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[Page 192]

WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

Volume XII, July, 1933

The Devious Path World Citizenship

War Debts--World Liability or World Asset? Editorial

A Real Defense of Religion Carl A. Ross

International Co-Citizenship: The Sole Basis of Permanent International Peace Royal W. France

The New Lilliputian Land Wallace W. Willard

World Advance: A Monthly International Review Raphael Buck

The World of Reality L. A. Hawkins

Book Notes Oscar Newfang

Notes on the Present Issue

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Ruhi Afnan [Page 193]

EDITORIAL

HE descent from the high hopes released by the founding of the League of Nations to the gloomy fear that the once-allied nations will now find it impossible to agree on certain outstanding problems, indicates a prevailing ignorance of what "internationalism" really means.

Internationalism, literally, means the relations among nations, but it has come to convey the larger meaning of world order.

Considering the literal meaning, the significance of the "inter" depends wholly on the implication attached to the word "nation." As long as a nation is conceived to be a wholly self-centered and self-seeking political entity, the relations between nations can rise no higher than those temporary agreements formally defined in treaties. But such a political entity contains within itself conditions of social and economic stress which make for continuous change between the state and the people.

It is well to glance back at the "internationalism" which asserted itself after the Napoleonic wars. Nations at that time were monarchies and social oligarchies established during medieval times. Any agreement between nations was made by the powerful few, with regard primarily to their continuance in authority and privilege, and only secondarily with regard to the fundamental well being of the whole population. Historically, that "internationalism" was destroyed by the insistent rise of democracy.

In the same manner, those nations that achieved the "internationalism" of the League one hundred years later were still but incompletely in social and political repose. From the date the League Covenant was signed, the assurance of even temporary international peace released within each nation violent forces insistent upon fundamental social reorganization. The real point is [Page 194]that there can be no "internationalism" of and for peoples, as distinct from an "internationalism" of treaty among political leaders, until the nations have each achieved real and enduring order.

The path to world unity is, and must be, a devious path—a path that now swerves in the direction of broader treaties and covenants, and again swerves in the opposite direction of organic internal improvement. The outbreak of revolutionary movements during the past ten years reveals all too clearly how much social readjustment has been required within each nation before true and enduring "nations"—uniting people and state—can exist.

Those who mean by "internationalism" a world order, a world knit together for cooperation in all important human interests, must deepen their conception of the historic forces moving states and humanity at this time. International peace can never be the gift to humanity made by political powers each of which has failed to establish the true peace of social justice at home.

The present London Conference is supremely significant in that its final outcome will strike a trial balance between these two as yet unreconciled forces—the needs of states and the needs of humanity. If the Conference succeeds in writing into firm law, law translatable into daily practice, some fundamental agreements making for increased freedom of the flow of goods from nation to nation, and some final agreements disposing of the war debts, that success will serve notice upon us all that the forces of internal revolution have at last begun to subside. If, however, the Conference terminates in mere words and sterile formulas, due notice will be served that the evolution of nationalism is still incomplete, and that internationalism in the real sense must await further internal adjustments including the possibility of new revolutionary movements, social, economic and political.

In brief, the goal of world order lies through the jungle of domestic politics where the issue still to be determined is what constitutes the real nature of human society.

H. H. [Page 195]

WORLD CITIZENSHIP

by CARL A. ROSS Lawyer

1. World Citizenship in Practice

IN beginning a new series of articles on World Citizenship we wish briefly to review the past series and forecast the new series cept made vivid and concrete to us in a draft of certain important articles of a constitution for a World Federation modeled after the constitution of the United States. Under later topics of the series many problems faced by such a constitution, such as exterritoriality, national governments, sovereignty, allegiance, and the war debts were discussed in the light of our early American history centering around the thirteen colonies after the Revolutionary War and the adoption of our United States constitution. The Federalist, John Fiske, James Bryce and many current writers were freely quoted in support of our thesis.

This parallel between the conditions in America in the 1780's and world conditions in the 1920's has stood the test of publicity. No one has denied it or challenged its basic implications. On the other hand, a high official of American League organizations has written us: "I have absolutely no difference with you on your main thesis. Your arguments backed by history as to the superiority of the United States Constitution over the Articles of Confederation are entirely sound. I think a United States of the World would be very much better than the League. I wish it were possible, but it is not!"

We realize that this opinion of the impracticability of World Citizenship is general. Many writers have mentioned world [Page 196]federation as an ideal, but few have championed it as a practical solution. However, as a problem of constitutional law we believe our published articles have demonstrated that there is nothing impossible or impracticable of speedy realization so far as constitutional processes go, in the establishment of a world government based on World Citizenship that would embrace, not all, but a reasonable majority of the nations of the world. In this new series, while continuing a study of constitutional phases of World Citizenship, we also assay the task of demonstrating the soundness and feasibility of World Citizenship in the realm of economics, finance and racial relations, problems incident to our industrial age. Many people are now critical of republicanism and they express it in various ways, we would join them by saying that our present set-up of republicanism has borne its fruit and withered, our modern industrialism being the ripened grain, and a new planting is demanded. We believe the same seed of republicanism should be sowed, not seed of any socialistic variety.

If, as we shall contend, a new republicanism in the form of World Citizenship will materially help to end our depression, if it will help Asia and the race problem while at the same time preserve Asian culture and civilization, if it will effect a reduction of armaments "with security," as legitimately demanded by France, if it will harmonize or reconcile capitalism, sovietism and fascism sufficiently to afford reasonable insurance against mortal conflict, World Citizenship should not be impossible of attainment, the people of the world should be led to adopt it rather than left to drift into another world war.

For the purpose of discussing World Citizenship in practice we shall, perforce, assume its adoption by at least a working majority of the leading nations of the world through the assent of a like majority of their respective citizens in suitable constitutional conventions revising the basic national governments to conform to the new constitutional model. On no other basis can we discuss effectively the economic, fiscal and racial problems of the world as they would be affected by such basic constitutional reforms. But [Page 197]

World Citizenship

our first endeavor should be to get a clear perspective of the new map that would result from establishing World Citizenship.

One of the first problems to be met in organizing our World Empire under world citizenship principles is, what nations would naturally become charter members and what map would result? We believe the rational supposition to be that the majority of nations in such an event would consist of the leading nations in the Americas and in Europe. The action of Asia and Africa would be more problematic, nor do we care to discuss whether the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Turkey would be classed as European or Asian. However, we would assume that some Asiatic nations qualified as charter members. Nine of the thirteen States had to accept our constitution before it became binding and some similar provision should be incorporated in any constitution recommended by any world constitutional convention. The status of nations that refused to join as charter members should be fixed in the world constitution subject to the limitation that no nation should be denied the right to join later. We do not care to be dogmatic about the status of nations remaining aloof. In 1789 Vermont and Canada held aloof and numerous of the thirteen States had claims to western territory. All these conditions would reappear. Do not the nations of today assert like claims to territory, though the claims of some were denied at Versailles in favor of others? Have all the mandated peoples been content and has not the status quo been disturbed in Africa and the Near East as well as in the Far East ever since Versailles? Some powers have emerged from this strife strong and united enough, perhaps, to qualify as charter members, surely the clash of their adherence would not be more severe than when Kansas was admitted, nor would lawlessness be more rife than in some other of our western States at the period of their admission to statehood. Other dependencies among our mandated peoples should be turned over to the Union to exercise the mandate as our States turned over their western territories to the federal government. This might leave a few nations actually hostile to the World Federation and a world allegiance. The citizens of [Page 198]such hostile nations would surely become "foreigners," their land "foreign territory." How large this foreign territory would be and its shore line on the high seas, no one can well forecast. In our discussions we will often refer to these three main classes of nations, charter members, mandates and foreign countries.

Assuming the adoption of World Citizenship, then, all nations in the world will fall in one or the other of these three classes. Those favoring world federation will be found as charter members or mandates and automatically all other nations will be foreign and considerations of economic and fiscal expediency will largely determine whether any given nation joins or remains aloof. New York, North Carolina and Rhode Island were the last States to adopt our constitution, joining after the constitution became effective by adherence of nine States. These three States were not convinced of the constitutional superiority of the Union, but feared its economic, financial and military strength. We believe these same economic, financial and military considerations would today exert even a stronger pull for union than they did in 1789, and, without elaboration, we will enumerate some of these advantages.

Charter members would no longer need to support their respective national army or navy since the Union would furnish all the navy needed, but a "foreign" nation would find itself opposed to an army and navy representing the World Empire and at a decided disadvantage in any race in armaments.

We expect later to devote some space to consideration of the High Seas under a World Federation, but now we would merely point out that likely a large proportion of all important world ports would be within Union territory and thereby shipping more easy of control than under present conditions. Even the United States could not well remain aloof were practically all European ports and many in Asia and South America under Union control.

Taking our queue from 1789, we would expect the Union to adopt a single currency, with redemption in gold in any nation member. The effects of having one currency and one gold reserve for [Page 199]

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the Union would be far reaching and will be more fully considered later in the series.

An Empire Banking system, uniform in all nations of the Union, would doubtless be enacted and fortunate the merchant anywhere in Union territory thus able to conduct his business throughout the Empire under one banking system and under one currency.

The Union would need and would possess under World Citizenship principles, the right to tax for carrying on the federated government functioning in matters now exterritorial, and would doubtless refund all so-called War Debts and Reparations thus relieving the various national budgets of a heavy interest burden. With a single currency, a single banking system and a single war debt all backed by the entire population within the federated territory, a sound basis would be laid for a return to normal and stable business conditions for all participating nations. In the United States it would mean a revival of mass production on a sound basis. Some of these reforms might fail of realization, but history teaches that they have more than a reasonable chance of success.

In this program of reforms what is there inconsistent with the national honor of any country, capitalistic or proletarian, what is there limiting the sovereignty of the people in any participating nation, what is there inimical to the domestic program of any nation, capitalistic or proletarian, laisser faire, socialist, fascist or soviet? Would not these benefits accrue to all alike, whether American, European or Asian? Such reforms would not of themselves create any new problems between participating nations, they would merely simplify existing business conditions and permit business to develop under more favorable trading conditions. The improvement in credit conditions resulting from a stable currency situation and from balanced national budgets would be reflected not only in "foreign" business but in a marked improvement in domestic business in each charter member.

We wish to emphasize that these are the benefits that would accrue to nations that join as charter members and furnish the chief [Page 200]reason for their adherence, whether capitalistic or proletarian, and these benefits would extend to those nations we have classed as mandates or territories, because they would be given the benefit of all these economies although they would have to await their further growth and development politically to enjoy full local or domestic government and full participation in the Union. But when we come to consider the effect on those countries stubborn and refractory enough to hold themselves aloof and defeat adherence to the Union, those nations we have classed as "foreign," we cannot see that any of these benefits would result to them. They would still need a national army and navy and very likely a much larger one. so that their national budget would have a still heavier burden Their position on the high seas and in world ports would likely be more restricted, they would have no benefit of the reformed and single currency of the Union, and the chances would be that balances of trade would run against them and their gold reserves be in constant danger. Their currency would not be redeemable in gold except in their own country and rates of exchange would likely be against them most of the time. They would receive little or no benefit from the new banking system and their war debt would still endanger their budget and national currency. Aside from all these obvious handicaps, they would be a "foreign" country without any benefits from probable tariff reforms between the participating nations, and, at the will of the Empire, their exports might have to pay an extra toll to use the high seas and enter the big market of the World Union, so that indirectly they might have to help pay off the war debt of the charter members without receiving any benefits from the reforms.

These handicaps would apply to proletarian countries as well as to capitalistic countries who refused to join the Union. Under the present system we must admit that proletarian countries may have one advantage over capitalistic countries because of their full control of exports and imports, enabling them to play one country against another and make all foreign countries bid for their trade. by concentrating their foreign trade first in one country and then [Page 201]

WORLD CITIZENSHIP

in another. But should a proletarian country find itself sitting on the outside of a World Union under world citizenship principles. such an advantage would be lost because the Union would present to it the united front of all participating countries.

Some readers may concede these advantages to a World Union, but think it is going too far to have it embrace the whole world. They may say that consolidation should follow geographic and racial lines to be successful; that while Europe might well form such a Union, the Americas another and likely Asia a third, it would be unwise to attempt to combine all races and continents in one government. Our answer is that such group or race consolidation would, in ractice, intensify the conflicting characteristics of each group, particularly those characteristics that lead to imperialism, and lay down the lines for another clash of civilizations. For one thing, each group would say, we must capture our share of the world now or we will never get it.

The world today in a business sense is one community. Mass production demands one market, the world market and ignores geography and races. The gold standard, or any other standard in inance and banking, should be world wide to meet the needs of our world wide business and these matters can be provided for and controlled only where there is one government in charge of those matters now classed as "exterritorial." Dividing the world into three or more groups would continue exterritoriality and continue, if not increase, rivalry in armaments, tariff wars, the race problem, and the war debts could not well be apportioned for refunding; it would also leave the world saddled with the problem of the high seas and combinations for the balance of power. It would prolong rather than put a practical end to militarism. The Federalist presented many military arguments in favor of one government rather than three or four for America in 1789, showing clearly the rivalry, military as well as economic, that would result today from an American group, a European group and an Asian group. [Page 202]"Leave America divided into thirteen or, if you please, into three or four independent governments—what armies could they raise and pay—what fleets could they ever hope to have? If one was attacked, would the others fly to its succor, and spend their blood and money in its defense? Would there be no danger of their being flattered into neutrality by its specious promises, or seduced by a too great fondness for peace to decline hazarding their tranquility and present safety for the sake of neighbors, of whom perhaps they have been jealous, and whose importance they are content to see diminished? Although such conduct would not be wise, it would, nevertheless, be natural. But admit that they might be willing to help the invaded State or confederacy. How, and when, and in what proportion shall aids of men and money be afforded? Who shall command the allied armies, and from which of them shall he receive his orders? Who shall settle the terms of peace, and in case of disputes what umpire shall decide between them and compel acquiescence? Various difficulties and inconveniences would be inseparable from such a situation; whereas one government, watching over the general and common interests, and combining and directing the powers and resources of the whole, would be free from all these embarrassments, and conduce far more to the safety of the people."

Not a contingency outlined above but what we have seen illustrated during the World War. The American groups under consideration in 1789 were a New England group, a Central and a Southern group, with doubt as to whether New York would join the Central or the New England group. There were also foreign powers with colonies close by ready to flatter New York or any group into an alliance either before or after these groups were formed. Today the place of New York might well be taken by some nation in the Near East or again by some nation in Central or South America and it is probable that some one or more strong nations might refuse to join any group and prefer to seek alliances. Finally, do we desire the formation of any white group and a yellow group under any consideration? With the interests of rival [Page 203]

WORLD CITIZENSHIP

groups clashing and strong "foreign" nations to ferment discord and breed military alliances we find the conditions of 1789 paralleled by 1933.

If we add to these military handicaps of group organization the complete failure to meet those world economic conditions that have brought on our depression, one may well ask, what possible use could there be in the struggles needed to reform the world into a number of larger, competing racial group organizations? In regard to remedying the economic problems from which our depression resulted, history teaches that united action of the entire world business community affected is needed. Also there is general agree. ment in each nation that the economic reforms we have suggested would be markedly beneficial. In other words there is unanimity as to the reforms that would work out our salvation. Why should the enlightened public opinion in each nation now favor these reforms and later, when brought together in a world group like the coming World Economic Conference, change face about and reject them? Baird, in his valuable book, "The Rise of American Civilization," throws a new light on this phase of our world organization problem.

"For more than a hundred years it was the custom of historians, in speaking of the work of the delegates-to the Philadelphia Convention-to emphasize their differences of opinion, their impassioned controversies, and their compromises, whereas as a matter of fact they exhibited a striking unanimity of opinion on the great economic objects which they had assembled to attain. For this we have the testimony of a competent scholar, R. L. Schuyler, who has put the whole story of the making of the Constitution in .new perspective by showing, on the basis of authentic researches, that the essential agreements of the Philadelphia Convention were more significant than its disputes.

"In the light of his inquiries, it appears that a safe majority of the members was early mustered on nearly all the fundamental issues before them. If they warmly debated many matters pertaining to means and instrumentalities, they agreed with relative case [Page 204]that the national government must be erected and endowed with ample power to defend the country on land and sea, to pay the national debt, to protect private property against agrarian legislatures, to secure the return of fugitive servants, and to uphold the public order against domestic insurrection. This basic fact should not be obscured in any consideration of the long and tempestuous arguments that arose over the form of the new government and the representation of the States in it.

"On the creation of a great national agency endowed with political power equal to specific tasks of the highest order there was so much solidarity of opinion that the objections of the insurgent few merely emphasized the general concord."

We believe the leading national statesmen, economists and financiers, the world over, in theory now favor a World Union, a world currency based on the gold standard, a world banking system, the payment of all public debts, the reduction of armaments and other like reforms, but they see no acceptable "means and instrumentalities" for vitalizing them without detriment to their local interests and without "losing face" on national sovereignty and national honor. In practice, they see only the imperialistic parliamentary form of world government, again it is a quarrel over means and forms rather than over the substance of the remedy. We are urging a full and careful consideration of the federated type of World Union as the "means and instrumentalities" by which these reforms can be secured while harmonizing national "administrations, legislatures and patriotisms;" and we believe that the constitutional reforms of World Citizenship will make it possible to solve our economic, fiscal and racial problems. [Page 205]

WAR DEBTS—WORLD LIABILITY OR WORLD ASSET?

by ROYAL WILBUR FRANCE Professor of Economics, Rollins College

THE war debts are considered a European liability to America. Debts and liabilities are usually synonymous terms. As a matter of bookkeeping they are an asset of the United States. "They owe us the money. Let them pay and shut up!" was the elegant way that one member of Congress expressed the American side of the great argument. Some of our bemused debtors reply, "With what and how?" while others are growing defiant and making faces at us.

But what if it should appear that in fact it would be more harmful to the United States to collect than to forego and more injurious to Europe to repudiate than to pay? That would raise the accounting question to another level altogether.

An impasse can only be bridged by what is known to the sociologist as the cooperative technique for resolving conflict.* If we desire to avoid disaster it would be advisable for congressmen and statesmen, if any, to study it. In this war debt controversy the position of either side, stated by itself, sounds not merely reasonable but irrefutable. That one-sided statement has a convincing sound is not an unusual phenomenon as any one who has judicial experience will readily understand. Met by an equally one-sided statement from the opposition, if there is no judicial tribunal empowered to decide and neither will listen to the other, the result in private argument is a brawl and perhaps a fist fight and in international affairs may mean a severance of diplomatic relations or even a resort to arms. The modern world has far from recovered

• The Art of Straight Thinking. Clarke. Appleton.

[Page 206]from its last frenzy in that line. We all see that another such locking of maddened bulls' horns as took place from 1914 to 1918 is not to be courted, war debt payments or no war debt payments. unless civilization, euphemistically so called, is eager for its own destruction. No man in his senses wants another world war or even prolongation of acrimonious controversy between nations. We rightly fear any split over major issues because we have learned to our lasting sorrow that international argumentation is loaded with dynamite. National interests coming into conflict menace the peace of the world unless we can agree with our adversaries quickly before the passions of patriotism have become inflamed. Once something said or done about a debt touches our sensitive national honors it is necessary to begin the preparation of anesthetics and Red Cross bandages.

How can we get statesmen to learn the simple principle of discussion at a higher level underlying the cooperative technique of social conflict? Can we induce them to apply reason and goodwill to the problems that confront nations? One way would be by choosing intelligent statesmen in the first place. That apparently is difficult. To hope that we can persuade the American Congress to take a world view in the light of recent utterances from Capitol Hill seems utopian. Perhaps if we can make it clear that by gaining our life through selfish nationalism we will surely lose it and that by giving up something we will make immeasurable gains we can at least appeal to a more enlightened self interest.

The way to resolve seemingly insoluble conflict problems is to extract the truth from both sides of the argument instead of stupidly continuing to see and state only one side. The first phase then is clarification of the problem in terms of the different groups involved and the stakes which they have or believe that they have in the outcome. The second involves considering the advantages and disadvantages to cach group of cach course of action proposed. The last step involves adopting the course which best reconciles apparently incompatible aims and views. There is always a larger view. It considers not only the interest of the smaller group but [Page 207]

WAR DEBTS

of the larger of which it is a part. When we consider the United States not merely as a separate nation but as an organ of an extremely sick world can our views and practical attitudes fail to be different? We can scarcely imagine a healthy member in a dying body.

The argument on war debts has reached an impasse. If debts could be changed from a European liability to a world asset by Europe paying and making herself the immeasurable gainer and the United States surrendering something and reaping incomparable benefits, that chasm would be bridged. The sad and heartsick world of the depression years would feel a new surge of hope. The sun that was clouded by the disillusioning treaty of Versailles would shine once more. The cynicism and despair of the post-war period must be dissipated by a broader statesmanship and a wider vision of world economics and mutual interests among the nations. We all know this but a practical way of realizing it must be found.

The present proposal proceeds from the following premises which seem to fit the facts;

1. That the present depression derives from an insufficiency and steady diminishment of world purchasing power. That remedial measures must now be directed to the stimulation of purchasing power.

2. That our European debtors will be further embarrassed by the transfer to us of large sums in gold without corresponding benefits to us from gold transfer in view of the present maldistribution of the world gold supply.

3. That the payment by the transfer of goods to us is impracticable in the light of our own overproduction and of the fact that what we desperately need is not goods but markets.

4. Per contra, that the American Congress and the American people are in no mood to consider cancellation with favor, especially in view of the continued large expenditures of our European debtors on armaments at the very period when they are asking us to relieve them from their debts.

5. That in the large view cancellation would prove humiliating and embarrassing and in the end injurious to debtor [Page 208]countries when they find themselves in the position of seeking further loans and would constitute an unfortunate precedent from the standpoint of creditor countries. Either repudiation or wholesale cancellation might make international finance an impossible gamble for generations to come.

We come to the point then where payment to us either in gold or goods is undesirable and repudiation or cancellation equally undesirable from the standpoint of debtors and creditors alike. Our proposal recognizes a community of interest in finding some way in which the debts can be paid which will constitute the minimum of embarrassment to debtors and creditors and the maximum of stimulation of purchasing power in countries which are at one and the same time both our creditors and our customers and in our own country as well. Loving our neighbors as well as ourselves implies no slightest obligation to love them any better.

We come now to our conclusion which involves the answer to the question, "In what form can payment be made which will meet most satisfactorily all of the conditions of our problem?"

Our handling of the Boxer indemnity by turning it back to China for educational purposes constitutes at least the suggestion of a precedent. We propose;

1. That each of the debtor countries set aside a certain portion of the payments due to us for the purpose of paying for scholarships for American students who wish to prepare themselves for the consular or other foreign service and for other high grade graduates of our colleges. The Rhodes scholarships are a model of what we have in mind. From such an outlay, which could be quite a substantial sum, we would derive a national benefit from expenditures made in the debtor countries. No transfer of funds to us would be involved.

2. That a fund be set aside by the debtor countries for the transport and entertainment of large numbers of American school and college teachers. These teachers could be carried to Europe cach summer in the ships of debtor countries and be entertained by them without the necessity of transfer of funds to us. The sum [Page 209]involved would be substantial and the vitalizing of our educational system immeasurable while our debtor countries would secure a Corresponding benefit not only from the stimulation of expenditures in them but from the humanizing contacts and mutual exchanges in viewpoints that would take place.

3. A certain number of foreign students could be sent to and supported in American colleges and universities at the expense of debtor countries. This item would involve some money being transferred here but the sum involved would be slight compared to the benefits to the debtors themselves educationally and would result in a desirable reciprocity.

4. A large number of books could be sent to schools, colleges and public libraries in the languages of the debtor countries and since these would be largely books not published in America would not compete with our home publishers. Maps and certain works of art would fall in this same category. Also there is considerable technical and laboratory equipment which we could take from our debtor countries of a type whch would be most useful to our educational system and not in competition with equipment produced here

5. That each of the debtor countries place orders for the manufacture within their own countries of goods to be delivered to the American Red Cross or other agencies to be designated by the American Government for the relief of destitution throughout the world. Consumer goods could be distributed for example, in India and China on a large scale without unduly disturbing exist ang business because they could be delivered to people who have little or nothing with which to buy goods which have to be handled through the ordinary channels of trade. Tho orders should be of a nature to make the maximum demands on the primary markets which are of interest to the American farmer.

We are not now attempting to present the plan in detail and in order to do so in any adequate way would require an international conference of experts. To illustrate what we have in mind however, England would place orders with cotton textile mills in [Page 210]England for an agreed number of dollars worth of cotton cloth. It should be stipulated that the cotton should be purchased from our Farm Board or other American sources at prices to be agreed upon. They would thus buy the raw cotton from us at a favorable price thereby relieving the cotton surplus and stimulating the price of cotton. They would have to transfer substantial sums in gold to us under this item of the program to pay for the cotton but since the cost of the raw material is a relatively small proportion of the cost of the finished goods and since the balance of the money would go direct to English cotton mills for the stimulation of their languishing businesses they would gain much more than they paid. When the cloth was completed it would be delivered to the American Red Cross for distribution to our unemployed or in China or wherever we might decide. Orders for wheat products for distribution to our destitute and for delivery to the underfed populations of China and India could rapidly clean up world wheat surpluses and raise the market price of wheat for the American farmer. The Government would get its repayment, not directly, but indirectly through the increase of income tax returns that would result from returning confidence and a revival of business not only here but abroad.

This principle could be worked out in detail. It is not impossible that conditions could be developed for the delivery of producers' goods in the nature of modern machinery and equipment to some of the backward countries and that the application of the same idea to the Russian question could work out their acquiring needed equipment against their five year plan and restoring themselves to the community of nations by satisfying their international debts. We are suggesting that as we were able to work out an elaborate international organization to win the war, using American money for the purpose, so we use American money, now owing to us, to form an international organization to win the peace.

It is obvious that the plan as presented is susceptible of adoption in part or great modifications. If adopted, it would need the scrutiny and sifting of many minds in many countries but to set such a plan in motion at this time would be an act of the highest possible [Page 211]

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statesmanship. Who can fail to envy Franklin Roosevelt his opportunity at such a crisis in world affairs and to shudder at his responsibility? For suppose that he should fail? Suppose that America should fail? The world's reserves, material and spiritual, are close to the exhaustion point. Signs of breakdown appear on every hand.

Is our plan chimerical? Only if self interest has so blinded the nations of the world to their real interests that they will be unable to visualize the immense benefits, both material and spiritual, that would come to them from considering themselves not as individual nations but as members of a world community.

The way lies open before us. If we step back into the narrow by-ways of the past, darkened as they are by the passions and hatreds and the spilled blood of millions, chaos and destruction may have to be our portion. That has been the lot of all past civilizations. They tried to base prosperity on selfishness and they failed. If we fail, the building of a fairer and better world may once again have to await the birth of a more benevolent and a more intelligent generation. [Page 212]

A REAL DEFENCE OF RELIGION

by WALLACE W. WILLARD

In the parlance of war, organized religion is now "digging in" in an effort to withstand the forces of negation that threaten it on every side.

In this conflict it is of central importance that we remind ourselves that the logical understanding has inexorable limits in the quest of ultimate truth. A full and clear recognition of this fact would go far toward relieving the widespread unrest that exists today. To believe that we must anxiously wait on every new deliverance of science, philosophy and psychology for the verification of religion is to condemn the soul to a ceaseless quest with no hope of arrival.

Logic may serve religion but cannot of itself discover religion. Its function is strictly limited to concepts and concepts are abstractions. Reality emerges only in the direct impinging of the Whole on the totality of man’s nature. The function of logic in relation to religion is a negative one; it serves to clear the way, that the deeper intuitive self may find expression. It blazes a path through the tangled undergrowths of superstition and wrong-thinking that stifle the religious instinct. It is a John the Baptist that prepares in the wilderness a highway for the God who is within. Its function is to train the telescope, not to see the star, to adjust the pointer on the dial, not to hear the voices and the music that come over the radio. Like the electric wires that extend from the central dynamo in a great municipality to every part of the city, bringing light and heat and power for human need, conceptual thought makes available for use the mysterious energies that issue from the central power house of man’s deeper nature. Like the mysterious [Page 213]

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filaments of the nervous system that are tracks over which the life current travels from the central cerebral cortex to the utmost periphery of the body, conceptual thought constructs the traction lines that make the deeper life forces operative; but neither wires nor nerves are to be confounded with the current of energy. That the processes of logical reasoning can never reach ultimate truth is a conclusion forced on anyone who finds himself enmeshed in the web of modern controversial thought. Logic has to do with particulars or what is abstracted from the Whole; religion has to do with the Whole. Logic is a process of unfolding what is already enfolded in the premises; religion has to do with Reality itself. Logic is mechanical and deals with surfaces; religion is vital and deals with essences.

Thus it is true that if ultimate reality is to be gained, if the whole is in any way to be apprehended, it must be by some other method than that of the syllogism which by its very nature is disqualified for the religious quest. Religion is "either self-evident or incomprehensible." And this lines religion with art. Beauty does not appeal to logic but to appreciation. The sense of beauty precedes any concept by which we may try to explain it. Here as in religion and wherever ultimate values are concerned, the concept is last, not first, a human construction, not a divine and original influx. Whether it be the beauty of religion that we have in mind or the religion of beauty the same is true:

"Beauty through my senses stole, I gave myself to the perfect Whole."

When Dante and Virgil reached the farther confines of Purgatory, Virgil, symbolizing intellect, fastened his eyes on Dante and said:

". . . thou . . . to a place art come Where of myself no farther I discern; By intellect and art I here have brought thee. Expect no more or word or sign from me;" [Page 214]"Thee o'er thyself I therefore crown and mitre!" Virgil had reached the limit of his power as guide and tells his charge to go forward under higher direction.

It will be great gain for multitudes in our perplexed modern situation if we can get a clear idea of what present-day religious thought at its best is saying upon this subject. That the source of religion is beyond the concept was long ago expressed by James Russell Lowell among the poets in lines taken from "The Cathedral":

"If sometimes I must hear good men debate Of other witness to Thyself than Thou, As if there needed any help of ours To nurse Thy flickering light, that else must cease, Blown out, as 'twere a candle, by men's breath, My soul shall not be taken in their snare, To change her inward surety for their doubt Muffled from sight in formal robes of proof."

In turning to our philosophers we find this poetical instinct of Lowell expressed in terms of unmetered, sober thought. "It is mysticism," says Professor Hocking of Harvard University, "that unites the certainty that God exists and that all explanations are inadequate." "The most flawless proof of the existence of God," says Professor Eddington the Oxford astronomer, "is no substitute for it (relationship with God) and if we have that relationship the most convincing disproof is turned harmlessly aside." "Nothing in religion," says Professor Hartely Burr Alexander, "is more desperate than just this fact, that we have come to look—so many men, so many—upon human religious experience as a thing to be explained, and not as itself the explanation, regal over all." "Your purely conceptual thinker," says Professor James Bissett Pratt, "is ever at one remove from reality." In "The Pilgrimage of Buddhism" Professor Pratt presents a wealth of material showing that the best exponents of Buddhism have a profound sense of the utter disparity between reality itself and all symbols that seek to reflect it:

"Your true Zen (Chinese Buddhist) will discuss philosophy with [Page 215]

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you as long as you like, he will read books and write them but he is not troubled by the thought that all the philosophers and all the books may be mistaken for he knows that the best and truest of these are but fingers pointing to the moon. . . . . If we fix our gaze upon the finger we miss the heavenly glory. The finger is of use only in pointing away from itself to the light which illumines finger and all." And quoting the Buddhist authority Suzuki: "The highest truth is unfathomably deep, it is not an object of thought or discussion and even the canonical texts have no way to bring it within our reach. Let us once see into our original nature and we have truth even if we are illiterate, not knowing a thing." This last quotation suggests the words of Jesus about becoming as a little child in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.

These reflections of current thought point to the self-sufficiency of religion. Rising from a point beyond the concept it exists in its own right and is not dependent on any body of concepts. Rather it gives rise to conceptual systems which are imperfect and often erratic efforts to express in intellectual symbols that which in itself is non-rational. In other words religion so considered is autonomous. As Dean Inge has expressed it "Mysticism (which the Dean has characterized as 'pure religion') has given to the spiritual life the right to stand on its own feet and rest on its own evidence." Too long has religion paid obeisance to the concept. The time has come when a defensive attitude must give way to an offensive. A religion that is ever anxious to make peace with science, philosophy and psychology is bankrupt. Religion is made to command and not to serve.

There are signs that the tide is turning and that religion, relieved of the incubus of misconceptions and doubts "Muffled from sight in formal robes of proof" is about to reassert itself as a simple and elemental power in human life.

This tendency is seen not only in the growing impatience with conceptual systems that often blind the souls of men to the deeper realities which they only succeed in obscuring, but in the positive [Page 216]spiritual interpretations that are piercing the intellectual wrappings of reality and discovering the simple and basic truths on which religion rests.

It would not be an over-bold assertion to say that science is today doing more to make religion real in the minds of thinking men than are the professional theologians. The professional theologian still too often speaks a language in bondage to the concept and in a dialect foreign to the modes of modern thought. On the other hand science with its empirical approach to truth and its reliance on experience is paving the way, though unwittingly, for a new appreciation of religion as a vital reality in human life.

Further, the positive results of science are pointing in an astounding way toward a spiritual interpretation of the universe as entirely consistent with, and even demanded by, the strictest scientific methods of research. Modern science is a Moses leading the children of men out of the land of bondage but as Moses, modern science can go no farther than the border of the Promised Land. In the words of L. P. Jacks: "We are in sight of a new intimacy between ourselves and the universe, in the strength of which we shall no longer think of the universe as a dumb and awful object threatening to overwhelm us with its immensities, but rather as the embodied word of living God, addressed to us. To some of our greatest poets, Keats and Shelley, Wordsworth and Blake, this intuition has been self-evident; but while for them it rests on the intuition of exalted moments, we are now finding our way to it through the teaching of that very science which once seemed to be leading us in the opposite direction. It is no exaggeration to say that mysticism itself is acquiring a scientific basis."

A direct corollary of religion conceived as deriving from the secret depths of personality and prior to its expression in conceptual thinking is the unity, in their inmost essence, of the great religions of the world. This does not mean that we shall equate every religion with every other but it is to recognize that there is a light that lighteth every man coming into the world since "in Him we live and move and have our being." From the bottom rung of pure [Page 217]

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magic to the topmost rung of pure spirituality where the spiritual principle has disengaged itself from all alien admixtures and become regnant, may be traced the stages wherein the divine has revealed itself in the human. An American lecturer in India recorded the fact he had become conscious of a certain "spiritual consanguinity" between himself and the Hindus. This same consanguinity is felt wherever human spirits touch each other in their profoundest depths. Tradition, culture, creeds, ritual, idiosyncracies—all superficial features of personality—drop away when the innermost man speaks.

There is nothing in the whole range of contemporary life so hopeful for the future welfare of mankind as the resurgence of the religious spirit in its elemental simplicity and the growing recognition of the spiritual bond that binds together men of all races, creeds and traditions. The practical implications of this fact point the only way out of the jungles of misunderstanding and strife into the open places of an ordered and happier world.

Another corollary of utmost significance flowing from the conception of religion under consideration is this: Religion, taking its rise from the elemental depths of the soul, is omnific, all-creative in every realm and range of human life, and conversely, life becomes automatically sterile wherever it is separated from conscious relation to the Whole wherein essentially religion consists.

The human spirit is at its deepest level super-conceptual and has access to things that "have not entered into the heart of man to conceive" and to know, in its deeper sense, is not to arrive at an inference by a process of reasoning; it "Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape." It proceeds from a . . . . . . source within us, where broods radiance vast, To be elicited ray by ray."

And from this source proceed great creations of the human spirit as well as the radiant lives of the humblest and most inconspicuous of those around us. Everywhere and always real life is to be [Page 218]measured by the purity and volume of the stream that flows from this fountain-head. Everything is religious in its essential nature that expresses in whatever degree the Universal in terms of Truth, Beauty and Goodness.

Depth and expansion are what we need today—depth to plumb with Tennyson “the abysmal depth of personality” whence all creative impulses proceed and expansion to recognize the unity of religion that underlies its widely diverse symbolic expressions in creed and ritual and in the arts that seek to body forth in music, in painting and in literature the Universal Reality within the phenomenal world that is ever seeking recognition in the lives of men.

There are experiences which if not religious in the commonly accepted sense are certainly religious as witnesses to a higher dimension of life ever waiting to be “tapped” by the human spirit. A striking illustration of such an experience, taken from the realm of music, is found in the “Education of Henry Adams” wherein the autobiographer tells us that until one day of revelation he had loathed the music of Beethoven. On that day he had been reluctantly persuaded by friends to go to a beer garden and again, for fellowship’s sake, listen to the music he loathed. His own words may state what happened: “He could not be more astonished had he read a new language. Among the marvels of education this was the most marvellous. A prison wall that barred his senses on one side of life fell of its own accord without his so much as knowing when it happened. Among the fumes of coarse tobacco and poor beer, surrounded by the coarsest of hausfrauen a new sense burst out like a flower in his life, so superior to the old senses, so bewildering, so astonished at its own existence that he could not credit it and watch it as something apart, accidental and not to be trusted.”

In this experience we cannot doubt that Henry Adams had “dealings with the Secret-Ground of the universe inaccessible to conceptual thought.”

The history of art is the history of a pre-logical instinct in the soul of man seeking expression in the world of sense. Whether it be a cave man depicting buffaloes on cavern walls in France before [Page 219]

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the dawn of history and with a fidelity unrivalled today or Michelangelo painting frescos on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at Rome; whether it be the builders of temples now only known in their majestic ruins or the creators of those piles that everywhere in Europe today bear witness to the spirit of Beauty seeking embodiment in stone—in every instance we are in the presence of a superconceptual urge that cannot rest until it is clothed in sensuous form.

"The work of religion," Professor Hocking has said, "is a perpetual parentage; the status of the arts is a perpetual dependence."

To limit the creative power of religion, however, to an esoteric experience or to the fine arts would be to falsify it at the very point which needs emphasis today. If religion be the total response of the human spirit to the living Totality of things it follows that it must function outwardly through the entire gamut of human relations. There is not a human interest that does not await its life-giving touch. The chaos of politics and economics, giving rise to perplexity, confusion and strife, threatening the very existence of civilization, awaits the creative and co-ordinating power of the religious sentiment without which all policies of expediency and strategies of statecraft must end either in a stalemate or in universal destruction. Gandhi's program for India rests on his belief that "soul-force," active on a national scale, will eventually win independence of his people; and Mukerji, a native son of India, closes his book "Disillusioned India" with these words: "India has given many religions to the world. She may now be giving a new method of gaining political freedom without resort to war."

To sum up: Religion springs from a source deeper than conceptual thinking. Formal logic deals with abstractions and is incapable of grasping truth as a whole. The insights of all high poetry and philosophy attest the primacy of the religious instinct and the secondary importance of discursive thought in the quest of ultimate truth. The universality of religion and the fundamental unity of "religions" follow as corollaries. Finally, the recognition of vital religion as the all-creative factor in human life emerges. [Page 220]

INTERNATIONAL CO-CITIZENSHIP: THE SOLE BASIS OF PERMANENT INTERNATIONAL PEACE

by RAPHAEL BUCK

A WORLD at peace must be a world at peace in substance as well as in form. It must be a world in which the brotherhood of man is recognized as a scientific and juridical fact instead of being regarded as a beautiful but unsubstantia! dream. It must be a world in which the various countries are merely convenient administrative and geographical units which though politically independent are commercially integrated by custom-house-less frontiers with all the rest of the world. It must be a world in which the most favored nation principle is extended to mean the granting by the government of each nation to the people of every other nation of the same rights and privileges which are enjoyed by its own people and in which, therefore, all restrictions upon and all special laws relating to the movements of population, of capital, of merchandise and of shipping from one country to another and between one country and another have disappeared from the statute books. It must be a world, in short, in which every man is a citizen of the world, a citizen in one country having all the rights and privileges of citizenship in every other country and being, to all intents and purposes, a citizen of every other country.

In such a world there would be no motive for wars between nations. Nations fight for territory but the territory of the whole world would, under a system of international co-citizenship as here advocated, be open to the people of the whole world. Nations fight for trade but the ports of the whole world would, under such a system, be open to the trade of the whole world and on the same terms to all nations including the nation in whose territory a par [Page 221]

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ticular port is situated. Nations fight for field of investment for their capital but under the plan of international co-citizenship foreign capital would be guaranteed the same rights and privileges in any country as native capital enjoys. And what, at the bottom, in most instances, is even a war for national independence but a struggle by one people to secure equal political and civil rights with the people to whom it is, for the time being, subject, and such equality of rights would be secured to the people of the entire civilized world by the adoption of the plan of international co-citizenship herein put forward and which, in combination with the grant of automony as to matters of local concern, would make a war of secession as criminally stupid as a war to prevent secession.

The adoption by the nations of the world of the system of international co-citizenship, as here proposed, so that a man shall have the same civil and political rights in any country regardless of his country of origin as a native has and, similarly, that the capital and merchandise of the people of any country may be imported into any other country without meeting with any discriminatory or prohibitive tax or tariff in favor of native capital or native merchandise, the adoption of this system of international co-citizenship, embodying, as it would, for the first time in human history the principle of the brotherhood of man as a part of international law, will not, it is true, in itself deprive the nations of the power to wage war but it will deprive them of all incentive as well as of all excuse for doing so, and only when nations will no longer have either any incentive or any excuse for war and not until then will they cease to wage war.

International co-citizenship means the opening up of the economic opportunities of the world to all the nations of the world and it means, therefore, the enlargement of the economic opportunities of the people of all nations by as much as the whole earth is larger than any one country. Nor is any country so rich in resources and facilities for the supply of human wants nor yet so poor that the throwing open to the people of the whole world of the economic resources and facilities of the whole world would not immensely aid such country in the production of wealth and [Page 222]in more profitable inter-change of its products with other countries while elevating correspondingly its standards of living and of comfort. Nor, again, are the wages of labor in any country so high nor yet so low that the throwing open of the markets of the entire world to the products of the industry of the entire world would not vastly increase the demand for labor in such country and correspondingly increase labor’s reward. High wages are the reflex of high productivity, and cannot, in any event, be overborne by low wages based on low productivity. Neither can the importation of foreign goods possibly undermine native industry since such goods must necessarily be paid for, directly or indirectly, by the exportation of the products of native industry. It may, indeed, be quite unprofitable, as a commercial proposition, in the absence of a protective tariff and aided only by a glass roof and steam heat-to endeavor to raise bananas in the Aleutian Islands, but it were better for the Aleutian Islanders as well as for the rest of the world that the former confine their industrial efforts to sealing and the like and the rest of the world will then see to it that Aleutian Islanders are kept fairly well supplied with bananas. Tariff barriers, like mine barriers at sea or barbed wire entanglements on land are quite serviceable regarded as an integral part of the mechanism of war and so that a nation may not in an age of universal militancy and of universal preparedness for war and universal expectation of war be commercially dependent upon foreigners. Such obstructions, however, to international commerce, to international unity and to international good will as tariff systems are would be as great an anachronism in and as great a menace to a world order supposedly based on universal and perpetual peace, as would frontiers bristling with fortifications and seas swarming with battleships.

The surrender by each nation of the special rights and privileges now possessed by its members as against foreigners, the abolition of all discriminatory laws and all discriminatory duties and taxes against foreign merchandise, foreign capital, foreign shipping, etc., far from involving any loss or sacrifice to the nations making such surrender is in reality an essential condition to [Page 223]

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their highest prosperity and to their being able to make the most of their natural resources and abilities. Yet such is the surrender that must be made by the nations of the world to avoid the unspeakable horrors and calamities of otherwise inevitable future world wars and the otherwise inevitable destruction over a world-wide area of all that has been built up in a thousand years of laborious effort. With the present amazing developments and improvements in the means of communication and transportation so that, shortly, the different countries of the world will become but as different wards or quarters of one, gigantic, earth-encircling city, the various nations and races of mankind must reconcile themselves to the thought of living together and working together on the basis of amity and of equality and mutuality of rights and of interests, in other words, on the basis of international co-citizenship, or, blinded by age-old prides and hatreds and armed with the new and all too efficient means of destruction which they are now fashioning and improving, they will perish together in a coming Armageddon and a new cycle of barbarism, slowly and painfully developing through the centuries into civilization, will begin its course.

But it will be asked, "Will not the geographical intermingling on a large scale of races of lower standards of living and of culture with those of higher standards as must necessarily result over large portions of the world through the operation of the plan of international co-citizenship, as here advocated, prove directly detrimental to the latter races and directly destructive to such higher standards?" It is this fear which is, of course, largely responsible for such drastic anti-foreign legislation as, for example, the Asiatic exclusion laws of the United States, Canada and Australia and which laws, if not abolished, must at some future day involve these countries in a life-and-death struggle with the populous and, perhaps, by that time, as powerful as populous countries of Eastern and Southern Asia.

Let us examine, then, the validity of the argument against the universal freedom of migration on the ground of the alleged [Page 224]danger to countries having high standards of living and of culture of immigration from countries with lower standards. And, first, let us ask: In what country is the standard of living or the standard of culture of the various classes of the population that now inhabit such country equal and uniform or anything that most remotely approaches that condition? Is the standard of living of a hod carrier, for example, in any part of the United States equal to that of a bricklayer, or is the latter's standard of living at all comparable with that of, say, a brick manufacturer? Yet in what respect is the hod carrier's lower standard of living a menace to the bricklayer, and since when have brick manufacturers begun to tremble because of the relatively pitiful income of bricklayers?

If. then, leaving aside for the moment, the question of cultural differences, there is, quite irrespective of immigration, the greatest possible disparity of incomes and of earning power between the various classes in a modern industrial nation and if, as we see, those in the medium and higher income groups are not at all adversely affected by the presence of vast numbers with much lower incomes, the differences in income under modern industrial conditions, aside from the effects of legal monopolies, being due, in the main, to differences in productivity or in the importance of the individual's economic function as determined by the law of supply and demand, why must we suppose that the introduction even of a very considerable population of foreigners accustomed to a low standard of living, but whose economic efficiency is correspondingly low, would be detrimental to those who do not themselves stand at a still lower level of economic efficiency? Or if we assume that such foreigners, either in the first or subsequent generations. would gradually develop a higher degree of productivity, which under the operation of economic law would necessarily ensure them correspondingly enlarged returns, either in wages or other forms of income, would such enlarged returns be at the expense of the other elements of the population? Assuredly not. For what the newcomers or their descendants would thus take out of the social fund could not be more than what they will have put into [Page 225]

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it in labor or other forms of service, and for every man who would possibly be displaced by their competition to find another field for his activities, one more in accord with his abilities, room would be made for a dozen to help supply the market for goods and services which the presence of the new element in the population would directly and indirectly create.

But perhaps it will be argued that the mere numerical increase of population brought about by immigration is in itself a detriment to the natives of a country by decreasing the ratio of land to population and so increasing the pressure of population upon the means of subsistence. The tendency of population, however, in any country, gradually to increase, in any event, to, what may be called, the saturation point, for that particular country and for that particular stage of industrial development is inevitable, barring certain possible future changes in the sexual life of the race which need not here be taken into account and which may possibly nullify such tendency. Arbitrary restrictions upon immigration can, therefore, at the most, retard but they cannot prevent the natural expansion of the population of any country to the limits set by the natural resources of the latter and according to the progress that has been reached in the power of man to utilize these resources. At the present moment, for example, the increase of population in England purely through the excess of births over deaths and notwithstanding the lack of numerical proportion between the sexes is over one thousand a day. In the United States, at the present time, the corresponding number is twice as high.

Since, then, in any country, population must, in any event, reach or tend to reach, approximately, the maximum density which under the given conditions of production it is possible for it to attain, and since the standards of living of the various classes of the population must, in any event, reach a point corresponding with such density, it is quite useless, it is, indeed, infinitely mischievous, through legislation, legislation that must be provocative of war on the vastest and most horrible scale, to endeavor to combat such tendency unless it be the deliberate and insane design to [Page 226]invoke war for the very purpose of having war itself, through its destructiveness, serve as a check upon such population density.

Let us now turn to the consideration of the possible cultural danger to the countries of high cultural development of the immigration of large numbers from among the races of lower types of culture, an immigration which there is no reason to suppose would in the long run, under the system of international co-citizenship, more than balance the movement of population in the opposite direction. Bearing in mind that each cultural group deems its own form of culture to be the best and that each cultural form is, perhaps, in a sense, the best for the members of the particular cultural group and at the particular time, does it not bespeak a spirit of medieval intolerance as well as a lack of faith in the inherent power of its own culture for any group to require conformity to its own cultural system as a condition to the admission of outsiders to the territory in which such group is politically dominant? As a matter of fact, there is, as a result of the unifying influence of modern science, modern invention and modern commerce, a gradual and steady convergence of the various civilizations of the earth, a gradual and steady spread of the same modes of living and the same habits of thought in all countries, so that the danger is almost that the cultural life of the earth will become too monotonously uniform in character rather than that the present diversity in the degree and kind of civilization of the various countries will continue.

But perhaps it will be argued that the danger of free migration to countries with high standards of culture consists in the possible entry into such countries of large numbers of an inferior ethnic strain, the possible entry of large numbers from among the races that because of inferior mental endowment have, through all history, contributed nothing to human progress and seem inherently incapable of making such contribution. To this the answer is that the same force in Nature which has developed the human species to its present biological state, the same selective and eliminative force which has raised man from the level of the Pithecanthropus Erectus and from that of the sub-human Neanderthal and of kin- [Page 227]

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dred types is still at work, slowly and silently producing, through the ages, a nobler and more perfect race. Those varieties, therefore, of the human species which having lagged behind in the biological development are incapable of meeting the test of adaptation to the conditions of modern civilization and of the higher civilization of the future, are destined gradually to disappear, and whatever problems and difficulties may arise because of their presence in the midst of a more advanced population must, therefore, be of a temporary nature.

Nevertheless, it is true that because of the democratic character of modern states conditions may arise in which a primitive race settled in large numbers amidst a population with long traditions of civilization may become a most serious political danger to the more cultivated race through its possession of the power of the ballot and its consequent influence upon governmental policy. Similarly, two races of perhaps equal native capacity but of extremely divergent types of culture would, if occupying the same territory, present a serious problem in racial adjustment under the ordinary political method of majority coercion of minorities. Such race problems could be readily solved, however, upon the basis of racial autonomy. As territorial autonomy reduces the friction between populations occupying separate territories so does racial autonomy reduce the friction between populations of different type or race occupying the same territory. If and when, as a result of the freedom of migration involved in the plan of international co-citizenship, it should happen that the members of a particular race, immigrating into a particular country in such numbers as to threaten to become the dominant political factor in their new home, possess a type of culture preventing their assimilation with the remainder of the population and constituting them because of such cultural differences a political danger to the cultural system of the latter, a separate autonomous governmental authority could be set up for each of the two racial elements into which the population of the particular country will thus have come to be divided, such separate autonomous racial governmental bodies to have jurisdiction in all legislative, administrative and judicial [Page 228]matters which it is physically possible to detach from the control of the body representing the community as a whole. Thus, all the just rights and privileges of each of the racial components of the population will be safeguarded and each of them could continue in the enjoyment of its own form of cultural life uninterfered with by the other and without constituting a danger to the other.

However, we may well suppose that the influence of the system of international co-citizenship, a system which without infringing upon the sovereignty of the individual nations will, nevertheless, in effect, unite all mankind into one, vast, universal commonwealth, will be to develop a spirit of sympathy and a mutual understanding between the various peoples of the earth as will tend to the rise of a new and universal culture in which the best elements within the existing cultural forms will be combined and improved upon while all the unessential and undesirable features of the latter will be eliminated. Racial autonomy as an expedient for the safeguarding of existing racial cultures from hostile legislative action by rival racial bodies in countries of mixed and, for the time being, mutually unassimilable population would, therefore. if adopted at all for use as between populations of European or Asiatic origin be required to meet a relatively temporary need only.

The case would be rather different, however, in countries such as for example, South Africa, where it may be expected that, for ages to come, the bulk of the population will consist of a racial stock of primitive type that is but ill adapted to collaborate advantageously on the political field and on a "one man one vote" basis with the minority race that, as a body, is milleniums ahead of it in cultural development. In such a country the interest of each race and the peace and well-being of the community as a whole would obviously be best conserved by establishing as a practically unchangeable political policy a system of racial autonomy that will enable each race, the backward majority race as well the more advanced minority race or the backward minority race as well as the more advanced majority race, as the case may be, to live its own life and to develop its own institutional forms unhindered by the [Page 229]

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other, each race to enjoy the rewards of its own wisdom and merit or to suffer the consequences of its own follies and vices. Thus, peace between nations is to be secured by recognizing the equal rights of the people of all nations to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, even though such pursuit must lead men of all nations across the political boundary lines that now separate them into opposing nationalistic camps. Only upon the basis of international co-citizenship, only upon the basis of the recognition of the right of mankind as a whole to the enjoyment of the opportunities and resources of the planet as a whole and to the total ignoring of political boundary lines, only upon such a basis can an Association of nations for the maintenance of peace succeed in its purpose. Wars between nations are due to the hitherto universal policy of national exclusiveness and only through the adoption of the opposite policy of international fellowship and the extension of all civil, political, residential and commercial rights possessed by each nation to the people of all other nations is permanent peace between nations possible. Peace on earth is unthinkable without good will to men and this latter state is politically expressed in the form of what we have here called international co-citizenship.

Is it too much to hope that the world is now ripe for the adoption of a system of international relations that will banish forever the specter of war from human affairs even at the cost of the abandonment and repudiation of the age-old anti-foreign prejudices and practices that have hitherto kept the nations at Baggers’ points? Is it too much to hope that the peoples of the world have had their fill of strife and hatred and are now ready to unite in the bonds of a universal fellowship? Whether or not the world as a whole has now reached such a state of intellectual and moral maturity as to be prepared for such an experiment certain it is that only to the extent that the nations, whether acting jointly or individually, remold their policies in accordance with the principles of international fellowship as examplified in the proposal for international co-citizenship will the occasions for war and strife be removed and the era of perpetual peace be brought nearer. [Page 230]

THE NEW LILLIPUTIAN LAND

by L. A. HAWKINS Research Laboratory, General Electric Company

Forty years ago physicists knew very many things that they no longer know. During the past four decades physical science has made far greater advances towards understanding fundamentals of things than in all the previous history of mankind, and as a result physicists today are confronted by more unknowns than ever before.

No paradox is involved. Someone has likened the growth of scientific knowledge to the expansion of a circle. The larger the circle, the longer is its circumference, and it is the circumference that defines our contact with the unknown. Of course our circle cannot expand indefinitely unless it has space to grow in, and possibly, even as recently as the beginning of this year, it might have been said that, because of Einstein’s curvature of space, our knowledge, when extended to cover some billions of light years, might comprehend all the universe, just as a growing spot on an orange will first enlarge its circumference and then decrease it to zero as the spot covers the entire surface; but now Einstein himself no longer seems sure that space is curved. It may, as we believed in pre-relativity days, extend in all directions to infinity.

But, after all, our analogy of the growing circle is not to be taken too seriously. Knowledge exists not in space but in mind and its dimensions are measured, not in light years, but in experimentally demonstrated facts. While it is true that our knowledge can never be complete unless it extends to the farthest reaches of space, to infinity if space extends that far, even then it would not be all-comprehending unless it reached to the limits of the littlest things as well. [Page 231]

LILLIPUTIAN LAND

Our grandfathers had a verse which ran,- "Little drops of water, Little grains of sand, Make the mighty ocean And the pleasant land."

A drop of water and a grain of sand represented the very small, and it is true that a grain of fine sand is about as small a thing as can be seen by the unaided eye. But it was known more than forty years ago that there were things much smaller than our best microscopes could see. A grain of sand may contain a billion billion atoms. No one has ever seen an atom, but science is not dependent on the direct evidence of our five senses. Scientific progress has been largely the result of developing devices for investigating things which our unaided senses cannot perceive at all. In the great range of radiant energy, for instance, our eyes can perceive only a single octave which we call light. Our bodies can vaguely recognize two or three lower octaves which we call heat. But from the electric waves we pick up on our radio broadcast receivers to the mysterious cosmic waves which come to us from the far depths of space, there are more than fifty octaves, of most of which our senses are wholly unconscious, but all of which science has made subject to observation and study.

So, forty years ago, chemists and physicists knew all about atoms. The trouble was, as we now realize, that they knew some things that were not so. For instance, they knew that the atom was the smallest possible unit of matter, indivisible, indestructible and immutable. Then one day a Frenchman, named Becquerel, happened to leave some pitchblend near a photographic plate and was later astonished to find an image on that plate. He traced the radiation which caused the image to the pitchblend and to the metal uranium in the pitchblend. Then the Curies took up the study and found that most, though not all, of those radiations came from an element, before unknown, which was present as an impurity in the uranium and which they named radium.

Further study showed that the atoms of both uranium and [Page 232]radium were exploding, each at a definite rate, throwing off radiations of a kind never before known, and through a series of transformations, turning into lead. So the indivisible, immutable and indestructible atom went the way of many other scientific concepts and dogmas based on insufficient knowledge.

The radiations were of three kinds—alpha rays, or positively charged helium atoms; beta rays, or bits of negative electricity which we now call electrons; and gamma rays, like X-rays but more penetrating.

Now the electron has been shown to have a diameter fifty thousand times smaller than that of the smallest atom. If an electron were enlarged to the size of a grain of sand, the grain of sand would be about the size of the earth. But small as they are, electrons are all-important, for, with the corresponding positive charges they constitute, and determine the nature of, all bodies in the universe, from the smallest speck of dust to the largest star, and most of the physical research during the past thirty-five years has been directed to the electron and Lilliputian world in which it exists. And a strange world it is, that land of electronics, wholly different from the world which our five senses reveal to us. The nature of the electron itself is strange, so strange that the physicist finds it hard to describe in language other than that of mathematics. and a peculiar mathematics at that. One of the leading physicists. a particularly able expositor of physical theory, presents a word picture of the electron which can be concisely paraphrased in the terms, "a train of ripples in a non-existent probability."

"Probability" is the sole law that the electron recognizes. Causation does not exist in its Lilliputian world. In that world metaphorically speaking, water may run up hill, and fire may freeze. not burn. At first that may seem quite disturbing. In the physical world, at least, we have believed in, and based all our thoughts and acts on, universality and absoluteness of the law of cause and effect. and now we find, when we get closer to fundamentals, that that law has no foundation in fact. How then does it happen that the engineer, proceeding confidently on the mistaken belief that a cer [Page 233]tain effect must always follow from a given cause, has so uniformly found results confirming him in his error? It is because, given a large enough number of events, the law of probability gives as certain results as the law of causation. That is why life insurance companies can exist and prosper, no matter how unpredictable is the exact length of the time that any one individual may live. The engineer, dealing with the smallest currents is employing millions or billions of electrons, and so may proceed with confidence unshaken by the discovery that probability, not causation, is in the last analysis determining his results.

So, while theoretical physics is still studying the nature of the electron and the strange phenomena in which individual electrons play their part, the engineer has put electrons in mass to work, in the electron tube, which already has become the most versatile and interesting device at his command.

When atoms of a radioactive metal, like radium or uranium explode, electrons are hurled out at velocities which may be as high as 180,000 mi es a second. From non-radioactive elements, work is required to get the electrons out, but when a metal or metalic oxide is heated, electrons are thrown out at much lower velocities somewhat as molecules are evaporated from the surface of heated water. So, in most forms of electron tubes, a hot filament either supplies the electrons directly from its surface or heats an oxide-coated electrode to cause it to emit electrons.

The form in which the electron tube is most familiar is that in which it appears in the radio broadcast receiver. It was the electron tube that made possible radio broadcasting, as well as trans-continental and trans-oceanic telephony, television, and the talking motion picture. Similar tubes are being used for such purposes as controlling the signals in a locomotive cab or controlling the starting, stopping, and automatic leveling of elevators. But for most industrial applications a different type of tube is better adapted. Radio tubes have a high vacuum. In fact, one necessary development before high power radio tubes, such as are used in transmitting stations, could be successfully built, was to [Page 234]learn how to produce and measure a higher degree of vacuum than was known before. But such tubes need high voltage if they are to yield high power outputs; so for most industrial uses tubes called thyratrons, are better suited, which contain a drop of mercury, so that mercury vapor at low pressure fills the bulb. Such tubes can carry large currents with a drop of about six volts. so that they show good efficiency on ordinary commercial voltages. Thyratron tubes are performing such diverse duties as controlling intermittent welding machines, regulating the tension in wire drawing machines, synchronizing conveyers, and controlling theater light. 3. flood lights and electric signs. Lights can be dimmed and regulated by thyratrons with no waste of energy in rheostats and with apparatus of relatively very small size.

While most electron tubes have hot filaments, as has been already explained, there is another type of tube in which electrons are emitted from a cold metal surface exposed to light. Most metals emit electrons under exposure to ultraviolet radiation, but some emit thera in quantity when exposed to visible light. A tube with its inner walls coated with such a metal is a photoelectric tube, or electric eye, as it is popularly called.

Such a tube. in combination with a thyratron for amplifying the feeble photoelectric currents, is already performing such diverse functions as controlling furnace temperatures, counting units in production and automobiles passing through a tunnel, opening the doors in a restaurant or garage, routing product on conveyers and mail sacks in a railway terminal, controlling the cutting off of hot steel bars as they come from the rolls, supervising a paper napkin machine to see to it that the napkins are so folded that the edges register, turning on the lights in a school room when daylight grows too weak for the children's eyes, turning on street lights and electric signs as it grows dark and turning them off at daybreak, controlling the exhaust fans in a tunnel, supervising an automatic wrapping and printing machine to insure that the printing comes at the right place on the wrapper, and sorting beans according to color. [Page 235]

LILLIPUTIAN LAND

The photo-tube is vastly quicker than the human eve, is more sensitive to slow changes of light. and may be made to operate on non-visable light. either ultra-violet or infra-red. Electron tubes as relays are instantaneous in action, and have no moving parts Electron tubes can be made so sensitive that they will detect a hundredth of a millionth of a billionth of an ampere.

Just as electric motors have taken over most of the muscular work of man and multiplied his output many fold, so electron tubes are taking over more and more of the routine inspectional or supervisory jobs and doing them better and quicker than human operators could. So it would seem that electron tubes may write another chapter in the story of technological unemployment.

Technological unemployment presents a grave problem. With the motor-driven machines which engineering has produced, a small fraction of our man power can produce all our necessities, or at least all things that were considered necessities, forty years ago. Fortunately, in those forty years engineering has developed many new things, some of which have come to be regarded as necessities and all of which have created new jobs. New industries have arisen from such things as the automobile, the radio broadcast receiver and electric refrigerator, millions of new jobs have been created, and. through the increased convenience. comfort and enjoyment these devices have brought, the standard of living has been raised.

At the same time the hours of work have been reduced, and eventually a greatly shortened working day, giving everyone much more leisure for recreation and self-improvement, may make our productive efficiency an unmixed blessing. But custom yields only slowly to changing conditions, and we can as yet only dimly foresee an economic regime comprehensively planned and adequately controlled.

And so, to reduce our present unemployment, we need more devices to give more work in their production and more comfort and enjoyment in their use. No one can foresee more than a few of the new things which, we may hope, the next two or three decades will bring. Some new things are produced by deliberate [Page 236]

The Substance of World Cooperation

design, but others come unexpectedly from the discovery of new knowledge. There was no demand for radio-broadcasting until after there had come into existence, as a result of research, electron tubes which made broadcasting a possibility.

In the development of the radically new, the usual sequence is, research, new knowledge, a new device made possible, an application for the device, and a new industry, or a new product to manufacture and enjoy. Nowhere can we look more confidently for the initiation of such sequences than to research in the newest branch of physics, electrons. Research in that field has given us radio broadcasting, the talking motion picture and television. It seems about to give us a new technique in electro-therapy of efficacy and value in a variety of infectious diseases. It is giving the engineer a most versatile new tool, making possible many new undertakings It is bringing our knowledge closer and closer to the ver fundamentals of things,—to a better understanding, and possibly even ultimately to the control, of the astounding forces within the atom. To science and to engineering alike it is opening up new fields from which we may surely expect many rich returns for the future benefit of mankind.

And in this new branch of physics, as in every other department of science, advances into the new fields are being made on no narrow sector. Physicists in all lands, in ever swelling numbers, in universities and in industrial, institutional and private laboratories, are closely cooperating in the world-wide forward movement. Each individual advance, each additional fact obtained by experiment, each new theoretical insight into the unknown, each new tool for widening the exploration, is immediately passed along the whole wide front, not only inspiriting but directly aiding every worker in that great army of science. This free exchange is impeded by no tariff walls or national boundaries, for in scientific endeavor there already exists a true world solidarity for the benefit of all mankind.

The ninth article in a Symposium on THE SUBSTANCE OF WORLD COOPERATION—the contribution of the scientist and engineer to international unity and peace. [Page 237]

WORLD ADVANCE

A Monthly International Review by OSCAR NEWFANG Author of "The Road to Peace," etc.

TOWARD WORLD ECONOMIC PEACE

THE World War caused two profound changes in the economic condition of the occidental world. It caused the demand for an enormous reparation payment to the allies by Germany, and it caused an enormous indebtedness by the allies to America. Part of the reparations was payable in kind. but by far the largest part was payable in money; that is, in gold, the only money internationally acceptable. Germany found no particular difficulty making payments in kind; that is, in commodities or in services contributed to the restoration of northern France. In fact, this strong stimulation of the export business of Germany for a time produced in that country a period of fictitious prosperity.

The German Reparation Payments

In making the payments demanded in gold or gold exchange, however, Germany began to feel in a short time great and increasing difficulty. In all modern countries gold is the basis of a superstructure of currency and credit of about ten times its amount. When, therefore, a million units of gold (marks, pounds, francs or dollars) are exported from a country, this necessitates a restriction of ten millions in the currency and credit superstructure, if even the slender 10% ratio of reserve is to be maintained. The withdrawal from Germany of the huge amounts of gold demanded for reparation payments soon produced such strangulation of the industrial structure of Germany and such reduction in the security [Page 238]of its currency, that a total collapse impended; and it was recognized even by the allies that a modification must be made. Since the principal difficulty was not in the ability of Germany to raise the reparation payments by internal taxation, but in the ability of Germany to transfer the amounts to the allies in gold or gold exchange, the Bank for International Settlements was established to receive the payments in marks and to plan for their transfer to the allies only when, as and if such transfer did not wreck the currency and destroy the economic life of Germany.

In order to provide the necessary gold exchange for these transfers, Germany strove with all her might to increase the excess of her exports over her imports. The result of this policy was, that the allies found their own industries threatened by the flood of German exports, against which they could not export their own manufactures to Germany. They found that they were receiving, on the whole, more harm than benefit from the German reparation payments; and the allies (especially France) therefore in turn applied restrictions of various kinds to the German imports into their countries. This, of course, shut off all possibility of Germany's meeting her reparation payments. It resulted in the allied occupation of the Ruhr, which in turn led to the total collapse of the German currency, which fell to three trillion marks to the dollar.

Hence the allies found it necessary to scale down their reparation demands through one "plan" after another, until at the Lausanne gathering last year the entire 132 billion gold marks originally demanded were finally cancelled by the payment of a cash sum infinitesimal by comparison. The slate has been practically wiped clean.

The Allied Debts to America

The second great economic change caused by the World War, however, is still the source of great economic difficulties. The allied debts to America were payable, not in kind, but in gold or gold exchange. The difficulties met in making the enormous transfers of gold required were the same as those outlined in regard to [Page 239]Germany, since the currency and credit structures of the allied countries were fully ten times the amount of their gold holdings, and in the case of Great Britain somewhat larger than that. As it was impossible to transfer these large amounts of gold to America without ruining their currencies and their industries, the allies in turn strove to increase the excess of their exports over their imports, in order to obtain the necessary exchange with which to meet the payments. America, however, had for many decades been debtor country and had built up its own necessary excess of exports by means of tariffs restricting imports into the country. As the pressure of the allied merchandise for entrance into America increased, the American government correspondingly raised its tariff walls to keep out the flood of goods, which would have demoralized American industry.

The situation, therefore, approached a deadlock, which was temporarily solved by America's making foreign loans to Europe (and especially to Germany) in a volume sufficient not only to liquidate the American export excess, but also sufficient to enable Germany to transfer to the allies the necessary exchange for reparation payments, which the allies in turn transferred back to America order to meet their own payments.

This scheme worked only until the volume of loans grew so large that Germany could not even meet the interest charges on the loans. The result was the crash of leading credit institutions in Austria and Germany, and a moratorium on all inter-governmental payments became necessary. That "standstill" arrangement still stands with some countries, and with England and the remainder it will in all probability be renewed. We have reached an impasse.

The Battle of the Tariffs

These were not the only ruinous effects of the huge intergovernmental debts. Each country, in order to protect its gold reserve, has adopted an increasingly severe policy for the restriction of imports either by tariffs or other preferences, licenses, quotas or embargoes. All the leading countries, except France, have in [Page 240]addition placed such restrictions or prohibitions on the export of their gold that their currencies have become irredeemable, and hence have depreciated in various degrees. As a country's currency depreciated and gave it a temporary advantage in its export business. all the other countries sought to protect their industries from this deluge of imports by raising ever higher and higher their tariff or other restrictions against imports, and the battle of the tariffs began, which has cut down world trade from year to year in a vicious spiral, until at the present time international trade may fairly be considered as strangled nearly to death.

The destruction of international trade has completely deranged the domestic industrial structure of all the countries, has created such a wide gulf between farm prices and manufacturing prices that the farmers can no longer consume the manufactures of the cities. The result is ever-increasing unemployment in the cities and ever-increasing distress on the farms, making necessary enormous relief measures for the urban population, and causing serious troubles on the farms through farmers' holiday and riots against foreclosures of mortgages.

The Battle of the Depreciated Currencies

Into this sorry mess another disturbing element has been precipitated. Since American tariff policy effectively shut out the possibility of the payment of allied indebtedness in commodities, the result was the drain of a very large part of the world's gold reserve to America, the reduction of gold reserve ratios in England to a fatal degree, and the weakening of the currency structure of European countries to such an extent that most of the leading countries except France have been forced off the gold standard. Their depreciated currencies fluctuate from day to day, and the country with the heaviest depreciation temporarily has an advantage in all the export markets, because its labor costs at home do not immediately rise to an extent that offsets the currency depreciation. Thus England's currency depreciation temporarily held the Indian cot [Page 241]ton trade until the Japanese yen depreciated to a far greater extent. and Japan captured the business.

Even America has gone off the gold standard and has entered the mad race to ruin; for there is but one end in a war among the na- tions to see which can debase its currency to the largest degree. the ultimate debacle of all the currencies in the manner of Ger- many in 1923. Will the world follow the mad dance of the crazy currency fluctuation to this logical end, or will sanity return in time to prevent the debacle?

As the Manchester (England) Asssociation of Importers and Exporters, in its annual survey of world trade, says: "Distrust and animosity prevail everywhere, making it akin to destructive mili- tary warfare. Every country is feverishly devising measures to de- crease imports and increase exports, the cumulative effect being an all-around shrinkage of trading and industrial operations, which, if continued to its logical conclusion, means that each country is clamoring to give its production away for nothing, a process which must finish in absolute bankruptcy."

Or, as Finance Minister Guido Jung, of Italy, puts it: "Every European nation, threatened with the loss of the payments on which it has counted and having to place on the other side of the scales the debts contracted abroad for the war, tries to overcome, in part at least, the difficulties besetting it by attempting to throw the burden on other count. es. This is followed by the raising of cus- toms barriers--the restriction if not the actual prohibition of im- ports-in a desperate defense of each country's currency. This ac- centuates the vicious circle of closing markets, falling prices, mount- ing surpluses of goods, unemployment, budget deficits, morator ums, distrust and aggravation of the political situation, leading finally to even greater expenditures for armament and defense."

How Shall This Economic Warfare be Ended?

From what has been said it would seem obvious that the re- striction of world economic peace requires the following measures: [Page 242]1. Cancellation of reparations. 2. Cancellation of inter-allied debts. 3. Restoration of the gold standard. 4. Reversal of the policy of trade restrictions. 5. Reversal of the policy of financial restrictions.

Regarding the first of these measures nothing more need be said; it is for all practical purposes an accomplished fact. Regarding the cancellation of inter-allied debts it has been the American contention that the loans to the allies were made in good faith and are legally due, and that cancellation of these debts would throw an unfair burden upon the American taxpayer. It is claimed that, while the European allies would renounce in reparations from Germany only the same amount that is cancelled in debt to America, and that they would therefore lose nothing whatever by the cancellation of both reparations and allied indebtedness, the case of America is entirely different. America has no debt to any other country whose cancellation would offset her cancellation of the allied debts to her. The whole additional burden must, therefore, fall on the American taxpayers.

Which is true. The real question for America to decide, however, is whether the bedevilment of the economic life of the whole world, including that of America, which has been the result of the attempt to make these huge international transfers of gold funds, has not been an evil to America far greater than the slight increase of taxation which would be necessary in America, if the debts were completely cancelled. The annual payment at present due on all of the allied debts is less than one tenth of the American national budget; and the American national budget itself is only a minor part of the total tax burden, national, state and local, carried by the American citizen. The total increase in the burden of taxation of the individual citizen, therefore, would hardly be more than 3% or 4%, probably less than the former figure.

There is no question about the legal right of America to collect the debts. There is serious question as to the moral right to col [Page 243]lect, and there is a certainty that there is no practical common sense in trying to collect them. Passing over any legal discussion, the moral aspect seems to be this: for three long years our allies in our common war put in their blood, while we put in our cash. Even the governmental loans made after the close of the war were part and parcel of the total war effort. Why not be generous and say to our allies: "Boys, you have carried the heavy end of the load of suffering. We will call it square, wipe the slate and start a new deal?"

If this is done, it will be comparatively easy to carry out the third measure suggested above, the re-establishment of the gold standard in all the leading commercial countries. This is practically impossible while huge and constant drains upon the gold reserves of the principal European countries must be made to meet American payments, without any possibility of establishing an excess of exports to America which would cause an equivalent return flow of gold. England, financially the strongest country in Europe, tried valiantly to restore her pound sterling to its immemorial parity with gold and its historic stability as a medium of world commerce, but the American drain of gold has again forced England off the gold standard. France, next in strength among European countries, has seen the impossibility of continuing for decades to come the annual drain of her gold to America and has refused to make further payments in gold. No doubt France would be perfectly willing to pay, if she were permitted to pay in commodities; but her astute financiers see the impossibility of these long-continued payments in naked gold.

The restoration of the gold standard in all the leading commercial countries of the world would do more than any other single measure to stimulate world trade, including American export trade which is so sorely needed by our cotton and wheat farmers, whose purchasing power, in turn, is so sorely needed by our urban manufacturers to restore employment and prosperity. The benefits resulting from the re-establishment of the gold standard in all countries would far outweigh the small additional tax [Page 244]burden of the American citizen which would result from the complete cancellation of inter-allied debts.

With a few words regarding the fourth and fifth measures suggested above this article will close. It would, of course, cause intolerable dislocation and derangement of all industry and finance, if the innumerable restrictions to the free international flow of commodities and funds were removed all at once. That would be like demolishing a building with dynamite instead of taking it down bit by bit, in the reverse order in which the materials were erected. In order to remove these causes of the strangulation of trade, employment and prosperity, it might be well to fix a Reversal Date, the abolition of each restriction in all countries to be automatically made at the same interval after the reversal date as the restriction had existed before the reversal date. By this method the restrictions would be removed in the order in which the were erected and without any great jolt to business in any country

This article has dealt only with the ending of the present raging economic war. The further and more far-reaching measures necessary to prevent future economic wars, owing to the limitation of space, must be reserved for the next article. (For the reader's information, this article was written before the opening of the World Economic and Monetary Conference.) [Page 245]

THE WORLD OF REALITY

by RUHI AFNÁN

THE strange and disturbing confusion which has seized upon the visible world of human action reflects that deeper confusion ruling in the world of human thought and belief.

The path of religious guidance has for the majority of people divided into three faint trails leading by different directions toward an impenetrable future.

The first of these trails is ecclesiasticism; the second is humanism; the third is mysticism.

In this essay an effort is made to analyze, in the light of pure religion, that is, the religion of the Prophets, some of the more deep-seated fallacies inherent in the mystical attitude and philosophy, whose subtle lure marks a definite danger to the human soul at one stage of its development.

Humanity at this time needs above all valid sources of inspiration and renewal for its inner life—new and greater impulses toward that condition of loving unity and brotherhood upheld by the Prophet in every age. No student of existing social conditions can afford to overlook the fact that the lure of mysticism increases in potency as fatigue and discouragement, the result of years of warfare and economic upheaval, lie heavily upon countless hearts. It is at such a time as the present that quietistic and other movements based upon mysticism are likely to spread far and wide, diverting masses of people from the true social task and imprisoning their spirits in a subjective realm of shadowy unreality.

The more that people are suppressed in their normal daily lives, the more they incline to accept philosophies which supply [Page 246]sustenance to the pride of ego divorced from ordinary standards of achievement.

A discussion of mysticism, indeed, seems vitally important, in that its tenets represent hard, unyielding attitudes which in some ages have suppressed all effective social action and in fact justified collective impotence by specious arguments inviting eventual catastrophe.

But what is mysticism? According to Dean Inge, "Mysticism is a very wide subject, and the name has been used more loosely even than socialism." In this broad sense, mysticism includes every phase of an's spiritual life, and according to this interpretation it embraces all religions and establishes the Prophets as the supreme mystics of the race. It makes mysticism and spirituality interchangeable terms. But Dean Inge has also defined mysticism more definitely: "Religious mysticism may be defined as the attempt to realize the presence of the living God in the soul and in nature, or more generally, as the attempt to realize in thought and feeling the immanence of the temporal in the eternal and the eternal in the temporal."

He further says, "Thus it soon became clear to me that mysticism involves a philosophy and at bottom is a philosophy." The broader definition may be dismissed as essentially meaningless. In practice, mysticism is not the wholeness of religion, but one particular part of religion which, made a phil cuts itself away from expounder al cult, or that wholeness of the spiritual life and. of religion but a separate cult. This separat philosophy, has even at times become one of the m. inveterate enemies of true religion.

Many people not themselves mystics regard mysticism as the very essence of religion, its secret heart, because they look not at the outcome but at the origin of this special philosophy.

Every Prophet has raised up notable followers of a mystical nature whose innate tendencies toward an exclusive inner life have been restrained by their devotion and zeal for their divine leader. Such followers tend to identify mysticism with devotion to and [Page 247]

THE WORLD OF REALITY

sacrifice for the very source of religion on earth. It is necessary to follow the mystical tendency into later times, when the Prophet's influence has receded, when ecclesiasticism has become dominant, and the effects of devotion and love for the Faith are no longer powerful enough to hold the secret ego in check. Careful consideration of mysticism at such times will reveal the chasm between the Prophet's teaching and the subtle philosophies that form esoteric schools of thought claiming His name. Mysticism, then, underneath all its terminologies and symbolisms, is essentially a particular philosophy and not a facet of religion.

The value of this distinction becomes manifest when one realizes that the evils inherent in mystical philosophy become revealed when carried to its logical conclusion. Religion may be likened to a sun of truth which illumines the world of reality. Mysticism is a candle lighted in the darkened chamber of the subjective self, disclosing only that which the self imagines to be true.

Mysticism is not unique in any one religious tradition-all faiths seems to provide the fertile soil in which its growth may flourish. In the history of every Prophetic faith the appearance of mystical philosophies represents the same stage of decadence. Since the human characteristics repeat themselves from age to age and race to race, the principles of mysticism are identical in Europe and the East. The late Prof. Browne declared that "many of the utterances of Eckhart, Tauler or St. Teresa would, if translated into Persian, easily pass current as the word of Sufi Shaykhs."

The teachings of Bahá’u’lláh contain many explanations of the untrue elements found in Sufi philosophy. These teachings, and their interpretation by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, have been taken as the basis of the following analysis of the chief tenets of mystical philosophy. Aside from the pure religious teaching of one who has restored spiritual truth to a sore beset world, there can be no guidance through the confusion of thought and action in this crucial age.

While few readers may acknowledge themselves as "mystics" in any technical sense, consideration of the chief tenets of mysti [Page 248]"But the proceeding through manifestation (by this is meant the divine appearance, and not division into parts) we have said, is the proceeding and appearance of the Holy Spirit and the Word which is from God. As it is said in the Gospel of St. John: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God:' then the Holy Spirit and the Word are the appearance of God... "

In these passages ‘Abdu’l-Bahá mentions two ways by which the Divine Essence reveals itself in the world. The first, which He terms manifestation, means that the same reality has assumed another form. It is like the rays of the sun reflected in the mirror. The reflected rays are only another form of the light that is shed by the sun. This method of divine revelation pertains only to the Prophets.

The second form of Divine revelation is called creation. It means that a totally new reality is produced. Even though a table has its origin in the mind of a carpenter yet its reality is fundamentally different. This form of revelation comprises our universe and includes the rational soul which is the spiritual element in man.

(To be continued) [Page 249]

BOOK NOTES

by JOSEPH S. ROUCEK Department of Sociology, Pennsylvania State College

Our Obsolete Constitution, by William Kay Wallace. John Day Co., New York, 1932. Pp. 226. $2.00.

The Coming of a New Party, by Paul H. Douglas. Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1932. Pp. ix, 236. $2.00.

Is there a Case for Foreign Missions? by Pearl S. Buck. The John Day Pamphlets. Pp 30. 25 cents. 1932.

The present world-wide depression has been performing indirectly one great service: the people are now questioning seriously some of their "sacred cows" of political thinking. That such is the fact is attested by the appearance of these volumes, all of which would have brought the wrath of our dyed-in-the-wool sentimental and unreasonable patriots on the heads of the authors some years ago.

Thus Mr. Wallace quite openly tells us that our Constitution does not serve the needs of the present and then proceeds to tell us in what respect that document hinders much-needed legislation. He shows ably how the original purposes of the government have changed (somewhat in the manner of Dr. Charles A. Beard) and demonstrates that powerful forces—corporations—can very effectively get what they want in the way of legislation; thus now the people need a free and untrammeled government to protect them against the new forms of industrial tyranny. From this negative attitude the author turns to constructive suggestions, arguing that the only alternative to violent revolution is a complete revision of the Constitution of the United States. He has a concrete proposal, with which few will agree, though we must thank Mr. Wallace for his vigorous presentation of his case. [Page 250]Professor Douglas of the University of Chicago as a true liberal outlines for us a program of liberalism and analyzes tactics by which such a program can be put into effect. He evidently does not like our present political system, as represented by the old parties, and proceeds in brilliant fashion to tell us why. He demonstrates that the wealth of the country is being centralized into a few hands—an old fact told in a new and splendid way. The "opportunity" for the workers (whether they are of white collared or of the manual class) is passing, possibly never to return. Professor Douglas believes that we must give up many sentimentalities of the past and work for programs which will be interested in the farmer and laborer and make their lives more profitable. He minces no words when he tears into our tariffs. But he offers us for remedies such alluring suggestions as greater security, minimum wage laws, a drastic change in the tax system, more taxes against wealth and incomes, the socialization of medicine, suitable housing for the poorer classes, etc. His thoughtful reasoning carefully analyzes the technique of "boring from within" the old parties to use either the Republican or the Democratic party as a potential liberal organization; but he is clearly aware of the difficulties which would hamper a realization of such plan. All things considered, he is convinced that a new party should be established, based on the non-privileged classes of people, particularly the farmers and workers.

No doubt the achievement of the plans of Professor Douglas would liberalize our foreign and international policies. We thus must add our voice of praise to his work, considering it a brilliant ideal toward which we all should strive, though such ideal seems to be far distant.

Mrs. Buck's story also goes a long way in abolishing a "sacred cow" of our Christian missionary efforts. We have read already the story in one of our national magazines and we have enjoyed re-reading it again. The psychological reactions of the poorly prepared missionaries and their inability to grasp the sociological realities with which they have to deal are stated here with force by a woman who, being a missionary herself, knows what she is talking about. [Page 251]

BOOK NOTES

But we are glad to note that she advances the argument that in her experience more genuine spirit of goodness has been detectable in regions in which Christianity has penetrated than in those in which it has not; consequently, Mrs. Buck thinks, there is a case for foreign missions.

Building the World Society, by Laura W. McMullen, Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1931, Pp. xiv, 434. $2.50. There seems to be no end of books, and especially textbooks, instructing readers in international relations. Though this volume was one of the first to be issued, it has, ever since, been overshadowed by other more thorough books. The author has gathered more than one hundred articles by leading writers in the field, presenting the salient aspects of the international situation today and summing up the issues and events from the period immediately preceding the World War to the present. As such, it is an attempt to wrestle valiantly with a vast subject. The articles, the reviewer believes are not always the best that could be found on the subject. But that might be only a private opinion. In addition, the picture here presented is somewhat disjointed and blurred, which could have been avoided had the subject been written by one specialist in the field. The treatment might serve for those who are aiming to get a rapid and not too deep instruction. Those who consider that the study of the subject of international relations demands a vast sociological, historical, political, psychological, geographical, and other preparation, will have to look for their material in other volumes which have been mentioned in our previous reviews.

Pioneer Youth in Palestine, by Shlomo Bardin. Bloch Pub. Co., New York, 1932. Pp, 182. $1.50. Mr. Bardin's thesis is that the "crystallization of youth into a specific strata of society is manifesting itself in Jewish life as a unique movement of Pioneer Youth... . It is determined to build a new type of society, a free and creative Labor Commonwealth. And it has, moreover, already succeeded in laying the foundations of this new society. Academic youths have transformed themselves into laborers. Urban youths have created rural agricultural settlements. Thousands of [Page 252]young men and women have left middle-class homes and careers and flocked to Palestine to rebuild the nation and country, and to recreate themselves."

During the last twenty-five years, the movement has grown to proportions which number over 40,000 in Palestine, and of about 100,000 abroad. Those who believe that the future lies with the movement of youth should notice this volume. It records the evolution of this movement, its inception, struggles and achievements. though it is limited to the Palestine pioneer endeavor.

V. K. Wellington Koo, Memoranda Presented to the Lytton Commission

Vol. 1, pp. 464, Vol. II pp. 940. Published by the Chinese Cultural Society, 743 Fifth Ave., New York, 1932. $3.00 for the two volumes. The reviewer is convinced that this world should not be made safe for imperialism, and consequently he enjoys heartily the thorough whacking which the Chinese propaganda is handing out to contemporary imperialists. The Chinese are learning the art of propaganda. The documents, statistics, maps and other material are rather convincing, and especially so for those who stand on the Chinese side of the fence. Obviously, the work aims to switch American public opinion to its side. At any rate, the Chinese have here presented a good case. [Page 253]

NOTES ON THE PRESENT ISSUE

Mr. Carl A. Ross returns to World Unity this month with the first of a new series on World Citizenship. An exposition that several years ago had to be largely theoretical, based upon general principles, has since been reinforced by the rise of several problems unsolvable by competitive national sovereignties—tariffs, currency and war debts. Behind these barriers the force of social pressure gathers enormous weight and mass, a flood that can make for peaceful improvement or for violent change.

The principle of Co-Citizenship expounded by Mr. Raphael Buck is another valuable contribution to the ideal of an ordered world upheld by World Unity. When cleared of the mists of prejudice, the rational mind sees all social problems in terms of an ordered world. Whatever else the London Conference may do, it serves to focus the underlying issues that make for peace or war.

Meanwhile, as Mr. L. A. Hawkins illustrates, the steady march of science proceeds outside the control of any form of social propaganda, creating the ingredients of a society possessing sufficient leisure to continue education throughout the span of human life.

Apart from the new range of moral and mental significances arising from our desperate effort to establish a world community, religion might be dismissed by many as a professional attitude or temperamental interest with which they no longer have any but occasional concern. But the matter of motive remains the central issue in every social question in an age when every traditional social boundary has been overthrown. For this reason, the analysis of the mystical philosophy by Ruhi Afnán, grandson of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, has rightful place in a magazine devoted to the world outlook. If the modern age has been carried forward by industrial and political revolutions, a revolution in the religious world is necessary to complete the regeneration of mankind. [Page 254]

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