World Unity/Volume 2/Issue 5/Text

←Previous

World Unity Volume 2, Issue 5

Next→

Return to PDF view Proofread once

[Page 297]

WORLD UNITY

C. F. ANSLEY W. W. ATWOOD

A Monthly Magazine for those who seek the world outlook upon present developments of philosophy, science, religion, ethics and the arts

JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, Editor HORACE HOLLEY, Managing Editor HELEN B. MACMILLAN, Business Manager

Contributing Editors

A. MENDELSOHN BARTHOLDY BARON BAUDRAN L. F. DE BEAUFORT GERRIT A. BENEKER PIERRE BOVET EDWIN ARTHUR BURTT HARRY CHARLESWORTH No POON CHEW RUDOLPH I. COFFEE BAYARD DODGE GEORGES DUHAME ANNA B. ECKSTEIN HAVELOCK ELLIS AUGUSTE FOREL C. F. GATES V. SCHULZE GÄVERNITZ HELLMUTH VON GERLACH HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS KAHLIL GIBRAN CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN JOHN W. GRAHAM FRANK H. HANKINS A. EUSTACE HAYDON WILL HAYES YAMATO ICHICHASHI RUPUS M. JONES MORDECAI W. JOHNSON DAVID STARR JORDAN SAMURL LUCAS JOSHI ERNEST JUDET VLADIMIR KARAPETOFF P. W. Kuo RICHARD LEB HARRY LEVI ALAIN LOCKE GEORGE DE LUKÁCS LOUIS L. MANN SIR JAMES MARCHANT VICTOR MARGUERITTE R. H. MARKHAM ALFRED W. MARTIN F. S. MARVIN KIRTLEY F. MATHER MARJA GRUNDMANN-KOSCIENSKA LUCIA AMES MEAD KARIN MICHAELIS HERBERT A. MILLER FRED MERRIFIELD DHAN GOPAL MUKERJI IDA MÜLLER HARRY ALLEN OVERSTREET DEXTER PERKINS JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. CHARLES RICHET FORREST RIED TH. RUYSSEN WILLIAM R. SHEPHERD MARY SIEGRIST ABBA HILLEL SILVER ISIDOR SINGER DAVID G. STEAD AUGUSTUS O. THOMAS GILBERT THOMAS ISABELLA VAN METER RUSTUM VAMBÉRY WALTER WALSH HANS WERBERG M. P. WILLCOCKS FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

Editorial Office: 4 East 12th Street, New York City

WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE is published by WORLD UNITY PUBLISHING CORPORATION, 4 East 12th Street, New York City: MARY RUMSEY MOVIUS, president; HORACE HOLLEY, vice-president; FLORENCE MORTON, treasurer; JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, secretary. Published monthly, 35 cents a copy, $3.50 a year in the United States, $4.00 in Canada and $4.50 in all other countries (postage included). THE WORLD UNITY PUBLISHING CORPORATION and its editors do not invite unsolicited manuscripts and art material, but welcome correspondence on articles related to the aims and purposes of the magazine. Printed in U. S. A.

Contents copyrighted 1928 by WORLD UNITY PUBLISHING CORPORATION,. [Page 298]

New Studies in Mystical Religion

HISTORY—I mean the historical process—is once more something which cannot be reduced to a rigid causal series. There is a significant overplus—something overbrimming boils over and inundates the cold facts of history. It is a dramatic movement. It is full of surprises. It has a meaning which can be interpreted like a cumulative story or a work of art. It reveals and it verifies moral principles. It is not merely wild and fortuitous. It is not a series of "repeatable" events. One act prepares for the next. The new continuously correlates with the old. It has its laws and rational order. But ever and anon persons of genius, or persons possessed of a unique dynamic quality, appear with some novel and unpredictable ideal which affects not only their own destiny but which, at the same time, alters the entire course of history and shifts the line of march of the whole race. Here once more the mind in us seems to correlate with and to be in correspondence with a deeper, foundational Mind that steers the majestic fleet of the ages. The moral nature revealed in us, and revealed in august fashion in the slow judgment days of history, implies and involves a deeper eternal moral nature of things, creatively operative in the fabric of life and history.

RUFUS M. JONES [Page 299]

2. The New Power of Individualism

IN THE general collapse of arbitrary authority which supplies the keynote to the present decade, we are compelled to face a condition of moral emergency such as would come upon the soldiers of an army abandoned by its leaders in the field. Through the broken dikes of group discipline, incalculable forces have been released within the modern world, vastly extending every impulse both for good and evil.

The resulting individualism seems like the extreme of lawlessness to those who desire traditional institutions to continue unchanged, but can be interpreted far differently by those who realize the need for thorough renovation in the spirit of society as well as in its forms. From the latter point of view, it is inevitable that institutions implying competition and conflict must somehow be removed or redirected before any sound basis for cooperation can be laid.

What reactionary people condemn as fatal indifference or destructive anarchy may in reality prove to be the most vital assertion of the instinct of self-preservation which humanity could experience in relation to the existing social environment. For the total effect of the prevailing individualism, whether its expression be apathy or violence, is to immerse social forms in an acid bath whose action is powerful enough to dissolve the outlines and profoundly alter the substance of every political, economic and religious organization. Previous to the war this process was confined to the conscious criticism of the few leaders of courage and insight, whose crusades apparently failed as tragically as the efforts of Don Quixote, but its real influence has now gained [Page 300]irresistible momentum in the firmly established outlook of the younger generation.

The search for the moral foundation capable of sustaining the weight of world community must begin with this fact: loyalty can no longer be commanded, its value must be proved. Profound inertia among the spiritually submerged still exists, but the sense of consecration to a definite cause, and the willingness to fuse with others in a devoted group, has ebbed from the soul of mankind. And as long as the outcome of patriotism is war; as long as the joy of craftsmanship finds itself entangled in intensive economic competition; as long as the instinct of worship is perverted by the influence of creeds which ignore true brotherhood, just so long must the individualistic attitude be justified by those who look to the needs of humanity as a whole. Concentration upon personal achievement at the expense of inherited loyalties will represent a creative expression of intelligence until a community is born in which loyalty can be completely fulfilled.

The dynamic power of social loyalty, meanwhile, has not been destroyed but remains latent in the average personality like a tightly-coiled spring. All the creative forces of human nature are periodically so returned to their source. It is the condition of the new seed when the old tree withers and becomes fruitless.

With the new factor of technical education, however, which gives access to the Aladdin lamp of inexhaustible natural energies, modern individualism has become a far higher and more complex state of being than ever in the past. By individualism today we may not mean limited physical being, but self-directed personality capable of making contact with other lives through mediums transcending the body and reflecting the limitless potency of mind. Individuals so reinforced and extended by scientific mechanisms, and constantly stimulated by larger visions of power, are no more to be communized by political forms based upon land ownership and hand labor than mighty-winged eagles by the nest which once held their unhatched eggs. [Page 301]

PROGRESS BY TELIC GUIDANCE

by MARY HULL

II. In Defence of the Ideal of Progress

PRIOR to 1914, faith in progress was the controlling ideal of Western Civilization. Since the Great War this ideal has been under a shadow. In a preceding paper, "The Evolution of the Ideal of Progress," I have shown that it is not the ideal of progress per se, but the materialistic conception of progress that has been discredited. But present day criticism does not stop with the arraignment of the current conception of progress, but challenges the ideal itself on the score that the assumptions on which it is based are unsound. Many modern evolutionists contend that there is no warrant for the belief that progress is continuous, automatic, and inevitable. Evolution does not reveal life mounting on a continually advancing scale. Facts of reversion are as common as the opposite kind. Human history likewise discloses no continuous advance. "Progress" Professor Todd observes, "is rare, evolution and change are universal. Just as the dead out-number the living, so the abortive civilizations exceed the successful."

The prophets of cyclic recurrence, Flinders Petrie and Oswald Spengler and their followers go a step farther. The main thesis of Spengler's "Decline of the West," which has a very great vogue at the present time, is that what human history actually presents is not a continuous development, but a series of separate cultures. During the six thousand years covered by our records, eight ripe cultures have evolved. Each one is indigenous and not susceptible of transplantation. Each culture unfolds certain inherent tendencies and then finally and inevitably stiffens [Page 302]into a petrified civilization, a structure, which may last indefinitely after the soul that formed it has perished. Each culture passes through the successive stages of birth, growth, decay and death that pertain to all things organic. The cycle of civilization, Spengler infers, is as immutable and inevitable as that of individual life. There is no purpose in history, there is no progress; there is only "Destiny" operating automatically in a cosmic rhythm of recurrent cycles of expansion and decay.

Western Civilization, Mr. Spengler assures us, bears all the ear-marks of the stage of decline. With us Winter has come. Our genius is critical rather than creative, ingenious rather than inspirational. In the arts "We are dawdling over dead forms, deluding ourselves with vain phantoms of a living art." The spirit of democracy is dead. The apparent spread of democracy is merely a matter of form and theory. The actual power, now as ever, is in the hands of the few. The principle of territorial expansion is leading straight to a period of Caesarism which will bring gigantic wars in its wake. Imperialism in politics, lack of inspiration in the arts, a dominant utilitarian interest in science, and skepticism in religion all mark the stage of decay. We may have some two hundred years or more of grace, but the final catastrophe is inevitable. "Something has come to an end. The Northern Soul has exhausted its inner possibilities, and of the dynamic force and insistence that expressed itself in world historical vision of the future, vision of millenial scope, nothing remains but the mere pressure, the passionate yearning to create, the form without the content."

Since a truly constructive philosophy must not be inconsistent with current scientific thought, let us survey briefly the recent findings of science in so far as they relate to the theory of progress. In biology, the modern trend may be characterized by the term "Emergence." According to the theory of emergence, at intervals, by means of a creative synthesis which ushers in new properties that could not have been predicted from knowledge of the antecedent factors, the customary snail's pace of progress by increasing complexity of structures and integration [Page 303]

IN DEFENCE OF THE IDEAL OF PROGRESS

of functions is so accelerated as to constitute a leap forward. An example below the biological level is the chemical compound of molecules of oxygen and hydrogen which form water. Water has properties which are quite different from those of oxygen and hydrogen and which could not be anticipated purely from observation of these properties in isolation. Epoch-making leaps forward occurred when living beings first appeared and finally human beings. In each case again there is an emergence of that which obviously is not in preceding and lower levels of existence.

So at successively higher levels in the scale of evolution more complex forms appear and new properties emerge, and the history of the earth discloses the development of an ascending hierarchy of orders. In this hierarchy the substance of each lower stage is the material for the next level above it. But in the advent of the new level the elements of this material are related in such a way as to create new properties which could not have been inferred from a knowledge of the component factors. Further, the new properties which emerge at the higher level are capable of sustaining and guiding the events distinctive of that level. But when an entity fails to use these new properties duly, it either slips back to the level below or disintegrates.

Emergent evolution, then, reveals progress, and it reveals retrogression. Also it reveals a condition of comparative inertia, since the advance to a higher level in each case is made only by a few out of the total number of those who, apparently, are capable of making such a change. Progress, therefore, in the case of the particular individual and group, is not automatic or inevitable.

These facts, according to one school of thought, are all we need to know. But another school is not satisfied with the knowledge of bare facts; it demands a reasonable interpretation of them. The evolution of an ascendant hierarchy of types implies an inherent urge upward. What is this urge upward, and what makes emergents emerge? And philosophy supplements the scientific statement of facts by translating the inherent urge upward into terms of the immanence of God, and by postulating that back [Page 304]of the whole evolutionary process there is a Divine directive Activity.

How, under the hypothesis of a directive Activity, do we account for retrogression and failure to advance? On the grounds of freedom. Freedom is the power to bring something into being spontaneously, and it implies the possibility of doing either one of two opposite things. Even in the early stages of evolution there is an element of choice involved. In biology the rudiment of freedom is observable in the creative synthesis in which new properties emerge; in the realm of physics, it is implied in the movements of the electrons within the atom, which, according to the Quantum Theory, cannot be entirely predicted, and which therefore, are inconsistent with the general scheme of determinism. The measure of freedom enjoyed by the entity increases with each ascending level. Man, for instance, by virtue of his superior adaptability, is vastly less limited than the beast is by his environment. And with the development and use of the reasoning faculties there is a tremendous expansion of the sphere of freedom and a corresponding recession of the limits of environment. God alone is wholly free in that He acts solely by the necessity of His nature. But man, as a spirit created by God, partakes in some degree of the nature of the Creator; consequently, although he is limited more or less otherwise by heredity and environment, in all eras and on all levels, he is free to heed the upward urge in his own heart and so align himself with the directive Activity that makes for progress and he is equally free, likewise, to yield himself to the instinctive tendency to inertia and to the undercurrent which drags him back to the level of the beast.

Because they have yielded to these baneful tendencies, throughout the long course of history, individuals and civilizations have collapsed; but humanity has kept moving steadily onward, and from the amoeba to man and from savagery to civilization, the trend of life has been upward. Therefore we believe, that though individuals and groups continue to fall out from the path, there will always be those who, heeding the upward [Page 305]

IN DEFENCE OF THE IDEAL OF PROGRESS

urge, will carry life steadily forward to higher and higher levels. A rational faith in progress, then, does not mean that we can fold our hands and a benign Providence will bear us along willy nilly toward our goal, for they who drift ever drift down stream, and God helps those who help themselves. On the contrary, it means that by working in harmony with the laws of the universe and functioning on the highest level that we have attained, we, as the agents of Providence, can ourselves create the conditions that make higher levels possible.

Answering Mr. Spengler's contention that history does not reveal a continuous development we agree that cultures are indigenous and incapable of transplantation as a whole. But the elements of cultures are transferable. No cultural group is ever completely isolated. And even in case of the most primitive cultures there is a constant interchange of elements. Elements originate in one area and are carried to an adjacent region and certain of them are grafted on to cultural stock to which they have some native affinity. The elements of our own culture have come to us from a succeeding series of earlier cultures and have been modified in turn by each group which has assimilated them. Thus the science of astronomy was developed first by the Chaldeans, the alphabet that we use was invented by the Phoenicians, and our number system by the Arabs, and they have all been handed on to us in a developed form by people nearer to us in point of time. And many of the most vital elements of our culture are so deeply rooted in the remote past that we cannot trace their origin. Who, for example, were the pioneers who blazed the trail for the development of language and conceived the idea of writing, who worked out the principle of the lever, and who first domesticated animals and plants, who first extracted metals from their ores, who originated the institutions that are the very structure of society and the categories that are the basis of thinking? The truth is, each succeeding culture is the apex of a series, the heritor of the past and the legator of the future. History, indeed, gives convincing evidence of a continuity running through human experience, and this movement spells progress. [Page 306]In the course of history the ever-mounting trend of life appears to me as the mighty primeval impulse, whence issued the universe, streaming upward in a spiral course with ever-widening coils swelled by all the worth-while accretions of the past.

Here and there a race in the course of its development, coming within range of the cosmic current, is caught up by it and is borne along with it. Then that race suddenly bursts forth in an expansive culture, the nature of which is conditioned by the direction of the current. When that culture decays, it fails either because the accumulation of dead forms blocks movement forward or because certain disruptive forces in it have destroyed its equilibrium and have caused it to swing off on a tangent from the vitalizing current. But in each case where the civilization has seemingly perished, whatever there was of value in it has been saved. The corrupt body alone is destroyed and the dross consumed, but the residue of pure achievement is incorporated in the cosmic current and mounts with it. Thus Greece, losing balance because of the ominous gap between the leisured aristocracy and the illiterate slave class who bore the entire economic burden of the state, and further weakened by internal faction, is ground to dust beneath the iron heel of Rome; and after centuries of oblivion, Greek art and philosophy, which are the very essence of the Greek spirit, revive in the Renaissance, and live in our composite civilization. "Truth crushed to earth, will rise again; the eternal years of God are hers."

And the monumental records of antiquity that are being uncovered in all quarters of the globe, revealing amazing glimpses of long forgotten civilizations, are just as surely fertilizing and enriching our cultural soil today. Truly there are sermons in these stones unearthed by the archeologist's spade. Already we note a stimulation of imagination, and a widening of perspective, and we have grounds for hoping that this stirring of the memories of the human psyche may result in the awakening of dormant forces and the development of a saving faith that will give us a new slant on age-old but still unsolved problems and that will blossom forth in a harmonious cosmopolitan culture, [Page 307]surpassing far the sectional cultures of the past. But whether a second Renaissance is dawning now or whether the longed-for new age is still in the dim future, we may rest sure that in all the wrecks of time only the useless and inadaptable have perished; no good thing is ever ultimately lost. In her mysterious depths Mother Earth preserves the precious seed produced by the decaying race, and in her own good time brings it to flower and fruit.

There is no denying Mr. Spengler’s statement that the civilizations of the past have perished after the manner of organisms and that the inference he draws from this fact is plausible. Nevertheless he fails utterly to prove that the cycle of civilization is inherent in the nature of events. He ignores the significance of the fact that the cultural unit is a corporation, and unlike the individual whose earthly span is strictly limited, it is potentially immortal. The group is constantly replenishing itself. As soon as one generation reaches maturity another generation is born and the latter is ready to take the helm before the former looses its hold. Thus there is always enough young blood in circulation to keep things inoving.

Since it is not to the human constituency of a group that we refer when we call a civilization old we must mean that the spirit of age prevails over the spirit of youth. What constitutes age? The individual is old in fact when he is unable to make favorable adjustments to new conditions. This happens when his creative powers are lost or materially weakened by fast living, or when his vital organs fail to function properly and his body is choked and poisoned by the waste of his system which he can no longer throw off normally. A civilization, likewise, is old when its creative force is devitalized by destructive use and when the spirit of youth in it is cramped and throttled by moribund traditions and institutions that have secured a strangle-hold.

The destructive use of power results from giving free rein to the primitive instincts derived from our pre-human ancestors; this behavior is injurious because it is inconsistent with our [Page 308]present stage of development; and therefore it, as well as the clinging to dead structure, is a form of fixation on the past. But let a just conception of progress become the controlling ideal of our civilization, and its magnetic pull will counteract this tendency to fixation on the past and also the instinctive inertia that abets it, and it will rejuvenate our civilization and preserve it in the state of perennial youth.

For progress means continuous advance toward an ever receding goal, an endless journey with an infinite number of stages, but no stopping place; from the moment we sight it up to the time we reach it, each of these stages is in turn our immediate goal; but when we reach it it becomes straightway the point of departure for the next stage in our path.

Mr. Spengler's c. im that our civilization is in a stage of inevitable decline is likewise open to question. Although, in certain respects, Western Civilization is admittedly decadent, it gives evidence also of new growth of great promise; and many of the evil tendencies of today exhibit, not the decadence of approaching senility, but the premature and preventable deterioration of dissolute youth. Irresponsibility, deplorable waste of energy and lack of purposive direction all bespeak the turbulent adolescent who has broken loose from the control of his guardians and is not yet master of himself, who has lost the naïve beliefs of childhood and has not yet made a stronger faith his own.

But the trend of science now is away from the crude materialism of yesterday and in line with rational faith. And there are indications that a moral awakening is at hand. Modern skepticism is but a passing phase; it is merely youthful cynicism, the first reaction of the questioning mind to the realization that many of the dogmas instilled in childhood are myths. Current literature reveals a growing conviction that life without faith is void and a strong desire to find some sound basis of belief. The process of degeneration has not yet gone so far that our civilization is beyond redemption, and just as it sometimes happens that a slumping individual, through some significant change in his environment which affords a new point of view and awakens [Page 309]

IN DEFENCE OF THE IDEAL OF PROGRESS

hope, suddenly acquires a new interest in life and launches forth into a period of surpassing achievement, so also a decadent civilization, through similar stimuli, may take on a new lease of life.

Mr. Spengler fails utterly to prove that modern science is decadent. In this realm, indeed, we have positive evidence that the creative spirit is powerfully active. Each succeeding year witnesses some important discoveries and inventions. And the recent pregnant hypothesis of radio activity, the quantum theory of energy, the theory of relativity, the development of the principles of biology and the advent of a totally new psychology all serve to open up a new world.

The changes of the last century have been sweeping and momentous. "World history," Mr. Spengler observes," is our picture and not mankind's. Indian and classical man formed no image of a world in progress." Just because world history is our picture we are making it a fact. Western Civilization is extending its tendrils all over the globe and bringing the whole world under its influence. The Western traveler passes through the Orient on Western railroads; everywhere he comes upon Western banks, schools, factories and manufactured articles. And this penetration is reciprocal. Throughout the West, our homes, public buildings, and even our fashions in dress, evidence our susceptibility to the charm of Oriental art, and our literature voices our sensitiveness to the lure of Oriental philosophy. The East and the West are straining toward each other; and in consequence, although separative racial prejudices are still banefully operative, we do not feel so certain as we did a generation ago that "these twain shall never meet."

The fact is, with our generation world history has embarked on a new adventure. For the world of today is totally different from any world of the past in three fundamental respects: in the facility for communication which affords a physical basis for unity, in the almost complete mastery of Nature, and in the increase of knowledge of the laws of life. The significance of these achievements is that they confer upon society the power [Page 310]of directing its own evolution. Up to the present time, the history of progress has consisted chiefly in the evolution of tradition, of accumulations of tools and institutions and their reaction, rather than with the evolution of innate human characteristics. Now by the assimilation of the vast extension of the knowledge of life that we have recently amassed the way is open for telic guidance, for the conscious modification of tradition and the development of human instincts alike in accordance with a given end. Now when unexplored vistas are unfolding possibilities of development such as were never before within the reach of any previous civilization, it is no time to cry a halt in progress. It is rather a time which demands herculean effort to ward off the perils which confront us and make good our possibilities. For society to take stock of itself and deliberately plan the direction of its energies with respect to its ultimate goal is a new thing. The task is admittedly strange and difficult. But the reward is high and they who tell us that it is impossible shut off our only avenue of advance. With Mr. Spengler we agree that "something has come to an end." That "something" is man's faith in his power to satisfy his inner craving for freedom and secure human betterment through the control of external circumstance alone, a faith which stirred the men of the Renaissance to begin to experiment with Nature and which has been the mainspring of the achievements of modern science and of the whole expansive movement that characterised Western Civilization. With this faith we are now thoroughly disillusioned, and unless some new hope stirs us to fresh efforts in a different direction, we shall certainly go the way of past civilizations whose faith has petered out.

For faith is the precondition of advance. The course of progress runs from chaos to cosmos and from fear to freedom. Primitive man had to cope with the wind and the wave and with wild beasts of the earth, all apparently hostile and bent upon his destruction. Yet in his ignorant, wretched state, beset by dangers and tortured by fears, he still desired life. What made existence tolerable and even desirable was the stubborn belief [Page 311]that somehow or other he might learn to appease the inimical forces of Nature and better his condition. And so, driven by fear and inspired by hope, he proceeded to invent weapons for combating wild beasts and human enemies, and a psychic equipment to fortify himself against the invisible powers of the universe. In every step toward freeing himself from the capricious control of Nature and toward the discovery of a rational order of life, faith has led the way, faith that is not blind hope, but a compound of vision and daring. History makes it clear that faith is an integral part of the Will to Live. Therefore when a society loses its faith it develops a suicidal impulse and cuts itself off automatically from farther advance.

And now that we of the West have learned by experience that power in the hands of an unregenerate humanity is vain, that to reap the benefits of our dearly won conquest over Nature we must attain a corresponding control over human nature, and that the freedom the heart of man craves cannot be achieved by dominion over external circumstance without dominion over his inner passions and emotions also, the conviction is forced upon us that by active faith in the power of society to win increasing control over its own destiny, and by that faith alone can Western Civilization be saved. The effort to solve the problem of self-mastery gives opportunity for expression in a new direction to that "passionate yearning to create," the pressure of which, in the absence of an appropriate channel for expression, must needs disrupt the body of society.

X

[Page 312]

THE WORLD WE LIVE IN

Men live less and less in geographical and more and more in spiritual communities. The involuntary elements of existence tend to be limited to the regional area, the voluntary elements find increasing opportunity of self-expression through association of likeminded people selected out of the entire population by identity of interests and ideals. In this department, World Unity Magazine will publish each month a brief description of some important modern movement, voluntary in character and humanitarian in aim, believing that knowledge of these activities is not only essential to the world outlook, but also offers the true remedy for the sense of isolation and loneliness which has followed the breakdown of the traditional local neighborhood.

THE INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN

by ESTHER CAUKIN Secretary

N HISTORIC Chelsea, overlooking the Thames, stands Crosby Hall, dedicated to "the encouragement of learning and the promotion of friendship between the women of all nations," -a concrete embodiment of the aims of the International Federation of University Women. To realize that intellectual unity is not incompatible with national diversity; to appreciate, in fact, that variety of cultural experience must inevitably enrich intellectual life, is the motivating spirit of the Federation. Its members hardly ignore the political consequences that must flow from their adventure in international cooperation. Women teachers, journalists, and members of other professions, who grasp the international ideal in education are bound to have some influence on public opinion in their own countries. These women I have chosen, however, to devote their organized energies to a relatively narrow section of the whole field of international relations; to encourage productive scholarship on the part of women, to facilitate personal acquaintance among university women of various lands, to assist the interchange of teachers [Page 313]between different countries--in general, to engage in whatever activities should prove to be most effective for promoting international intellectual cooperation.

The Federation was organized in 1919, with the British, Canadian, and American groups as a nucleus. At the first Conference (London, 1920) voting delegates were present, also, from Czechoslovakia, France, Holland, Italy, and Spain. Twenty-eight national groups now compose the Federation, covering North America, the British Dominions, and practically all of Europe. The membership totals forty thousand, three-fourths of the members being in the American Association. The constitutional link between the associations and the International Federation is the committee on international relations in each national group.

The major projects of the International Federation are to endow fellowships for women and to establish clubhouses for the use of university women who are studying or traveling abroad. The clubhouses are built on the initiative of national associations or of groups within them. The American University Women's Club in Paris is in the latter category, as is the effort of American university women in Athens and Vienna to secure clubhouses. The National Club of the American Association of University Women in Washington is open to all members of the International Federation, and a number of women's college and university clubs in the United States have likewise opened their doors to foreign university women. Crosby Hall was converted into an international residence for women students by the initiative of the British Federation of University Women. With the aid of other national groups they secured the funds to buy the Hall and to add a residence wing, using the original building for the dining hall. Crosby Hall is at present the home of the Federation, for the Executive Headquarters is located there.

An endowment of a million dollars for international fellowships was first projected at the Conference of the Federation in 1924. Until 1927 the campaign went ahead slowly, though sufficient money was raised to endow one fellowship. Dr. Anne [Page 314]Marie Du Bois, of Switzerland, a biologist, is the first International Federation fellow. All of the member-associations have commenced to make more intensive efforts to raise the million dollars for the endowment fund. In the United States the campaign for the International fund is being conducted along with a campaign to increase the fellowship endowment of the American Association of University Women. From its very beginning this organization has encouraged women scholars to carry on advanced research, setting aside one-eighth of its income from dues for fellowships. The recent experience of the Fellowship Award Committee has demonstrated the inadequacy of the resources of the Association to meet the demands being made for assistance by women whose achievements in scholarship entitle them to such recognition. Consequently, the Association has set before itself a goal of a million dollars for fellowships, part of which will be the American contribution to the fellowship endowment of the International Federation of University Women.

In endowing fellowships and building clubhouses the members of the, International Federation have always before them the ideals of practical internationalism. By encouraging women to study in countries other than their own they serve the cause of international understanding as well as scholarship. The clubhouses gather under their hospitable roofs women from different countries, with different political and cultural backgrounds, but with the common experience of a university education, and with a common belief in the value of education. University women in the United States have demonstrated their ability to work together in units larger than alumnæ associations for their common aims. In the International Federation they are demonstrating their ability to work together for their common aims in a unit larger than national associations. Perhaps that achievement is greater than any single project which they may bring to completion. [Page 315]

AMERICA'S ROLE IN THE ORIENT

by RUDOLPH I. COFFEE, Temple Sinai, Oakland, California

AMERICA's role in the Orient—not what we have accomplished in the past, but what we shall accomplish in the golden future! That is what Americans should be thinking of today! The unselfish spirit of inspirational helpfulness was and is America's part in the development of the Orient. It should continue to be our role in the East. Financially, America may be the richest country in all the world, but she will be infinitely richer in soul if she continues to hold on high a banner of righteousness to which other nations may look for inspiration.

I hold this ideal before the people of my country as indicative of what America's role in the Orient should be. If we are true to past ideals, we shall not deprive our neighbors of their property. But I plead with you to be equally tolerant towards them in the matter of their religious beliefs. In the past century, many conscientious and self-sacrificing men and women have left our country and have settled in the Orient in order to Christianize the natives. I gladly pay tribute to the fine schools they have instituted and the modern hospitals they are directing. Also, to the sanitary gains which are due to their unselfish efforts. But if America is true to her highest ideals, she will internationalize her successful national policy. This country has been a home for religious tolerance. It recognizes the right of every man to worship God in accordance with his inner conscience. It compels no man to become Catholic, Protestant or Jew. On the contrary, it encourages every citizen to worship God as he sees fit. What we practice within our borders, let us practice outside our borders. [Page 316]I do not believe in de-Orientalizing Orientals any more than I believe in un-Americanizing Americans. And certainly the Orientals have as much right to Orientalize us as we have to Christianize and Americanize them, for their art is older than ours and their civilization began before our country was discovered. Some people feel that America’s role in the Orient is a process by which the Oriental is molded into a pattern of strictly American design. That process would be unfair, unkind, because our Heavenly Father intended that no two nations should be alike.

Our role in the Orient is to encourage the millions of people residing there to develop their own finest ideals along the lines best suited to them—not best suited to us. We must not destroy that which is sacred in their lives. Their Confucianism, their Shintoism, their Brahmanism, their Buddhism, is as sacred to them as the Ten Commandments are to us. The weird lettered banners that drape the principal streets of China are as necessary to the Chinese as our American flag is to us. America forcing her views upon the foreigner accomplishes little, but America holding aloft a standard of exemplary conduct accomplishes much. Let the Orientals realize that they are brothers to be loved, not foreigners to be scorned. Our love and good-fellowship should help them intensify the noblest traditions of their own people. Mr. Babbitt, boasting and ever acclaiming that his town and his country are the best in the world, is not the typical business man I would send to the Orient. Rather let us send him who would painstakingly serve, who believes, with Confucius, “The highest study of all is that which teaches us to develop those principles of purity and perfect virtue which Heaven bestowed upon us at our birth in order that we may acquire the power of influencing for good those amongst whom we are placed.” [Page 317]

BOOKS ABOUT THE HINTERLANDS

Reviewed by C. F. ANSLEY

In the cities, asking God for daily bread is obsolescent; bread comes from the grocery. Those curious about origins learn how a file of big machines parades through a landscape of wheat; the scene is pictured in newspapers and text-books. The pictures are of a remote place, possibly Hollywood; what one sees from the gates of his own city is one-family farms, some cultivated, some abandoned. On the whole, the cultivated part of the earth is in one-family farms; about five-sixths of the world's people cultivate them. Factory methods in farming are tried sometimes, but they do not pay-in Russia, America or elsewhere. The city's abundance is made up of the little surpluses of families who still ask some god for their own daily bread, praying by labor if not always in words. Farming by factory methods, like the chemist's production of food in factories, is still prophecy. America professes faith but does not invest; securities of farming corporations are not marketable. Russia invests but incurs deficits, met by taxing one-family farms. Food supplies still depend on processes often said to have been superseded. With local and disastrous exceptions the processes have gone on since neolithic times.

Those who practice the neolithic processes are said to have "the rural mind", which is more of a reality than any national mind; farmers of different countries understand each other better than farmers and metropolitans of the same country. Everywhere the rural mind wishes the maximum of home rule in the rural community; this seems to have been the independence that American colonists for the most part sought in their Revolution. What can be done by essentially autonomous rural communities has [Page 318]been shown by the city states of Greece and the medieval free towns. America was well on the way to another demonstration when it chose centralization instead. At about the same time, Denmark began progress toward what had seemed the American goal. In our day Denmark is the country in which one may see most clearly what rural communities could do with independence if they had it.

Rural Denmark is made up of modest homes, each with its garden, grouped in communities of human scale. These communities are cooperative in processing the products of their little farms and in other manufacturing, in buying and selling, in financing their work and in other ways. The communities cooperate with each other; to the limit of their power, they make of the kingdom a cooperative commonwealth. The Danes say that they were guided to the solution of their rural problem, acute not long ago, by their folk schools. Light from the North, by Joseph K. Hart, is an interpretation of these schools by the American most competent to interpret them.

The fundamental difference between the Danish folk school and an American school is that the folk school is free from standardization and supervision. The teachers teach what they choose, as they choose to teach it. They are not required to secure certificates that they are qualified; if they could not teach, pupils would not come to their schools. Pupils are not examined when they enter or when they leave or at any time between. They receive no credits, certificates or diplomas-nothing but education. Dr. Hart’s book explains how these schools do their work and why they are effective. Dayton, Tennessee and Chicago, Illinois suggest that America has something to learn from a nation that pays teachers and leaves them free. It is a little nation, but has the lowest percentage of illiteracy in the world and the highest percentage of recipients of Nobel prizes.

The pupil spends no more than five months in a folk school. He learns there how to educate himself; the teacher teaches, not what he knows, but how he learns. The teachers educate, first,

1 Light from the North, by Joseph K. Hart. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 159 pages. $1.50. [Page 319]

BOOKS ABOUT THE HINTERLANDS

themselves; next, their communities; and last, their pupils. The community itself, then, is an educational institution. "Danish life," Dr. Hart says, "is become a great educational enterprise- such as Athens must have been in the heyday of her glory, but without some of the defects that marred that glory and defeated it in the end-such as slavery."

Sweden, Norway and Finland now have folk schools sub- stantially like those of Denmark. If these nations develop as Denmark does, it will be for Denmark more than the equivalent of conquests and there will be no wars provoked by any nation of the group; world unity will have gone that far. In some nations, as Russia and the United States, the rural community is held an obstacle to progress, as no doubt it is when diseased. If rural communities in such countries might have what free and loyal folk schools could give them, they too might redeem themselves and become habitable; for the present, they lack lines of com- munication. Programs imposed by authority, even programs of cooperative buying and selling, are the anthithesis of local auton- omies in nature and outcome, making for competitive standard- izations, not for mutual aid.

Dr. Hart writes: "The Danish village is, I verily believe, the best educational instrument in the present world for the develop- ment of children and youth to the age of eighteen. The folk high- school crowns this process of community education in the most natural way, because it brings into play, at just the right time in youth's experience, the leadership, the stimulation and the spiritual guidance of the experience of the race as embodied in a few great teachers. The contrast between these great teaching personalities, who can hold a class for five months without ever bringing a book between themselves and their students, and our own instruction foremen, who assign lessons in books and listen to recitations with their eyes on the assigned pages, is too wide for simple words to tell."

The instrument of these great teaching personalities is "the living word", not the book, but such first-hand acquaintance with them as a book can give is offered in The Folk High-Schools of [Page 320]Denmark and the Development of a Farming Community, by Holger Begtrup, Hans Lund and Peter Manniche. Those who read Dr. Hart's book will wish to read this also. It is narrative rather than interpretation; the story is of no easy triumph but of strenuous educational pioneering. The book throughout testifies that the folk schools have the respect and confidence of their teachers, who are permitted to do their best. Some incidental details would correct mistaken American impressions if that were desired. Co-operative marketing of grains and live stock had no part in changing rural Denmark from a slum to its present state and has no part now in Danish practice. The turn toward prosperity came through cooperative processing and other manufacturing financed by cooperation. Denmark turned from exporting grains to importing them and converting them into products ready for the ultimate consumer, as bacon, butter and eggs. The creameries and packing houses are cooperative, and cooperative manufacturing is not limited to finishing unfinished products of farms. Denmark gives no evidence that any way of marketing grains and live stock will mitigate the poverty of a region that leaves manufacturing and finance to other regions.

Rural Religion and the Country Church³, by Warren H. Wilson, Director of the Town and Country Department of the Presbyterian Church, is a book that will be read eagerly by those engaged in religious work in rural communities. Its public should be much larger, for Dr. Wilson's understanding of rural conditions is exceptional; even this little book, which avoids economics as far as it may, could enable metropolitan centers to avoid an error that brought afflictions to their predecessors-the error of trust in large-scale farming, in latifundia. Dr. Wilson wishes the rural pastor to have his parish and to minister to all within its boundaries, regardless of church affiliation; he would have religion unify rather than divide the community.

The Rev. Edwin V. O'Hara, Director of the Rural Life

² The Folk High-Schools of Denmark and the Development of a Farming Community, by Holger Begtrup, Hans Lund and Peter Manniche. New York: Oxford University Press. 168 pages. $2.00. ³ Rural Religion and the Country Church, by Warren H. Wilson. New York: Fleming H. Revell Co. 141 pages. $1.25. [Page 321]

BOOKS ABOUT THE HINTERLANDS

Bureau of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, agrees with Dr. Wilson in finding fundamental significance in the fact that the home is a living social and economic institution in rural life; the farm population is not interested in any search for substitutes. In The Church and the Country Community, Father O’Hara says: “The farm in the United States is the stronghold of childhood. . . . From the standpoint of natural increase of population the country is Frolific and the city naturally tends to sterility. With the passage of time, institutions based upon a city population will be found to languish and institutions which are based upon the rural population will flourish as the bay tree beside the running water. . . . The Catholic Church in the United States is not at the source of population. A conservative estimate characterizes five-sixths of the Catholics of the United States as urban dwellers.”

“Let us turn now to the question, Why does the Catholic Church need especially to minister to the farmer? One soul is as important as another, and it would seem to be economy of effort to devote our efforts chiefly to the cities, where it is easier to reach large groups of people, and to leave the sparsely settled districts without care until we had thoroughly evangelized the cities. There is a specious reasonableness about this view, as being only an application to religious endeavor of the principle of diminishing returns. To what seems to Father O’Hara the “fundamental fallacy in this view, he replies that “The reservoirs of a city may be full, but the situation is disquieting if the well-springs of supply are rapidly drying up.” The children of farmers “will possess both city and country in the future.”

Recent statistics for the state of New York indicate that the rural exodus has already made this reply to the “fundamental fallacy inconclusive. The exodus has left the rural regions with far more than their proportion of men and women past the age of forty-five. This fact has brought the rural birth rate below the urban, as it has brought the rural mortality above the urban. Rural communities that could be relied upon as permanent well-springs of supply would be exceptional.

The Church and the Country Community, by Edwin V. O’Hara. New York: The Macmillan Co. 115 pages. $1.25. [Page 322]Catholic rural communities might be made more stable than the average rural community of New York. If a way were found, any religious, racial or other group could follow if capable; if no other group could keep cultivated land from reverting to wilderness, as millions of acres in the United States now revert every year, those who could not hold back the wilderness would have cause for gratitude to those who could. Catholic communities once subdued the wilderness that was Europe, and the methods of that work seem better remembered than the methods by which work of the kind was done more recently in America. The program of the Rural Life Bureau of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, included in Father O'Hara's book, is a most able document, meant to be effective, not meant to delude.

The Catholic rural community should buy and sell cooperatively, not that financial returns would be adequately increased thereby, but especially for the "social and moral consequences" of cooperation. Of more significance economically would be the cooperative credit union. "It is the millstones of finance that have caught the farmer in their tender embrace. And not until the farmer gets a voice in the management of this financial mill will it let him be free and even grind grist for his consumption. This voice in the control of credit he has secured in a number of countries by the establishment of cooperative rural savings and loan banks—coming to be known in this country as rural credit unions." It is well for America that the achievements of the credit union are to be studied and made known.

The cooperative movement as approved would have "safeguards against its becoming merely capitalistic, which is the case when it leads farmers to produce only for the market and not primarily for the family. The aim is the self-sufficient community, eliminating the economic waste of unnecessary transportation."

Father O'Hara mentions as typical of what is now achieved in Europe an Italian country parish where the pastor and assistant are members of the governing board of the society; where their laymen have been educated by the cooperative movement to manage intelligently the financial affairs of the bank; where most [Page 323]of the families of the parish are members of the Cassa, where a cooperative creamery, a cooperative olive press, and a cooperative butcher shop are maintained, and within the last few years the parish has cooperatively built a theatre and social center." Little communities fundamentally of the same kind, the autonomous "free towns" or "free cities," once created Gothic architecture and did many other great things. If American rural communities are ever to turn from their decline and do like great things, probably they will need the creamery and the olive press or their equivalents in enterprises for manufacturing; the sale of unfinished farm products, not ready for the ultimate consumer, impoverishes communities and depletes them of their population. Possibilities of diversifying local industries beyond agriculture will be found wherever they are intelligently sought. A free teacher, such as those of the Danish folk schools, could find such possibilities for his community. Many have doubted whether help for workers would ever again come from a religious organization: it may.

There would be help in demonstration of a way to spare other. hundreds of thousands of rural families the loss of their homes and occupations.

In Village Life under the Soviets, Karl Borders obviously tries to report conditions truthfully. He has had good opportunities to understand them; he was a famine relief worker with the Quakers, and since 1925 he has been Educational Director for the Russian Reconstruction Farms.

Exodus is a rural problem in Russia; in America it is said to be all for the best. Mr. Borders quotes the Moscow Pravda: "So long as the village will send to the city all of her new increments of workers who have not found work, it is useless to think of significant gain in the fight against unemployment." Village industries are suggested, "to use the surplus labor in the village". The Russians are reading good books eagerly and probably do not overlook Kropotkin’s Fields, Factories and Workshops, which tells of many successful factories at the gates of fields. In Russia, as elsewhere in recent and former times, the segregation of agriculture

5 Village Life under the Soviets, by Karl Borders. New York: Vanguard Press. 191 pages. $0.50. [Page 324]from other industries has led to unacceptable conditions. Where diversified industries are wanting, the peasant migrates, preferring not to remain a peasant. Since factories at the gates of field's increase production, both industrial and agricultural, they might be compatible with a prosperity based on abundance, if incompatible with a prosperity based on scarcity.

The Russian government, being urban, has held that factory methods should be applied in agriculture to increase production. The conviction has apparently been made insecure by deficits created by demonstration farms. An agricultural enterprise directed by Americans adds industries to its farming; it avoids a defic "by a careful management of the mills". If machines and gangs of men with overseers could farm, the rural home and community would be insecure in Russia as in America; but in the end these most ancient institutions always inherit the earth. A nation, a race or a church may gain by making the best of them, as Denmark does.

St [Page 325]

THE NEED OF ECONOMIC REFORM

by ROBERT L. MOFFETT Business Consultant

IN THIS day the true friends of Democracy are being sorely tried to explain its seeming failure to solve some of our most pressing problems. If democratic America shows signs of imperialistic leanings in its handling of certain international affairs, there are many who mark that up as a failure of Democracy. Poverty, crime, injustice and war still flourish and we wonder why our democratic principles cannot wipe out these things.

Perhaps we have not really understood the sort of Democracy we have, or have in some measure in this country. I am sure that many critics of this government of ours forget that this is a Democracy politically, and not an economic Democracy. What part of poverty, crime, war, and political injustice can be traced to economic rather than purely political causes? If the causes are largely economic, then is it right—does it help in finding the remedy, to bewail the shortcomings of Democracy?

It has become quite a habit in America to try to find a political remedy for everything that is wrong—even for poverty. When men are out of work, wages low, perhaps bread lines in the great cities—always talk of "passing a law" of some kind, as though that it would help what is clearly an economic mal-adjustment.

Perhaps we shall soon come to see that, while America's ideal of political Democracy was a big step forward, the success of this movement is—greatly retarded by an economic system inherited from feudal times. When we do clearly realize that so many of our bigger problems are economic problems, then [Page 326]perhaps we will look for the remedy in some sort of economic readjustment, and not through political means only.

at the root of it are becoming

As an early philosopher has said: "Thousands weakly hack at the branches the tree of evil, for every one who lays the ax The more earnest students of social forces today avinced that the real "root" of many of our present day p.lems is to be found in our outgrown economic system.

It has become a platitude to say that "it does not matter much or for long who is elected president, or governor." These political parties seldom have real issues dividing them. And some of the so-called "issues" are merely effects floating on the surface of things, while the real cause of injustice, and governmental inefficiency lies far deeper in the system of economics in which we are immersed. No matter how many men, or parties, or governments you put out of power, the ones you put in their place will let you be oppressed just as severely. Such is the history of democratic governments, and will continue to be so, I am afraid, so long as the fundamental economic inequality under- lying the oppression remains uncorrected.

How can we abolish unemployment, or high prices, or political trickery by passing laws for their abolishment-when these laws do not strike at the root-the cause of the injustice? So long as the cause remains, these heartbreaking effects will be with us, in spite of all the penalties we can impose.

A public improvement that should have cost nine millions, actually costs the city over thirty millions-government equip- ment that cost hundreds of millions is sold for five or six millions -the investment of private business men amounting to some twenty million dollars is "protected" at state expense to the tune of fifty millions-these are things that happen many times every year, yet no law or political power is able to reach things of this character. Is the reason not apparent-something wrong with the fundamental principle under which we are trying to run our Democracy with relation to things of an economic nature?

Now if we will direct our attack against the real causes of [Page 327]

THE NEED OF ECONOMIC REFORM

unemployment, of high prices, of poverty, of war and political crookedness, then we will have some chance of finding a remedy. When you get at the root of the matter you are going to get results and remember results have been very meager in our attempts to curb human greed up-to-date. There seems to be a clear indication that the mere imposing of penalties will not effect a cure—it does not seem to affect the symptoms very directly.

A great many people believe that greed is almost entirely a thing of the human heart, and that no change in our system of economics or anything else can help much, until we have elevated all men to a higher level of understanding and sympathy. This is only partially true, for we know well that human greed often defeats its own purpose. There is such a thing as an "intelligent selfishness" as well as an ignorant selfishness—and the spirit of cooperation is an example of that "selfishness" which operates with understanding and gets more and better results thereby.

It is an incontestable fact to well-informed people that a relatively small minority actually dominate the affairs in all countries, both politically and economically. This, always has been so perhaps to an even greater degree than today. The fact that this domination is accomplished, to some extent, with "the consent of the dominated," does not alter the fact for the purpose of our illustration, which has to do with how a better economic system would help to eliminate the crimes and injustices due to greed.

The new economic system, when it comes, will come as every other new system has come, from the people of vision, of understanding, or executive ability, and not from the masses. Usually the new system is "sold" to the people—their leaders tell them that it will be an improvement—and if the propaganda is well done, the people accept the new idea in time.

It may be that the "passion for freedom" was inherent in the breasts of the early American people, but certainly the Democratic form of government as a system for achieving greater [Page 328]liberty, was the work of men of education and profound wisdom far above the average.

So it may be that the "people of insight" may lead the way in pointing out the need for a modernized economic system as an aid to putting the true spirit of cooperation into the hearts of the crafty, the selfish and greedy. Students of modern economics have hoped that even the more ignorant can be shown how to cooperate under a new system of economics where unselfishness pays. To some that may seem impossible, as indeed it often seems to be as things are in the world today.

This point was clearly illustrated for children by an Oriental teacher in this way: Five merchants in a certain small city were all competing for business. Each ignorantly did all he could to injure his competitors, thinking that by so doing he was helping himself. So, in that town each of the five merchants had one merchant boosting his business (himself) and four merchants (the competitors) trying to pull down his business.

In another city were also five merchants, all in the same business, but these five men were intelligent. They all worked hard to build up, not only their own business, but each one praised and helped to build up the business of his competitor as well as his own business. Note well the difference, for in the second case each of the five merchants had five men (himself and four others) working to build up his business, and no one trying to destroy it. As a result the business of the first five merchants was poor, while the business of the merchants in the other town was constantly increased, and they became very prosperous.

That is the story.

Some may say that cooperation is possible without any change in the economic system. True, but this requires much education, and even then the crafty, greedy man of ability, even though he pays a heavy penalty eventually, does often become immensely wealthy by thoroughly dishonest methods. These cases are so notorious, and of such frequent occurrence, and the ultimate downfall of these men often so long delayed, that it is very difficult to impress the young or ignorant with the benefits [Page 329]

THE NEED OF ECONOMIC REFORM

of cooperation and dealing at all times honorably with their fellow men.

There is today a large body of informed public opinion which will say that it is much more important to tell us how to correct the economic system than to dwell upon the rather obvious need for this reform. We must never forget, however, that the apostles of any change-especially an economic change -are very greatly in the minority. The desperate need for the change needs to be restated from many different angles to over- come the objections of those who fear the "unsettling effect" of anything so fundamental as basic economic changes.

In approaching this problem of how to change the economic system, we shall need almost superhuman insight and guidance. We have seen the failures of the academic approach to the problem, of educational campaigns conducted through magazines and lecture tours.

I am convinced that the problem is a scientific one and needs the scientific treatment from start to finish. Radicals generally and reform types as we know them are totally incompetent to envisage the problem, much less find a practical method of bringing about its solution.

It is a strange fact of our political experience that the dis- reputable elements in our political leadership usually seem to be much better masters of the art of influencing people in the mass than is the occasional "decent" citizen who condescends to run for public office. The crude type of politician evidently knows how to appeal to the instincts of the ignorant voter, with meaningless slogans and catch-phrases, while the reform candidate hands out ponderous arguments, or platitudes as the case may be. The result is that the crude man gets the office, and the better class citizens get discouraged with politics.

To beat the politician at his own game we need scientific treatment. We need a scientist to show us the real technique of influencing human behavior. Unfortunately again, most of our scientific minds, if they have not prostituted their lives on the altar of commercialism, find it difficult to interest themselves in [Page 330]attacking the economic problem in any other than in an academic way. But I feel that we must have the scientist—at least the scientific method and the scientific attitude of mind.

If a thoroughly trained and competent industrial engineer were given a complex and difficult commercial or industrial problem, he already has a rather definite scientific method of procedure at his command. The methods of analyzing the problem and of charting the steps necessary to its solution are part of his mental equipment as an engineer, and as an industrial scientist. Why not utilize the same kind of brains in solving social, political and economic problems?

Here again experience teaches a strange lesson. Our economists of note are mostly in the universities. We never find them as leaders in industrial or commercial enterprises, seldom if ever in governmental positions, although there is no place where a first rate economist is needed more than in Congress. in the State Department, and other departments of the government.

Do you ask why? The real answer would constitute a liberal education in "what's wrong with government." Powerful influences do not seem to want economists in important posts, or on influential committees. These posts are filled largely by lawyers. Possibly a little less law and a good deal more economics would be the solution. Anyone who knows anything about politics can understand why an economist who is also a scientist would not "fit in" with the powers that rule in state affairs.

The method of the industrial engineer applied to our economic system and its correction would first of all chart things as they are now; listing the evils traceable to the economic system. He would trace each evil straight back to its source—the real cause. Once knowing the cause, the remedy is not far to seek.

He would carefully list the objects to be desired in a practical economic system, adapted to present day needs. These he would call probably, "the elements of the new order." Against these elements he would check the various solutions to the economic problem that have been advocated in the past. He [Page 331]

THE NEED OF ECONOMIC REFORM

would select and preserve those elements which were workable and discard the others. Out of all this he would, by a process of synthesis, work out the final elements of the new economic system which he would offer as a practicable, workable, fool-proof solution to those problems which are now directly or indirectly the result of a grossly out-of-date economic base to our civilization.

It is the writer's conviction that we are now ready to work out the new system of economics and put it into operation. This is the Day and the Age when this thing must be done. It must be done by the use of the new tool which a Great Divinity has given to man in this cycle-the scientific mind. [Page 332]

LABOR AND WORLD UNITY

by ROBERT WHITAKER Author and Lecturer

THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR had its Annual Session in Los Angeles, California in the early days of October, 1927. The meetings were without exciting incident, and the addresses, practically without exception, were conventional and conservative. Yet under the surface of the most carefully immunized utterances there were evidences of an actual movement of labor thought all the more significant that it was in the main unrecognized both by the speakers themselves and by the majority of their hearers. It was the life of the day speaking through the lip-formulas of the past, and as often happens, in labor circles and elsewhere, the speech was all the more meaningful that it said so much more than it seemed to say. Outright radical utterances are often less revealing of what life is doing with us than are the unconscious concessions of those who are most unwilling to admit any response to the forward drift of events, and may deny or disparage the events themselves.

For one thing there was frequent and vigorous affirmation, quite as vigorously endorsed by the delegates of all shades of affiliation, to the idea of the primacy of labor in shaping the life of the world for good or ill. It was not stated in this way, seldom going beyond the insistence that high wages and good conditions for labor are the key to general prosperity, but it implied all and more than is indicated above. Politicians and preachers and professors were there, and deference to them, so far as they participated in the program, was conventional enough. But practically they did not exist for the body of business that was [Page 333]

LABOR AND WORLD UNITY

done, and for the substance of emphasis in the discussions of the hour. State-craft, religion, and education were all minor interests with these men, and for them labor was the first determinant of the public welfare, though had they been asked to philosophize about it they might have denied this emphasis. But labor everywhere feels it today, and feels it more every hour in every country of the world, from the most radical to the most conservative group. Economic determinism is in the bones of the working class, however brokenly it may speak through their lips.

This was yet more evident in the discussion of immigration and foreign labor than it was in the repeated references to the sources of prosperity. California is, and has been since before the American Federation of Labor was born, notoriously anti-foreign in its labor policy. The presence of Secretary of Labor Davis, from President Coolidge's cabinet, did not lessen that emphasis on this occasion, and his anti-immigration utterances evoked vociferous applause. None the less the internationalism inherent in the present world development, especially in the economic field, spoke through all the noisy nationalism and organizational exclusiveness of the assembly in tones that were thunderous to those attuned to what was above the ground. It was recognized clearly that the labor problem is an international problem, despite all exclusion laws, and that however we "keep them aliens out," we cannot keep American millions, drawn from the productiveness of American labor, from going abroad and exploiting the cheap labor of the world to the deadly disadvantage of labor here as the process goes on. Either labor must be well-off everywhere or it will soon be well-off nowhere. World unity is becoming every day more imperiously actual in the economic field, and labor is affected by that fact more intimately and menacingly than is any other section of life.

And the third note of emphasis to be detected under the seeming conservatism of this notable labor convention was not less important from the viewpoint of world brotherhood. It has been charged, and not without reason, that the working classes are as much affected with the caste spirit among [Page 334]themselves as is society outside of labor ranks. The women folks of skilled labor, especially, are said to bear themselves toward the women of the less favored workers very much as the wives of the "higher-ups" are supposed to bear themselves toward the shop-girl. However that may be, there can be ro denial of the fact that the skilled workers have been inclined to view their own superior estate with complacency, and to leave the migratory and the unskilled to the I. W. W. and other like outlawed organizations.

Without discussing these aspects of the matter at all the A. F. of L. Convention in Los Angeles did discuss with much interest and acumen the tendency of present mechanical development to reduce all workers to one level, the level of the unskilled. The machine gets more and more democratic and international. It will work for a Chinaman, or a Hindu, or a Mexican just as willingly as it will respond to the supervision of a Nordic, and the fact that it calls for less and less supervision, and assumes more and more of the functions which human skill was supposed to monopolize a little while ago is profoundly affecting the world consciousness of the working classes. They have seen what Japan has done, and they know well what China is capable of doing, as they are more intimately aware of what the movement of factory mechanism from New England to the South means in terms of present American life. The immediate result may be an intensifying of the class spirit, as between Americans and foreigners, a result exhibited in the Sacco-Vanzetti tragedy in Massachusetts. But eventually the compulsion of protection for all, that the machine may not reduce the front ranks of labor to the desperate condition of the coolies of the world, is forced home everywhere. The machine cries aloud everywhere, "Except ye be brothers and masters all together of me, ye shall all be my slaves, and the walls of special privilege in the labor field are not thick enough to keep out the cry.

One other under-current of emphasis was notable in the flow of discussion and address throughout this Los Angeles labor convention. It was the cry for the "social wage," as against [Page 335]

LABOR AND WORLD UNITY

the “living wage” of the past. When so conservative a man as Frank Morrison, right hand worker with Samuel Gompers for years, says without contradiction, that “in proportion to what he produces the American workingman is today the poorest paid workingman in the world,” it is evident that something is leaking through the Coolidge prosperity of the hour. The worker is actually getting more than yesterday he had, as such papers as The Los Angeles Times never tire of assuring him, more than any other workers anywhere and at any time have actually had. His “living wage” is higher than his fathers ever dreamed it would be. But so also are his living costs, especially if he lives on the higher level which labor’s producing power today would justify. He gets more, but he produces relatively far more than he gets. It is labor product that is interesting labor now, and not labor wage. He will be partner, at the least, and no longer a servant, “who knoweth not what his master doeth.” Just now, in conservative labor circles the workers are asking only to be lifted to the level of “friends” with their employers, the capitalists. But many of them are saying, and a good many more of them are thinking, that it may be necessary to reorganize the world, from the standpoint of production rather than that of profit, in order to build a society where men can be so equitably placed toward each other as to make friendship a real thing.

Everywhere the movement toward world unity is evident now. But they see less than the full strength of that movement who do not watch the movement of life on the levels of men’s daily work. It is where the masses live, not in their immature school years, their hours of leisure after the exhaustion of shop and factory and field, their dress parades to church or concert hall or theatre or stadium, it is where the workers live when they are most alive, and most creatively related to the life of us all, that world unity is working most powerfully today. We do not any of us live in abstractions or idealizations first of all. We live in and by the creative hand, where man most immediately approaches his Maker, and the Maker of all the material world. It is as a fashioner and carrier of the food forms on which we [Page 336]depend at every table, of the fabrics all of us wear, of the houses wherein we live and the halls where we philosophize, and the churches where we "mount up with wings like eagles," that man shapes the social life most immediately and imperatively. And here it is that world unity is clamoring today to have its way on penalty of wrecking us all if we do not heed. Watch the workers of the world and you will be amazed at the speed with which, beyond their own consciousness, they are moving toward the realization of the unity of mankind. Work-unity and world-unity have more than an affinity of sound. [Page 337]

X-EDWIN D. MEAD

by LUCIA AMES MEAD Author of "Swords and Ploughshares," etc.

Mr. Mead cannot recall when his definite interest in the peace movement began. For several years before 1875, when he went to Cambridge, England, for university study, he had been brought at Ticknor and Fields' in Boston, in whose service he was, into contact with Emerson and the eminent New England poets and historians, whose works they published and from whom he received much inspiration in thinking of the world in terms of humanity. At Cambridge, where there were few Americans, he was challenged in friendly fashion to a debate on international arbitration, and scored his first success as a young orator on world peace. It was an emphatic triumph and won him life-long friends.

At Leipsic, where he spent three years studying under Wundt and other great scholars, he was specially impressed by Kant's "Eternal Peace" and his other international essays. He was studying in England during Gladstone's campaign against the Bulgarian atrocities, and on return home he lectured many times on Gladstone, contrasting his broad humanity with the nationalistic and selfish policies of Disraeli. Afterwards he became active in the American Peace Society, and representing it, in 1887 presented personally to President Cleveland and Senator Hoar petitions for reciprocal action by our government on arbitration measures by the British Parliament. As editor of The New England Magazine for a dozen years, his important editorials constantly reflected his intense interest in the issues [Page 338]involved in the Venezuela crisis, the Spanish war, the subjugation of the Philippines, and the Boer war. Many of these articles were published as pamphlets and had large circulation.

From 1883 on, he directed for over twenty years the Old South Historical Work in Boston, arranging summer lectures for school children, winter lectures for teachers, and preparing 200 Old South Leaflets, some of which reproduced famous international documents by Grotius, Penn, Franklin and others.

Mr. Mead early emphasized the cardinal and prophetic vocation of the United States in the development of a united world as incumbent on us through every principle of our history and our federal constitution. It was not accident but fate which made our republic the cradle of the organized peace movement. The great founders of our republic, Washington, Franklin and Jefferson, were the preeminent peace statesmen of their age. He surveyed their work at length in his Fourth of July address at Faneuil Hall in 1903 on "The Principles of the Founders," published later in book form. His pamphlet, "Organize the World" (1898) attracted wide attention, and the title was made a slogan by Edward Everett Hale in his addresses through the country on the approaching Hague Conference. Alfred Fried in Germany put it regularly as a motto on his monthly magazine, Friedenswarte. Mr. Mead showed how a century after Washington, "we are called to a vision as inspiring as that which came to him and his associates, and to a greater organizing work than that which he performed. He was commanded to organize a nation. We are commanded to organize the world. He saw that our true power and interest must be measured on a continental scale; we are warned that the time has come when we must conceive our power and our true interests by the measure of mankind

Mr Mead collaborated with Dr. Hale in his little journal, "The Peace Crusade," as the time for the first Hague Conference approached; and he arranged a series of weekly noon meetings in Tremont Temple, addressed by distinguished speakers. Just before this, a handsome young Scotchman, Ramsay MacDonald, [Page 339]

EDWIN D. MEAD

was sent to Boston and New York by William T. Stead, who similarly was issuing his little journal, "War Against War." On the visit of the young crusader to our little home on Beacon Hill, we little realized that he was a potential prime minister of England. This was the beginning of a valued friendship, continued when we met him and his "pro-Boer" colleagues in London during the hectic days of the Boer war.

About this time, Mr. Mead's pamphlets on "The Present Crisis" and "The Two Englands and their Lessons for America" had wide reading in both countries. He was active in the Anti-Imperialist League; and as president both of the Free Religious Association and the Twentieth Century Club, he promoted in them in various ways much attention to the issues involved in the two wars. He attended most of the International Arbitration Conferences at Mohonk from 1896 on, being secretary of the conference for three years and often one of the speakers. He was profoundly interested in Dr. Hale's memorable addresses there on a permanent international tribunal, and published these later in a volume, with an introduction on Dr. Hale's international services.

In 1907, we were present at the Second Hague Conference. We attended and Mr. Mead addressed the international peace congresses at Glasgow (1901), Rouen (1903), Lucerne (1905), Munich (1907), and London (1908). In 1909, we were at Christiania, Stockholm and Copenhagen, addressing peace meetings in all those cities; and in 1911 we went over for the congress arranged for Rome but prevented by the outbreak of war with Tripoli. However in that year we gave many addresses in England, Germany, Vienna and Budapest, at the last as guests of Count Apponyi, whose addresses in Boston Mr. Mead had arranged. In those later years, Mr. Mead was one of the American members of the International Peace Bureau at Berne and in constant touch with the leaders of the movement.

We recall with special interest the London Congress of 1908, when the delegates were entertained by the government. At the great banquet at the Hotel Cecil, Mr. Mead was chosen [Page 340]to speak for the United States, and he dwelt upon the mutual relations of our countries, emphasizing especially the issue of the immunity of private property at sea, a matter which he has always deemed of prime import. He was warmly congratulated by Mr. Asquith, the prime minister, and by the biographer of Lord Shelburne, the English minister in 1783 who sympathized with Franklin's championship of the freedom of the seas.

Mr. Mead addressed the International Religious Conference at Amsterdam in 1903 on "The Services of Holland in the Cause of Peace," and at a similar conference in Geneva in 1905 he gave, by request, an address on the conclusion at that moment of the Portsmouth treaty which ended the Russo-Japanese war. He took part in the Free Trade Congress in London in 1908; and in 1911 addressed the Universal Races Congress in London, in which about forty races were represented. In 1904, he chiefly conducted the work of organizing in Boston what proved to be the greatest international peace congress ever held, involving extensive publicity work and the securing of the financial support. Numerous foreign delegates came; and there were crowded meetings for a week, often simultaneously, in Tremont Temple, Faneuil Hall, Park Street Church, and the Old South Meeting House. Delegations of foreign guests were sent to New York, Philadelphia and other cities for supplementary meetings. Secretary Hay gave the impressive opening address at Boston; and Sir William Randall Cremer and the Baroness von Suttner were among the speakers.

The great success of this congress encouraged Mr. Mead to propose the first American National Peace Congress, held for a week in 1907 in Carnegie Hall, New York, and attended by James Bryce, William T. Stead, Baron D'Estournelles and other distinguished foreign guests. Secretary Root, Governor Hughes and William J. Bryan were among the speakers; and the congress was presided over by Andrew Carnegie. Mr. Mead's address was on "What the Scholar had done for Peace."

One of the most impressive meetings of the New York Congress was that of 5000 school children. This inspired Mr. [Page 341]Mead to take steps toward establishing the School Peace League, for the preliminary work of which Mr. Carnegie gave $2500. Samuel T. Dutton, who had been chairman of the executive committee of the New York congress, became the president; and Mrs. Fannie Fern Andrews became its secretary and has remained its executive officer to the present time.

The noteworthy success of the New York congress encouraged the holding of other national congresses, at Chicago, Baltimore, and St. Louis, in all of which Mr. Mead took active г . These were under the auspices of the American Peace Society, of which Mr. Mead's honored friend, Dr. Benjamin F. Trueblood, had been secretary since 1892.

Mr. Mead spoke at the St. Louis congress on "The Pan Teutonic Pledge of Peace." He emphasized, speaking in a city largely German, the commanding importance of the Teutonic element in the United States, and appealed for the firm cooperation of all the Teutonic nations for the peace and organization of the world. Nothing was so mournful to Mr. Mead as the already growing strain between England and Germany through commercial and naval rivalry. In 1908, he had published an article in the Atlantic Monthly on that subject. At that time he had felt the chief jealousy was on the part of England.

When the war broke out, we were at Constance at the first International Church Peace Conference ever held, arranged by the Church Peace Union just endowed by Mr. Carnegie with $2,000,000. Mr. Carnegie urged Mr. Mead to take an executive position with the Union, but he felt that his responsibilities to the World Peace Foundation were the prior claim, though he became a trustee. At Brussels, the week before the Constance conference, realizing the gravity of the situation, he assisted Senator Lafontaine in assembling a conference of members of the Berne Bureau, who addressed appeals to the great responsible governments. The Constance conference was forced at once to adjourn to London, where, without the French and German delegates, the World Alliance of Churches for Peace was organized, just after England entered the war. Those were memorable [Page 342]days, each hour full of thrilling experiences. A month later, Mr. Mead, feeling it was impossible to learn the German attitude from London papers, went back to Germany for ten days, visiting Leipsic and Berlin. Alfred Fried came from Vienna to meet him, and he conferred with Professor Wundt, and Professor Lamprecht at Leipsic, and with Wilhelm Foerster, Eduard Bernstein and others in Berlin, and with many classes of people. The London representative of “Everybody’s Magazine” cabled an article, published in October, in which Mr. Mead reported his experiences. Mr. Mead published elsewhere careful statements of his views on the causes of the war, which views he has later had no reason to change. He held then, what Mr. Asquith, Lloyd George, and Sir Edward Grey have since publicly declared, that no government desired or designed war, but that all, in Lloyd George’s words, “staggered and stumbled into it,” through lack of international organization. Europe had become an armed camp and the military machine was too monstrous for the existing political control.

Mr. Mead’s chief peace activities during the dozen years before 1914 were with the World Peace Foundation, endowed by Edwin Ginn, whose gift of a million dollars was the largest gift to the peace cause up to that time. Mr. Mead had been Mr. Ginn’s chosen adviser and helper, and Mr. Ginn used to say with grateful enthusiasm that the Foundation was Mr. Mead’s child more than his own. It was baptized at first as the International School of Peace, Mr. Ginn thus meaning to emphasize his central idea that peace could come only through the systematic education of the people. Mr. Mead became the secretary of the Foundation; and Dr. David Starr Jordan was at first made director; but as he was still president of Leland Stanford University and seldom in Boston, although his interest was constant, Mr. Mead was soon made the director. He has highly valued the association with Dr. Jordan, whom he reveres for his steadfast courage, unswerving purpose, and disdainful disregard of all mean persecutions and popular clamor. Mr. Mead, though not a doctrinaire, is resolute and thorough in his peace principles, [Page 343]

EDWIN D. MEAD

and if there is any one whom he hates, so far as his kindly nature lets him hate anyone, it is a trimmer.

While director of the World Peace Foundation, Mr. Mead gave many addresses throughout the country, prepared multitudes of peace pamphlets, and edited the International Library, which contained works of permanent value. To several of these, Sumner's and Channing's addresses on war, Kant's international essays, the Great Design of Henry IV, and others, he prepared careful introductions. He gathered around him in the work of the Foundation men of zeal and power. Dr. Charles H. Levermore directed the work in colleges; and later, when he received the Bok prize he wrote that he owed to Mr. Mead the inspiration and opportunity which made his essay possible. George Nasmyth, whom we fondly call our modern Galahad and whose early death was an irreparable loss, arranged most successfully the organization of Cosmopolitan clubs both in America and in German universities. Denys P. Myers came to the Foundation early and developed into an authority on international affairs, attaining a place of unique service among peace workers.

Following his retirement from the World Peace Foundation, Mr. Mead has written much for the newspapers; and last year, in three months in Europe, renewed relations with the peace workers and spoke in the London Guildhall at a peace meeting, and attended sessions of the League of Nations at Geneva. He holds with Mr. Root that the League and the World Court are the two greatest agencies for international peace which have ever been developed. He has published strong pamphlets on the limitation of armaments, which he considers a perpetual provocation to war, but which will disappear as a sense of security grows through reliance on law. He believes in systematic organization, and has no confidence in peace by ukase. He lays primary stress now, as always, on the freedom of the seas, which should be protected by an international naval police, as rival navies are banished. [Page 344]

How Stable is Europe?

I sit down to write these lines from Paris, it is exactly nine years, to a day, since the first of the peace treaties was signed at Versailles. Nine years is not an age in international politics, but it is none the less a period sufficiently long to make possible some kind of judgment upon the work that was done at the Peace Conference, and to justify the inquiry as to whether Europe is today more or less stable than was before the war. While any judgment on the matter must be open to constant revision, it is at least possible to come to some tentative conclusions.

Let us begin by painting in the darker side of the picture. Every observer of European politics knows that Europe is by no means entirely tranquil, and that there are areas of friction which cannot be ignored.

Of these the most important, at the moment, is the tension which exists in the relations of Italy and Jugo Slavia. There are numerous causes for this tension, and no one can deny that they are likely to be of considerable duration.

First to be mentioned is the rivalry of the two states with regard to Albania, which is rapidly becoming the financial vassal of Rome. The Italian penetration into this little state on the other side of the Adriatic can never be regarded otherwise than with apprehension by the government at Belgrade, and on the other hand is not likely to be abandoned so long as the present government remains in [Page 345]

HOW STABLE IS EUROPE?

power in Italy, so that there is here a fairly continuous source of irritation. But this is not the only cloud in the relations of the two most important Adriatic states. There is also the question of Dalmatia, and of the Italian treatment of the Slovene population in the now Italian province of Istria. With regard to the former, Italy put in her claims to the province at the Peace Conference, and there those claims were denied; justly enough, it would seem, since the inhabitants of this region are overwhelmingly Slavic in blood. But Dalmatia once belonged to Venice, and is also of some importance from a purely naval point of view, and despite the decisions taken nine years ago there continues in Italy an agitation for the acquisition of the province which cannot fail to touch the susceptibilities of the government at Belgrade. In the meantime, the nationalizing policy of the Fascist government with regard to its non-Italian population, and particularly with regard to the Slovenes, affords still another cause of difficulty in the relations of Italy and Jugo Slavia. It would be blindness not to see that in all these questions there is the possibility of serious difficulty in the future.

But there are other centers of irritation besides this one. In northeastern Europe there exists a long standing dispute between Poland and Lithuania with regard to the city of Vilna. This city was claimed by both governments at the Peace Conference; it was seized by a Polish freebooter in 1920, and was finally awarded to Poland by the conference of ambassadors. But the Lithuanian government has never acquiesced in that decision, and has never come into a completely normal relationship with Poland. While the intervention of the League of Nations has prevented an actual rupture, the relations of the two governments remain decidedly strained.

A third source of difficulty lies in the strong movement in Hungary for the revision of the treaty of the Trianon, the treaty which ended the war, so far as Hungary was concerned. The Hungarians have never considered this settlement a just one, and in particular they have resented the transfer to Rumania of the former Hungarian province of Transylvania, where there [Page 346]exists a large Magyar element which has been far from happy under Rumanian rule. The Hungarian cause has been taken up by the British journalist Lord Rothermere, and recently Mussolini, in a public utterance, gave some encouragement to the Hungarian pretensions to a revision of the treaty. In the irreconcilability of the Hungarian government there is a constant source of irritation, and possibly of war. Even those who may sympathize with the Hungarian view-point must recognize that the danger of war is implicit in the whole matter.

Then there is the question of Silesia and the Polish corridor. These matters do not at the moment seriously menace the relations of Poland and Germany, but there is a considerable section of German opinion which does not accept the settlement arrived at as just, and there is always the possibility that this question may become a more serious one.

Finally, the Italian policy of nationalization in the South Tyrol, where Fascismo is making a determined effort to de-Germanize a German population, has caused and is likely again to cause moments of tension, to put it mildly, in European affairs. All these matters taken together seem to show that Europe is far from tranquil, and yet, when all the facts are taken into consideration, there is still much to be said for the thesis that Europe is today far more stable than it was before the war, more stable, indeed, than it has been in several generations. In making this judgment, it is not necessary to put the major emphasis on the new institutions of peace that have been created since the war, such as the League of Nations, though it is always worth while remembering that the League has been instrumental in settling not a small number of European disputes, and in reducing the element of friction in others and that such a practical statesman as Herr Stresemann has ventured the remark that had the League existed in 1914 the war might have been averted. These institutions may be of large importance in the future; but they are by no means the whole story when it comes to an appraisal of the elements which make for stability in the new Europe. There are other factors which cannot be ignored. [Page 347]

HOW STABLE IS EUROPE?

Of these the most significant is the changed relationship of France and Germany. The retrocession of Alsace Lorraine removed the principal cause of friction between the two governments, and the Dawes plan and the Locarno treaties have still further removed the sources of friction between them. Powerful economic combinations cut across the Franco-German frontier, and help in the cementing of a more friendly understanding, and while there are still some important matters under discussion between Paris and Berlin, there is good reason to believe that a great and durable change has taken place in respect to their attitude toward one another. Western Europe has rarely been so stable, and the stability of Western Europe has much to do with the stability of the continent as a whole.

But even in Eastern Europe there are strong elements of stability. Put bluntly, the states that profited from the Peace Conference are sufficiently strong to make any attempt at the revision of the Peace Treaties extremely dangerous. Mussolini's criticism of the treaty of the Trianon and encouragement of Hungary has recemented the bonds of the Little Entente, the close association of Rumania, Jugo Slavia and Czechoslovakia, in defense of the existing order. Poland is much stronger than discontented Lithuania, and will doubtless keep what she has won. And behind all these states stands France, the champion of the status quo in Eastern as in Western Europe.

To some persons, of course, this peace of the status quo may seem worse than war. By some persons it may be held to consecrate grave injustice, and to have no sound moral basis to rest upon. But there is a possible retort to any such criticism. Hardly one of the controversial questions that still vex Europe is susceptible of an absolute solution. With regard to all of them there had necessarily to be a settlement which, while recognizing certain interests, interests legitimate enough, denied others equally legitimate. Not in new territorial adjustments, but in a broader and more generous interpretation of existing understandings, may perhaps be found the way of justice. Granting the injustice of some of the existing settlements, is it desirable [Page 348]that they be changed at the cost of a new war? Is it really a matter of regret that the political balance of Europe makes an appeal to the sword so difficult? Is it not fortunate that some other means than force must for the present be sought, if existing inequities are to be remedied? There is no absolute answer, perhaps, to such a question. Does peace come first of all, or are there principles and policies which transcend the question of peace? This is a matter of individual judgment, though no one ought to deny that peace is itself a world interest of major significance. In the meantime, one can only indicate the fact that, despite certain areas of friction, peace is today more secure, so far as Europe is concerned, than it has been in a considerable time.

All this leaves Russia out of account. But Russia is intent upon internal problems. The danger from this side is not great today, and will not be great tomorrow.

P.S. The new Kellogg note has just arrived in Europe. It has been very well received here, especially in Paris. In my next communication I hope to have the opportunity of commenting once again upon these interesting and important negotiations.

الله [Page 349]

The Sacred Scriptures of Buddhism (Continued)

UR study of the Hindu Vedas, Brahmanas and Upanishads acquainted us with the successive stages in the evolution of Hinduism down to about the year 500 B.C. We saw

Ο how, out of the original Aryan religion with its simple Vedic sacrifices and hymns to a few personified forces of nature, there was gradually built up an immense Pantheon, an elaborate ceremonial, an ecclesiastical hierarchy, a caste-classification, a doctrine of the infallibility of the Vedas, and a mass of philosophico-theological speculation regarding God, the soul and salvation. No one can read these Hindu Scriptures without observing that the people of India had become so steadily and increasingly engrossed in theology and ritual as to mistake theories and forms of religion for its essence. And whenever such engrossment in speculation and ceremonialism occurs, there invariably follows a reaction in favor of devotion to personal morality and public service. It has been so in the history of every religion, the reaction signifying not that fault was found with the ritual or speculation as such, but that religion had become so deficient in vital and vitalizing influence that the moral issues of life had been allowed to suffer almost total eclipse.

Buddhism was essentially a reaction of this kind, inaugurated about 500 B.C. by one Gotama, who had himself been reared in the Brahmanism against which he than rebelled. He is known in the Scriptures by various other names: Siddhartha (one in whom wishes are fulfilled); Bhagavat (the Blessed One); Tathagata (like his [Page 350]predecessors); Cakya-Muni (monk of the Cakya tribe). He was called "the Buddha" because it was believed by his followers that he is the Enlightened One. For "Buddha" means enlightened, as "Christ" means anointed,—each name not the name of a man, but of an office he was thought to have fulfilled. Jesus was called "the Christ" because it was believed by certain of his Judean contemporaries that he was the long expected "Anointed One" who would deliver the Jews from their Roman oppressors and restore the prosperity of David's day. Jesus, they thought, was the Messiah and "Christ" is but the Greek equivalent for the Hebrew "Messiah." Similarly Gotama was called "The Buddha" because it was believed he had shed new light on the problem of salvation and so was worthy to be called "The Enlightened One."

Thus, while in Greece Heraclitus and Pythagoras were shaping their philosophies, while Nehemiah and his associates were reorganizing the Hebrew nation in Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity, while Confucius was fulfilling the part of statesman and moralist in China, the founder of Buddhism was protesting against certain errors and evils in the Brahmanism in which he had been brought up and supplementing his protest with a positive, constructive gospel of permanent escape from a world in which suffering, sorrow, disease and death were the common lot; for to achieve such escape was salvation, Nirvana.

The simple ceremonial of "Vedism" had developed into an elaborate and expensive ritual. The Brahman priests had encompassed the whole of life with religious observances and around the daily ritual they had woven at extraordinary web of mystical ideas. The ceremonies of birth, death and marriage were in their hands. Moreover, the sacrifices of earth had a counterpart in the skies and a vast system of terrestrial and celestial connections was established by which the priests claimed that these performances kept the universe going and declared themselves "human Gods." Again, asceticism had come to be regarded as a virtue of the highest type and even a program of physical austerities had been worked out. It was believed that such [Page 351]austerities could secure superhuman powers of vision or of locomotion. To wear bark dress, to feed on berries and roots, to eat but once in four or five days, to hang one's head downward like a bat, to stand on one leg, these and many other self-torturing inventions had great attraction for many people even as had the pillar for Simeon Stylites. Once more, caste-distinctions had grown increasingly and obnoxiously exclusive and speculation on the hereafter had become so engrossing as to cause neglect of the practical humanities. Nay, more, defects in the prevailing Vedanta philosophy were discovered by the Buddha so that a new basis had to be found for the hope of salvation. Against these features of the religion into which he was born Gotama now registered emphatic protests. He denounced the costly ritual as wasteful and unethical. He repudiated asceticism as a practice inimical to the health of both body and mind. He pronounced caste distinctions to be both degrading and undemocratic. Intellectual speculation on the hereafter he deprecated as being both futile and unwarranted. The Vedanta belief in the existence of Brahma a permanent and supreme Power, the Soul of the universe; the belief in the existence of a soul in man, an entity, capable of transmigration at death; the belief in man's ultimate absorption into Brahma-all these philosophico-theological beliefs he regarded as superstitions, unworthy the support of enlightened people. In such terse sentences as the following did the Buddha embody his reform:

"Enough of rites that no one understands, in honor of useless spirits. Every man makes his own fate. I preach simple truths, I have no esoteric doctrine. My way of salvation is open to all, to the lowly as well as to the exalted. Not learning, not wealth, not high birth makes a man a worthy Brahman, but a pure heart, a good character, a noble aim in life. Better is a slave who lives nobly than a noble who lives slavishly. To be a slave of lusts is to miss the first step to emancipation from rebirth."

Such, in brief, was the fivefold reaction of Gotama on its negative side and had it ended there, no Buddhism would have been born. For no movement can ever live that is built solely [Page 352]upon negations. No future ever awaits a cause grounded upon iconoclasm. Every religious system that survives and perpetuates itself does so only on the basis of its affirmations. Let us see what they were and how he gave them expression in the Pitakas.

But first we must take note of the sub-stratum of his entire teaching, the "Four Noble Truths." Without full understanding and appreciation of these, salvation (final escape from the round of rebirths), he held, is impossible. Differ as Buddhists may on other points, they all are agreed on this. In the Vinaya-Pitaka Gotama says:

"It is through not understanding and grasping four noble truths, O brethren, that we have had to run so long, to wander so long in this weary path of reincarnation, both you and I. This, O Bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, decay is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering, presence of objects we hate is suffering, separation from objects we love is suffering, not to obtain what we desire is suffering. Briefly, the fivefold clinging to existence is suffering.

"This, O Bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the cause of suffering: thirst, that leads to rebirth, accompanied by pleasure and lust, finding its delight here and there. This thirst is threefold; namely, thirst for pleasure, thirst for existence, thirst for prosperity.

"This, O Bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering: (it ceases with) the complete cessation of this thirst, —a cessation which consists in the absence of every passion,— with the abandoning of this thirst, with the doing away with it, with the deliverance from it, with the destruction of desire.

"This, O Bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the path which leads to the cessation of suffering, the holy eightfold path; that is to say, right belief, right aspiration, right speech, right conduct, right means of livelihood, right endeavor, right memory, right meditation."

How tame and prosaic this list must have seemed to a people steeped in ceremonialism, fasting and penances! How tame and prosaic, perchance, it appears to us unless we happen [Page 353]

THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF BUDDHISM

to have read the detailed exposition of each in the Sutta-Pitaka.

As an index of the wealth of ethical and philosophical content in each of these constituent parts of the Path let me synopsize the first of the eight, "Right Views," as expounded at length in the forty-third of the 186 dialogues of the Buddha, preserved for us in the Sutta-Pitaka.

The man of right views is free from superstition, free from erroneous theories of the world, God, the soul. He realizes the impermanence of everything and of every being, whether human or divine. He knows that nothing permanently is, that everything becomes, that the world-stuff is eternal, that out of it all things and beings came, we know not how; and that it is a foolish waste of time to try to find out because the main concern of men should be to attain "Arahatship," that blessed state attainable here on earth, in which, as a result of faithful allegiance to the eightfold noble path, one is prepared for Nirvana and saved from the possibility of rebirth.

The man of right views understands that while it is legitimate to argue from one cause to the next, he cannot hope to reach an ultimate cause. Life he knows is a wheel, causation a chain, beginning with ignorance, "unconscious productive ignorance" (the unconscious "will to live from which spring consciousness, sensation, thirst, attachment, birth, suffering, old age, death, rebirth;—Karma (the fruit of one’s deeds) being the link that binds each life with its predecessor.

The man of right views understands that there is no reality corresponding to "soul" as a permanent, human entity, and that the notion of its final absorption into Brahma, the Oversoul, is also erroneous. For this latter, he nows to be just as unreal as the soul. Again, the man of right views understands what is evil and what is good and the roots of each. He knows the basis of bodily and mental life, how they originate and how they ultimately cease. As a result, he gets rid of sensuality and of ill-will toward others. Moreover, he knows what suffering is, its cause and its cessation, how it is bound up with the temporary individuality that results from the evanescent union of the five "Skandas" or groups of qualities that make up [Page 354]each individual (corporeity, consciousness, sensations, feelings, desires). He knows how suffering results from desire and how it ceases only after he has entered on the eightfold noble path at the entrance to which are the four noble truths. He perceives the "fetters, or failings, all of which are sloughed off in "Arahatship," the vestibule of Nirvana. And when he knows all this, his insight is right, his views are correct and the man is endowed with an abiding sense of truth. [Page 355]

THE NEW HUMANITY

"Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument, The institution of the dear love of comrades."

Edited by MARY SIEGRIST Author of "You That Come After," etc.

IT IS ever to the scorned and rejected—the "men of the tattered battalion, the men hemmed in with the spears"—that the finest awarenesses and sympathies of the poet have from the beginning rayed out. Never has it been to those "riding triumphantly to lap the fat of the years." In the very marrow of poetry there is the spirit of equality and kinship with all that wears a cross. To it the line of life is a curve, a spiral, sloping towards justice, beauty, truth. That justice confided to the mouth of time has always sounded her note of freedom most effectively through her trumpets of song. Sometimes, it is true, poetry has suffered at the hands of near-poets and sycophantic versifying pretenders but this has never been for long.

The Spirit of Poetry may be compared with an arrow of flame, searching always, as it were, the darkness, finding out with what consecration her devotees live and work. The spirit of soundness, of wholeness and joy-of-life for all men has always been primarily her lyric business. The birth—or renascence—of the spirit of fellowship has always been her dear concern. For what after all is the lyric but a cry? Not strangely, the Christs and Buddhas have always recognized that "if these should hold their peace"—if justice should miscarry—"the stones would immediately cry out!" The balance of the universe lies, it would seem, in the release of its song. In their very openness to the lyric cry the spiritual scales swing delicately and imperceptibly but surely toward the adjustment of wrong. [Page 356]

A CONSECRATION

Not of the princes and prelates with periwigged charioteers Riding triumphantly laurelled to lap the fat of the years, Rather the scorned--the rejected--the men hemmed in wich the spears;

The men of the tattered battalion which fights till it dies, Dazed with the dust of the battle, the din and the cries, The men with the broken heads and the blood running into their eyes.

Not the be-medalled Commander, beloved of the throne, Riding cock-horse to parade when the bugles are blown, But the lads who carry the koppie and cannot be known.

Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road, The slave with the sack on his shoulders pricked on with the goad, The man with too weighty a bur len, too heavy a load.

The sailor, the stoker of steamers, the man with the clout, The chanty man bent on the halliards putting a tune to the shout, The drowsy man at the wheel and the tired lookout.

Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth, The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth;- Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth!

Theirs be the music, the color, the glory, the gold; Mine be a handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould. Of the maimed and the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold- Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tale be told.

-JOHN MASEFIELD [Page 357]

CALVARY

Friendless and faint, with martyred steps and slow, Faint for the flesh, but for the spirit free, Stung by the mob that came to see the show, The Master toiled along to Calvary; We jibed him as he went with houndish glee, Till his dimmed eyes for us did overflow; We cursed his vengeless hands thrice wretchedly,- And this was nineteen hundred years ago. But after nineteen hundred years the shame Still clings, and we have not made good the loss That outraged faith has entered in his name. Ah, when shall come love's courage to be strong! Tell me, O Lord-tell me, O Lord, how long Are we to keep Christ writhing on the cross?

-EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON The Children of Night

HOLINESS

If all the carts were painted gay, And all the streets swept clean, And all the children came to play By hollyhocks, with green Grasses to grow between, If all the houses looked as though Some heart were in their stones, If all the people that we know Were dressed in scarlet gowns, With feathers in their crowns, I think this gaiety would make A spiritual land. I think that holiness would take This laughter by the hand Till both should understand..

-JOHN DRINKWATER [Page 358]

TO THE FREE CHILDREN

I We of our generation who touched liberty had to leap for it. Not as over a chasm aided by the momentum of running feet; but up in air... one glimpse... lash-breadth of glory white as flame on snow... then shock of falling backward. . . .. you we hold high above our heads.

II We hear you knocking at our doors, little white runners before the dawn. We arise and accompany you forth. . . but slowly... for we need our staffs.

III Not as through smoked glasses shall you look upon liberty, but with the unflinching gaze as the desert-born looks in the face of the sun.

IV Remember when the dawn breaks those who led you through the night... as the blind guided through the darkness at Pompeii those who had eyes.

-LOLA RIDGE Red Flag [Page 359]

THE RISING TIDE

Note on current books possessing special significance in the light of the trend toward world unity.

Edited by JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. Department of Philosophy, Columbia University,

The Cooperation of Europe

PROFESSOR JOHN SPENCER BASSETT, late occupant of a chair of history at Smith College, has made a careful and objective survey of the workings of the great experiment at political cooperation.

Dr. Bassett's book,* although appearing with a foreword by that staunch worker for the League of Nations, Professor James T. Shotwell, aims to be neither an apologetic nor a criticism. It is written as a chapter in world politics, as a part of recent political history. Never for a moment does the author permit his voice to be raised in strident condemnation or in enthusiastic defense. His account, therefore, differs markedly from most of the voluminous literature that has been written for and against the League. It is a temperate record of the facts, dealing mainly with the chief disputes the League has been called on to deal with, and with the crises it has weathered. It will accordingly satisfy partisans of neither camp. Yet this sober history contains much that the thoughtful man needs to remember before passing hasty judgment on the great international experiment.

The chief inadequacy such a reader will feel is the narrow limit within which Dr. Bassett has conceived his task. It is no part of his aim to picture the League as floating on the powerful

• John Spencer Bassett, The League of Nations. Longmans, Green and Co. ix, 415 pp. $3.50.

[Page 360]economic currents of the post-war world. One can read of the Upper Silesian dispute without suspecting its bearing on the economic life of Germany or Poland; there is no word of oil in connection with Mosul. The League machinery is pictured as creaking under strains the causes of which are not revealed. One gets the impression that all the diplomats so earnestly striving to smooth international prejudices are acting from a primary devotion to world peace. When they make impossible demands, it is solely to satisfy the passions of the masses they are representing. From time to time there are faint echoes of criticism that has been expressed, but this newspaper comment is nearly always deprecated and dismissed as not having had access to all the facts. And the judgment is usually, as in the case of the Silesian settlement, that "the adjustment, on the whole, is the best that could have been made under existing circumstances." This is probably true enough, but Dr. Bassett makes no attempt to analyse those circumstances.

This is not to say that the author does not recognize the failures of the League, in Vilna, in Corfu, the Geneva Protocol. He sees the League as appearing overnight in a world where the main power was in the hands of other agencies, and as primarily concerned with the difficult problem of "winning the confidence of the governments of the important states." Its successes have occurred when the conflicting interests of the great powers, as in the Silesian dispute, have so balanced each other that they have forced a compromise. When no power has been interested to support a small nation, as in Vilna and Corfu, the League has been able only to ratify the results of force. Yet even when the decisions seem most manifestly in favor of a powerful nation against the just claims of small states, it can be claimed that the inevitable has taken place without war. It was Bertrand Russell who long ago pointed out that the only successful international government for the present must secure without fighting what a war would have achieved. Judged in this light, the League has never failed completely.

Dr. Bassett thinks that the Assembly has not been pushed [Page 361]into the second place by the Council, though that may occur with the enlargement of the latter in 1926. He feels that the mandate system has been more than a mere screen for grasping imperialism. The abstention of the United States has not seriously hindered the League's development. The most serious problems confronting the League today arise from its attempt to oppose the nationalistic desires of strong states. The mandate system may provoke dissension, especially from the British dominions. The question of reducing naval armaments is grave. What will Great Britain do if she is asked to trust her empire to the League and not to her navy? Mussolini has openly flouted the League with impunity. Most serious of all, Dr. Bassett is afraid of the tendency for the Powers to reach agreements which the League can only ratify. The Briand-Chamberlain incident of 1926 over the admission of Poland to a permanent seat on the Council seems to have marked a shift away from the predominance of the Assembly.

Yet much can be hoped for from the actual functioning of the League and its influence on those participating in its meetings. "In actual practice the League did modify and it always can modify the will of the individual state. Men bound to their states by accepted policies have been obliged to act in Council in accord with them; but there has been a reaction on the wills of the states, modifying them and slowly bringing them around toward, if not entirely to, the 'League ideals.' It is in this way that the League has done some of its most important work." [Page 362]

NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

There is no question but that the ideal of international peace would become more firmly implanted in the popular imagination if we could experience true "economic peace" in our daily work. The habit of struggle, of uncertainty, of confusion and of defeat is too well nourished in the average heart by the immediate local environment to enable us to realize just what freedom from periodic war could mean.

The cynic, in fact, is apt to point out that if military strife could be forever removed from the world under present conditions, the very absence of armed frontiers would lead to gigantic industrial and financial combinations so powerful that the average man might be subject to worse evils than the battlefield.

Whether this result would follow or not, the fact remains that true peace will be compounded of many ingredients besides political documents, and improvement within each state must accompany every improvement between national sovereignties. An approach to new economic points of view, or rather new economic convictions, is clearly within the province of WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE, and the editors accordingly welcome the opportunity to publish the articles on this subject in the present issue.

Another ingredient not to be overlooked is that of art. The September number will therefore be largely devoted to expressions of creative artists.

Among the peace workers included in our series "Apostles of World Unity," the September issue will add the name of Nicholas Roerich, that painter of far-off Tibet and prophetic figure whose energy and vision are developing what seems to be a distinctive and powerful movement.

In Mary Siegrist's interpretation of Roerich we have a sensitive appreciation of a character readers of WORLD UNITY are already qualified to judge.

A preliminary announcement can now be made of an exceptionally interesting series of articles which will appear during coming months. This series consists of essays written by college undergraduates and others within the limits of the "youth movement, expressing the point of view of the coming generation on a wide variety of subjects. Different nationalities and races will be represented, the series being under the editorial supervision of Isabella Van Meter, a student of the Youth program developing in the various countries of the world. [Page 363]

Behind the Searchlight

HROUGH miles of thickly-hung darkness the searchlight speeds its flame-arrow Everything can illuminated blindingly by this midnight sun. But behind the searchlight it is always dark.

Behind the intelligence, too, which clarifies all that thought is directed upon -nature, history, the hidden things of space and time-the man himself, the proud thinker, remains unknown to himself, the one dark spot in his universe beyond knowledge to illumine and unfold.

But from that unlit area come the issues that determine life and death-the decisions which eventuate in war or peace-the instinctive perceptions working outward in action for cooperation or competition. Whether that area contains only the record of the beast, or is the narrow gate leading upward to Spirit and the power of Love a Science higher than chemistry or biology must be summoned to reveal.

That such a Science is being developed-a Science of Man-has become clear to all who patiently follow the testimony offered today by workers in every part of the world; workers who deal with human motives as their predecessors dealt with re-action of plant or composition of mineral.

It is the mission of World Unity Magazine to publish as much as possible of this testimony which marks the conquest of fear and hate.

WORLD UNITY PUBLISHING CORPORATION, EAST 12TH STREET, NEW YORK.

Please enter my subscription to World Unity Magazine. I enclose $3.50. (In Canada. $4.00; other countries, $4.50.) [Page 364]

BOOKS RECOMMENDED BY WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

New Geography, Book II By W. W. Atwood

The American Rhythm Everyman's Genius By Mary Austin

The Fighting Instinct By Pierre Bovet

Principles and Problems of Right Thinking By Edwin Arthur Burtt

Treatment of Exempt Classes of Chinese in America By Ng Poon Chew

Israel's Contribution to America By Rudolph I. Coffee

The Heart of the World By Georges Duhamel

Staatenschutzvertrag zur Sicherung des Weltfriedens By Anna B. Eckstein

The New Spirit The Dance of Life By Havelock Ellas

Das Parlement By Hellmuth von Gerlach

Introduction to World Politics Europe Since 1918 By Herbert Adams Gibbons

His Religion and Hers By Charlotte Perkins Griman

War from a Quaker Point of View The Divinity in Man By John W. Graham

The Racial Basis of Civilization By Frank H. Hankins

The Larger Bible By Will Hayes

Fundamental Ends of Life Social Law and the Spiritual World By Rufus M. Jones

A Religion of Truth, Justice and Peace By Isidor Singer

Proceedings of the Convention of World Federation of Education Associations Ed. by Augustus 0. Thomas

The Voice of Peace Sparks from the Fire By Gilbert Thomas

For International Peace The Outlawry of War By David Starr Jordan

Oriental Interpretations of the Far Eastern Problem By P. W. Kuo

Race Contacts and Inter- Racial Relations The New Negro By Alain Locke

The Master Problem The Future of Christianity By Sir James Marchant

The Fellowship of Faiths Comparative Religion By Alfred W. Martin

The Century of Hope By F. S. Marvin

Progress and History Evolution of World Peace Science and Civilization Ed. by F. S. Marvin

Swords and Plough- shares By Lucia Ames Mead

Races, Nations and Classes By Herbert A. Miller

My Brother's Face By Dhan Gopal Mukerji

Influencing Human Be- havior About Ourselves By Harry A. Overstreet

Humanity at the Cross- Roads By John Herman Randall

The Making of the Modern Mind By John Herman Randall, Jr.

The Messages of the Poets The Prophet of Nazareth By Nathaniel Schmidt

Demophon By Forrest Reid

The Moral Damage of War The World Rebuilt By Walter Walsh

Between the Old World and the New Towards New Horizons By M. P. Willcocks

Any of the above may be obtained from WORLD UNITY PUBLISHING CORPORATION 4 East 12th Street, New York City