World Unity/Volume 4/Issue 2/Text

[Page 81]

WORLD UNITY

A Monthly Magazine for those who seck the world fatock upon present developments of philosop epi. sci Sctence, religion, sable and t.

| ee Joun Harman Ranvatt, Edétor Horacz Hoxuizr, Managing Editor Heren B. MacMitzian, Business Manager

Contributing Editors

C. F. Ansty A. Eustacs Harponw Duan Govat Muxaay

W. W. Atwoop Wu Hares Ips Moen

A. Muwpatsoan Bantaotpr Yamato Icascmaset Yonz Noovucst

Banow Baupraw Moapaca: W. Jomson Harry. Arisw Ovanstazer

L. F. ps Baavroar Rurvs M. Joonss Dextran Peanins

Gaaanrr A. Baowaxsn Davip Stans Joapaw Jou Henman Rawvatt, Ja.

Pusans Bovsr Samunt Lucas Josm M. D. Repuica

Eowmw Aantsuz Buatr Eawust Jupst Fornust Rap

Heany Casaraswoars Viapuaia Kanapsrorr Paut Ricgaap

No Poos Cusw P. W. Kvo Cuances Ricusr

Rupoces I. Corras Ricuaap Las Ta. Rurssaw

Bavanp Doves Haary Luvs Natmamias Scumipt

Geoaoss Dusamat Arauw Loces Wirtiam R. Suspnsapn

Amma B. Ecusraux Gsoaos ps Lucics Maar Sisoaist

Havazoce Exz3s Louts L. Manne Ansa Hitzst Sirvar

Avousrs Foasz Sin Janens Mancuawr Isipor Siwoga

C. F. Gates Vicroa Manousaitts Davip G, Sraap

V. Scuuzzs Givaamrz R. H. Maneuam Avoustus O. Tuomas

Hazusura vow Gearacn Aracy W. Maarin Girpent Twoeas

Haaseat Apams Ginsons F. S. Maavin Isapauzs Van Maran

Kanu Greaan Kiatiay F. Maran Rusrus Vinaéay

Cusatorrs Paaxues Guan Lucia Asses Maap Warren Watsn

Joan W. Gaamam Fasp Msaaziriatp Haws Wanpaao

ManyaGauwnesane-Kosctasxa Kani Micuantis M. P. Witzcoczs

Faawe H. Hawxres Hunsaat A. Mitisa Faawz Liorpy Wasour

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

Woratp Unity Macazine is by Wortp Unrry Pustisnino Corpo-

RATION, 4 East r2th Street, ow York City: Mary Rumesy Movivs, :

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Rawoact, sowiny. Published, monthly, 35 eat 8 ol other countries postage cluded). Taz Woarp Unrrr Puszisnivo Corporation and its editors invite: unsolicited manuscripts and art material, but welcome correspondence on articles related to the aims and of the magazine. Printed in U. S. A. Contents copyrighted 1929 by Woatp Unrrr Puazismino Corporation. �[Page 82]aia pay

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HO willed the Industrial Revolution? No-

body. Who willed the World War? No-

body. The two greatest changes in the history of mankind were not brought about by mankind. They were brought about by unreasoning forces—since reason is the prerogative of man, let us boldly say by animal forces, using man's intel- ligence as their instrument. Mankind, in other words, is no longer master of its@eéstiny. Civiliza- tion has ceased to exist. Its outward form survives, the tribute of man’s enslaved intelligence to the dark forces which enthral him. But its reality is no more . . . The problem of the recovery of civil- ization is the problem of the relation between learning and lea sic

But before knowledge can take its rightful place in the worid of action it must be at unity with itself. The schism that has resulted from the rise of modern science must be healed so that the authority of the reunited world of thought can be Poona to bear on the problems of civilization. There are thus two distinct stages in the de-

velopment of a program of international intellec- tual cooperation. There is, first, the promotion of a unity in the world of thought itself and the set- ting up of an organization through which that unity can secure authoritative public expression. There is, secondly, the working out of a relation- ship between the best thought of mankind, thus brought together for the first time moog a rep- resentative organ on the interrfational plane, and the powers of government.

—Learning and Leadership ALFRED ZIMMERN �[Page 83]WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

Vor. IV May, 1929 . No. 2

EDITORIAL CaN RELIGION AND THE MODERN WORLD

urING the Nineteenth century many notable religious

leaders attempted to reconstruct traditional religion in

the face of the criticism of natural and social-scientists

and of the social needs of that age. Progressive religion today owes a great debt of gratitude to those pioneers: it is still largely following in their footsteps. But the present generation has seen an intellectual and a social revolution that makes all previous attempts to adapt the religious and moral inspiration of the past to the needs of the modern world seem outgrown and inadequate. The interpretation of the world generalized from Nine- teenth century natural science, against which sensitive and high- minded men felt compelled to protest as inadequate to human experience, has been completely altered and enriched by the scientists themselves. The crude theories of earlier social scientists as to the nature and function of religion are now seen as the groping attempts of a science in its infancy. Nineteenth century philosophies, chiefly protests in the name of human experience against an inadequate and incomplete science, have given way to philosophies that grow out of a broader scientific knowledge and a more flexible intellectual method. Most significant of all, a matured industrial society has awakened this generation to moral and social problems that seem incapable of solution with- out going far beyond any of the elements, however purified, of the religious tradition.

In the light of these changed viewpoints and problems, thoughtful men today no longer approach the religious life in the spirit of their fathers. They no longer seek to cling to as much of tradition as they can save from an encroaching science. They

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no longer try to secure an intellectually respectable faith by paring away what has been destroyed. They no longer resort to imposing philosophies that will bolster up the essence of traditional re- ligious beliefs in the face of science, nor do they seek in scientific concepts, like evolution, a substitute just as good. Nor is it enough for them to fall back on the core of moral idealism in Judaism and Christianity as a sufficient gospel for our age. The religious conflicts of the last century leave them cold, because it seems to them as futile to attack or defend religion in general as to approach the other great enterprises of art or science in such a controversial spirit.

To those familiar with the intellectual and practical atti- tudes of today, the religious life is a natural part of human ex- perience, to be studied, assimilated, lived, and developed like any other great human institution. It has manifested itself in various forms in different societies, and has normally played a vital part in close connection with the intellectual beliefs, the emotional and artistic expression, and the moral conduct and ideals of those societies. What interests the man of today is the needs of human nature religion has met, and how it has satisfied them most richly and effectively. What he wants to know is not how much traditional doctrine he can still believe. It is some- thing far more than that: it is what organization of the religious life, intellectual, emotional, and social, will best meet the re- ligious demands of men living in our present age. How can he express his religious feelings of piety toward the sources of his being and aspiration toward a fuller life in such a way that he will not find them in conflict with the rest of contemporary ex- perience, but rather a source of further consecration and inspira- tion? He does not want a religious faith he will have to defend against his other interests; he wants a faith that, springing nat- urally from them, will carry him beyond them.*

• Reprinted from the Foreword of ‘Religion and the Modern World,"’ by John Herman Randall

and John Herman Randall, Jr., the first volume in a series to be known as ‘Religion and the Modera Age,"’ published by F. A. Seokes, New York, under the editorship of John Herman Randall. The work by Edwin Arthur Burtt, now appearing serially ip Woatp Unrry Maoaznm, will be the second volume in ‘Religion and the Modern Age.” �[Page 85]QERKODLEAADLE OBR

THE AMERICAN FARMER

by C. F. Ansigy

BOUT two years ago Karl A. Klepper, then fortv-two years old, joined the exodus from American farms and came to New York City. His roommate, Peterson, also from a farm, is the source of some of the information about

Klepper given by the New York Sun.

“Times were bad in Iowa. No money was to be made at farming. So they came here and got jobs as night watchmen on the waterfront. Lately Klepper had been talking about going back to the farm at Cedar Falls, Peterson said. He hoped to have enough money saved soon to enable him to start all over again out there—'‘pay off all debts and everything.’ He had intended going back and trying his hand at farming again and staying with his family.”’

One morning Klepper came out of a subway station and stepped off the curb to cross the street. ‘‘He was struck by a maroon colored automobile, which was traveling . . . at a speed of about fifty miles an hour.'’ He was killed instantly. ‘‘Prac- tically every bone in Klepper’s body was broken, the physician said.’’ The driver of the automobile ‘stepped on the accelerator”’ and got away. Klepper was identified by a letter in his pocket. The letter was from his wife, in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and said: ‘We are looking forward to your being with us Christmas week. We are so glad.”

It was the manner of Klepper's death that got his name and Peterson's into the paper. Before that, the public knew nothing about either man. Not many of those who read metropolitan dailies could now recall the name of a third participant in the

rural exodus. The American farmer is often said to hae inade 85 �[Page 86]86 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

much noise; it is commonly termed ‘‘complaint”’ or ‘‘wailing.”’ If facts were as acceptable as myth, and if Klepper and Peterson are the only known participants in the exodus, one might learn from them that the exodus is silent. What is heard is noise about the noise that farmers are making.

Much has been said of farmers in politics, but no one could ascertain how they would vote, if they voted. Nominations are not made by them. In the spoils of victory, they have no part but the title rdle. If Klepper voted, it was in New York. He was often warned against panaceas. Probably no faith in the govern- ment delayed his departure from Iowa, mollified his creditor, or brought an offer for his farm.

The Department of Agriculture reported in 1928 that ‘‘Esti- mates based on surveys started in 1922 indicate that since that year a gross movement of persons leaving farms for urban centers has taken place to the number of 2,000,000 a year.’’ Th> move- ment had been going on for some time before the surveys were begun. Net figures, rather than gross, are commonly given. Klepper and Peterson are offset by city wage-earners who acquire small holdings near their jobs, where their families can lighten household expenses by gardening. The decision of these wage- earners means much to their families but is otherwise of slight effect. As the Department of Agriculture states, *‘The output of such truck-gardening farnis adds comparatively little to the Nation's commercial agriculturai production.’’ The increase in the number of truck-gardening farms is a detail of the suburban trend. It does not affect the business farming country and is not a diminution of the rural exodus except to the eye of the reader before whom net figures, canceling Klepper and Peterson, are substituted for the yross figures that include them. They were participants in no mean migration—the greatest, in fact, in the world’s history. It is the approved method of farm relief, ‘the determined effort of the farmers themselves.'’ The American farmer may by this time be more accurately represented by Peter- son than by the protagonist of the accepted myth. To take Peterson as the average may be a year or two off schedule, one �[Page 87]THE AMERICAN FARMER 87

way or the other. Klepper is no doubt a little farther from the average at this time.

The exodus is understood to consist of submarginal farmers. They are not needed on the=farms because other farmers have become more efficient; fewer men are tilling more acres and pro- ducing more foods and fibers for metropolitan centers. It is not suggested that a city should hold no more people than can supply farmers with what they receive from the city, though such an opinion has prevailed among men with local and brief exceptions. The colonies that went out from Greek city states, like the American neighborhoods founded by pioneers from older neigh- borhoods, were meant to be essentially autonomous, not tribu- tary. It has not always or usually seemed obvious that land should be waste unless a metropolis needs what the iand can be made to yield. American neighborhoods a few years ago could have understood the idea no more readily than Greek city states or medieval towns or manors. To measure the efficiency of the farmer of former years by his crop surplus is misleading. He made and sold pottery or nails or leather. He cleared fields from which his successors, the business farmers, cannot keep back the brush. He buile good houses and barns that business farming cannot repair. 7

The new tilled acres in America are not in the region of mixed farming that has fed and clothed the nation hitherto, where farming diminishes. They are in the semi-arid belt, where ma- chines can mine the soil efficiently in seasons of adequate rainfall. The semi-arid belt, as long as its soil is new, is submarginal only in dry seasons. Such labor as is required can be secured from across . the Rio Grande. It is another element in statistics of a ‘‘counter- migration from the tall buildings to the farm.’

A standard of living not acceptable to Klepper and his family helps Mexican farm labor to be more efficient in the semi-arid and irrigated regions. These farmers rear large families at little expense. Unlike Klepper, they do not incur the obligations of citizenship.

The exodus is made up chiefly of persons, like Klepper ‘and �[Page 88]88 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

Peterson, in the prime of life. The efficient who remain on the farms include the children and those too old to get city jobs. The inefficient whom the exodus takes include all but a few of those who have studied in agricultural or other colleges or in high schools. The changed nature of the rural population may help to explain why farmers do not come when their. leaders call and why they grow negligible in the politics even of the farming states, which are achieving a: pax Americana. One reads

that the farmer demands a higher tariff and other things, but there is inadequate evidence that he has given his attention to what he is said to demand. Klepper demands nothing; Peterson's interest, no doubt, is in holding his New York job.

A part of the increased efficiency of farmers resulted from Klepper's sale of his breeding stock. Livestock men increased their output, the measure of their efficiency, about 15 percent in recent years, while they were selling their breeding herds, as has been stated by the highest authorities. One of the results of this increased efficiency is a shortage of beef cattle. ‘‘For the current year [1928] the per capita supply’’ of beef, said the Sec- retary of Agriculture, ‘‘will be the smallest for any year for which records are available.’’ This was announced as ‘Improvement in Livestock Industry.’’ Producers have ‘‘reduced their breeding herds and disposed of burdensome surpluses."

Since farmers stopped planting apple trees, the production of apples also testifies to increased efficiency; fewer trees yield more fruit, as the orchards planted some years ago reach maturity, replacing orchards past the bearing age. ‘‘For each 100 trees in the country in 1910, there were 70 and 64 respectively in 1920 and 1925," reports the Department of Agriculture. There is no present need of planting apple trees. If one wanted them, there would be economy in buying an orchard in bearing.

Klepper had one of the farm debts and expected to get every cent of it paid. That, and not the bright lights, took him from an environment where his home was an economic unit to an environment where his wife and children could not live on his wages. How his farming came to be submarginal, so that it could �[Page 89]a

THE AMERICAN FARMER 89

not pay a debt that wages as a night watchman could pay, if his family stayed on the farm, may have been explained to him by the agencies of information, or it may not have been explained to him. Klepper, in any case, was working to pay his debt, weighted by the deflation, and to return to the family from whom the deflation had separated him. In statistics, his payments on his debt, when he sold his breeding stock and subsequently, indicated progress in agriculture.

Klepper and the millions of others have not asked charity and have received none. What spirit of charity there has been for them, official documents and the files of periodicals would testify. To cartoonists, much is taboo; the American farmer—Peterson or Klepper—was left to them and was useful.

Klepper and Peterson were not among the city’s unemployed. Their coming, however, must have had some effect on the general situation; their jobs would have gone to others if not to them. If measures to reduce unemployment should provide more jobs, more Kleppers and Petersons would be attracted to them or to jobs that the measures would indirectly make available.

The passing of Klepper and Peterson and their horses is under- stood to be releasing land for the mass production of food. If prophetic voices could bring -atifundia again, we should have them, with the hinterland cleared of homes and tilled by ma- chinery assisted by a little migratory labor. States and banks are acquiring many farms, as frozen assets, but corporation farming awaits a market for its securities. The capital of metropolitan centers hitherto has not been of a kind that could rehabilitate a decayed agriculture.

The prevailing opinion in the premises was stated by Dr. Jardine, who was Klepper's representative in the Cabinet: “A readjustment of farm personnel to a diminishing labor require- ment need give us no concern." �[Page 90] DELECOLE MOLE OOLETO

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

tion 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.

INTERPARLIAMENTARY UNION

by ArTHUR DEERIN CALL Executive Secretary of the American Group

E Interparliamentary Union was formed upon the in- itiative of William Randa! Cremer of the British House of Commons, with the cooperation of M. Frederic Passy of the French Chamber of Deputies, at Paris, in 1888.

The organization which they planned and which they named The nterparliamentary Conference for International Arbitra- tion,’ held its first Conference in the City of Paris, in 1889. The primary purpose of the founders was to promote arbitration treaties between the United States, France, and Great Britain. It was agreed at the outset that members of other parliaments, who had made themselves known by their devotion to the same ideals, should be admitted. This first Conference of 1889 was held, June 29 and 30, in connection with the Paris Exposition. There were delegates from France, Great Britain, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Hungary, Liberia, Spain, and the United States. .oFrederic Passy was elected President. The Conferences gradually

took the form of a permanent organization.

Since the preliminary conference of 1888, regular conferences

have been held as follows: First in Paris, 1889; Second in London, go �[Page 91]INTERPARLIAMENTARY UNION 91

1890; Third in Rome, 1891; Fourth in Berne, 1892; Fifth at The Hague, 1894; Sixth at Brussels, 1895; Seventh at Budapest, 1896; Eighth at Brussels, 1897; Ninth at Christiania, 1899; Tenth at. Paris, 1900; Eleventh at Vienna, 1903; Twelfth at St. Louis, 1904; Thirteenth at Brussels, 1905; Fourteenth at London, 1906; Fifteenth at Berlin, 1908; Sixteenth at Brussels, 1910; Seventeenth at Geneva, 1912; Eighteenth at The Hague, 1913; Nineteenth at Stockholm, 1921; Twentieth at Vienna, 1922; Twenty-first at Copenhagen, 1923; Twenty-second at Berne and Geneva, 1924; Twenty-third at Washington, 1925; Twenty-fourth at Paris, 1927; Twenty-fifth at Berlin, 1928.

While there was a representative of the American Congress at the first Conference, and other American representatives at Brussels, Christiania, Paris, and at Vienna, it was not until 1904, largely’ upon the initiative of Representative Richard Bartholdt, that an American Group was formed. The Presidents of the American Group have been Mr. Bartholdt, from its or- ganization to 1915; Representative James L. Slayden, of Texas, 1915-1919; Senator William B. McKinley, of Illinois, r919- 1927; Senator Theodore E. Burton, of Ohio, 1927 to date. At the Twenty-third Conference in Washington in 1925, forty-one parliaments were represented.

Since 1899, the name has been the Interparliamentary Union. Prior to 1911, the Union devoted its attention to the pacific settlement of international disputes, the further organization of the Society of Nations, problems of neutrality, the limitation of armaments, the laws of war, an international prize court, and private international law. It carried on studies in the methods of mediation, good offices, commissions of inquiry, Court of Arbitration, and the organization of an international judiciary. Later it concentrated upon the policies adopted at the Second Hague Conference and upon a provisional program for a Third. There hag been a tendency in later years to extend the work of the Union over other questions pertaining to the development of peaceful relations between nations.

The Union has achieved results. It had a direct influence �[Page 92]92 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

upon the Constitution of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, provided for at the First Hague Conference in 1899. It was primarily responsible for the calling of the Second Hague Con- ference in 1907. Its model arbitration treaty received at the Second Hague Conference the votes of 32 out of the 44 States represented. Perhaps its greatest achievement has been the pro- motion of intelligent relations between governments by enabling the parliamentarians of the world to get acquainted with each other.

The work of the Interparliamentary Union is carried on by a Bureau with headquarters at Geneva, Switzerland. The Secretary-General is Dr. Christian L. Lange. There is a Council made up of two representatives of each of the parliaments, mem- bers of the Union. There is an Executive Committee, composed as follows: M. Fernand Bouisson, Speaker of the French Chamber of Deputies, President; Senator R. Dandurand, Canada; Dr. W. Schiicking, Germany; Senator H. LaFontaine, Belgium; Dr. L. Moltesen, Denmark. Between conferences the work of the Union is carried on by six commissions, all with representatives from each of the parliaments, as follows: Political and Organization Questions; Juridical Questions; Economic and Financial Ques- tions; Ethnic and Colonial Questions; the Reduction of Arma- ments; Social Questions.

Over fifty percent of the United States Senate and of the House of Representatives are members of the American Group.

The officers of the American Group are as follows: President, Theodore E. Burton; Vice-Presidents, Andrew J. Montague, William A. Oldfield,* Henry W. Temple; Treasurer, Adolph J. Sabath; Secretary, John J. McSwain; Executive Secretary, Arthur Deerin Call; Executive Committee, Theodore E. Burton, ¢x officio Chairman, Fred Britten, Tom Connally, Henry Allen Cooper, Clarence F. Lea, James C. McLaughlin, Alben W. Barkley, Charles Curtis, Joseph T. Robinson, agd.Claude A. Swanson.

The American Group of the Interparliamentary Union has its office at 613 Colorado Building, Washjngton, D. C.

“Deceased. �[Page 93]

WORLD PEACE AND THE PACT AGAINST WAR

by R. H. MarxHaM Nowspaper Correspondent, The Balkans

AT is the use of getting converted if it doesn’t change

your conduct? What is the use of joining the Church

if you don't begin to live like a Christian? What is

the use of outlawing war if you don’t intend to set out to treat war makers as outlaws? And I assure you it’s no joke to be declared an outlaw. Whenever a man is declared outlawed by a court it means that it is the duty of anyone who sees him to arrest him or shoot him. And anyone who is nice to an outlaw by that very act becomes a criminal.

How is this pact against war going to operate? Whom is it going to keep from going to war and from preparing for war? What are going to be its practical results? It must be known by its fruits in preventing war. So let us ask how this pact will affect the war which is slowly and surely being prepared.

Where is the seat of that war? In Europe. Not all the actors in the war are in Europe, nor are all the causes of the war in Europe, but it will break out in Europe. The principal combatants will be the European powers. Now why will there be war? Largely because some peoples want what others have. From the point of view of international politics the most important part of the world is Europe. The powers there are divided into two groups, one of which possesses more land, wealth and power than the other. The fortunate group in this respect is the one that won the last war. In every age the nations that won the latest war are the fortunate ones.

Naturally these victorious nations want peace. They have gotten possession of all they covet and want nothing more than 93

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a chance to keep it. They continually talk of harmony and brotherly love. They think that boundaries are sacred and that the status quo is divinely ordained. This group centers about France and is rather heartily supported by England, too. The states of the so-called Little Entente, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia and Rumania, are also in the group of peace lovers. They were all created or vastly enlarged by the World War and have not yet consolidated their positions. A new war could give them no gains and might jeopardize the very existence of some of them. Poland, likewise, which was also created by the World War, is a member of this group of peace makers. It is well to note that each of these four last-named states contains a very large number of nationalistic minorities. For example, there are 12,500,000 Rumanians in Rumania and 5,000,000 people of other nationalities. In Jugoslavia there are half a dozen main nationality groups. In Czechoslovakia there are 6,750,000 Czechs, 2,200,000 Slovaks and 5,000,000 people of other nationalities. Only 18,000,000 of the 29,000,000 people in Poland are Poles. Usually states composed of such heteroge- neous and inharmonious racial elements do not desire war for it often disrupts them. These four states and France are the countries most vitally interested in peace. To them also may be added a number of small, well-established countries such as Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Holland and others which are usually neutral when wars rage, but which suffer indirectly in many ways. The longer the present period of peace lasts the better it is for all these peoples.

But there are other countries which hope to profit by war. First among the: < is Hungary. As a result of the last war Hungary lost 72% of her territory and 64% of her inhabitants. To be sure most of the people inhabiting the territory given to other states were not Hungarians but still three million Hungarians were separated from the mother country and placed under the rule of hostilely disposed foreigners. Hungary resents this beyond measure and demands treaty revision. All the Hungarians are in favor of treaty revision. All the Hungarians would be glad to go to war if they believed that by that they would be able to restore to the �[Page 95]WORLD PEACE AND THE PACT AGAINST WAR 95

mother country the millions of Hungarians ‘‘snatched’’ from her. Every social institution in Hungary is working for war. And it must be pointed cut that they consider this a sacred duty. They consider that this is the most holy and noble and godly thing that a Hungarian could do. They think that any other attitude would be base and selfish. They feel called upon to free and save their brothers. And just as the early Christians were glad to defy the public opinion of the whole world, so the Hungarians would gladly spurn the opinion of all the other nations on the globe if they thought they could gain by war. When a man is in a heroic mood nothing counts so little as the opinion of his enemies. He says, ‘Beware when your enemies speak well of you!"’

Bulgaria is in a position somewhat similar to that of Hungary. She also lost heavily as a result of the war. And she wants to “come back.’’ She also wants to achieve liberation, right and justice. She also has a sacred cause. And the most fanatical people in Europe are the Macedonians, who live in a region called Macedonia situated in the west central part of the Balkan Pen- insula. This area has been partitioned among Greece, Jugoslavia and Bulgaria so that the Macedonians, most of whom are Bulgar- ians or think that they are, have been divided among three states. Naturally they are not happy about that, especially inasmuch as two of these states, Greecc and Jugoslavia, are reputed to treat the Macedonians very badly. So the Macedonians want to be liberated. And they have created a revolutionary organization to fight for that liberation. And these revolutionists do not hesitate to kill many prominent people. Many Bulgarians sympathize with the Macedonians in their revolutionary efforts. No Macedonian revo- lutionist would for a moment refrain from a single violent act out of regard for any pact against war. A revolutionist is a man who scorns public opinion and defies the world for the sake of his cause.

A great power which sympathizes with Hungary and Mace- donia and Bulgaria is Italy. Italy didn’t gain as much as she aspired to in the World War. She is limited and cramped. She thinks that her importance entitles her to a little more territory. She also believes that certain parts of Jugoslavia by right belong �[Page 96]96 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

to her. So she would like to see a reshuffle of European boundaries. She might lose in the new deal but she thinks that she would gain. Italy is very vigorous and aggressive and would be inclined to aid any power that set out to change the status quo.

Then again, it is certain that Germany is becoming stronger and that the Germans will eventually want to regain their place in the sun. There are 3,350,000 Germans in Czechoslovakia, 1,100,000 in Poland and millions more in other places. Many of these would like to be restored to the mother country and the others who do not hope to be restored would like to see their fatherland again acquire a dominating place in the world. For if Germany were a powerful country the Germans in Rumania and Jugoslavia and Hungary would be treated better; in any case they would feel prouder and more important—and that is a very pleas- ant emotion. The first step in Germany's recovery will be the uniting of Austria and Germany. This will happen gradually but it will certainly happen. This will be one of the first changes in the status quo.

Another state which wants to see a change in the map of the world is Russia.

All of these last named countries are actually or potentially in favor of war. They are not united among themselves and some of them are checked by strong socialistic movements but thev are moving toward an attempt at a general readjustment of con- ditions in Europe. Most all of them have signed the pact, but how does that affect the situation, even theoretically? For example, does it prevent Hungary from going to war? The pact does not prohibit wars for self-defense. Now if the Mexicans killed a dozen American business men in Mexico and held 500 more in prison would not the United States consider itself juridically ‘justified in sending marines to release them? But Hungary says the Ruman- ians have captured, and daily oppress, over a million Hungarians. If Hungary goes to war to rescue them could anyone deny that that was done in self-defense? Of course no Hungarian would deny it. The Bulgarians say that the Serbs brutally abuse 500,000 Bulgarian Macedonians which they ‘‘stole’’ from Bulgaria. Now �[Page 97]WORLD PEACE AND THE PACT AGAINST WAR 97

if Bulgaria raises her arm to defend her helpless children, is that not self-defense? If England, according to the pact, may legally go to war in order to hold India, may Bulgaria not go to war to free her own ‘‘enslaved"’ people? The pact is against wars of aggres- sion, but if Hungary fights to recover ‘‘abducted"’ children, is that aggression? If she fights to recover land that belonged to her for a thousand years is that aggression? No Hungarian thinks so. Therefore, whom does the pact bind and to what does it bind one?

A new war is being prepared in Europe. It will be a general war. In order to help prevent ic America must take a more active and effective part in world affairs. This is not an easy nor a pleas- ant task. However, there is no other way and the new pact will certainly not prevent the nations in southeast Europe from fight- ing when they feel that they are in a position to fight. It is well to feel noble and to sign noble documents but it is better not to be deceived. The war area is in southeast Europe and is as little affected by the pact as the World War was by Mr. Ford's peace ship. �[Page 98]QIN ODN ZO DN OAD SOLER ©

APOSTLES OF WORLD UNITY

XVII—SALMON O. LEVINSON

by

Joun DEwey Department of Philosophy, Columbia University

practical: international politics an idea that had its birth

something over ten years ago in the mind of a Chicago

lawyer, Mr. Levinson, whose name heads this article. With a legal education and a lawyer's experience, he was led by the outbreak and conduct of the Great War, long before our own entrance into it, to raise the question of the status of war. Reports of violations of the laws of war, the constant recrimina- tions that marked the course of the war; charges of use of illegal ammunitions, poison gas, cruelty to prisoners, violations of rights of neutrals, the unlawful use of submarines, are a few of the many charges that even a hazy memory will recall. From questions regarding rules of war, Mr. Levinson was led on to ask about the standing of war itself before the law.

The result amazed him. Out of that surprise, emerged the idea of outlawry of war. For his investigations showed what hardly anyone before him had faced intellectually and morally; namely, that war is a legally authorized mode of settlement of disputes between nations; indeed, that in serious controversies it is in a legal, not merely a rhetorical sense, the authorized court of last resort. The result was amazing, since our popular opinion has been that there is something anomalous, something contrary to the very idea of law, in recourse to armed force. Investigation and reflection convinced Mr. Levinson that in this acknowledged legal status of war lies the key to the problem of war and peace; 98

Te Briand-Kellogg Pact has brought into the domain of �[Page 99]SALMON 0. LEVINSON 99

that, as long as war itself is the legally established and sanctioned method of settling disputes, it is idle to try to mitigate the evils of war by laws for carrying on warfare; that the object of war is to win and that the record of war is the history of recourse to more and more concentrated and destructive means in order to win—and thus /egally settle the dispute; submarines and poison gas are merely the latest steps in the history, doubtless to be followed by other agencies still more destructive. Moreover, he was led to conclude that the legal status of the war is the fact that ultimately rendered nugatory efforts at disarmament, and brought to nought the activities of peace organizations. When the United States entered the war, the intense interest that had pre- viously developed in Mr. Levinson’s mind in the problem of war, was rendered more acute by the fact that his own sons, two in number, were active participants in it.

It was Mr. Levinson's discovery of the legal status of war and of the implications and consequences of this status that gave —and still give—meaning to the phrase about which Mr. Levin- son henceforth centered his campaign—the Outlawry of War. Among earlier writers, whom Mr. Levinson consulted, Charles Sumner was practically the only one who appeared to realize the force of the fact that war has itself a definite and, in crucial cases, a supreme legal status. It is perhaps not surprising, accord- ingly, that so many persons misunderstood the phrase and the idea for which it stands; there are still many who are too im- patient, too lazy, or too partisan to give thought to the back- ground that confers meaning and pertinency upon the phrase. So they ridiculed it or made light of it by distorting it, treating it as if it meant the passing of a statute on paper against war, instead of realizing that ic meant an agreement among nations to deprive war of its legalized status as a means of settling dis- putes that arise between them. Mr. Levinson as a lawyer, and especially as a lawyer whose business consisted largely in settling troubles that grow out of threatened or actual economic break- downs of great industrial companies, realized that abolition of the legal status of war would make necessary the institution of �[Page 100]100 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

other and peaceful means of settlement, while as long as war has a legal status any strong nation will have recourse to it, without regarding itself or being regarded before the bar of history as criminally blameworthy.

It would be interesting to know how many persons Mr. Levinson conversed with on the subject; to how many persons and to whom he presented his discovery and his project of an alternative. There were scores of such persons, lawyers, poli- ticians, publicists, clergymen, bankers, men of affairs. It was through the give-and-take of this prolonged personal discussion that the idea grew and assumed form. There were certain stock objections, reactions that were practically conventionalized and standardized. These were due to the novelty of the idea and failure to take time enough to grasp it. They were soon learned and were comparatively easily disposed of; but even through them the edges of the project got sharpened. Others cut deeper and sent Mr. Levinson back to further investigations and re- flections; and in this way the idea took on further shape; un- necessary features, excrescences, were eliminated; essential features strengthened and made central; gradually the idea rounded out into symmetrical and finished form. I doubt if any idea of social and political importance has gone through such a severe process of testing and winnowing by discussion with a large number of able minds of different points of view and interests as did the conception of Outlawry after it dawned upon Mr. Levinson. It was conceived in his own brain, but it grew and took on final ‘form not in a closet but in the forum of intense, continued and wide-spread mutual discussion. When he met a new objection, Mr. Levinson was neither discouraged nor did he resort to the method of debate for the sake of an appearance of victory. He took the difficulty home with him, and thought about it until he had thought it through and found its solution.

If I emphasize these years of incubation, the period of say from 1917 until 1921 or so, it is because the work done in those years was so earnest and so complete, that after that period the task was not that of development of the idea but of presenting �[Page 101]SALMON O. LEVINSON IOI

it to others and winning their assent. Among those to whom Mr. Levinson feels most indebted fr assistance in clarifying the idea are two men, now gone, President Eliot and Senator Knox. The former was not, however, in full sympathy; he was active in the League to Enforce Peace and that point operated to keep their thoughts apart. But President Eliot gave the idea a sympathetic hearing, and through this contact Mr. Levinson was led to con- sider thoroughly and finally the meaning of ‘‘sanctions’’ and the use of force, and to realize that in ultimate analysis dependence upon them means recourse to war; and hence involves the notion that war can be eliminated by means of war—a notion the futility of which the fate of the War to end War was already demon- strating. Because of the train of reflections thus induced, Mr. Levinson was led to modify his first statement of his idea. This was contained in an article entitled ‘‘The Lezal Status of War,”’ and was published in THz New Repustic on March 9, 1918. Up to the time at which the nature of the Treaty of Versailles became evident, Mr. Levinson had been one of the strongest supporters of the Wilsonian idea of the League of Nations. The linking of the League with the injustices of the Treaty and even more its frank avowal of reliance upon combined and concerted war, that is, its continuation of the notion of the legal status of war as a means for settling disputes, repelled Mr. Levinson. This repulsion was natural and logical. For otherwise he would have been obliged to surrender the very idea of Outlawry; and this idea provided, he was more and more convinced, the only sure way in which first to focus attention upon the necessity of peaceful means of adjustment, and then to bring nations to the point of using peaceful methods. From this conviction Mr. Levinson has never wavered. It was in this connection that he came in contact with Senator Knox;,in interviews with the latter in February, 1919, he made his first distinguished political convert to the idea so that in March of the same year the idea was first presented to any parliamentary body in a speech by Mr. Knox before the United States Senate. The same idea was further elaborated and presented by Knox in a speech in the Senate in May, 1920. In the �[Page 102]102 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

meantime, Senator Borah had also become interested, and both he and Knox stimulated Mr. Levinson to further thought upon the problem of sanctions by force, and the result was in 1922 the publication of an article: ‘‘Can Peace be Enforced?’’ In Febru- ary, 1923, Senator Borah offered in the Senate a resolution to outlaw war in which the whole plan was succinctly outlined, including the project of a codification of international law and a supreme court of the world having positive and affirmative jurisdiction in all disputes that might lead to war, and not settled by diplomacy, conciliation or other means.

After these years, as has been already said, the work was one of publicity and persuasion. As a private citizen, Mr. Levinson founded in Chicago and himself financed The American Committee for the Outlawry of War. He is still, fortunately, with us, and would be offended by effusive praise. But I cannot refrain from saying that his constant, intense and unremitting work, with the expenditure of the time as well as money of a busy lawyer, shows that peace has not only its victories but its gallant ad- ventures. Patiently and persistently, undeterred by ridicule, indifference and active opposition, Mr. Levinson carried on his campaign of education. It was not exactly a one-man campaign, because in addition to those already referred to, Mr. Raymond Robins, John Haynes Holmes, Judge Florence Allen and Dr. C. C. Morrison did a remarkable service, while the present writer occasionally contributed. But Mr. Levinson was the center and heart of the campaign. In pursuit of its purpose, he went to Europe in the spring of 1927; and established an office in London under the able direction of Mr. Harrison Brown. He met a large number of publicists, journalists and statesmen on the trip; meeting also the diplomats of the Foreign Offices. That in Paris at the Quai d’Orsay was especially fruitful. There he met M. Leger, who is close to Briand, and explained to him the idea of Outlawry. The proposal of Briand to Secretary Kellogg for an Outlawry Treaty between France and the United States, which had previously been sent to Washington, can be directly traced to the ideas promulgated by Mr. Levinson. The interviews with �[Page 103]SALMON O. LEVINSON 103

the French Foreign Office became a connecting link in conversa- tions with Senator Borah and Secretary Kellogg upon Mr. Levinson's return to this country. With Mr. Borah as the Chair- man of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate and Mr. Kellogg as the Secretary of State, the strategic positions were won. In consequence the multilateral Pact was prepared, our State Department having resolutely refused to consider the introduction of coercive sanctions, arguing along the lines previ- ously laid down by Mr. Levinson.

But it is safe to assert that never in the history of mankind has such a simple, fundamental idea made the progress in such a short length of time as has the Outlawry idea. It is no diminution of the credit that belongs to the statesmen concerned, Kellogg, Briand and Borah, to say that the initiation of the idea together with the promotion and publicity that found their fitting climax in the preparation of the Pact and its signature by over sixty of the leading nations of the world, came from a private citizen in Chicago, who was without the backing o1 official position and without that of any large organization. By his own intelli- gence, courage, energy and devotion to the cause of peace among nations, he has forced the idea upon the attention of the world. The record is so inspiring that any words I could say could only dim the luster of the event itself. I cannot close without adding that no one is more aware than Mr. Levinson himself that the campaign is only begun. The preliminary step has been taken with the ratification of the Pact. The task of discovering and instituting the means for making a working reality out of the idea remains to be accomplished, while the pledge of the nations is a pledge of its final achievement, the codification of 2 new code of international law, congruous with the fact of Outlawry, and the institution of the Supreme Court of the nations of the world are the great tasks of the future. I risk nothing in pre- dicting that as long as his life is spared, Mr. Levinson will bring to their accomplishment the same disinterested zeal, persistence, and vigorous thought that has been crowned with victory in the space of the eleven last short years. �[Page 104]QYROZODN OVO ODRURE

RACIAL RELATIONSHIPS AND INTERNATIONAL HARMONY

by

Frank H. Hankins Department of Sociology, Smith College

III. The Question of Racial Equality

question of racial equality is so difficult. If I belong to a

race that possesses social, political and economic prestige,

it seems to me too obvious for argument that races are un- equal and that my own is gifted with superior genius. If on the other hand, I belong to a socially inferior race which is burning with self-consciousness and a keen sense of racial solidarity, my own ego is hurt by any assertion of my racial inferiority. My need of self-esteem then requires that I believe races to be at least equal, when it does not require me to believe that in all prob- ability my own race is a bit superior. These attitudes are readily understood when it is recalled that race pride finds its roots in the struggle for existence and has been an essential condition of survival in the endless conflicts of human groups with each other and with the forces of nature. It is not an accident that most of the protagonists of the doctrine of Nordic supremacy have been (or thought they were) Nordics, while most of the advocates of the doctrine of racial equality have been Jews. The former were at the same time flattering themselves and justifying their traditional privileges; the latter were sustaining their courage in the face of social handicaps and seeking to undermine the assumptions upon which such discrimination rests.

If one is to discuss this question intelligently, it is necessary first to have clearly in mind the manner in which the problem 104

I 1s because of its intimate personal significance that the �[Page 105]THE QUESTION OF RACIAL EQUALITY IO§

should be conceived. This requires above all else that a race should be thought of as a group of persons vary‘ng more or less widely about a type or norm. One can prove nothing about races by citing a few individual instances. As one peruses the literature of Nordic idealization he notes that the typical Nordic is always pictured as tall in stature, noble in countenance, with beautiful hair, skin and eyes. But there never was any such race. If one were able to study the purest group of Nordics that now exists or ever has existed he would find that many of them were of short or medium stature, with irregular features and with ugly or vicious countenances. Some of them would bv geniuses of a high order but others would be imbeciles and morons. Similar statements apply to other races, since all zoological species or varieties vary through more or less extensive limits.

The primary question, therefore, is whether the average value of two compared races for given traits are the same or not. Let us take stature for illustration. The Japanese are a short people while the Norwegians are tall. Neither the Japanese nor the Norwegians are perfectly pure in race, but they represent quite different racial compositions and hence will serve our purpose. On actual measurement it is found that a fair proportion of Japanese are taller than the average Norwegian, while numer- ous Norwegians are shorter than the average Japanese. This means that there is a very considerable overlapping in the dis- tribution of statures of even two widely different racial groups. Moreover, such overlapping is found to be true of practically all other important traits.

It follows that, in comparing Japanese and Norwegians as regards stature, when we say that Norwegians are taller we mean that they are taller on an average. This means that they are more frequently taller. It does not mean that all Norwegians are taller than any Japanese. If now we change the language we might say that the Norwegians are swperior to the Japanese in stature. I think this case is typical. It shows that races must be compared as regards one particular trait at a time, and that what we mean by superior refers to the racial average for that trait. �[Page 106]106 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

The superiority of a given race with respect to a trait is thus consonant with the inferiority of some of its members.

Moreover, a race may excel in one trait but prove inferior in others. Norwegians are taller and heavier than Japanese but they are less agile and have less pigment in hair, skin, and eyes. A multitude of such comparisons leads to the conclusion that the various main branches of the human family have developed along diverse lines during many generations. The processes of heredity, mutation, and natural selection have molded them according to more cr less different patterns. It is probably per- fectly correct to say that there is no important trait in which the great divisions of mankind are exactly alike as regards average and range of distribution.

The question here arises as to whether it is perfectly accurate to speak of all existing races as belonging to the same species. This question has been much discussed in anthropological literature avd there is considerable diversity of opinion. We popularly accept the doctrine that all existing men belong to Homo sapiens. This is a view which satisfies our democratic senti- ments and the popular belief in the brotherhood of man. Never- theless it is true, as Daiwin pointed out two generations «go, that the differences between various varieties of mankind are sufficiently great to warrant their division into separate species. Any such division is, however, a more or less arbitrary matter of zoological classification. The point is mentioned here merely to enforce the above conclusion that the great stems along which mankind has evolved during the last 500,000 years have reached a high degree of diversity. The evolutionary processes have modified every feature of racial anatomy.

It might, of course, be true that the various races differ widely in physical characteristics and yet are equal in mental vigor and capacity. The presumption, however, is against such a conclusion. The brain is the seat of the mental powers. Its functioning gives direction and sets limits to the manifestation of intellectual, emotional and zsthetic activities. Since, there- fore, the average brain sizes of different races show significant �[Page 107]THE QUESTION OF RACIAL EQUALITY 107

differences, it seems reasonable to suppose that their mental powers will also differ. Thus the average Negro brain is about ten per cent less than the average white brain in weight or size. There are also certain differences, on the average, in brain structure—that is, in the relative proportions of different parts. Such a difference, of course, must be conceived in the terms above stated, that is, the difference applies only to the average, which warrants the conclusion that many Negro brains are larger than the average white and that many white brains are considerably below the average of the Negro.

If then we were judging racial values by brain size alone we should be warranted in drawing two conclusions. One is that there 1s apparently nothing in brain size which would prevent Negroes from becoming effective members of our own society. That is, if we assume that white men of low mental capacity are effective members, then we are warranted in holding that Negroes also of low mental capacity may become effective members. A second conclusion is that there is no basis for racial discrimination as between individual members of the two races in this regard. The individual must be taken on his merits for the simple reason that vast numbers of the colored people of Negroid extraction excel the white man in this highly important trait.

There is, however, considerable significance to this difference as regards the culture-producing capacities of the two races. This statement is based on the fact that persons of high intelli- gence are more likely to make inventions or otherwise manifest creative abilities than persons of low mentality. That race will excel in the advancement of culture which produces the greater number of men of genius. Now extensive investigation has shown that the vast majority, fully ninety per cent, of the men of genius whose brains have been studied, considerably excelled the average of the white races in brain size and capacity. Moreover, measure- ments made on the living have shown a considerable correlation between brain size and advancement in the public schools or ability to pass mental tests. It has been shown that individuals �[Page 108]108 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

who pass through the high school to the college and university excel high school graduates in average brain size, while high school graduates show a similar superiority to inmates of feeble- minded institutions. One must not conclude from these facts that there is a close correspondence between brain size and mental ability. The organization of the neural tissues is perhaps more important than mere size. But a large, well organized brain seems to be superior to a small one of equal organization. While, therefore, one cannot in individual cases draw any conclusion as regards mental capacity from mere brain size, one is warranted in holding that, in a large number of cases, large-brained in- dividuals will more frequently show mental superiority than will small-brained individuals. |

This important question deserves more attention than we can give it here. Moreover, much still remains to be discovered regarding the significance of brain size and structure for mental development. We do seem, however, warranted in drawing the conclusion that the white race is much more likely to produce great leaders, great organizers, great inventors and great artists than is the Negro race. When, however, we consider such peoples as the Chinese and the Japanese, the differences between white and colored are much smaller and the significance of such differ- ences becomes highly questionable. While measurements are still few, they seem to indicate that the Japanese excel the Chinese, and perhaps even the whites, in brain size, whereas Chinese and Europeans are very similar.

This brings us to the question of mental tests. It will doubt- less be admitted that thoroughly acceptable mental tests are the best possible measures of significant racial abilities. But existing tests are not in all respects thoroughly acceptable. They have, however, been so widely and so variously used that there are grounds for believing them to have considerable significance for the question at hand. These tests have now been in use for twenty years or more. During more than half of this time they have been extensively used in education, business, and scientific research. They have doubtless been improved and refinec, but �[Page 109]THE QUESTION OF RACIAL EQUALITY I09

nothing has yet occurred to upset the conclusions drawn from the earlier results. Such tests sometimes fail in individual cases because of emotional disturbances, unique physical development, or peculiar elements in the individual's experience. But they never fail to distinguish groups of low-grade from groups of high-grade individuals. Their confident application in school and college, in office, factory and department store, in the army, in prisons and reformatories, and indeed wherever the mental rating of individuals is desired, shows that their reliability has won widespread acceptance. :

It must be admitted, however, that the application of the same tests to persons of essentially different cultural backgrounds raises additional questions of validity. We all think in terms of our own cultural background. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the average person trained in one mode of think- ing to fully understand the significance which people of a quite different culture attach to words and objects. The psychologists have been aware of these difficulties and have sought to over- come them by the use of non-language tests. That they have succeeded to a large degree is shown by the high correspundence between the results of language and non-language tests. More- over, the objectors to mental tests seem to magnify this particular difficulty. There are many cases of Chinese and Japanese who, although their language and culture are certainly more distinct from our own than are those of the American Negro or the Italian immigrant, have nevertheless revealed a mental level remarkably high. I think we are warranted in saying that al- though the application of the tests to persons of different race and culture is far from the reliability which strictly scientific methods require, the results thus far obtained have considerable value. Moreover, when such results are borne out by educational experience and cultural attainments they seem worthy of con- siderable credence.

Thus far the results of mental tests which are most extensive and most pertinent to our discussion are those of the American Negro and various groups cf immigrants. It is impossible to �[Page 110] @ fe) WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

summarize them here. In general, the Negro has ranked distinctly below the native white. His average has been less and he has less frequently attained the higher values. While multitudes of Negroes excel the average white, it appears approximately cor- rect to say that about three-fourths of them attain a mental level below the average white. There are thus levels of mental ability reached by a small percentage of whites which seem never to be attained by the Negro. In view of the data now at hand from mental testing, from world-wide experience of educators with Negro students, and the historical status of the Negro in all great civilizations, we seem warranted in saying that it is ex- tremely doubtful whether that race could under most favorable circumstances produce men of the rank of the poets, artists, philosophers, scientists and statesmen who have been the active agents in the creation of European culture. On the other hand, the Negro has gifts of his own in the way of temperament and rhythmic appreciation which have already contributed char- acteristic elements to American life and bid fair to produce more notable products in the future.

I think the difference of the native white and Negro is the clearest case we have of differences in mental] level. It is important because it demonstrates the necessity from the social viewpoint of taking account of the value of stock. It does not seem probable that a people with gifts no higher than those of the average American would be able of its own initiative to achieve and maintain a culture at all comparable with our own in material effort and cooperative complexity. We seem also warranted in concluding from the tests of immigrant groups that the averages of a number of them—notably the Italians, Poles, French- Canadians and Spanish-Mexicans—are below the American average. This is probably due to the selective action of immigra- tion movements under modern conditions of transportation. These make it possible for low-grade labor to move in vast hordes from one country to another. Moreover, the rapid multi- plication of immigrant stocks in this country, together with the low birth rate among successful Americans, bids fair to lower �[Page 111]THE QUESTION OF RACIAL EQUALITY III

the average mental endowment of the American people. At the same time, some of these immigrant stocks bring a lightness of temperament, a love of music and the arts, and a capacity to get some fun out of life which will add welcome elements to the American scene. The French are fond of saying that there is nothing more humorous than a German trying to amuse himself. Southern European strains, with little of the Puritan in their make-up or cultural background, will doubtless make future Americans less intent on material achievement and more intent on xsthetic enjoyments.

It remains to inquire whether any light can be thrown upon the question of racial differences from the historical roles of different racial groups. Just now the outstanding school of opinion in this field includes the Nordicists. This school has a long historical background but has been most active since about 1890. The primary root from which it sprung was the worship of the Aryans during the middle of the nineteenth century. When it was discovered, about the time this country was founded, that various European languages had sprung from a common stem, there rapidly developed enormous interest and activity in philological research. The argument was advanced that all the languages—Sanscrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, Romance, German, Slavic, Celtic, and others with common roots—must have been derived from a single mother tongue. It was then argued that this tongue must have been spoken by a single race, to which the name Aryan was given. A busy search, which has continued up to the present, then began for the cradleland of the Aryans. The outcome of decades of scholarly activity has been to raise great doubt as to whether there ever was an Aryan race. This has not, however, prevented schools of opinion arising in different countries to capitalize the Aryan myth in the interest of national- istic egoism. Latterly, in view of the tremendous power of the Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, English and American peoples, the claim of the Nordics to be the original Aryans and thus the creator of the mother of all languages and the chief factor in the creation of all the great civilizations has won wide acceptance. �[Page 112]Iiz WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

The fact of the matter seems to be, however, that the claims of the Nordicists rest upon flimsy and untenable grounds. It can- not be shown that the Nordics constituted the dominant element in either Greek or Roman civilization, to say nothing of those much older. Nor can it be shown that men of Nordic extraction played an unusual role in the Renaissance or the creation of the modern world. The primary reasons why Nordic claims cannot be substantiated is that the Nordic race has nowhere existed in unalloyed purity; that where it has been purest civilization has not been highest; and that all areas of high culture have been remarkable for the extent and variety of their race mixture. The Nordic protagonists have therefore found it impossible to show that great leaders of either ancient or modern times represented unmixed Nordic types or even predominantly Nordic types in any preponderance. Realizing this difficulty they have not in- frequently resorted to fictitious biological assumptions and a purely a prioristic and convenient type of anthropological reasoning.

As an illustration of their difficulties we may take the oft- repeated contention that Protestantism was a consequence of Nordic love of independence, whereas Catholicism has flourished notably in Slavic countries because of the inherent docility and lack of initiative of the Alpine stock. It is a notable fact, how- ever, that Luther, instead of being a tall, long-headed blond, was a short, round-headed brunet. Moreover, the population of the British Isles, which is somewhat less Nordic than it is Medi- terranean, has always stood in the forefront of the Protestant movement. Finally, sociological analysis seems to indicate that Protestantism was the combined result of political and economic factors, together with distance from the Papal seat, and probably not at all a matter of racial composition.

The truch of the matter would seem to be that the tall, blond race of northern Europe is one of the most highly evolved human types which nature has yet produced. It is possessed of unusual physical vigor, emotional stability, and high intelli- gence. At the same time, even the Nordic apologists admit that �[Page 113]THE QUESTION OF RACIAL EQUALITY 113

the Mediterranean stock probably excels the Nordic in intel- lectual acumen and artistic capacity. In any case the combination of the Nordic and the Mediterranean, and perhaps better still the combination of Nordic, Mediterranean and Alpine, seems to produce a people gifted with all the diverse elements of genius necessary for the creation of a complex, dynamic and varied civilization.

In general, then, we reach the conclusion that races differ. They differ physically, mentally, and temperamentally. More- over, these differences have some significance for the culture-pro- ducing capacity of the different racial elements. At the same time there has been nothing in our contention which warrants any discrimination against individuals on the ground of race. Every race has its low-grade as well as its high-grade, or its high-grade as well 2s its low-grade, individuals. The only social policy, therefore, which has a basis in anthropological fact is that of democratic individualism. Every individual should be treated on his personal merits. Moreover, from the standpoint of social efficiency the highest utility requires that all individuals, regardless of race, be given the freest possible opportunity to develop their potentialities. Race prejudice and discrimination defeat social efficiency. It arrests energy in emotional friction and deprives society at large of the full benefit of all the talent born in its midst. �[Page 114]QIN OLD ORNS

THE WISDOM OF THE AGES

Edited by

ALFRED W. MarTIN Society for Ethical Culture, New York

The Sacred Scriptures of Taoism

Confucianism for the religious control of China was

Taoism. Its founder was Lao-Tze (the old Philosopher).

Born in 604 B.C., he was some fifty years the senior of Confucius. Tradition has it that on one occasion Confucius visited the state capitol at Loh-Yang, to consult the archives of which Lao-Tze was the custodian and the venerable sage took Occasion to inform him that his ideas were erroneous and his reform-method futile, adding that it would be well to discard his artificial dignity and ceremonial manner, because when a man has real modesty and humility he does not seek to give them external expression. It may well be, as most authorities agree, that this story is apocryphal, yet is it ben trovato because it expresses so well the bewilderment Confucius must have ex- perienced when he made his first acquaintance with teachings so diametrically opposed to his own. Furthermore, the story points to the irreconcilability of the two systems of thought and it persists to this day. Neither the adherents of Confucianism nor those of Taoism have succeeded in effecting a conciliation or higher harmony inclusive of their differences. Lao-Tze's views were embodied in a book he entitled ‘*Tao-Teh,’’ ‘‘Reason and Virtue.”’ Its profound ennobling principles and precepts caused it to be raised by imperial decree to the level of canonical authori- tative literature, the ultimate source of information on Taoist faith and practice. Hence the addition of the term Kéng (canon)

114

Te only native Chinese religion that ever competed with �[Page 115]THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF TAOISM IIs

to the original title of the book. It consists of two main parts, called Tao and Teh, the whole subsequently divided by expositors into eighty short chapters, or sections. The first portion is chiefly metaphysical, the second, ethical and poetical, though no logical development of ideas binds the two parts. So striking is the resemblance between certain portions of the second book and what we find in the New Testament, as to have given rise to the hypothesis of Christian influence on the thought of the Chinese author. But the pre-Christian origin of this canonical work has been established beyond all question through the dis- covery of the greater part of the contents in quotations made by Chinese writers who flourished long before the beginning of the Christian era.’ So laconic and terse is the style in which the Tao- Teh-King is written that it makes the book obscure and the sense of its obscurity is considerably aggravated by the many different meanings that attach to the term Tao. It means ‘‘way,"’ or ‘method,’ 1.e., ‘‘according to a way.’’ It is sometimes trans- lated ‘‘principle,’’ ‘‘word,'’ the latter corresponding to the ‘‘logos’’ of the Fourth Gospel. ‘‘In the beginning was the Word”’ (Logos). Again, Tao is a term for ‘‘the nameless.’’ ‘“The name that can be named is not the unchanging enduring name"’ (Tao). Tao is the Ultimate, Eternal Reason; Heaven's Reason (T’ien- Tao), spelled with a capital R to differentiate it from the reason of the rationalist, the fallible reason of man. Bodiless, omni- present, prior even to God (Shang-Ti) it is that which, in its essence, is unknowable; as source of all being it is itself beyond being; the Ur-Grund of all that is. Typical passages from the first book of the Tao-Teb-King, setting forth what is meant by the Tao, are the following:

‘The Tao (way) that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao. The name (Tao) that is named is not the enduring and unchanging name.

‘Before the Most High Lord (Shang-Ti), is a first principle (the éex# of the Greek philosophers), which in its essential being is unknowable. As source of all being, ratio essendi, it is itself

1See The Monist, vol. XI, pp. 574 foll., for further derails. �[Page 116]116 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

beyond being: ‘‘All existences in the universe sprang from Being (Tao, as active); Being itself sprang from Non-Being (Tao, as absolute)."’ It produces and nourishes all things, ‘‘by its out- flowing operation,"’ and to it, as to their origin, all things, when they have run their course, return. It is the end as well as the beginning of all existences. ‘‘We look at it and do not see it, and we name it ‘the Equable’; we listen to it and do not hear it, and we name it ‘the Inaudible’; we try to grasp it and do not get hold of it, and we name it ‘the Subtle.’ With these three qualities it cannot be made the subject of any descriptions; and hence we blend them together and obtain the One."’ In the twenty-fifth chapter of the Tao-Teh-King is the following passage which cores nearer than any other to a definition of the Tao:—

‘There was a Something, undifferentiated and yet perfect, before heaven and earth came into being. So still, so incorporea!! It alone abides and changes not. It pervades all, but is not en- dangered. It may be regarded as the mother of all things. I know not its name; if I must designate it, I call it Tao. Striving to give it a name, I call it great; great, I call it transcending; transcend- ing, I call it far off; far off, I call it returning. . . . Man takes his norm from earth; earth from heaven; heaven from Tao; the Tao from itself."’

What impressed Lao-Tze above all else in the orderly opera- tions of Nature was their effortlessness. ‘“The Tao does every- thing without doing anything.’ It is Heaven's way not to strive, yet it overcomes. And this method of Nature's is the norm for man. His chief end is to take example of the Tao, pattern his life after it, make it ‘‘the inner law of his life from which con- duct spontaneously flows.’’ By so doing the cosmic principle be- comes in him ethical principle. Herein lies the basis of Taoist ethics and to this the second part of the Tao-Teh-King is devoted. The Tao as manifested in man is the jan-Tao virtue-acting power, Operating to will and to do the transcendent divine will of the T'ten Tao. In every human being, according to Lao-Tze, is this jan-Tao, this divine spirit which has its counterpart in the ex- ternal world as the basis of Nature's order and harmony and in �[Page 117]THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF TAOISM 117

devotion to which ‘‘the incomplete achieves completion and the ideal of perfection realization.’’ This is the corner-stone of Taoist ethics. To let Heaven's Reason prevail, to yield oneself to the holy prompting of the Tao, never interfering with Nature's way of seeking to alter the nature of things, but instead ‘‘acting non-assertion,’’ practising self-surrender to the Tao, that makes one ‘‘master,’’ ‘‘superior,’’ ‘‘holy’’; that enables a man ‘‘to do without ado’’; to act without acting,—devoid of display, egotism, vanity;—to act with non-assertion (wei wu wei) to find ‘‘in quietness and confidence his strength."

Typical passages from the Teh,—the second part of the sacred book,—inculcating the kind of ethical living which allegiance to the Tao calls for, are the following:

‘**When merit has been achieved, do not take it to yourself. On the other hand, if you do not take it to yourself, it shall never be taken from you.

‘“*By many words wit is exhausted. It is better to preserve a mean.

‘‘Keep behind and you shall be put in front. Keep out, and you shall be kept in.

‘‘What the world reverences may not be treated with irreverence.

‘*Good words shall gain you honor in the market-place. Good deeds shall gain you friends among men.

‘*He who, conscious of being strong, is content to be weak, he shall be a cynosure of men.

‘The Empire is a divine trust, and may not be ruled. He who rules, ruins. He who holds by force, loses.

“Mighty is he who conquers himself.

‘*He who is content has enough.

‘The wise man’s freedom from grievance is because he will not regard grievances as such.

‘The good I meet with goodness; the bad I also meet with goodness. . . . The faithful I meet with faith, the faithless I also meet with faith. (Chap. 49.) �[Page 118]118 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE .

‘Abandon your saintliness; put away your prudence; and the people will gain a hundredfold!

‘Abandon your benevolence; put away your justice; and the people will return to filial piety and paternal devotion.

‘‘Abandon smartness; give up greed; and thieves and robbers will no longer exist.

“These are three things for which culture is insufficient. Therefore it is said: |

‘Hold fast to that which will endure. Show thyself simple, preserve thee pure, And lessen self with desires fewer.’ (Chap. 19.)

‘Superior virtue is non-assertion and without pretension. Inferior virtue asserts and makes pretensions.

‘Superior benevolence acts but makes not pretensions. Superior justice acts and makes pretensions.’’ (Chap. 38.)

The three “‘jewels of character’’ are gentleness, humility, frugality. Under no circumstances will the Taoist act other than with gentleness. ‘‘There is nothing in the world more soft and weak than water, yet for attacking things that are firm and strong nothing surpasses it.’ So, too, the true Taoist humbles himself and becomes exalted. ‘‘There is no guilt greater than to sanction ambition; no calamity greater than to be discontented with one’s lot; no fault greater than the desire for gain. The sufficiency of contentment is an enduring and unchanging sufficiency."’

In precise keeping with Lao-Tze’s doctrine of opposites, the counterpart of frugality is liberality even as is courage of gentle- ness and honored recognition of humility. ‘‘The wise man does not accumulate. The more he expends for others, the more does he possess of his own; the more he gives to others, the more does he have himself."’

The dominant thought in Lao-Tze’s teaching was that man should seek to possess that inward deep morality of the spirit which makes him indifferent to rules and spontaneously, in- tuitively guides him to what is right. Just as Jesus, in his dis- �[Page 119]THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF TAOISM IIg

cussion with the tricky lawyer, took the ground that he who has the spirit of love to God and love to man in his heart has that out of which all good actions will spontaneously flow, so Lao-Tze held that there is in every man the ‘‘Tao,’’ that divine spirit which has its counterpart in the external world as the basis of Nature’s order and harmony, and in devotion to which ‘the incomplete achieves completion, and the ideal of perfection, realization."'

The essential differences between the founders of Confucianism and Taoism and their respective theses may be summed up as follows:

Lao-Tze was an ascetic, a recluse; he went into voluntary exile, disgusted with the political and social disorder of his time.

Confucius was a man of the world, yet without worldliness, through personal example influencing his fellow-men for good.

Lao-Tze was an unshorn, tattered, half-starved hermit; the occupant of a hollow rock or cave in the wilderness.

Confucius was a sleek, well-fed, comfortable philosopher and statesman; enjoying the favor of princes and kings.

Lao-Tze sought to reform each human soul at the roots of his being, to purify the heart, the inner springs of conduct, be- lieving thae all external relations would right themselves as a result.

Confucius began at the other end, with etiquette, manners, moral ruies, believing that the heart would thereby be reformed.

Lao-Tze determined man’s life from within; Confucius, from without. The former was subjective, the latter objective in attitude and method. The one operated from the center to the circumference, the other from the circumference to the center.

Lao-Tze was an anarchist in the philosophical sense, opposed to governing and in favor of spontaneity and independence in thought and conduct. Confucius was a monarchist, wishing to have government penetrate to the very heart of the individual, the family and the state. To Lao-Tze, Confucius seemed a fussy meddler in the affairs of the universe; in the eyes of Confucius Lao-Tze was an impractical, paradoxical dreamer. �[Page 120]I20 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

Lao-Tze cared for wisdom, not scholarship. Confucius cared for scholarship and hoped to get wisdom through learning.

Lao-Tze's system called for much patient and hard thinking, for analysis of the condensed ethical truths of the ‘*Tao-Tc- King,’’ offered, as they were, without commentary or explana- tion and interspersed with metaphysical argument. The code of Confucius called for no such mental and physical strain. It was concrete, intelligible, practical; free from speculative elements, serviceable as a textbook of instruction for public schools and actually was made the basis of all civil service examinations, the sole gateway to office. No wonder, then, that in view of these differences, Confucius as a moral leader eclipsed Lao-Tze, though much of the latter’s message is of transcendent worth and singularly suited to our own age with its passion for external results that are tangible, its devotion to ameliorating social and economic conditions, as contrasted with the more radical devo- tion to that which is impalpable and imperishable, the infinite and eternal worth in man.

Finally, it should be noted that the Tao-Teh-King has only a nominal influence on modern Taoism,—a far cry from the Taoism of Lao-Tze. Had the latter retained its philosophico- mystical elements, which made it attractive chiefly to contem- plative recluses, it could never have become popular with the masses as it is today. But like the Buddhism of Gotama which took on strange and superstitious forms after its introduction into China, Japan, Thibet, so the Taoism of Lao-Tze underwent similar modification and today has little else than the name to link it with the teachings of the Founder.

) �[Page 121]ODS OVD ODOR @

SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION by

Epwin ARTHUR BurTT Departmen: of Philosophy, University of Chicago

II. THE Notion or UNiversaL Law

E ARE ali familiar today with two uses of the word

law. In one use, and this is the most primitive,

spontaneous, and inevitable meaning, it stands for

what we are thinking about when we have judges, legislatures, and policemen in mind. This is the regulative mean- ing of the term. When we utter it we refer to an enactment en- forced by some social group over its individual members, or by a deity over the consciences of his followers. It may, under the stress of metaphysical sophistication, be rarefied into an im- perative of moral obligation independent of religious or social backing, as in the philosophy of Kant, but the common element in all these uses is the notion of a discoverable and authoritative command which certain individuals are bound to obey. Since no social group could well become conscious of its essential activi- ties without pressing this conception into the forefront of atten- cion it is evident that this meaning is basic. And indeed a con- siderable part of the world has never transcended it, namely all those whose primary otion of a law of nature is that of a more or less arbitrary enactment of a divine will. For such thinking all Jaw is in the end of the sort just described.

The other use is one which we are familiar with in its rela- tion to scientific inquiry. In this use of the term law we are not thinking of a regulative, but merely factual affair; it 1s not some- thing prescriptive, but descriptive. It has lifted itself to in- dependence of any necessary complication with the imposing of

121 �[Page 122]122 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

obligations. It is the result of an attempt simply to state the outcome of careful study of how nature behaves in general terms, so that when this or that feature of her behavior recurs it may be identified, understood, and its yet potential phases confidently predicted. There is in it no elemeat of how things ought to act, but simply an objective statement of how they do act.

This distinction need hardly be belabored to modern folk but the point which I wish to emphasize in connection with it is that this second notion, however simple it seems to us, repre- sents a very difficult human achievement, and can be appreciated in anything like its full significance only when we study its tortuous historical growth. For our thinking is naturally shaped by social habit and is primarily concerned with the adaptation of means to ends that are pursued in a matrix of social relations. The conception of a universal descriptive law is very remote from this spontaneous character of human reflection, while that of a legislative enactment is much more congenial and 1s de- manded by the simplest social tie.

Shall we consider more fully the differences and similarities ketween the scientific notion of natural law and its main historic predecessors and still influential competitors? Our quaintly personalistic mode of viewing the world has already been noted; it is but a general extension of the principles of interpretation which at once prove themselves fruitful when we try to describe what happens in the complex relations of persons within a social group. Such relations are pretty obviously determined in the main by more or less unpredictable impulses controlled to some extent by conscious realization of their probable consequences. It is in the attempt to extend this control in definite ways con- ditioned by prevalent conceptions of social welfare that laws in the political sense of the term become reflectively formulated. Now what is often spoken of as the religious view of nature results when this mode of interpretation is followed through without any question as to its legitimacy or its limits. Why did b happen when a happened? The answer offered by this procedure consists in an appeal to an arbitrary purpose affirmed by some �[Page 123]THE NOTION OF UNIVERSAL LAW 123

invisible being who controls all or a certain realm of natural. events and whose will therefore constitutes an ultimate principle of explanation. The things composing the world spring into place, in Santayana’s vivid summary of the first chapters of Genesis, in response to the fiat of a vehement Jehovah swimming about in a chaos.

Many of us today have so far outgrown this attitude toward nature that it seems thoroughly fantastic, though it is important to remember that the thinking of most of the world is still dominated by it, and that its psycho-sociological origin is so naive and inevitable that nothing else could easily be tried as man’s first serious attempt to order his world in some systematic way. Moreover, we mistake greatly if we suppose that the notion of law in modern science bears now no traces of this animistic and theological beginning—how far it does so we shall try to see —for the conception of universal law that might be worked out by an age with no animism behind its thinking we can hardly even surmise.

The beauty of the attitude lies in the luxuriant fashion in which the conception lent itself to poetic response. We may be misled into exaggeration of this phase of polytheism by the form taken by it with which we are most familiar, that among the ancient Greeks, whose picture of the world was really that of a living drama staged by a heterogeneous collection of deities cleverer but no better than ourselves and who often knew as little as we do what was coming next. The manner in which this picture challenged artistic creation in literature, sculpture, and the other arts is too familiar to need more than reference. To men whose imaginations were thus governed even a lonely walk through the woods must have been either a very appealing or quite terrifying exploit of social and religious adventure. It is no wonder that in modern times, especially after a superheated period of rationalism, men of romantic proclivities have longed for a return to this warmly personal and invitingly esthetic way of viewing nature’s behavior.

What is the essential weakness in this interpretation? To �[Page 124]124 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

answer this question it is hardly enough to say that the facts did not bear it out. In many respects they did bear it out, at least the needs which men wanted to satisfy in their explanations were sufficiently satisfied by it for the view to persist fog many centuries in practically all parts of the world and to offer pungent resistance even today to replacement by what we regard as more verifiable conceptions. The fundamental answer in my judgment is rather that a practical technique of control in terms of this attitude could never be really devised with assurance, so that what we regard as real understanding and power of prediction in dealing with nature was not actually secured. If events deter- mining the weal or woe of men, such as the maturing of crops, victory Over enemies, the subsidence of a plague, are caused by the will of invisible beings, how shall we go about it to turn these volitions in favorable directions and avoid the crushing calamities that might otherwise befall? The answer given and the technique attempted are wholly consistent. Since other people’s volitions are affected by beseeching and by treasured gifts, those of the deities are supposed to be similarly modifiable. Hence the remarkablv systematic and often terribly pathetic development in the history of religion of the institutions of prayer and sacrifice. In its extreme form, human sacrifice, what a mute testimony to man's dire need of finding some way to avoid social calamity and assure the blessings of life!

Now it is evident at the start that the power of prediction and of control that might be secured in this way is but partial. For beseeching is often without avail, and one moved by ferocious anger may not be appeased by any gift that can be brought, how- ever precious. Hence there is a certain intrinsic awkwardness in this manner of approaching the task of understanding nature that would surely lead to the consideration of other fundamental hypotheses when it became clearly recognized. But in the light of actual practice the success of the technique proved to be con- stantly less than even this limitation would appear to justify. The behavior of the gods was not of course supposed to be merely Capricious, or it would have been useless to attempt to affect it �[Page 125]THE NOTION OF UNIVERSAL LAW 125

at all. Now this means that there is present the assumption of some dependability in what they do, an expectation felt to be legitimate that the sacrifice accepted on this occasion will avail equally when a similar occasion recurs. Otherwise no technique would have promise or value. But as reflection worked itself free from the emotions of fear and reverence it was forced to acknowl- edge that no such regularity in the behavior of the gods could honestly be verified. Their purpose was inscrutable, their ways of dealing with men past finding out. Even the most meticulous performance of the sacrifices which had been commanded, and the most fervent prayers which revelation had promised would be sure to reach the throne of grace, often bore no fruit.

As this lesson came to be learned, thinking moved inevitably in two different directions. With those in whom religious fervor ran high a profound element of satisfaction came to be found in submissive acceptance of this inherent mystery of the world, of the unpredictable power of divinity—the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!—ac- companied by a theological rationalization of the failure of the attempted technique of nature-mastery. With the consoling cadences of this rationalization we are all familiar. If the sacrifice is of no avail or the prayer brings no answer, still well and good, so runs the reverent apoiogy—your faith did not prove strong enough, or God's will was other than yours, and of course it is better for his will to be done than for your contrary desire to be satisfied. The glory of this conception was that it fostered under the appealing imagery of a humble acceptance of God's will the important virtue of resignation to forces too strong for us to master. But this virtue should not blind us to the element of intellectual and practical defeat in the whole procedure which came to be at least partially remedied by the more successful technique of science.

Experience, then, did not really support even those scraps of dependability which seemed to be justified by this theological way of thinking, and which God apparently had guaranteed by his solemn promise in written revelation that if men did thus �[Page 126]126 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

and so in matters of ritual and ceremony, specific consequences could be counted on in terms of human welfare. The promise could continue to be believed therefore only where loyal religious zea) supported our natural tendency to notice the favorable in- stances of any relation we suppose to be regular and forget or explain away on other grounds the negative ones.

But there has been historically another important com- petitor of both animism and science, perhaps not as widespread or enticing as the former, and evidently presupposing it in time, for it bears the marks of the disillusionment which animism in- evitably prepared. This is the conception which is best repre- sented by the word fate, and which has not only played a con- siderable part in oriental thinking but is found affecting a sporadic intellectual current in Greece and Rome. We are familiar with those episodes of Greek hero-story which deal with the supposed duty of blood revenge, such as the story of Orestes. Here an initial crime sets in motion a chain of events, each absolutely necessary because of the unquestioned duty of aveng- ing one’s kin, but perfectly hopeless in its outcome and weighted with insoluble contradictions. In theory Orestes ought to be killed too, but there is no one left whose duty it is to wreak on him the necessary vengeance. Here the arbitrariness of the ani- mistic conception is given up, but the hope of understanding and control, which was a persistent if futile factor in the same notion, is given up too. The world is viewed as a chain of necessary events, but the necessity that rules them is blind, inexorable, unmasterable, and so from the point of view of human interest in understanding the world utterly hopeless.

Despite the stark futility of this gloomy picture of the world, there is an august impersonalism about it that is not without kinship with the intelligible order postulated by science, and many oriental conceptions of the deity, notably in India, show that it is not incapable of arousing feelings of reverence and adoration. The infinite Brahma dilating all things and from which they flow in unalterable necessity is far more like the Greek fate in these decisive respects than the Jewish Jehovah, �[Page 127]THE NOTION OF UNIVERSAL LAW 127

yet 1t has served as an object of worship to many times the ad- herents of the latter deity. ‘

Words need not be elaborated to show why this doctrine does not satisfy the main needs which express themselves in the enterprise of science. For the theoretical interest in detailed under- standing it gives nothing but a barren desert, because accounting in the same terms for everything that happens it yields no insight into their differences from each other; as to why 6 follows a4 rather than c or d, it has no explanation. All it is concerned to affirm with its rhythmic invocation is that each of these occur- rences flows from the same absolute, inscrutable origin. And of course the practical interest of science in establishing human control over nature through discovering regular connections between things beyond our power and things within is not even present here; the fateful chain is from first to last beyond all possibility of interruption or effective manipulation. To a man of ambition and hope this doctrine makes the universe lapse into a somber scene of unmitigated boredom.

It is really an astounding thing to have reached in any wide- spread fashion the notion that Professor Whitehead calls the instinctive faith of science and which has deeply permeated the attitude of all intelligent modern folk toward nature, namely, the notion of the world as a system of universal law, which means, as we shall see, that it is pictured as intrinsically responsive to the effort of intelligence, impartially exerted in the interest of social control.

Just what was the purging yet needed? What baggage was to be left behind? We shall see what this was when we note that the Christian conception of God was that cf a being morally perfect as well as rational. Accordingly, as long as the interpreta- tion of the world was attempted in theological terms the pre- supposition could hardly be avoided that everything must happen for the sake of some good, and that this circumstance ought to furnish a helpful guiding clue in the investigation of nature. If we remember the persistent power of this notion in the biological sciences, even after the Darwinian theory had become generally �[Page 128]128 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

adopted, in the form of the assumption that every organ has a definite use for the organism, we may glimpse what the state of science generally must have been when the same type of assump- tion was taken for granted everywhere. Hence, while practically all the early champions of modern science still believed in God, they were strongly concerned to rid their scientific method of moral notions. The usual way of justifying this was to say that while God has a purpose in everything that happens his purposes are often beyond finite comprehension and should therefore not be considered in any attempt to formulate human knowledge about the affairs in question. The important thing then is to dis- cover, by careful observation and experiment, exactly what is happening in the behavior of nature without confusing our minds with the necessity of a moral apology for it. There was of course much cant in this song; but the underlying point was irrefragable. In the Aristotelian language of the times, this meant a polemic, engaged in more or less fiercely by all of these pioneers of science, against the introduction of ‘‘final causes’’ in the field of physics, final causes referring to the good ends for the sake of which events were supposed to take place and in terms of which they were in part to be explained.

The notion of universal law is twofold in its human bearings.

In the first place, mastery of such an idea testifies to a clean- cut emancipation in our thinking trom the control of the im- mediate present. In the old Roman phrase, law is that which obtains ‘‘semper, ubique, et ab omnibus,’ and such simple every- day terms as regularity, dependability, and the like, presuppose clear grasp of such an ideal of universality. These words would be meaningless ink apart from the conception of chains of identi- fiable recurrences such that given a certain event another is inevitably connected with it, and of certain persistent conditions which remain the same amid all variations of their associates. Our very language reflects this achievement, so that it is im- possible to describe ic other than in its own terms. We assume a dependable relation between words and the things for which they stand. �[Page 129]THE NOTION OF UNIVERSAL LAW 129

Now in a genera] way, of course, this achievement cannot be laid uniquely to the credit of modern times; ancient philosophy must have been in possession of the principle, and proverbs of all peoples seem in some sense to presuppose it. Yet there is a vast difference between the self-conscious, daring, unlimited convic- tion of an intelligible order which the modern scientist reveals, and the frail, half-hearted beliefs which preceded him. We shall see something of the difference if we devote a casual examination to the remarks on the point offered by the greatest mind among the Greeks. Aristotle insists upon the common-sense distinction between ‘“‘that which happens always, or for the most part’’ and connections which are merely fortuitous. The latter relations are taken to be just as objectively real as the former, and it never seems to have occurred to him to make seriously the postulate that these fortuitous concomitants can be reduced by analytic observation and experimental manipulation to disclosures of underlying relations universal in scope. Thus nature for his con- trolling theory was but partially ordered, only loosely intelli- gible. The boldness of the faith of modern science lies precisely in the fact that it insists on an ideal of intelligibility that spurns all limitations; for its implicit conviction there is absolutely nothing in nature, however capricious to ordinary observation, that is not at bottom reducible to universality of law. Every re- lation is regular if we but penetrate to its determining conditions.

This certainly implies a remarkable mental attainment. Primitive thinking, as anthropology readily reveals and child psychology as easily confirms, is largely confined to immediate particulars of sensation and action, and even where universality is implicit the fact is not consciously recognized and the uni- formities exist merely as rules of thumb, not as genuine scientific laws. By saying that it is confined to immediate particulars I mean that it is occupied with selecting means to a specific end, now challenging, and the question whether the means thus selected can be counted on to serve in other situations does not rise to the foreground, as it does wherever attention has been seasoned by the conviction of science. By saying that its dis- �[Page 130]130 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

coveries are rules of thumb rather than scientific laws I mean that they are practically successful when used by those .”ho have mastered the lessons precipitated in them, but are not formulated in such a way that real universality of application in appropriate situations is guaranteed. At best they are like the recipes of a cook who can usually be counted on for a good dish but who cannot tell anybody else just how to produce it. The thinking of this stage of development is thus characterized by devotion to a succession of specific ends, no larger generality of purpose having definitely emerged, nor its intellectual basis clearly grasped.

To leap to the unlimited conviction of order held by modern science and to regard any apparent accident as a challenge to the discovery of regular relations hidden within it, testifies to a pro- found achievement in our modern psychology. And on the moral side this clear recognition of the meaning of strict universality as well as the active commitment to its application implies the for- mation of a novel ideal of life and one more intelligently justi- fiable than any of the less far-reaching ideals that preceded it. What is this novel ideal, this distinctive conviction of what is important?

The ideal of science is to establish what is needed for the successful attainment of any other ideal. If further repetition of a basic point in other terms is pardonable, we may put it in this form: the purpose of science is nothing other than human pur- pose itself become conscious of its universal needs. It is an interest in all other interests realizing itself as such and developing its appropriate feeling and technique. Scientific knowledge means hospitality to all human purposes, as furnishing the most depend- able means possible for their prosecution, and accordingly the pursuit of scientific knowledge is the living expression of the conviction that such constructive hospitality to other goals 1s a more important goal than any of them taken by itself. In par- ticular, the unique conviction of modern times that the accidental is not ultimate in the structure of things, means in terms of our controlling valuations the feeling that this completely uni- versalized purpose is under all circumstances without exception �[Page 131]THE NOTION OF UNIVERSAL LAW I3I

so supremely important that any bafflement which it meets must be regarded as temporary rather than final, any apparently stub- born element of chance really something that can be taken as a dependable means, not simply left as a disturbing token of nature's insanity.

It is because of this implicit character of science that we instinctively feel something monstrous and grotesque in certain situations which in an age still irrational politically occasionally present themselves to observation. I mean situations in which the energies of a group of scientists are commandeered by this or that government with the expectation of keeping the laws thus brought under lock and key and insuring their devotion to limited nationalistic ends. That such policies may succeed for a time and that under present conditions scientists must be forgiven for allowing their intrinsic universality of aim to be thus prostituted does not relieve the unblushing contradiction in such procedure; even patents expire in time. It is like attempting to compel an artist to produce a piece of sculpture that will seem beautiful only to the members of a certain club, or a logician to produce laws of thought that wili only hold good for a term of years. Politicians may cry ‘‘America first,’’ but the laws of science are impartial.

We shall reach a related result by another series of con- siderations. In discussing the above we have really anticipated a second fundamental achievement that the consciousness of universality of law and of its importance reflects. Universality has a social implication, conveyed by the last phrase of the Latin formula already adduced. Its mention may seem somewhat fantastic to those who conceive an age of science mainly in terms of the machines through which scientific knowledge is applied to the control of nature, but it must be remembered that behind this machine technology and rendering it possible is the research activity of pure science, with the characteristic attitudes and de- mands which the latter makes. It is in these demands that the true moral corollaries of science are to be found, for without them the more popularly visible achievements would not have �[Page 132]232 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

existed and could not now endure. Universality not only means that which I can identify as a cord of unity running through a series of varying events, but that which can also be verified as such by other minds than my own. A universal law, that is, is one which can be corroborated in the same way and under the same conditions by my fellows, and which is stateable in lan- guage such as will throw it open to social testing, and make it available for use in the experience of others on the same terms as it becomes available for me. Apart from this it is almost im- possible to accept it for myself as a genuine law. If it fails to meet such social corroboration when the outlined conditions are observed, I shall be more inclined to doubt my own senses and even my own sanity than to continue to affirm it as uni- versally valid in spite of the disagreement of my fellows. This means that science is by nature a social possession, utterly re- moved from the monopolizing spirit of greed and competition.

How far this social implication of universality really under- lies the more abstract notions of generality, dependability, etc., is probably a question cn which the guesses of competent stu- dents will differ. Considerable evidence could easily be adduced for the thesis that in practice, in the case of any growing in- dividual, it is through the attainment of a socialized point of view that the limitations of our particular wants are always transcended, and that apart from social relations the possibility of consciously realizing an ideal of universality would be quite impossible. Compare the difficulty with which a spoiled child, brought up without brothers and sisters, outgrows the selfish ends which he has always taken for granted and appreciates how others view him, with the ready way in which impartiality of reference is attained by one whose family relations have always forced him to share a social judgment on his conduct. Univer- sality is perhaps intrinsically a moral matter, dependent on getting outside of oneself and sharing the thinking of others.

At any rate the ideal of science, as shown by the fact that asserted laws must be susceptible of social verification and that scientists more and more recognize the essentially cooperative �[Page 133]THE NOTION OF UNIVERSAL LAW 133

character of the scientific undertaking, is a social ideal. Its existence testifies to the emergence in character of a kind of unselfishness more securely grounded than any other and out- reaching any other in its generality.

Now such detachment from the immediate and the in- dividual as is revealed in a transformation along these two lines, whether or not the reader agree that the ideal of universality implicit within it has been actually influential in schooling the character of scientists, is certainly the spiritual foundation of the realization of world unity or any other important social good. To prize what can stand the test of verification in human life at large more than what appeals to an individual or re- stricted group, to care more for the establishment of dependable means for the realization of any human good than for the realiza- tion of any particular good itself—this certainly manifests a kind of attitude and purpose far removed from the pettiness and biind folly that curse so many of the doings of men.

One point more and we must leave this theme of universality of law. How deeply grounded in the essential conditions of human life are these spiritual values which have above been portrayed as corollaries of scientific devotion to universal law? The answer, I think, is that their foundation is far firmer than that of any alternative. For, is not the purpose which we have been trying to show underlies this scientific faith in the world as an intelligible order a more definite concretion of the purpose which gradually comes to controlling power in the experience of all of us if we allow our ideals to expand to their normal limit in the fashion inevitably dictated by the buffetings of contact with nature and with other folks? If so, then we have found definite justification for the conviction that the scientific ideal of universality is more securely rooted than any contrasting ideal and in any stable harmonization of character must play a con- trolling part. But ponder the facts.

The purposes with which all of us begin our conscious ex- perience are those determined by the instinctive activities of the trace, redirected and expanded by the habitual ways of the group �[Page 134]134 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

to which we belong. Just as we take without question the food that is put in our mouths and the clothes given us to wear, so as children we imbibe the stable ideas of our community and share without criticism its emotional tones. In short, we make our own at first the purposes that are taken for granted around us, for they constitute the necessary foundation of any conscious experience that is to be ours in the future. We cannot develop our mature minds out of nothing. And amid great variation of time and place these purposes always reveal a certain pervading similarity due to the fact that they are founded upon vital needs which all of humanity share.

But if individual consciousness has grown live and con- fident, and imagination becomes freely fertile, this stage will net continue to satisfy. Attention will be caught by phases of experience that cast doubt on the validity of current explanations, novel hypotheses will be boldly played with in imagination, and if they seem confirmed by observation will not be surrendered in reverent deference to the consecrated beliefs they violate. Now this is the intellectual phase of a process whose purposive aspect is Creative novelty itself. We have an individual who no longer admits without question the current ends of action but dares to entertain and pursue some modification of them which his liver imagination has envisioned and his more critical ob- servation has proved. Put in another way, he has not merely become conscious of himself as an eddy in the current of com- munity life, but he has become self-conscious in a new way; he knows himself as a center of power that may oppose the com- munity and convict it of error in its traditional conceptions of good. This is the stage of rebellion and of freedom. The individual who has reached this point refuses to be bound any longer by the goals his fellows count worthy of realization. He has dis- covered something different that appeals to him, and appeals so strongly, and finds justification in his experience so vividly, that the mighty call of loyalty to tradition cannot contain him. In the early development of social groups this stage was precarious and full of danger, for rebellion meant disunity, and disunity of �[Page 135]THE NOTION OF UNIVERSAL LAW 135

any sort was highly prejudicial to community success in the struggle for life. But as came enlarging experience of the im- portant benefits to society of fostering a strain of originality, and as widening communication thrust people into appreciative interplay with groups whose standards of value were different (a process of transformation which has today gone very far in producing its inevitable consequence), manifestations of in- dividual freedom are taken more lightly. In fact, throughout large areas of the modern world, notably those permeated by scientific interests or affected by the stress of business competi- tion, such inventiveness is positively encouraged as an indis- pensable condition of social advance.

But in describing free individuality in this fashion we are already presupposing that the second stage is destined, if in- telligent growth continues, to pass into a third. For of course not all rebellion is socially constructive. In itself it is simply confident departure from prevailing purposes, commitment to an individually conceived good other than the goods prized by one’s ancestors and neighbors. The individualist may be a crim- inal or a prophet or just a crank. But there is a persistent force resident in the conditions which all such free originality has to meet that operates against the criminal, the mere iconoclast, and the mystic without a social gospel.

Confidence that our personal judgment is the standard of truth and our individual satisfaction the test of good cannot after all be successfully maintained. For although we may be sure that an ideal generated by our live criticism of tradition is more adequate than that offered the latter, and may commit ourselves without reservation accordingly, yet our faith in it wavers and quickly evaporates if the conviction cannot be con- firmed that others too would recognize the authority of our ideal if they envisioned social needs as clearly as we do and were not so strongly hampered by the sway of custom over emotion. The end to which I have devored my energies no longer seems so assuredly good when it is inspected by one who is more than a ripple in the customary current and rejected—so dependent are �[Page 136]136 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

we upon social support. Moreover, if I want my free originality to issue in no ignis fatuus but to leave an enduring mark in the current of history, I must have some assurance that its chosen end will satisfy the real problems of the age more deeply than they are satisfied by the ends now uncritically pursued.

Accordingly, bare rebellion, sheer individuality of self- assertion, is not permanently satisfactory. If our own imagi- natively formulated ideals are to maintain themselves and bear their appropriate fruit they must be more than ours. And that means that our controlling purpose must have become a social purpose, our dominating interest that of sharing the real interests of others, and our moving need that of contributing construc- tively to the solution of problems which arise because of the living needs of our fellows. As Hegel would have put it, this stage is a synthesis of the two preceding stages, preserving the inherent social reference and loyalty of the first and combining it with the free imagination and live responsibility of reflection of the second. In this third stage, then, we make our own what by the keenest insight we take to be the enduring problems of the world around us, and our ideal is that of furthering the realization of all other ideals so far as they can be harmonized into a single picture of human good. There is something summary and conclusive about this stage, just because all more limited finalities have been surrendered in favor of a living hospitality to whatever goods present themselves as such to any center of experience. It is a final stage because it has consciously attained universality of reference, unlimited by variations of circumstance; in it the good of the individual becomes by his free act of self- commitment identified with universal good.

C “~) �[Page 137]UNITY AND DISUNITY IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

Edited by

Dexter PERKINS Department of History and Government, University of Rochester

Our Relations With Great Britain

gloomy prophecies as to our relations with Great Britain.

There are those who seem to think that we are at the begin-

ning of a steep descent into the pit of international] conflict. The example of Anglo-German relations at the beginning of the century is brought forward to demonstrate the danger. Ahead lies the gloomy spectre of war.

It would be unfortunate to take these prophets of evil at their own value. But surely the very existence of such prophecies makes it desirable to examine with care the existing situation, and to spare no effort to prevent any such calamity as is said to impend.

The crux of the situation no doubt lies in the naval problem. If we can see that problem sanely and calmly we will be able to avoid a good many of the difficulties that lie ahead. The beginning of sound thinking on the matter would seem to lie in the inquiry as to why we need a navy equal to or even superior to that of England.

In the past this nation’s naval power has been very inferior to that of Britain. Down to the period of the Great War such a thing as parity was never advocated by any responsible statesman. It therefore becomes interesting to inquire whether, during all this period of naval weakness—relatively speaking—we suffered severely in our diplomatic controversies with Great Britain, and came out holding the small end of the stick.

Te passage of the cruiser bill has been followed by many

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The answer can hardly be doubtful. In our altercations with Great Britain, we have almost uniformly fared extremely well. In 1895 we demanded that Great Britain arbitrate a boundary dispute with Venezuela. The demand was conceded. In 1901 we demanded that Great Britain abrogate the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, which gave her equal rights with the United States in the pro- jected inter-oceanic canal, and concede to this country alone full rights of ownership. The demand was conceded. In 1903 we demanded arbitration of the Alaska Boundary dispute. The dis- pute was arbitrated, and a commission composed of three Ameri- cans, and three British subjects, decided in favor of the United States. In 1913 we asked a free hand in Mexico. We got it. After the war was over, we demanded that our loans to the Allied governments ke refunded. The British were the first to agree to this refunding, on terms more favorable to this country than those made with any other nation. Does this look as if we had to have a great navy in order to protect our national interests? Or have we been tolerably successful without it?

The scare-mongers of the present day lay special emphasis on British interference with neutral trade in time of war. The United States, they say, must have a great navy to protect its increasing foreign trade. If Great Britain will not agree to modify and codify in a sense favorable to neutrals the rules governing private property on the high seas, said Senator Borah recently, then this country must build a navy not only equal to, but supe- rior to, that of the British. The ‘‘freedom of the seas’’ must be secured to future generations of Americans.

Do we need this super-navy to assure us the freedom of the

eas? What has history to say on this matter? If we go back to the period of the Napoleonic wars, we shall, of course, discover a very arbitrary interference with neutral commerce by both sets of belligerents. But from 1815 down to 1914 there is nothing to complain of. Though Britannia ruled the waves during this period, no serious issues with regard to neutral commerce arose, neither in the Crimean War of 1853-56, nor in the Boer War of 1899-1902. In the meantime, it may be worth observing, the �[Page 139]OUR RELATIONS WITH GREAT BRITAIN 139

United States had given a very considerable extension ta bellige- rent rights in its own blockade of the South during the period of the Civil War. In the Great War interference was more rigorous. Mine-fields were laid, and commerce with neutral nations which might trans-ship to Germany was under rigorous surveillance, and after 1916, under a rationing system. Unquestionably a certain amount of resentment was aroused in this country. But in 1917 when we entered the war, we applied virtually the same rules as the British. We acquiesced and cooperated in a great extension of belligerent rights.

The fact is that in minor wars, where there are many neutrals, it has always been good diplomacy, and British practice, to deal gently with neutral rights. Only in such a great conflict as the World War have rigorous restrictions been applied. In our own great crises we have been no less sweeping in our claims thar. the British. Yet according to Senator Borah, we should now demand the observance by Great Britain of rules which we have flouted ourselves, and if the demand is refused, we should build a super- navy against the possibility of another struggle of the dimensions of the World War. To the British the demand may seem somewhat excessive; to thoughtful Americans the cost of a super-navy, not only in money but in goodwill, may seem infinitely greater than the losses to our commerce which might be sustained in case we were neutral in a new world cataclysm. It might be cheaper to kelp organize the world against a new disaster of the proportion of that of 1914-18. It might be wiser to put our whole effort into the prevention of war rather than to go to extravagant lengths of armament to protect ourselves against the lawlessness of war- ring nations.

The raising of this issue of ‘‘the freedom of the seas’’ seems to me decidedly unfortunate. In reality it is a minor question, since British sea power is usually used with moderation, and since world wars, fortunately, are not normal or even frequent occu- rences in modern international history. A failure to agree on this matter would not justify a tremendous building program on the part of the United States. But, though logic dictates this conclu- �[Page 140]140 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

sion, there is no telling what is ahead of us. A request for the President to negotiate treaties in protection of neutral rights was tacked on to the cruiser bill in the Senate. American public opin- ion may conceivably become much interested in this question. Britain may be reluctant to accede to our views. A new propaganda of navalism may follow.

Let us suppose, however, that the American people, despite Senator Borah’s rather incendiary comments, refuse to become excited over this question. What is the outlook on the basis of such an assumption? That depends, it must frankly be said, on British rather than American public opinion. For the moment, in the passage of the fifteen-cruiser bill, the big-navy advocates in this country have attained all that they can realize. We now have parity in total tonnage with Great Britain. But we have more 10,000-ton cruisers than the British, and the British big-navy men may wish to build up to us in this specific class of vessei. If they have their way, they will stimulate new demands on the part of American navalists. Therein might lie real danger.

On the other hand, it may be possible to come to an agree- meut with the British government on the basis of the status quo. It may be possible to provide that there shall be no more building on either side except for replacements. It is certainly to be hoped that such an agreement can be arrived at. If it were, the naval question would lose its terrors, and recede into the background.

In a still broader view of Anglo-American relations, there are certain disquieting and certain reassuring factors. There are elements in this country that are persistently, tenaciously and often stridently anti-British. They carry very real weight. In the fierce commercial competition of this post-war era, trade rivalries are sure to develop, and may serve as a focus of dangerous irritation. Mr. Ludwell Denny has dealt effectively with one aspect of this problem in his interesting book, ‘‘The Fight for Oil."’ But, on the other hand, there are certain hopeful signs. There is, for example, a robust peace sentiment here in the United States. The influence of the British Dominions will almost invariably be exerted in favor of accommodation with this coun- �[Page 141]OUR RELATIONS WITH GREAT BRITAIN I4!I

try. Canada, in particular, knows how to value its close economic and spiritual relationship with its neighbor, and will be the vigilant guardian of good relations between its mother-country and the great American republic. Nor can there be left out of account either the strong sentimental feeling in favor of good relations with America which so frequently discloses itself in Britain, or, still more important, the shrewd realism of British ‘statesmanship, which understands the significance of the im- mense material power of the United States. A quarrel with this country might be too disastrous to Great Britain for it to be willingly courted.

Yet the feeling that the British in the long run will make concessions rather than fight ought not to lead the United States into the dangerous course of arrogance. Nations, like individuals, give way to passion. A blustering and bullying tone on the part of the American State Department may do infinite harm, may casily embitter relations to the point of new competitions in armament, and might even lead to war. We owe it to ourselves as a great nation to set an example of moderation and restraint in our relations with every other people in the world, not the least in our relations with that people from whom we derive our language, so much of our culture, and so many of our common ideals. �[Page 142]eens ae ee

YOUTH AND THE MODERN WORLD Edited by

IsABELLA VAN METER

• • Above and beyond all war and death és our deep yearning for the time when we shall be able to work side by

side with the youth of the whole world.”

During the crucial years since the European war, the youth of the world has been gathering its force as if for a supreme struggle with the militant, destructive past. Repudiating alike its inherit- ance of institutions, customs and ideals, the generation now assuming manhood and womanhood in East and West is gradually creating the substance of a different way of life, a new outlook, destined to form a new civilization. Viewed from the ranks of those molded by the past, this manifestation of youth has appeared one of the most tragic, misguided, even sinister of social phenomena, since its triumph must involve the overthrow of so much that mank ind has done and been. The statement of youth itself, so far as youth has yet defined its own energies, experiences and directions, will te!! a different story. In this department World Unity Magazine will publish from time to time brief articles expressing the outlook of youth, by youth itself, on those vital issues which are recur-eat from age to age.

MODERN JUDAISM

by BENJAMIN MANDELKER Columbia University

N LOOKING back over the history of the Reform Movement in Judaism, it seems that the German Jews, who started it in the middle of the nineteenth century, found themselves con- fronted by a traditional Judaism, which, like the dragon in

Nietzsche’s ‘‘Zarathustra’’ cried, ‘‘Thou shalt.’’ And, being themselves in the second of the three metamorphoses, they roared back lion-like, “‘I will!’’ and then proceeded to tear off the golden scales glittering with ‘‘the values of a thousand years.’’ Thus, from its inception, the Reform Movement has been essentially a ‘‘Holy Nay.’’ As such, the movement deserves honor. But, the reformers have all but stopped with the ‘‘Nay.”’ Throughout the seventy-five years of the existence of the move- ment, they seem to have failed to realize that the function of the

142 �[Page 143]MODERN JUDAISM 143

‘‘lion’’—their function—is but to prepare the road for the ‘‘child."’ They have succeeded so well with the ‘‘Nay’’ that they have made but very little attempt at turning it into the ‘‘Holy Yea."’

Judaism had need of reform in the middle of the nineteenth century. To meet the changed and changing world’s demands, it needed the reform of the “‘lion.’’ Judaism still has need of reform. But henceforth it must be a creative process. The re- formers have torn down the old building instead of patching it up—a very fine thing. What is needed now is an inspection of the old bricks and an evaluation of the new ones in order to decide which of them will stand use again in the new structure. Fox, in the destructive process the reformers have disclosed at the core of Judaism that very social gospel which is at present needed. In the little creation they have done, they have brought to Judaism some of the philosophic concepts which are essentia! in the modern world. But, at the same time, their elimination of certain elements has almost completely emasculated the religion so far as xsthetic values are concerned.

The constructive side of the Reform Movement has been marked by a few, but very important, accomplishments. Thc modernists have, during the past seventy-five years, succeedec! in inculcating into Judaism a new philosophy. In doing so, perhaps their greatest contribution has keen in bringing before the Jew the idea that his religion is a progressive one. The statc- ment issued by the Rabbinical Conference at Pittsburgh (1885 5, “We recognize in Judaism a progressive religion, ever striving to be in accord with the postulates of reason.’’ (Cesterley and Box—Religion and Worship of the Synagogue—p. 154), is one of utmost importance and has had a universal effect upon the Jews of all denominations, especially because to it was added the remark, ‘‘We are convinced of the utmost necessity of preserving the historical identity with our great past.’’ A similar attitude has been taken to the Bible, and it has had as important an effect since it is almost a corollary of the other statement. The Rabbis at Pittsburgh supported this concept of the Bible—(éZéd. p. 153 )— ‘‘We recognize in the Bible the record of the consecration of tie �[Page 144]144 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

Jewish people to its mission as the priests of God, and value it as the most potent instrument of religious and moral instruc- tion. We hold that the modern discoveries of scientific researches in the domain of nature and history are not antagonistic to the doctrines of Judaism, the Bible reflecting the primitive ideas of its own age, and at times clothing its conception of Divine prov- idence and justice dealing with man in miraculous narratives."

Of course, to one who has read Maimonides, it is evident that the reformers have added nothing really new to the tradi- tion, but have merely revived the doctrines of the twelfth cen- tury scholastic. He, too, insisted upon the progressive nature of the religion, the importance of making it accord with reason and science, and the necessity of freely interpreting the Bible. Still, to impress upon the modern Jew, who had become ac- customed to the finalism of the Talmud, the concept of a growing and living religion, was a great accomplishment and one that was absolutely essential. Similarly, getting rid of the literal finalism of the Bible was a great and essential step. Maimonides, faced by a situation very much like our own, had to turn to these ideas for his solution. We can do no better. And so Maimonides must be called the father of liberal Judaism, just as Thomas has been claimed as the first of the Catholic Modernists.

The second great philosophic contribution, which is the emphasis upon the socialistic aspect of Judaism, may be either considered as novel or as merely the result of removing accre- tions which have hidden it heretofore. In either case, this emphasis is what is essential to religion in the modern industrial society. The conference at Pittsburgh stated it in this way (ébid. p. 154), ‘In full accordance with the spirit of Mosaic legislation, which strives to regulate the relations between rich and poor, we deem it our duty to participate in the great task of modern times, to solve, on the basis of justice and righteousness, the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society... When this is combined with the attempt to bring Judaism back to its pure state—the state where, before the coming of otherworldliness, the Kingdom of God was �[Page 145]MODERN JUDAISM 145

within and to be found in this world—we find that the reformers have, by adding new elements and changing the emphasis on others, succeeded in meeting one of the requirements made upon religion in our day. For, the Rabbinical Conference at Pittsburgh also issued this principle (sbéd. p. 154), ‘‘We reassert the doctrine of Judaism that the soul is immortal, grounding the belief on the divine nature of the human spirit, which ever finds bliss in righteousness and misery in wickedness. We reject, as ideas not rooted in Judaism, the beliefs both in bodily resurrection and in Gehenna and Eden (Hell and Paradise) as abodes for everlasting punishment and reward.’’ This statement is not only in accord- ance with the basic Jewish concept of Sin—for as Oesterley and Box put it (p. 277), ‘In many respects the Jewish doctrine of Sin is sublime’’—but, it is essentially the attitude expressed by Maimonides in the ‘‘Mishnah Torah.’’ And it is, moreover, an interpretation of judgment and immortality which is demanded by our generation.

In fine, we have seen that Reform Judaism is well on its way to establishing a gospel of social progress and welfare, one of the two things which the religion of the day must do. But, when we turn to the other phase of its activity, its destructive phase, we find another picture to paint, the picture of failure. On the destructive side, the movement has been characterized by an attempt to rid traditional Judaism of all that is empty and meaningless in the ritual. All of the Mosaic legislation other than the moral laws, as well as the Rabbinical laws, are rejected by the reformers (See Oesterley and Box, p. 153). They have also attempted to cleanse the prayers and the ritual attached to them of all that is meaningless in them. And finally they have tried co remove from Judaism those things which they believe to be superstitions that have crept into it from other sources. On the surface, all this seems perfectly laudable. And, perhaps, if carried through otherwise and with more appreciation of the values in so many of the external forms of the Jewish ritual, it would be. But, as it is, they have emasculated the religion.

In their rabid destruction, which seems as though it were �[Page 146]146 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

being carried on just for the sake of destruction itself, the modern- ists have completely changed the attitude of the Jew towards his religion. H. G. Wells says in his ‘‘Joan and Peter,’’ ‘‘If a little boy has grown up in a home, in the sort of home which one might describe as God-fearing, if he has not only heard of God but seen God as a living influence upon the people about him, then—then, I admit, you have something real. He will believe in God. He will know God. God, simply because of the faith about him, will be a knowable reality. God is faith. In men. Such a boy’s world will fall into shape about the idea of God. He will take God as a matter of course. Such a boy can be re- ligious from childhood.’’ Such is the ideal of the traditional Judaism, and the home of the intelligent orthodox Jew is such a home, the religion of his child is such a religion. And the reason for that is the ritual. ‘‘The important moments in the life of the Jew from birth to death, are all invested with the religious sanction and a religious significance. The atmosphere into which the Jewish child is born, and in which ig grows up, is crowded with associations, symbols and observances which are bound up with the past religious history of the race.’ (Oesterley and Box, p. 293.) For the effect of this environment upon the religion and life of the Jew see the rest of this chapter on ‘‘The Education and Life of the Jew’’—Ch. XIV. On the other hand, the home of the reform Jew is anything but such as Wells describes. The child of such a family hears of God but has never seen Him as a living influence upon any of the people about him. Religion has become a thing divorced from his daily life, just as it has become divorced from the lives of those about him. As a result, he never knows God and his world never falls into shape about the idea of God. Thus Reform Judaism is failing to accom- plish the one thing which makes religion what it must be—a truly vital matter. For, unless one’s whole life is polarized through and through by the feeling that Wells speaks of, even William James would admit religion becomes an empty thing, hollow and meaningless.

Thus, the reformers in attempting to remove empty forms �[Page 147]MODERN JUDAISM 147

from Judaism, have reduced the whole religion to an empty form. The change in attitude which I have just described is the result of the destruction of the ritual customs of the tradition. And this in turn has arisen out of a complete misunderstanding of the meaning of these. The orthodox Jew welcomes the re- strictions and hardships impesed upon him with a kind of ecstatic joy. The Reform Jew looks at these and sees only burdens—over- looking all of the beauty in them. And so, he proceeds to rob Judaism of the rich storehouse of beauty and emotion which is to be found in the traditional prayers, observances, festivals and fasts. Perhaps the clearest example of such misunderstanding leading to such results is to be found in the reduction of the Sabbath to a meaningless, empty shell of its former self. In speak- ing of the observance of the Sabbath, Oesterley and Box say, ‘It is a mistake to suppose that the Sabbath-rest of the Jews is to them a rigorous and exacting observance, so austere in its demands as to kill out all joy and loveliness. On the contrary, it appeals to the real Jew as a divinely given rest from the tur- moil and bitter opposition of a hostile world. It is—and always has been among the Jews—a festal observance. The more op- position and persecution have crystallized without, the more passionate has the attachment of the Jew become to what he regards as the most precious legacy of his national past. . . . One of the most beautiful expressions of Jewish sentiment about the Sabbath is to be found in the hymn sung every Friday evening in the Synagogue in which the Sabbath is compared to a bride, and bidden to come to her husband who awaits her—the Al- mighty.”’

When one considers such examples of the foolish destructive- ness of the Reform movement, it is difficult not to feel that probably we have here only another illustration of Bernard Shaw's interpretation of the reformation of religions. Shaw assures us in his preface to ‘‘Androcles and the Lion’’ that the evolution of religion has been ‘“‘essentially a movement for cheap or entirely gratuitous salvation.’ The modern movement in Judaism has never been cheap or gratuitous in the monetary �[Page 148]148 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

sense. But, it has been making salvation easier. The German Jew organizes the Reform Synagogue. Stephen Wise forms the Free Synagogue. His son breaks from his father and begins ““liberalizing liberal Judaism.’’ Perhaps these men are serious, I think they are. But, though they may be interested in reforming the religion in order to make a finer, better, and richer thing of it; certainly it seems as though their followers are merely moral cowards, who, lacking the strength to stand by the tradition in the face of all the social pressure that is brought to bear upon them, and similarly lacking the strength to kick the bucket over completely, have saved some few shreds of the old religion and have evolved an easy, cheap religion which requires no hardships whatever for them to undergo in the society in which they move or should like to move.

Hence, we can safely say that, while the reformers have succeeded in bringing into Judaism those concepts which are essential to anyone who is familiar with modern science and philosophy, they have not succeeded in preserving the beauties inherent in the tradition. And, since ie study of the religions of the past cannot but convince one that both of these are essential to a truly vital religion, I believe that the task of the ‘‘child’’ who is to come after the ‘‘Jion’’ must be, not so much a ‘‘new beginning,’’ as a synthesis of the beauty of the old and the philosophy of the new. And, this the child must do, not only in the Jewish tradition, but also in the Christian. For, if anything at all has been shown by this study of Jewish modernism, it is that the movement is, in all respects, the parallel of the contemporary developments in Catholicism and Protestantism. They have all tried to save themselves from being crowded out of our civilization by the wealth of new interests that industrial society has brought. The way in which they have done so has been by assimilating and incorporating as many of these interests as possible. Thus we find the reformed Synagogues as well as the modern churches giving dances for the younger members and having prominent lecturers address the members weekly. In order not to be destroyed by philosophic, scientific, or historical �[Page 149]MODERN JUDAISM 149

criticism, they have adapted themselves to these developments. And we find that the Bible has come to be viewed in the light of the higher criticism, the story of Genesis has been reinterpreted in the light of the theory of evolution, miracles have become allegories, and immortality has become Platonic. But, throughout the process, they have tended more and more to obliterate the pulsating emotion which hides behind so many of the outer forms of the old traditions. And the problem is, how to bring these values back into the religion. I have no solution to offer —if I did, I should go out and preach it to a_ benighted humanity and, perhaps, even organize another church of my own. Still, a solution must come eventually, for, without it religion must die at the hands of both the modernists and the orthodox, and such an eventuality, in the light of the history of mankind, seems impossible; in the light of the values in re- ligion, it would be deplorable.

v �[Page 150]QR OBROCANDR ODER

THE RISING TIDE

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

Edited by

Joun Herman Ranpa tt, Jr. Department of Philosophy, Columbia University

The Meaning of the Pact of Paris

HE treaty signed by the governments of fifteen nations in

Paris on August 27, 1928, has awakened widely divergent reactions in the minds of thoughtful students of inter- national affairs. By some it has been denounced as the

most dangerous endorsement of war the world has ever seen. To some it has appeared as a meaningless piece of hypocritical demagoguery. Some have gratefully accepted it, but have doubted both its practical effectiveness and its exact meaning. Some have seen in it the definite turning of the world from darkness to light. The private American who has been most closely associated with the whole plan to renounce war as an instrument of national policy, Professor James T. Shotwell, has set down his own account of the steps leading to the adoption of the Pact of Paris and his interpretation of its meaning and limitations.’ His chapters on the diplomatic history from the Briand offer to the signing of the treaty are a model both of exposition and of modesty. Still more important, however, to the thoughtful reader is the sober analysis Professor Shotwell gives of the Pact and its implications in the light of history and of contemporary politics. It is hardly too much to say that here is an authoritative statement of what the Treaty was intended to accomplish, in

1 James T. Shotwell, War as an Instrument of National Policy, Harcourt, Brace and Company. x, 310 pages. $3.50. 150 �[Page 151]THE MEANING OF THE PACT OF PARIS 1§t

the minds of its American formulators at least. And what strikes the reader most of all is the critical sense of international realities displayed on every page.

Professor Shotwell emphasizes the immemorial hold of the method of warfare in the dealings of sovereign states, and the theory implicit in all international law that both in declaring war and in conducting it the state is tlic sole judge of its own actions. He makes it plain how deeply European nations have felt the necessity of employing this implement, and how hard it has been’ for Americans in their isolation to comprehend European needs. At the same time, he points out how modern scientific and technological advances have made it necessary to discover another method of international policy. Just as slavery was abolished when humanitarian sentiment was reinforced by the needs of industrial society, so war will be renounced because it is no longer an effective instrument in a scientific and indusirial world community. ‘‘The movement for international peace owes its validity, which is real, to the fact that a new civilization has arisen which rests upon the interdependence of nations, and that the prosperity of the present depends upon the buying power of the future. The world of credit is essentially a world of peace. The activities of business now decide most of the major relation- ships within and between societies which formerly were left in the last resort to the instrument of war. If we are to have world peace, it is because the world has turned that corner in history when civilized societies need peace for their continued existence and find the instrument of war no longer pertinent."’

Under the old conditions, when the world was not a single unit, war was controllable or relatively so. It was possible for a nation to remain neutral merely by refusing to fight. ‘‘Under these conditions the place of war in political theory was well defined. It was a legitimate exercise of sovereignty, the final argument, the altima ratio, of governments. It established or enforced policies of state, and was therefore a usable instrument with calculable results."’

In modern warfare, however, there is no keeping events �[Page 152]192 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

within bounds. ‘‘War is today as uncertain in its direction as in its intensity, or its spread. It is no longer a safe instrument for statesmanship under such c.:.umstances; it is too d2ngerous to employ. Victor and victim may suffer a common disaster. Its effects reach even into the unformed future, and rob the savings of generations yet unborn. In short, war which was once a directable instrument of policy has now changed its nature with the nature of modern society and ceases to be controllable and directable in the hands of statesmen. By reason of its all-embrac- ing needs, it becomes a contagion among the nations; and one cannot safely use a contagion as an instrument."’

That war has ceased to be an effective means of achieving any policy was the supreme lesson of the World War. ‘“The World War has, after all, taught its full lesson to the generation that has suffered from it. The will to peace is paramount in the civi- lized world; and it is in this fact that the strength of the Pact of Paris resides.’’ Professor Shotwell gives it as his sober judgment that it was the rising tide of public opinion that was directly responsible for the negotiations that led to the Pact. Thoughtful men everywhere have come to realize that ‘‘war has become a futile instrument incapable of direction and therefore criminal in use. A new attitude is forcing its way in international politics, as it also is revealing itself in the world of business and internal economics,—one which seeks to substitute for ruthless com- petition some measure of cooperation, so that each member of the community of nations may have a larger share in an increas- ing common good. This change in attitude is itself a fact of history. This means that a world community is emerging, based upon the solid ground of joint and common interests. But it is only just emerging, and is still in the early stages of development."’

The significance of the Pact must not be exaggerated. ‘‘Even if it be all that can be claimed for it, it still remains far short of a complete embodiment of reform. The instruments of inter- national justice are not yet perfected, and the Pact of Paris leaves this problem unsolved. But although the Pact of Paris is in itself only the embodiment of a single phase of the movement to �[Page 153]THE MEANING OF THE PACT OF PARIS 1§3

eliminate international war, it has so challenged the imagination of the world as to become—for the day at least—a sort of symbol of the larger movement.’’ Yet its value seems to Professor Shot- well much more than merely symbolic. ‘“There is all but universal agreement on the need for war-renunciation by the civilized Powers. The question is not therefore any longer a moral issue, since there is practical agreement as to what should be done; it is almost wholly a matter of ways and means. The Pact of Paris must be judged, not merely as an expression of international morals, as some of its friends have tried to interpret it, but as the effective embodiment of political realities; unless it has some practical value, it has little value at all.”’

Professor Shotwell believes that the reservations with which the various nations accompanied their adherence to the Pact were not real reservations striking at the Pact, but mere ex- planations and interpretations that might well have been em- bodied in the original text. ‘‘It cannot be said that there was any conditional signature—with a possible exception of one British proviso—which was not in Mr. Kellogg's list of explanations.’’ The exception is the British insistence ox « five hand in certain unspecified regions of the world whose integrity is regarded as essential to Imperial defense,—the so-called ‘‘British Monroe Doctrine."’ Professor Shotwell insists that this reservation re- ferred only to Egypt, and merely states long-existing realities.

He also insists that although the complex problem of de- fining aggressive war was wisely avoided, the Pact does define such war without a formal definition. He believes the only adequate definition of an act of aggression must be in terms, not of violence, but of the violation of a specific pledge to resort to other methods of settlement. Aggression thus escapes the analysis of grievances, and concerns only the method employed to redress them. The Pact does commit the nations to settle their disputes without war. To be sure, it recognizes the right of self- defense, and states that each nation ‘‘is alone competent to decide whether circumstances require recourse to war in self-defense."’ This, insists Professor Shotwell, is the real reservation to the �[Page 154]1§4 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

Pact; the others are of slight importance. ‘‘It is in this connection that one sees how much less of a guarantee of peace lies in the Pact of Paris than in the Covenant of the League, which provides a machinery of investigation for the hour of crisis, and by re- calling the obligation to employ it instead of arms for the settle- ment of disputes forces an application of the test of aggression then and there. The choice under the League is definite and clear, a commission of investigation awaits each international dis- order; the Pact of Paris merely states that pacific means—the vaguest of terms—should be employed instead of war. As a practical measure, therefore, the Pact is by no means so well implemented for effective action as the Covenant of the League.”’ This reservation, however, is an honest statement of both the American and the British point of view. ‘‘The world would have to leave the United States free to judge on its own account as to which nation, in case of war, had violated the juristic frontier of its given word. But at least this much would be accomplished, that any war in the future will be judged not so much with reference to the ends to be attained by it as with reference to the method used for attaining those ends. The legitimacy of war is denied by the Pact of Paris, and the use of the illegitimate method is henceforth aggression."’

There is no legal obligation to enforce peace in the Pact; any belligerent nation is merely ‘‘denied the benefits furnished by this treaty.’’ This is a warning that no belligerent can in the future count on American benevolent neutrality. There is a moral obligation not to frustrate measures of peace; and Professor Shotwell sees in this the commitment of the United States to such support as it deems wise to give to League decisions. The Pact therefore supplies the solution to the American attitude toward the League. It also, in his opinion, solves the old problem of the freedom of the seas; for with war illegitimate no inter- ference with neutral commerce can become legitimate. He be- lieves that Britain is on the point of admitting and accepting this view, thus reversing its historic position.

Finally, ‘‘giving up war as an instrument of policy must �[Page 155]THE MEANING OF THE PACT OF PARIS 155

mean either the strengthening of other instruments or, if they are not adequate, the invention or discovery of new ones.’’ While recognizing the value of juristic measures, like arbitration and the World Court, he inclines to emphasize rather the political measures of conciliation and conference. He feels that to outlaw war is not nearly so important as to renounce it in questions, not of Jaw, but of policy. Means for adjusting international policy, as distinguished from international law, must be both permanent and centralized; they have been most adequately developed by the League. *‘We come back to the point already mentioned, that the chief instrument of international settlement in political questions, namely, international conference, is an instrument which has not .yet been defined for us by any document com- parable to the statute which provided the World Court with its constitution or defined its powers, or even the earlier constitution of the so-called Court of Arbitration at The Hague. Lacking this, we are at a double disadvanta‘ as a result of our absence from Geneva where the technique is taking shape."’ It is clear that in Professor Shotwell’s mind the renunciation of war as an instru- ment of national policy by the United States should logically lead to the employment of the machinery of the League of Nations as the only adequate alternative. �[Page 156]QYROIDNE ON DLO GO

TONGUES OF FIRE*

reviewed by

ALFRED W. MarTIN Society for Esbical Culture, New York

HIs is the first extensive venture in the field of literature by Miss Turnbull, already widely known as a painter and sculptress. Her book is the outcome of a lifelong interest in what she describes as ‘‘that most absorbing of subjects,

man's relation to the world of spirit."’

Her desire was to make representative selections from a widely inclusive body of scriptures accessible to laymen and scholars. Her avowed purpose, as stated on the jacket of the book, is ‘‘to make a contribution toward a better understanding of the alien races who have sought and are still seeking the one true God; a greater sympathy and charity between countries, sects, times and creeds.”"

A most commendable purpose indeed, but was she not un- fortunate in her choice of the word ‘‘pagan"’ as applied to those scriptures and to the peoples who compose the non-Jewish and non-Christian worlds? Doubtless she meant to use the word merely as a convenient term wherewith to describe these peoples and scriptures, but surely the so-called pagans must resent the use of the term and we resent it for them. That classification of religions, which puts Christianity in a class by itself as ‘‘the one true Divine religion’ and labels all the other great religions ‘‘pagan’’ ought by this time to be obsolete, because the revela- tions of comparative religion have abolished all warrant for such a distinction. And so one cannot but deplore the perpetuation of the term ‘‘pagan’’ as it appears on the cover and in the preface

• Tongues of Fire, a Bible composed of Sacred Scriptures of the Pagan World, compiled by

Grace H. Turnbull. Macmillan. $3.50.

156 �[Page 157]TONGUES OF FIRE 1§7

and again in the introduction of Miss Turnbull’s compilation. It suggests that she has not yet made the transition from tolerance to appreciation, a composite of insight, justice and love, pre- cluding the possibility of using such a term as ‘‘pagan,’’ or such a phrase as ‘‘the natural Christianity of the heathen,’’ in speaking of non-Christian faiths. Miss Turnbull's selections include pas- sages from the sacred literature of the Egyptians, Accadians, Babylonians, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Confucians, Tao- ists and Mohammedans, together with quotations from Xeno- phon, Plato, Plotinus, Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. In reviewing the selections from these various sources, we miss many a fine passage with which we are familiar, but this is in- evitably the case with any anthology which as the writer says must be ‘‘in the last analysis the personal choice of the compiler.’ �[Page 158]QR ODS ORD SOLON

WORLD UNITY CONFERENCES

Under the Auspices of World Unity Foundation

The World Unity Conferences are a medium by which responsible leaders of opinion can convey their message to the public without restriction of race, class, nationality or creed. Upholding the ideals of brotherhood found in all religious and ethical teachings, the Conferences strive to quicken the spiritual resources of the community by bringing upon one platform gifted speakers representing the universal outlook and capable of interpreting the meanings of the new age. World Unity Con- ferences are held at frequent intervals in cities of the United States and Canada, and this educational activity will be extended as soon as possible to Europe. A distinctive feature of the Conferences consists in the local World Unity Councils, composed of leading liberals, established in the various cities to further the world unity ideal. This department will publish the programs and report the activities of the World Unity Conferences and Councils.

Meetings Held at Springfield, Massachusetts April 8, 9 and 10, 1929

Three meetings were held at Spring- field, in Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, Fred Winslow Adams, min- ister. The first meeting, on Monday, April 8, was an informal conference on World Unity, to set forth the pur- pose of the World Unity program and relate it to local needs and condi- tions. The chairman of this meeting was Dr. Adams, leader of discussion, Dr. John Herman Randall, Director of World Unity Foundation. The program on April 9 included an ad- dress on ‘Racial Differences and World Unity’’ by Frank H. Hankins, Ph.D., of the Department of Soci- ology, Smith College, and an address by Dr. Randall on ‘‘The Birth of a World and Its Implications for the Twentieth Century.’’ Dr. Lawrence L. Doggett, President of Interna- tional Y. M. C. A. College, presided at this session, On Wednesday, April 10, Dr. Randall served as chairman,

158

the speakers being Mr. Alfred W. Martin, of the Society for Ethical Culcure, New York, who delivered an address on ‘“The New Internation- alism,”’ and Dr. James Gordon Gilkie, of South Congregational Church, whose subject was ‘‘Strengthening the Forces for World Friendship.”’

• ¢ &

Three World Unity Conferences held at Toledo, Ohio, January 18, were not listed in the Conference program published in the February issue of World Unity Magazine. Ad- dresses on world unity were delivered by Mrs. Ruth Moffatt, Field Secre- tary of World Unity Foundation, and Dr. Herbert A. Miller, Department of Sociology, University of Ohio, be- fore the League of Women Voters, the Women’s Club aad the Chamber of Commerce. �[Page 159]

QYRIZODSOZLON DSCREN EG)

NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

Is the American farmer, through the inertia of an out-dated individual- ism, the chief menace to the large scale production system which has become the physical basis of the post-war world? Or is he the victim of our modern sense of organization which has revolutionized the manu- facture of all articles of luxury, and most utilities, but has perversely and blindly neglected the most important product of all?

Mr. C. F. Ansley, by virtue of actual experience, typifies the Amer- ican farmer, but he is an agricultural expert whose knowledge of farm problems and farm life is allied to a rare humanism, a profound feeling for the true values of civilization, a rich intimacy with the movements of history, and first hand acquaint- ance with the mechanical advances of the modern city. The matured opinion of such a spokesman, that the American farmer has become a national peril, and that his essential problem is misrepresented by most of those responsible for bringing for- ward a solution, challenges every- one at all concerned with the devel- opment of order and stability in human affairs. Readers of World Unity Magazine ate requested to bring to tite attention of the editors the names c¥ individuals and organizations who

should be particularly interested in Mr. Ansley's article.

es * *&

The editors take pleasure in noting the Ninth Unity History School, under the direction of Mr. F. S. Marvin, a prospectus of which has been re- ceived. This School represents an ex- pression of creative scholarship and liberalism in England, and the pub- lished volumes reprinting papers read at the sessions of the School form an important part of the literature now coming into being under the impulse of international understanding and peace.

The ninth session will take place at Danzig, from Tuesday, July 30, to Tuesday, August 6, 1929. Special sailings have been arranged from London on July 26 and from Hull on July 27. Further details may be se- cured from the Honorable Secretary, Mrs. K. E. Innes, B.A., 29 High Oaks Road, Welwyn Garden City, Herts., England.

Mr. Marvin, whose cooperation as Contributing Editor has been greatly appreciated, had an article on ‘“The Transformation of Society’’ in World Unity for February, 1929, and will be represented by two additional articles in the near future.

159 �[Page 160]ARE CULTURAL MAGAZINES fulfilling their mission?

“x

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But a world view is not merely the antithesis of parochialism in social exclu- siveness—it must likewise transcend the more subtle and sinister parochialism of limited thought content. To attempt a world view in terms of economic determinism is as provincial as to attempt it in terms of racial or national supremacy.

World Unity Magazine represents an effort to visualize the future in the pres- ent. Ic deals with ideas as impulses to useful action. It seeks to preserve balance among dynamic forces of unknown range and significance. Its aim is reality— success or failure depends upon achieving this aim, not in pleasing or shocking any particular group.

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162 �[Page 162]Current Books on World Unity

WAR AS AN INSTRUMENT OF NATIONAL POLICY

by James T. SHOTWELL

An account of the steps leading to the adoption of the Pact of Paris and an interpretation of its meaning and limi- tations. Reviewed in the current issue of World Unity.

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THE OUTLAWRY OF WAR

by CHARLES CLAYTON Morrison

Now that the Peace Pact is signed, read the one authoritative, historic book upon the outlawry move- ment.

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by Burris JENKINS

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A symposium edited by CHARLES A. Bearp. Reviewed in the De- issue of World

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RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN THE LAST QUARTER CENTURY

by GERALD B. SMITH

“A symposium which gives an accurate and invaluable picture of the intellectual currents in contemporary liberal Prot- estantism.”—John Herman Randall, Jr., in World Unity, February, 1929.

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THE SCANDAL OF CHRISTIANITY

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162

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�[Page 163]

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RELIGION AND THE MODERN WORLD

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“probably the most dynamic treatment of the modern religious complex which has yet been published in our country. .. . It is bound to freshen and enliven discussion in this field.”

RELIGION AND THE MODERN WORLD—just published —is the first book in the “Religion and the Modern Age” Series, edited by Dr. John Herman Randall, Director of World Unity Foundation and Editor of World Unity Magazine. Until the publication of this Series there had been no systematic attempt to deal, briefly and clearly, with the problems of present-day religious life in the light of modern knowledge and modern social conditions.

What interests the man of today is not how much traditional doctrine he can still believe, but something far more: it ie what organization of the religious life, intellectual, emotional and social, will best serve the religious needs of men living in our present age.

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