way of any of them can feel at case.

But the desire for power is not only a desire for land and its raw materials and ports and markets. There is also a desire for strength through a rounded nationality. Upon the territory ad- Jucent to each nation in eastern Europe there are men and women of one’s own stock and culture, who are no less desirable because with them are perhaps fertile valleys or rich mines or forests or a harbor or a “corridor” from somewhere to somewhere else. Such a population and all these other things are bound up with military strength; they are good in themselves, and good also for soldiery ind the support of soldiery. And with the military strength there comes a temptation to be less accommodating; to be a little shorter of speech; and the irritation from this, added to the menace from the armament itself, increases the dislike felt by neighbors. But unfortunately the military strength breeds a sense of security, and brings in also a certain pleasant incense of deference from others, mingled with their dislike. Japan, in developing naval and military power with other western ways, has attained a high place in the councils of the world; she is at once feared and disliked and treated with respect. The United States with great territory and growing wcalth and populatio:, and a desire to stand with the first in naval strength is beginning to notice a similar complex attitude toward herself,

And besides territory, wealth, and population, there is the �[Page 182]182 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

grade of a nation’s integration, of its morale. The degree in which a nation possesses nationhood is a part of its power and helps to form the nation’s own attitude and that of its neighbors. But the international danger from any nation is not proportioned—other things equal—solely and directly to its strength of organization. There is danger also in want of organization, as well as in fullness of it; for a nation can be a menace to its neighbors not only by being strong in this respect, but in being weak.

The list of nations most completely united, most successful in their political organization, would certainly include Great Britain. France, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Japan, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Argentine, Chile, and the United States. These have both the form of nationhood and its substance; have considerable independence of action and have internal strength. Less completely unified at the moment are Russia, Spain, certain States of the Baltic, the Balkan States, Turkey, Mexico, and several States to Mexico's south. China, long torn by factions, has at last, let us hope, an effective government. Such countries for the time are less fully nations; so that nationhood need not be present or absent entire, but may be present in varying degree.

This is important, for the less unified countries court inter- vention, which turns loose the forces of disorder hard to control. Nations that are neighbors to an unintegrated country are awak- ened with anxiety or cupidity. But disturbance of the normal re- lation of neighbors may be caused in another way by a nation that lacks morale. For although few things are worse in the end, yet few things are more effective for the moment than a foreign war to tide a nation over internal dissensions; temporarily war acts as a simulant, and gives a certain coherence within. A weak State, if not too weak for the effort, is therefore tempted to pick a quarrel with some still weaker neighbor. Germany sought unity by this course, by wars with Denmark, Austria, and France. The obvious morale which comes in time of successful war is doubtless re- sponsible for the doctrine that a nation degenerates unless at fre- quent intervals it goes to war—a doctrine which is of course re- futed by Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Argentina. But �[Page 183]THE ATTITUDE CREATED BY NATIONAL POWER 183

undoubtedly war is a tempting expedient for sick States.

II

But there is another aspect of power and weakness which is perhaps of still more importance today. In spite of the menace which comes from national strength, the robust nations—includ- ing. of course, the small robust nations—are the very ones which in ceneral have given the heartier impulse to international advance- ment. The best promise of order comes, after all, from the peoples of national vigor. Your valetudinarians among the nations are too much preoccupied each with his own little ailment. The rest of the world need not fear them; neither can it count upon them to icnd a hand in constructive work.

All this may well be remembered by any nation tempted to csc its own anxiety by weakening internally its neighbors, de- stroying that neighbor's morale by fostering dissension and perhaps tcbellion. It is a dangerous road to security, and a blind road. The injury to the neighbor causes bad blood in him, and the weakness in the neighborhood means disorder in the neighborhood, and un- happy days for all concerned. The destroyers of political unity in others thus reap the whirlwind.

Those who work intelligently for their own peace of mind therefore work for a reasonabie contentment in their neighbors, with inner strength and lessened grudges there. China for this reason will be most providently dealt with by assisting her to strength. And France is beginning to be reconciled to the thought of a united and prosperous Germany.

But the guarantees against the abuse of power are, on every hand, still unassuring. So that, in the form in which it has usually becn sought, power is rarely seen in another nation without dis- trust. The attitude of the Latin American nations toward the | nited States has here and there been uncordial, not because of any nivsterious defect or excess on these Latin-American countries, nor occause the United States is the chief of sinners. America, that could at any moment have taken all of Mexico and much besides, mught feel inclined to exclaim as did Lord Clive before those who

�[Page 184]184 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

accused him of taking too much: "By God, Mr. Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at mv own moderation.” But Americu’s neighbors cannot but be distrustful of her immense commerci.l. naval, and political power. And this feeling which exists in the Western Hemisphere exists also in a part of Asia and is appearing in Europe. Nor is it astonishing. For rarely is there love for the man who holds a mortgage on the homestead; or for the fronticrs- man with uncommonly many pistols in his belt. So the usual dis- trust among nations is intensified by any extraordinary might. Ver- bal assurances of goodwill, or even one’s own consciousiiess of rec: titude will not prevent this attitude toward a nation which holds the fate of others so largely in its hands. Any nation that in the present stage of international society possesses such uncontrolled power is not merely thought to be a menace, it 7s a menace. Each nation thus seeks power, and indirectly secks hatred.

And yet the nations that attain to power are not merely the despair of one who looks for international goodwill; they are also his hope. For there are no better relations among nations al! of which are weak. Aggressors were found among the parts of ancient Greece with its miniature States, in the India of earlier centuries, in Italy when she was nothing but fragments. The German States wherever the central power over them was impotent were at logger heads with one another. The weak States of eastern Europe and of Latin America are not faster friends than are France, England. Germany, Japan, Russia, and the United States. While the growth of power causes in neighbors dismay and the desire to shatter the growing power, yet—as with the union of English and Scots in Great Britain, or of Britons and Boers in South Africa—it marks an extension of order, a lessened friction of the several parts, a dis. ciplining of them mind and body into cooperation. So it has been with the American federation of States, and with united Italy anc united Germany. The larger body is more dangerous, and yet 1 is an achievement in the quieting of discord, in the increase ot tolerance and cooperation.

Self-determination, in so far as it means division and the es- tablishment of separate nations by small and discontented peoples. �[Page 185]THB ATTITUDE CREATED BY NATIONAL POWER IS §

must accordingly be looked at askance. It is in general a move in the wrong direction. For if the international life is to be vigorous t needs strong members; it needs nations that have proved their ibility to take unhappy elements and make them into fellow- workers. But the decision to become fellow-workers is best when t is attained freely and after long deliberation, rather than at the cannon’s mouth. Whenever a people is already within a larger ad- ministration not utterly tyrannical, the interest of the nations gen- erally suggests that this people school itself to compromise, to some disappointment of its longing to stand free and alone. It is better not only for Great Britain but also for France, Italy, Germany, and the United States if Ireland finally accepts a place within the Empire. This kind of choice leads toward, rather than away from, a strengthened world-society.

Nations are unwise, then, not in desiring power for them- «ives, but in desiring disjoined, competitive power; in seeking strength for the nation itself, and relative weakness for all others. [he mutual ill-will which comes of such a course they try to meet by obtaining still more power each for himself, and thus increasing the danger to all. But she way out of this vicious circle ts begin- ning Lo appear in agreements of various kinds which impose volun- niry restrictions upon the use of power to create not a common ainger but a common security. The power must be so organized as ‘o bring a security in which all the nations can share, and not a sccurity of one group of nations against another group. In so far .» the nations move toward this new use of power, the sting of power is gone. �[Page 186]STEPS TOWARD BALKAN UNION

by JosePH S. Roucrek

Profesor of Socral Science, Centenary Junior College, Hackettstown, N. J.

wo recent attempts of unofficial representatives of the Bal.

kan nations to initiate steps leading to the eventual forma

tion of a Balkan Union deserve more attention by the world:

minded observers than has been given to these meetings in our public press and discussions. The Balkans remain one of the most important spheres of the world, insofar as here events ma any day disrupt the peace structure of Europe and of the world We must not forget that the conflagration of the World Wa: flamed up there in 1914, that the control of the Balkans and of th. Dardanelles was the primary object for which the Central Power: fought their losing battle so determinedly, that through the inter vention of Turkey and Bulgaria the greatest war in history wa prolonged; it must be added that it was in the Balkans tha the victory of the Allied armies was earliest, and most decisivel: won. Even after the Peace, the problem of Turkey kept Europ: agitated for four more years and the periodical difficulties arisin: from the exchanges of the populations have until very recent! required the attention of statesmen and of the League of Nation: Nor is it yet a situation to view as settled, for the whole probler of the Balkans is still a challenging one, and the efforts to provid: the basis of lasting peace in the Balkans should deserve our mo serious attention.

If we are to appreciate the difficulties with which the enlight ened leadership of the Balkans must still contend, we must unde: stand the background of their problems. Let us take a look at th: map of Europe. If we focus our attention upon the southeaster: part of Europe we shall see that even nature has not been ver tha

�[Page 187]STBPS TOWARD BALKAN UNION IST

charitable. Geographical obstacles.are immediately evident and the consequent lack of communications has greatly intensified the sep- statism of each nation. As the export trade reveals (about three- ‘ourths of the whole are agricultural products), the whole region is industrially undeveloped. Hence there is a lack of balance be- ‘ween industry and agriculture, a balance which would produce social and economic equilibrium, as weli as political stability. The Balkan nations so far have had very little reason to depend on the exchange of their products and thus form, mutual interests and aterchanges of economic goods. Greece alone is in need of im- sorted grain. This lack of economic interdependence is no doubt responsible for the lack of political, social and cultural interrela- ions and interconnections. At the same time it intensifics the na- nonalistic behaviour of each nation. Thus there is created an at- mosphere in which each country is a potential competitor of each other country.

From the historical viewpoint, the Balkan countries had been most unkindly treated. Subject for centuries to Turkish domina- on, Serbia, Roumania, Greece, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Albania switcered in every way possible. The impress of the past oppression » still discerned psychologically, if not materially. The weapons t the “weak” had to be used; cheating, chronic opposition, hatred, violent murders, sense of martyrdom and delusions of persecutions whether based on imaginative or real reasons), consequent delu- on of grandeur and exaggerated feeling of self-importance, over- timation attached to the military profession and to the banditry and the dislike of honest labor—all these and other attitudes have seen the heritage of oppression. If the oppressor was long opposed bv the general method of non-cooperation and strong passive re- sstance, the habit naturally remained. In addition, each of the balkan nations won its independence by a series of wars, by means

t bloody sacrifices and tremendous efforts. In other words, the nse of nationalism could not but become exaggerated; and while ‘nese nations could join against a common oppressor, they could «0, as in the second Balkan War in 1913, fight each other.

The same difficulties are apparent in the racial and ethnic ele- �[Page 188]188 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

ments. Slavic components extend from Yugoslavia to Bulgaria, b.: their Slav blood does not make them contented neighbors. In add: tion, we find here Roumasians, Greeks, Albanians, and a varicty «: other ethnic mixtures, including Jews, Turks, Germans, Hunga: ians, Gypsies, Czechoslovaks, and others. Even religion is no: unified, though the Greek Orthodox Church is the prevailing re ligion. There is a belt of Roman Catholic population in norther: Albania, on the Dalmation coast and in Yugoslavia; there are als Muslim Albanians, the Muslims in Yugoslavia, the Muslims c: Thrace, the Muslimized Bulgars and Turks of Bulgaria and th: Protestant and Catholic Saxons and Czeklers in Roumania, in ac dition to the Russians.

With such mixtures of populations it is evident that no boun. ary, by whatever authority drawn, will satisfy everybody. Thus :: the wake of two regional wars in the Balkans before the Worl. War, and following the World War, numerous sources of dissa: isfaction arose with the territorial changes. They left behind the: a series of minorities, centers of increasing dissatisfaction and hat. The extraordinary hate of each people for each other in the Balkar has been most clearly revealed, in the post-war period, in the act: ities of the Macedonian organizations, which continue their activit: with outrages, murders, bombings and kidnappings, leaving : their wake misery, bloodshed and suspicion in international co: tacts. Thus the problem of minorities is and will remain one of th: most difficult problems that Europe will have to face. The more s because no tentative and concrete solution can be oftered, witho: striking at the emotional basis of nationalism, so dear to ever nationalist of south-eastern Europe. Any future redistribution | territory, if there be any, will but make for new bitterness. T> exchange of populations has been tried. But it is questionab. whether such expensive experiments can be used to meet the ge’ eral situation. |

Let us stop for a moment and consider the chief aims of th. individual natiuns of the Balkans.

Roumania has achieved her territorial ambition in the dire tion of the Balkans. Hence she would be ready to agree to a Balkx �[Page 189]STEPS TOWARD BALKAN UNION Sg

con, Which would also guarantee the present stats guo. In fact, bucharest has no territorial grievances in this respect and will be itisfied with any tendencies in the direction of mutual cooperation.

The same applies for the most part to Yugoslavia; but the in- ‘ernational situation for this Kingdom is not yet assured. Bulgaria sill mourns the loss of Macedonia. The territorial and naval in- ‘entions of Mussolini in reference to the Adriatic sea and seacoast ‘urther confuse the situation. The unhappy experiences with Rome also manifest themselves in the political and economic domination t Albania by Italian diplomacy, a situation which does not escape ‘ne notice of the Belgrade Foreign Office.

Bulgaria was defeated twice in her ambitions. The loss of ‘erritories after the Balkan Wars just before the World War and ‘ne additional losses after the “Great Parade” make Bulgaria the nost dissatisfied nation of the Balkans. The territorial partitions

• » Roumania, Yugoslavia and Greece are bitter medicine to the

Sulgarian nationalists, as well as to the large numbers of Bulgarian

snorities in these states. Consequently Bulgaria will pose, and in “act 1S posing, as the natural protector of the national minoritics in ~¢ Balkan States. The Macedonians so far have dominated with ore or less success the political and cultural lite of Sofia and the Macedonian problem, especially because of the terrorist methods nd periodical border raids, has its steady influence on relations “tween Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, though the recent settlements ad agreements point a way ta the gradual solution of the problem.

Greece, thwarted in her attempt to create a “Greater Greece”

2 the ruins of the Turkish Empire by the persevering policy of \cmal Pasha, can be considered a loser in the direction of Asia “nor and a winner in the direction of the Balkans. The problem ‘ the Salonica Free Zone for Yugoslavia has recently been settled ster years of negotiations, but the outlet for Bulgaria on the \cgcan Sea, promised to the latter country by the Neuilly Treaty,

not yet provided for. The liquidation of the problem of the change of populations, however, is being very quickly completed of the Turkish-Greek relations have been recently put on a very ‘icndly and most hopeful footing. �[Page 190]190 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

Turkey can be classified as the most disinterested player in th: whole game. Kemal Pasha is an astute diplomat and is devoting all his time to the westernization of his country. There exists n legal problem of minorities and there are no territorial ambition: for the present. Indeed, it may be safely assumed that the Forcig: Office of Ankara will look with very friendly eye on peaceful an: cooperative plans.

We have so far omit ' nia. Intentionally so. Albania :: led by the clever and ambiuous King Zogu, “The King of All A! banians.” The title itself points to the fact that this small Kingdor is aware of Albanians living as minorities in other Balkan States But the country is too small and too weak to entertain any seriou: territiorial ambitions. What is more important in our case is th: fact that Albania is completely dominated by the influence o: Rome, which looks on the territory as its outpost of influence. |: contrast to the Italian influence in Albania, the influence of Par: is most evident in Belgrade, and to a lesser degree in Roumani. Italy, however, has been making its counter-moves against th: French policy by joining in marriage a royal daughter to the Kin. of Bulgaria, and making treaties with Greece, Turkey and Rouman ia, while allowing a similar one with Yugoslavia to expire. The Ba. kans is, therefore, the meeting ground of the diplomacy of two «: the strongest European powers. The most disturbing aspect is th: the Balkan nations are not allowed to put their own house in orde: They must listen to the suggestions and advice of their “b. brothers,” who, of course, have their own interest at heart. An move which will not benefit either France or Italy will bring the influences into play. Just as the problem of the Near East was th: focal point for the foreign offices of pre-war Europe, so today « sentially the same interest remains, though the general backgrour is somewhat changed.

From the above discussion we may assume two points of & parture, underlying any attempt to form a Balkan Union and o which any future cooperation will have to be built. In the tir place, it is evident that any political union will have to avoid inc vidual mistrusts of anv of the Balkan States, and be formed on.

�[Page 191]STEPS TOWARD BALKAN UNION iQl

with the approval of all Balkan States. This is evidenced by the tact that so far all attempts of two or three states to institute a treaty or agreement of any kind of cooperation have provoked suspicions of the most serious nature, suspicions based to some extent on fact, is the history of the Balkan peninsula has shown for the last fifty vears. Secondly, a “hands-off” policy by the Great Powers, meaning absolute non-interfence in the affairs of the Balkans by the Western States, is essential. While in the past the problem facing the Bal- kans was how to remove the Turk, now the problem is how to keep other Great Powers out of the Balkans. This will become increas- ingly possible with the gradual formation of sufficient unity to off- set the influence of imperialistic foreign states.

On the whole, the two Baikan Conferences, which we shall presently discuss, have achieved a measure of success only because post-war developments are showing the consolidation of various interests and the diminution of certain conditions hampering such progress. The degree of mutual suspicions is decreasing due to the increasing sense of security, based on a series of treaties concluded ot in the process of conclusion. The projected exchange of popu- lations is completed and the whole problem practically liquidated. The problem of the Free Zone for Yugoslavia in Salonica has been settled and a similar seaport settlement of Bulgaria and Greece is on the way. The Macedonian question is lessened in its influence on the Yugoslav-Bulgarian-Greek relations, despite the influence of the Macedonians themselves to the contrary. There are and al- ways will be territorial disputes, but the bitterness is decreasing and there are numerous evidences of a desire to deal concretely with the other difficulties on the basis of the present status quo.

• f se

The movement for the unification of the Balkan nations has a trudition of more than a century. But in the past the conceptions of such a union have been varied and all of them have been different ‘ram the present one. The Balkans in fact were formerly more inified than at present, at least from the legal and political view- points, because this territory was under the domination of the Ot- toman sovereignty. When this status became unbearable for the �[Page 192]192 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

oppressed Christian nations, the idea that these nations should fieht for their liberty in common was originated. This ction, it is in teresting to notice, was basically religious (with iew exceptions thc oppressed nations belonged to the Greek-Orthodox Church) and came from the Greeks. The famous society “Filiki Steria” tried to gain the Serbs and Bulgars for a conimon anti-Turkish action: thc great poet of the Greek struggle for liberty, Rigas Ferreos, was 11 contact with the rebellious movement of Serbs.

The first national states of the Balkans, Greece and Serb:.. though divided from each other by Turkish territory, looked fo: the possibilities of cooperation for the purpose of liberating thei: nationals from Turkish domination. Thus in the sixties of the las: century the first Serb-Greek alliance was formed, which, however. had no occasion for making itself valid practically. Meanwhile another factor appears on the political horizon of the Balkans When Bulgaria, in the seventies, made attempts to become free. this effort was appreciated in Serbia and with it the idea of th unification of all Southern Slavs was born. But subsequent event: buried this idea; the Serbo-Bulgarian war of 1885 and especial): the influence of non-Balkan factors, which divided the whole pen insula into its “spheres of interest,” created an abyss which hss never been bridged. :

After that we mect alternately the first conception of unit and with the subsequent conception of uniting only certain peopic in the Balkans. It is, of course, evident that these conceptions con: tradict each other. The plan to form a Serbo-Bulgarian custom: union in 1905 was not considered at that time as running agains: the interests of other Balkan States; a little earlier than that th: Prime Minister of Serbia, Viadan Djordjevic, propounded the ide of mutual close cooperation of all Balkan States with Turkey. Bu: in 1912 and 1913 came the conflict of these two conceptions. Tix military cooperation of the Christian States against Turkey brougi: grcat gains to the individual states; but it was shown then th. against the all-Balkan interests the interests of national egotis: could fight very successfully; or, to be concrete, Bulgaria fought he: Balkan allics. Concurrently, at that time a new factor comes is �[Page 193]STEPS TOWARD BALKAN UNION 193

Roumania, which, with the exception of the participation in the struggle against the Turks in 1878, had kept aside, now received southern Dobrogea, a part of the Balkans, and began to have in- terests in the Peninsula. Turkey not being considered as oppressor any more, could become a cooperator. Finally, another factor ap- pears on the scene in Albania, whose appearance is characterized by the intrigues of foreign powers in the affairs of the Balkans.

The World War buried definitely any possible Slav coopera- tion. Bulgaria and Serbia joined different camps. Thus the con- ception of a Slav union, which could dominate the Balkan penin- sula, cannot be considered for the future.

In the present post-war period we mect with the gradual settle- ment of differences and also the gradual consolidation of mutual relations—as discussed in the first part of our articic.

sts ss as

A practical step toward the realization of a Balkan Union was taken for the first time in October, 1930, at Athens. The necessity for some “regional understanding” was a matter of discussion of the International Peace Congress held in Athens in 1929, which greed to set up a commission, at the suggestion of the Greek dele- cates, to consider the plan of instituting regular Balkan conferences and the establishment of a Balkan Institute in Athens under the auspices of the League of Nations. Subsequently the Bureau of International Peace decided to follow the recommendation of the Balkan Commission and invited the Balkan Governments to send their representatives to Athens. The Greek Parliament offered its hospitality to the delegates, and appointed its director of the For- cign Ministry as official observer. Other Balkan Governments gave instructions to their delegates to follow the proceedings and chose their national delegates.

According to The Central European Observer, the first con- ference, without having any official character, gathered beneath a specially designed flag of the United Balkans, showing six stars on a ‘.ulti-colored ground, on October 5, 1930. Altogether about 150 del-

yites were there, in addition to the diplomats assigned to Athens ..d representatives of the League of Nations. The proceedings �[Page 194]194 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

opened with the playing by a military band of the “Balkan Hymn of Peace,” composed for the occasion. The delegates included rey resentatives of political parties, of municipalities, social agencics. the press, labor professions, academic circles, and from agriculture. industry and commerce. The presence of Bulgarian and Albanian representatives added to the impressiveness of this gathering. Steps were taken for the foundation of an Institute for Intellectual Co- operation in the Balkans, with its seat in Istanbul. A resolution was adopted requesting the Foreign Ministers of the Balkan States to meet regularly every year to exchange opinions on the Balkan affairs and discuss means of solidarity among the Balkan peoples. The resolution also urged the Balkan States to study the proposed pact of Premier Papanastasiu of Greece, based on the following principles: first, the outlawry of war; second, peaceful settlement of all disputes that arise among them; and, third, mutual assistance in case of violation of the obligation to abstain from war. The economic commission suggested to the Governments that they pre- pare an agreement to give economic solidarity to the Balkan States.

It is unnecessary to deal with other detailed recommendations. It must be noticed, however, that of the resolutions voted in 1:30 very little was realized up to the Second Conference, held in Istan- bul in October 1931. Even the psychological progress was not very great. The Governments paid little attention to these pioneers be: cause in that period of one year lay many commercial wars, mis- understandings, the problems of emigration, debts and reparation payments, in addition to the minority questions, the customs tarifi problems and even the problem of railway connections.

The Second Conference, again composed of unofficial dele gates who began their work on October 20, 1931, reached its cruci.: point when the discussion centered on the question whether cco: nomic problems or political problems involving minorities shoul: be taken up first. The Albanian delegates accused Yugoslavia 0: illegally Serbizing their nationals in Yugoslavia, and the Yugos!.. delegates retorted that Albania was the tool of Italy. This some what heated discussion was sidetracked by the formation of . special committee which was to elaborate the non-aggression com �[Page 195]STEPS TOWARD BALKAN UNION 195

pact with particular reference to the rights of minorities, and sub- mit a report to the various states three months before the opening of the next conference. Parallel with this fundamental problem a scries of practical questions have been dealt with, most of an eco- nomic nature. Real progress was made in the discussions of the project of a Balkan postal union, the establishment of a common office for controlling and coordinating the production of tobacco, the foundation of a Balkan cereal union, the establishment of a Balkan chamber of commerce which would also examine the prob- lem of partial customs union and at the same time would recom- mend measures for simplifying the tariff system. Important ques- tions of transport and law were also spoken of: for example, the unification of all civil law, etc. The Balkan-pact resolution was accepted with unanimity. Its final clause confirms the principle of the outlawry of war as a means of international policy and puts the principle of arbitration in its place. In addition, the resolution recommended that the individual states conclude two-party arbitra- tion treaties and expressed the hope that the universal Disarmament Conference in 1932 would achieve positive results.

Both Conferences represent new epochs in the evolution of the new movement, in which all Balkan nations are to forget their old differences and to create the closest relations and improve Bal- kan conditions. It is interesting to note, for example, that Greece as well as Turkey have evidently given up their old imperialistic policies. As the point of departure must be the principle of status yuo, it is significant that the Greek leaders worked for the calling of the Conference in Athens. Turkey, on the other hand, became 4 gracious host to the Second Conference and in both conferences the Turkish delegates were trying to imbue moderation in the other delegates when the differences became too strong.

Whether the practical results of both conferences wil! materi- wlize in the near future through the. practical steps taken by the Governments concerned is questionable. But the whole movement must be followed with greatest interest by all who are interested in the movements leading to world peace and cooperation. Here met the unifying ideas of a danger-spot of Europe; for the first time �[Page 196]196 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

the representatives of nations gathered on the constructive basis of possible mutual union; nations who hitherto had imagined them- selves as foes, enemies and competitots. Thus from a negative basis the meetings switched to positive and constructive founda- tions. Here was formed a tradition of direct dealings, personal contacts and mutual knowledge of leading personalities, who were here unofficially, but are the leaders of the public opinion in their respective lands. Here was created the atmosphere of Geneva. It the cultural, economic and social problems of the Balkans will grad- ually become unified, the psychological results are bound to provide a success in the political realm. The moral beginnings will eventu- _ally bring concrete, and especially political consequences. All friends of world unity and peace will make a mistake if they ignore these first two steps and underestimate the present developments.

The thirty-third modern mevomenmt presented by Wore Usiry in its department “The W : We Lise In” �[Page 197]THE PATH OF HISTORY by PAUL HINNER

THE EPOCH OF AGGRESSIVE INDIVIDUALISM (Comeluded)

TT HE impotence of religion, the dissolving of all moral stand-

ards, the worship of wealth, the increase in crime, the

shallowness of literature and art and their tendency to

capitalize the sex-appeal, the subversion of a large part of the press by selfish interest, the commercializing of the pro- fcessions, the endeavor of the educational institutions to prepare their pupils mainly for the struggle for material riches, the foster- ing and exploiting of the weakness of the people by business in- tcrests, the continuous increase of the world’s indebtedness, the impoverishing of the masses, the permanent unemployment of mil- lions of workers, the excessive speculation, the perversion of the conception of justice, the obliteration of the dividing line between lcgal business and organized crime, the impaired circulation of the currency and the corruption in the highest financial and political citcles are some of the many parallel events and consequences of the inner dissolution of the present civilization. The use of intrigue or brutal force by many nations to gain their selfish ends, the bar- tcring of their support for materialistic advantages, the insincerity in their conduct towards each other and the restlessness of many subject people are the external signs of decay’

In consequence of the fact that individualism reached its highest possible development in the United States of America, the latter were also bound to be most prominent in the dissolution of the individualistic civilization. The combined effects of the com- piction of the development of their own domain, of the part

197 �[Page 198]198 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

played in the World War and of the subsequent financial conquest of the World, placed the United States in a position in which they were fulfilling this function unconsciously; force of circum. stances compelled the nation to carry on an economic expansion, for which a necessity did not exist and which therefore was bound to become destructive. The enormous industrial and financial ca- pacities drove the United States to increase and exploit the material desires not only of their own people but of the whole world, in order to develop a market for the products of the industries and to create opportunities for the investment of the surplus capital. This was accomplished through intensive advertising and through the granting of credit in the form of deferred payments at home and a continuous stream of loans and investments of capital abroad. However, this policy not only increased their own interior indcbt- edness but also the indebtedness of the world in general and drove the present economic system relentlessly towards its climax.

The limit of the ability of the nations to pay interest on invested capital, determines the limit for their combined interior and exterior indebtedness. After this limit has been reached the further investment of capital in their countries ceases on account of becoming unsafe and unprofitable; but as the reinvestment of the profits in new undertaking is an absolute necessity for the maintenance of the circulation of the currency, the vanisl. ag of the opportunities :for investment must bring this circulation to a standstill, Through the practice of issuing securities which do not represent actual investments, through the high rate of interest of the outstanding capital, through the centralization of the retail business, through the intensification of the sales methods and through the sale of goods on the instalment plan, the means which draw the capital out of the masses and deliver it to the respective financial centers, have been developed far beyond all previous dimensions. On the other hand institutions and means which would cause the capital to flow back into the masses do not exist. The progressive settlement of the world, the development of the nat- ural resources and the general expansion of the different facilities to meet the demands created by the growth of the population and �[Page 199]THE PATH OF HISTORY 199

ot the materialistic desires, fulfilled this function up to now and separate organs which would serve this purpose were not needed. The capital flowed of its own accord from the center into new undertakings which promised profits and security, for instance: The settling of new parts of the world, the building and expansion of cities, the extension of railroads, steamship lines and telegraphs, the opening of mines and other sources of raw materials, the erecting of factories, the extension of business facilities and divers other enterprises. In the form of wages or payments for prop- city or material, the liquid capital reached again the broad masses of the people, to return as before through the different channels ot business and banking to the center. Now, however, the settling ot the world, the development of resources and the construction of necessary facilities have been accomplished and in many in- stances carried far beyond the measure dictated by necessity. The whole world is equipped with enough factories and industrial plants, etc., to more than satisfy all demands: Additional invest- ments of capital for these purposes is now unprofitable and has practically ceased. Besides that the upkeep of the different fac- Jitics requires less of the industrial products than their construction wnd additional shrinking in the demand for the products of the industries is the natural result.

Furthermore, the sum of all profits, interest charges, dividends, tixes, etc., must forever stand between production and consump- tion. This is reflected in the low prices for the products of agricul- ture and the relatively low annual earnings of labor on the one hand and the high prices demanded of the consumer on the other. The continued increase of the world’s indebtedness, however, has increased the sum total of the profits and interest charges, etc., and widened the price-gap between production and consumption to such an extent that the income of many producers is insuftcient to cover the expenses which they have as consumers. The distress of agriculture and the shrinking of the buying power of ever-increas- ing masses of people are mainly due to this fact. The selling of soods on the instalment plan is an attempt to bridge this ever- widening gap; however, as that does not decrease but rather in- �[Page 200]200 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

creases the burden, it will not prevent the ultimate collapse of the present financial system when the climax is reached.

The gold standard had already become inadequate before the war in consequence of the enormous amounts of the outstanding capital. The amount of money based on gold was insufficient to meet all payments becoming due daily and at the same time accom: plish the distribution of the necessities of life. The gold standard therefore was supplemented through an extension of the credit system and a paper currency based on securities. During and since the war it was still more weakened through the further increase o: the world’s indebtedness, through the one-sided and restricted dis. tribution of the world’s gold supply and through the diminishing of the confidence of great masses of people in the stability of the present economic conditions. This waning of the public confidence is clearly demonstrated through the hoarding of gold. The gold which was in free circulation throughout the western world has completely disappeared since the World War because persons or institutions who are in a position to do so retain now all gold coins which they receive in payment. In consequence of the enormous expenditures for the purpose of the war, the indebtedness of the involved countries had increased until the ability of the people to pay the interest was taxed to the limit. Through the effect of the peace treaty the central powers were forced to renounce their in- terior debts and compelled to assume the obligations contracted by the Allies. In this way the ability and the will of the German people to pay reparations became part of the basis of the present interna: tional financial situation. However, the payment of the reparations and of the interest on their legal debts exceed the ability of the Ger man people. Germany has, therefore, during the last few years, bor- rowed the means to meet the deficit, hoping for a favorable turn in world affairs. This policy has increased the burden still more. as the hoped for relief has not materialized. All attempts to improve the situation through increased efforts have also failed, because anv new capital is through the reparations automatically drained from the country. Foreign capital, knowing that Germany has reached the limit of its ability to pay, has ceased to flow to the country in the �[Page 201]THE PATH OF HISTORY 20!

‘orm of loans. Through that Germany is pliced outside of the Inter- ational circuit of the currency and its economic life suffers contin- ously from want of capital. The constant sinking of their standard

living, the continued direct and indircct domination of their af-

‘airs by foreigners and the failure of all cfforts to bring relief, reveal » the German people more and more the hopelessness of their situa- ‘on, A state of indifference towards all obligations, whether legal imposed and towards the consequences of non-fulfillment is de- loping in the broad masses. The incentive to maintain and sup- sort the present political and economic institutions is vanishing, as ‘nev have ceased to be of benefit to a majority ef the people. It is, crefore, only a question of time when the complete economic and litical collapse of Germany must take place. This event in com- nation with the progressive dissolution of the individualistic civ- ation Will have far- ‘reaching effects. Financial failures, cessation ‘ payment of interest on investments and continuous wide-spread net mploy ment will be the result in many countries and cause great atdships in the large citics and densely populated districts where ost people depend entirely on the steady flow of wages or income “om investments. A temporary relict to Germany docs not alter “.c situation but will only postpone for a time the inevitable end | prolong the agony of dissolution, because it is impossible to

oid the consequences of previous developments.

The epoch of civilization which has dominated the affairs of sikind in the Westeii: Hemisphere since the decline of Rome «) the materialization of the principle of aggressive individualism cough Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The adherents of these gions were combined through the common ideal into a living canic entity. During its ascendency spiritual interests predom- ated within the epoch, while in the decline, materialistic desires te strongest. The religious, political and economic institutions te the organs; they supplemented each other and fulfilled all sctions Which the development and growth of the epoch re-

ied. The fundamental principle, the method of growth and the: cn and functions of the organs were suitable only for the ex- ‘tion of the world through colonial expansion, the abolition �[Page 202]202 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

of slavery and the establishment of political equality. When th: purpose was attained the utility of the individualistic princip|: ceased and it must now give way to the collective principle whic: is the logical successor and which will govern the affairs of man kind during the next era. The World War was the death-strugy): of individualism and the chaotic conditions prevailing in ihe wor). today are the dissolution. This dissolution of the individualist. order of society is the natural consequence of the selfishness an. extreme love of material possessions which dominate the involve. parts of mankind, a vivid demonstration that selfishness will alwas

defeat itself in the end.

This terrible decline of the true humane qualities in mankind :

a parallel to the barbarism which prevailed in Europe during an. after the downfall of ancient Rome. The world is now, the sam as it was then, in a state in which the attained object of the d:

solving epoch of civilization has not yet been replaced by a nes and living ideal. Common spiritual interests and ideals alway promote mutual helpfulness and sympathy among their adherent while their lack produces the opposite eftect. People without idea. are guided by selfishness and materialistic desires only and mus therefore be classed as barbarians, irrespective of whether the hold college degrees or wear the formal dress or elaborate unitor: denoting high position, The line of human conduct prevailing the world today and the resulting conditions show an absence «

all features which are generally embraced by the meaning of t!: term “Civilization;” and an absence of civilization is ‘“Barbarism

�[Page 203]THIS PRAYING WORLD by JOHN WILLIAM KivcHinc

Author of © Azrwhaal and Lamorna et

Greece

( RANT that no word may fall from me against my will unfit for present need.”

Here is a Prayer of Pericles (B.C. 42)) known as the

builder of the Parthenon at Athens. This prayer may

¢ placed alongside a quotation from the Book of Proverbs, “A ord fitly spoken is like apples of gold in network of silver.”

Pericles was the greatest statesman of ancient Greece. His

uther was Xanthippus, victor over the Persians at Mycale in 470

+(. His mother was Agariste, the niece of Clisthenes, the law giver.

He received a careful education and was especially influenced

. two of his teachers, Damon, a famous sophist and master of

asic, and the philosopher Anaxagoras of Clazomende, to whose

aching he undoubtedly owed the independence of thought and

‘«cdom from superstition which raised him above the multitude.

l’or more than thirty years he was the most influential leader

. Athens. From the first he attached himself to the democratic

atty, and under his leadership the complete democratization of

ithens was accomplished. There was, however, strong opposition to Pericles’ policy. “it party opposed to him was led by Thucydides, whose ostracism 444 B.C. left Pericles the undisputed leader.

Pericles restored temples destroyed by the Persians and erected

“w monuments which made Athens the most magnificent city of

¢ ancient world. Most prominent among these monuments were

“.c bronze statue to Athena Promachos, which was erected about

45 at the west end of the Acropolis and a new temple to Athena

203 �[Page 204]204 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

Polias. The Parthenon was also built on an enlarged and more magnificent scale.

Athens now became a great centre of literature as well as o: the fine arts, and philosophy transplanted from Tonia and Ital: made its home there for a thousand years.

The imperialistic schemes of Pericles led to the Peloponnesia: war. The famous Aspasia was celebrated for her friendship wit! Pericles.

“O dear Pan and other gods who are here, grant me to becom: beautiful within and grant that whatever outward possession: I have may be friendly to that which is within. Let me cour’ the wise man a wealthy man. As for gold, give me just so muc as none but the prudent man could bear or carry.”

This is a prayer attributed to Socrates and is quoted by Plu in the Phedrus.

Socrates (469-399 B.C.), the greatest of the Greek philos ophers, was born at Athens. He served in several campaigns in th: Athenian army, and distinguished himself by his unusual fortituds He received as a boy only the old-fashioned elementary educatio: in music and gymnastics, but later familiarized himself with ty education of the Sophists in rhetoric and dialectics, with the spec. lations of the Ionic philosophers, and all the culture of Pericles Athens.

Socrates followed at first the craft of his father, a sculptor ar tradition attributed to him a group of the three Graces drape. which Pausanias (a Greek traveler and geographer, author | “Guidebook to Greece,” 175 A.D.) saw on the Acropolis.

The greater part of his mature life was spent in the mark: place, streets and public resorts of Athens in conversation with « who cared to listen.

He devoted himself chiefly to problems of life and conduc Deeply conscious as he was ot the need and the lack of clear insig into principles in matters of conduct, he set himself in his int course with his fellow-citizens to discover to them, by a method | cross examination, the limitations of their ethical knowledge.

In personal appearance Socrates was notoriously ugly, and -

�[Page 205]THIS PRAYING WORLD 205

the Platonic dialogues he is represented as making jesting refer- ences to his snub nose and protruding eves. Eventually he was ac- cused of impiety and religious innovation and condemned to death. Plato puts another prayer into the mouth of Socrates which runs: “Lord Zeus, grant us good even without our request; grant us not evil, even at our request.” (Alcibiades, I, 143 A.) “Oh, may my constant feet not fail, Walking in paths of righteousness, Sinless in word and deed,— True to those eternal laws That scale forever the high steep Of heaven's pure ether, whence they sprang;— For only in Olympus is their home, Nor mortal wisdom gave them birth: And howsoe’er men may forget, They will not sleep For the might of the god within them grows not old.” This prayer of Sophocles is taken from the Cidipus Rex. So- shocles lived from about 490 to 405 B.C. and was a native of Co- onus, near Athens. He was famous for his personal beauty, ami- «ble character and political qualities as well as for his pre-eminent octical genius. There is a story, not likely to be true, that in the ast vears of his life his son prosecuted him on the ground of in- ‘city to manage his property and that he defended himself sim- “Wy by reciting in court a famous chorus from G:dipus Coloneus. On the occasion of his first appearance as a dramatist (468 B.C.) son the first prize, defeating even Aschylus. Only seven of his avs are extant, in addition to a number of fragments. He prob- invented scene-painting; and was the first to use Phrygian “usic. His characters are delineated with great skill and the ver- uct of his contemporaries, that he was the greatest of the three “reat tragic poets has never been seriously questioned. Sophocles ‘5 a firm believer in the accepted religion and in the gods; but «held that their ways were beyond man’s understanding. His ‘tant plays are the Antigone, Ajax, Electra, Gidipus Tyrannus, ‘i. ipus Coloneus, Philoctetes and Trachiniae. �[Page 206]BOOK NOTES

Economic Causes of War and Hope for the Future, by Be. trice Pitney Lamb, National League of Women Voters. 4oc. On a few vears ago it was generally felt that the ““woman’s movement —the association of women as voters with the instruments of polit ical responsibility—had dismally failed. Discouraged liberal: forgot that time was required in order to allow the fresh secd «: democracy to germinate. Here is a pamphlet which our grand mothers could not have imagined would ever be written by . member of their sex. It appears at a time when the myth of yo ernmental autocracy gives way to a realistic sense of the need t find a way through the confusions of daily living. Such a probler is not masculine nor feminine, but human. If members of th: National League truly assimilate this material, they will be pre pared for world citizenship sooner than men. The contents include Friction arising out of population pressure; Friction arising ou: of international trade; Friction arising out of international finance Possible cures of economic friction. The sustaining philosophy :: sumed up in the following statement: ‘Economic life has spreac out beyond the existing political units. . . The next larger un: is the world as a whole, with economic internationalism as th corresponding philosophy.”

Our International Relations and How to Understand Then. by Anna Steese Richardson. The Cromwell Publishing Com pan; 4c. The director of the Good Citizenship Bureau of the Woman: Home Companion has made available, in a ten page pamphlet, th information needed by program chairmen, group leaders and ind: vidual readers approaching the study of international relation: Mrs. Richardson supplies three ‘Study Outlines” on Who Decide Our Relations with Foreign Nations? What is the Foreign Polic of the United States? and Armament and Disarmament. This se tion is followed by sources of information on Our Relations wit Central and South America, Groups Working for a Better Unde:

206 �[Page 207]BOOK NOTES 207

standing of International Affairs and World Peace, Organizations \\ hich Contribute to the Education of Youth in International Un- lorstanding, Magazines and Bulletins Devoted to International ( nderstanding, and Helpful Books on International Relations. This handbook is extremely useful as a “directory of the peace movement” and will no doubt be widely used throughout the country.

The World Court 1921—1931, by Manley O. Hudson. World Pace Foundation, $2.50. Dr. Hudson, Bemis Professor of Inter- national Law, Harvard University, has produced an authoritative manual of the World Court.. He traces the growth of the con- ception during recent centuries, reminding the reader, incidently, that The American delegation to the first Peace Conference at The Hague in 1899 was instructed by President McKinley and Secretary Hay to act upon ‘the long-continued and widespread interest among the people of the United States in the establishment of an international court,’ and to propose a plan for the creation of an nternational tribunal.” Under the subject of Jurisdiction, dealing with the over-emphasized topic of Advisory Opinions, we note that “each of these opinions has contributed to the solution of some perplexing international question.” The twenty Advisory Opin- ons of the Court to date are summarized, following a summary of judgments and Orders of the Court. The final chapter, on Proposed utiication by the United States, brings the matter up to the Mem- vrandum by Elihu Root on the Protocol for the Adhesion of the (tuted States, January 21, 1931. The book gives a working knowl- -dge of the structure and processes of the World Court. It may

ot be read by any large number of laymen, but it should be known

©) all those in political and newspaper circles who assume the re- ousibility of attempting to mold public opinion on one of the ost significant problems of the time.

lrom World Understanding to World Peace, by Helene ipede-Spir, Williams & Norgate, Ltd. London. 6s. 6d. An ‘hology of statements on world peace collected by the author leading men of England, France, Germany and other coun-

e �[Page 208]208 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

tries, including the United States. All the statements were macic since the European War. Preface by Gilbert Murray, Introductic: by David Starr Jordan, Conclusion by Paul Monroe. Such a wort: indicates the obvious fact that a certain type of public man anc scholar, who recognizes the need for peace, can be found in a! countries. Similar compilations prove that mystics in all religions have always agreed upon certain fundamental humanitarian ideals, but the fact remains that it is still institutions and not selecte. individuals who turn the scale in times of unescapable crisis. Or the other hand there are doubtless many people in whom suc a book will awaken a more conscious world outlook. As Pau. Monroe declares, ‘Humanity has groped painfully up the Calvar; of the ages.”

International Communications: The American Attitude, | Keith Clark. Columbia University Press. $3.75. “Communicatior is the measure of civilization. It is a long story, it comprehend: all history, it interpenetrates all activity. But the principal mec anisms are few: the post, the telegraph, the cable, the radio. T: set forth these definite means which serve the vast ends of livin. is the object of this essay; particulariy as the United States con municates with the world, by connecting its services with th. services of other countries, by conforming its national procedu:. to the international codes.” Dr. Clark shows how the United State is being brought into the world family by the pull of inventior even while holding back from the inertia of political and cultur. provincialism. An unanswerable argument, the more convinan. because its larger implications are left unexpressed.

H. H.

�[Page 209]CORRESPONDENCE

MariIA WOLTERS New Y ork City

In these days when one reads so much unfavorable about the Japanese and their militarism, the news must naturally turn many Westerners against Japan. But may I be allowed to speak of my experiences in Japan when for six years I lived there and among the natives exclusively, and so had a better chance to study and observe this race than people in foreign settlements and concessions or missionaries or travellers looking from hotel windows. In fact I had no foreign intercourse whatsoever during all these years. But, by the way, I constantly noticed that all for- cigners, including the Chinese were treated with the utmost civ- lity. In public places, at concerts and other occasions, the front scats are always reserved and roped off for the foreigners and the Japanese had to be and were content with that which was left.

I lived there just as a plain simple every day human being and was looked upon as such and no ado whatsoever was made about my insignificant person; and so I may justly claim to have gotten a true insight inio this race. I lived entirely Japanese fashion in one of their native hotels, wore their native kimono and gettas and ate their native food most of the time.

Teaching them languages, I had among my pupils, professors

und studeats of the Tokyo University and from schools, men and

women of high rank in life and also some of the humbler standing, military men, protessional—and business men, trades people and their children. What greater choice to gather varied and valuable op could anyone ask ferme h at better chance for a Joser study has anybody than the teacher who holds the key to

the inner recesses of the human soul. Most of the Japanese are 209 �[Page 210]210 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

very ambitious to learn and to enlarge their knowledge of the English language and of the American people for which they all expressed the highest esteem and affection.

The respect and courtesy given me, given all teachers by al! ranks alike, was in noticeable contrast to much here in America and in Europe.

The gentle spirit so noticeable in all classes, from the military down to the coolies was a revelation to me, explained when I met the Japanese mothers, and saw the affection and care even the poor and toiling mothers bestowed upon their children, as a result, the children of Japan have a charm indescribable. Devotion and affec- tion for children and mothers and reverence for old age are some of their strongest characteristics I noticed; and not alone towards their own but was manifested towards others as well.

When we started relief work in Japan right after the con- clusion of the world-war for the suffering children in Europe and in China, the latter's caused by the terrible drought there in 1919-20, every person in Japan, the poorest as well, chipped in. sometimes by sacrificing meals, and at times saying: “Though the Chinese are no friends of ours but their children shall not starve, may it lay a foundation for a better understanding between their children and our children” —I was a helper and witness when they were sending to all the suffering children in Europe a large sum and also to the Chinese ones at that time were sent over 100,- 000 yen, contributed by the school-children of Japan, I can back my statement by showing receipts and proofs of this to anybody who wishes to see them. Should not this humane action towards an enemy, and which I believe is very little known, as they do things quietly without talking about, call forth in us a more just attitude towards the Japanese?—How often have I not been asked by my Japanese pupils to introduce them to my Chinese students for the purpose of becoming better acquainted and to develop friendship between them and, though delightful and splendid young men and women the Chinese were, yet, 1 always felt thes were much hesitating to meet the Japanese on equal footing and good terms for friendship. �[Page 211]CORRESPONDENCE 211

The strong pacifistic tendency of the Japanese at that time was genuine and I fou». when visiting schools there, that the training of the youth i. this direction was not lacking, as every teacher 1 met was imbued with the desire to do away with force and help establish a new method by which to straighten out the nations’ differences and affairs, all promised their cooperation and with hundreds upon hundreds of schools enrolled as members in the “School Boys’ and Girls’ World Friendship League,” I was happy that Japan had taken such a stand for World Peace and such vital interest in the friendship movement started there 1918.— And it. seems, with the world’s more just and thoughtful attitude toward the solution of their economic, population and land prob- lems, any militaristic and aggressive tendency of this, at heart really gentle and kind and childlike nation, could have been easily forestalled—On what plane of civilization a nation is stand- ing, is always known by the way it treats its war-prisoners, Japan measured up to the highest in this respect, the war-prisoners told me personally of the humane treatment they received.

There is no need of going into further details and relate about the wonderful hospitality*one meets everywhere when travelling through Japan, others have experienced that as well as I have; books have been written on it and her peoples’ kind and thoughttul .ctions grace many pages of them.

Naturally, it must have frightened her when she stepped out of her seclusion into the world and looked around after her door was torcefully opened—to see the enslavement and hardships other races had to endure. Nevertheless, Japan held out her hand for tricndship; and it is not yet too late to grasp it.

Fortunately, we have here in America statesmen and people who realize the above facts and see clearly that for us to remain nuctral, would serve the cause of peace best, and that it would be more wise and noble, later to try in a kind and just spirit to help ‘scnd and adjust the conditions and relations between those two creat Asiatic nations, Japan and China; for it is nothing new that, through the imperialistic policy and ambitions of some nations of the white race in the Orient and due to their mischievous machin- �[Page 212]212 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

ations, these two splendid nations, Japan and China have become so estranged that their embitterment toward each other has taken on frightful and fateful dimensions, for which the poor and inno- cent people and boys on both sides have to pay the penalty with their lifes and suffering. And with the red peril and much band. itry looming up so near Japan, her position is in fact not an enviable one. |

It is indeed a good omen for the future that here in America where the natural, enlightened and affectionate bonds of a League of Nations exist and hold us together in mutual appreciation, help- fulness and cooperation that we begin to realize that no blessing can ever grow out of and come to any nation, organization, or any individual who builds prosperity and fortune on the misery and misfortunes of others.

RONALD A. L. ARMSTRONG Editor, The Sufi Quarterly

I should be much obliged if you could find space for the pub: lication of this letter.

In your issue for February, under the heading “Round Table’. you speak of ‘Fitzgerald’s neurotic interpretation of a mystical Sufi poem.” May I refer you to my article in ‘The Spectator” of Feb. 14th, 1931, for a confutation of this erroneous conception: Omar Khayyam was not a mystic and was rejected by Sufis of his time as a genuine agnostic. When he said “wine,” his contempor: aries were convinced he meant it. You will find the case fully stated by that most eminent of authorities, Professor E. G. Browne in his monumental history of Persian Literature. �[Page 213]ROUND TABLE

Cordial acknowledgement is made to the Woodrow Wilson | sundation, and to the artist, F. Soulé Campbell, for the privilege ot reproducing the portrait of the principal author of the League Covenant. The passing of time adds to the mystery and tragedy of Wilson's lite—the War President who strove so valiantly to serve thie Prince of Peace. Woodrow Wilson stood between two differ- ct areas of immense conflict—the conflict between philosophy and politics, and the conflict between nationalism and internation- wiism. While he could not achieve victory for the new forces, he -revented the triumph of the old.

Dr. Curti’s “Poets of Peace and the Civil War” is part of the otk done by him as a Guggenheim Fellow. Since writing ‘The \merican Peace Crusade: 1815—1861,” published last year by Duke University Press, Dr. Curti has been working on a new book originally planned as a continuation of the first, but now shaped on a larger scale. We understand that the new volume will deal not only with the organized peace movement, but with the forces aaking for peace and war throughout American history.

No task is more important than finding the real key to the ncart of America—defining the destiny of this immense reservoir of human power, and upholding a goal commensurate with ‘its energy and influence. Too long have Americans themselves thought of their country as merely “better and bigger” than other \ountries—the most successful nation in the world struggle. If the League of Nations definitely collapses, America will be called upon to achieve world order in sheer self-defense. It is not too soon to create a totally different concept of this nation for the tcrtilization of its mental and moral powers: a concept establishing the thought that America is not “another” nation, but a represent- ative of all the nations and peoples, formed by them in an effort ‘o evolve out of the limitations of the past. Between us all and

213 �[Page 214]214 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINB

world peace there is but one real obstacle: the immaturity of the American racial type; and perhaps even this is not an obstacle but the condition requisite to the final failure of every ancicnt oppression in Europe and the East. America’s jealous aloofness may be abundantly justified, however irrational it may appear. Great things grow by instinct, not reason.

We note with interest an announcement that Dr. Dexter Perkins will deliver next vear's Shaw Lectures under the auspices of the Walter Hines School of International Relations, on historic.! aspects of the Monroe Doctrine. Dr. Perkins's articles on inter national politics, published in World Unity over a period of two years, can be read with interest and profit today.

“The Novel of the War Years” by Dr. Evelyn Newman, has made strange contrast between the ideals born of the suffering incurred in the trenches and the politics played for profit by the Legion in time of peace. Two concluding chapters in the Newman series will be published next fall.

“Social Psychology of International Conduct,’ by George Malcolm Stratton, a work published in 1929, impressed us at the time as a point of view, a mental technic, representing what might be termed the mature approach to the problem of national rela- tionships. It conveyed the sense of a new and more valid sociology, an effective inner grasp of the forces released in this age. Dr. Strat- ton’s article in the present issue is an expression of that wide out- look which can regard the phenomenon of nationalism as some- thing apart from one’s emotional being and hence something which can eventually be controlled.

C. F. Ansley returns to his vital theme, the relations of men to the soil, which underlies not merely the economic but also the social problem. Rejected alike by official socialism and official capitalism, both of which build on the factory, the sense of a regen- erated personal being which sustains Mr. Ansley’s plea for the family farm and a balanced life—the return of neighborhood and local independence—seems no longer the abstract argument it ap- peared to be before 1929, but an interpretation of a vast movement actually taking place. �[Page 215]BOOKS FOR WORLD UNITY READERS

A WORLD COMMUNITY, by John Herman Randall

T Hi book for those who seek to grasp the world movement as a whole, with the inter-relations of economic, political, industrial and social coors. and a careful analysis of the trends making for international SACI Zon, Ir has been included in the reading list issued by the National Committee the Cause and Cure of War.

NATIONALISM AND INTERNATIONALISM by Herbert Adams Gibbons

[* THIS book, Dr. Gibbons has infused his historical scholarship with a iterime of personal experience and participation in international affairs. result is a study accurate enough for the classroom and interesting wl for the average reader.

Nationalism and Internationalism” traces the evolution of political ‘.¢ trom its first expression in the movement toward modern national- through the nineteenth century, to its present expression in inter-

cionalistn as the true outcome of national ideals.

SEVEN GREAT BIBLES, by Alfred W. Martin

ERE, at last, are the essential truths about Hinduism, Buddhism,

Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, Taoism, Muhammadanism, Judaism Christianity that demonstrate the underlying unity and harmony in ‘eats from which these religions derive—a very history of the soul of illumined from age to age by inspired teachers pointing the path co ‘icrhood and peace.

These three books have been published in the World Unity Library initiated and sponsored by this magazine. Per copy, $2.00. Any one title, with annual subscription to World Unity Magazine, $4.00; subscription and two books, $5.75; subscription and all three books, $7.50.

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“It has been very encouraging to see the warm reception which W’oRLD Univ] has received and to note its constant progress. There was toom for a magazin which should devote itself to a non-partisan discussion of the intellectual and oer aspects of world cooperation and international movements, and WorLD UNITY h met this need in a most satisfactory manner." —John Dewey.

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• () SEVEN GREAT BIBLES, by Alfred W. Martin, $2.00. Book and}

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