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WORLD UNITY
INTERPRETING LHE SPIRIT OF THE AGE
JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, Editor Horace HOutey, Managing Editor
CONTENTS
Vol. IX NOVEMBER, 1931 No. 2 Baroness Bertha von Suttner Frontispiece The leaders Face Realities Editorial Why East and West Are Different. I. . Grover Clark Apostles of World Unity
XXXIL Ludwik L. Zamenhof Lidja Zamenhof
International Language Helen S. Eaton The League of Nations and the U. S. III. Elizabeth Bassett Orient and Occident. IT. Hans Kohn Phe Novel of the War Years. I. Evelyn Newman Norld Citizenship and Allegiance Carl A. Ross [he Disarmament Conference Alfred E. Guest [he American Peace Movement Russell M. Cooper
The Peace Leaders Reply Round Table
(Contents indexed in the International Index to Periodicals)
VortD Unity MAGazine is published by Wortp UNity PUBLISHING CoRPORA- ton, 4 East 12th Street, New York City: Mary Rumsey Movius, president; 1 onack HOLLEY, tice-president; FLORENCE Morton, treasurer; JOHN HERMAN
NDALL. secretary. Published monthly, 25 cents a copy, $2.50 a year in the
‘ited States and in all other countries (postage included). THE Wortp Unity
\HLISHING CORPORATION and its editors welcome correspondence on articles
tlated to the aims and purposes of the magazine. Printed in U. S. A. Contents
opyrighted 1931 by Wortp UNITY PUBLISHING CORPORATION.
�[Page 74]
BARONESS BERTHA VON SUTTNER Apostle of World Unity
(ee Weed Listy Maraxzine, be S )
�[Page 75]THE LEADERS FACE REALITIES
CAEN EDITORIAL
VER since the Hoover Moratorium went into effect last June
there have been increasing signs that at last political leaders,
bankers and industrialists in all countries were beginning to
face realities. The grave exigencies of the world’s economic depression, growing more and more serious as the summer ad- vanced, have forced political theories and nationalistic ambitions more and more into the background as the economic realities have assumed supreme importance. Whatever else results from Presi- dent Hoover's action last June there is no doubting the fact that our traditional policy of “splendid isojation” has once for all been abandoned.
For ten years under the Harding, the Coolidge and the Hoover administrations we have pretended that the United States could remain forever aloof, and that Germany, France, England and all the rest of Europe could stew in their own juices so far as we were concerned. Foreign attairs were to be none of our business. The League of Nations was anathema, it was a matter of indifterence whether we joined the World Court or not. We might send “ofh- cial observers” to occasional conferences, but Europe would have to solve her own problems quite apart from us. As Thomas L. Chadbourne has phrased it, “The chief trouble with the United Stutes—the prime cause of the evils that have betallen us—ts a very definite Colonial complex. Our so-called leaders all act as if they had just returned from hearing George Washington deliver his Farewell Address, and our policies have been based upon the quaint
—-
�[Page 76]76 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINB
assumption that there has been nothing new in economic relations since the days of Daniel Boone.”
All this, however, now belongs to a past that is gone. When Secretary of State, Mr. Stimson, and Secretary of the Treasury, Mr Mellon, went to Europe this summer, they went without any disguise whatever, and admitted frankly and without any embarrassmcat that they were doing official business for their country. Let us admit it frankly—we are back in Europe officially because our interests drove us there. We no longer dare to let Europe stew in its own juices because we know that the fate of Europe is inextricably bound up with the fate of the United States. All intelligent men know that our selling capacity is absolutely dependent upon the buying power of a prosperous Europe.
Following the Moratorium came the report of the Wiggin Commission, later endorsed by the Financial Commission of the League, in which it was recommended among other things that the whole matter of allicd indebtedness, of reparations and of high tariff policies be carefully considered as these were the immediate obstacles to an economic recovery. The financial crisis in England and the decision to suspend the gold standard, at least temporarily, only forced the realities more clearly into the foreground. Then followed the visit of Premier Laval and M. Briand to Berlin, and the resulting Franco-German Commission for Economic Cooper: ation. In October came the “important announcement” from the White House, after consultation with political and business leaders. that aims to widen credit and release frozen assets in this country, with the further announcement that this is only the beginning and that “international problems” are being considered pending the forthcoming visit of Premier Laval to Washington the last of Oc- tober. And now we are informed that Dino Grandi, Foreign Secre- tary for Italy, is to visit Washington early in November. That these conferences with the official representatives of France and Italy are to deal directly with debts, reparations and disarmament, goes without saying, and from them we can only hope for practical results that shall lead to a rationalization of the present world
disorders on a more solid foundation.
J. H.R.
�[Page 77]WHY EAST AND WEST ARE DIFFERENT
hy
GROVER CLARK
Consultant on Par Lartern Afaes
ys AST is East and West is West'’—true enough. But it by no means follows that "never the twain shall meet.” They are meeting now, and have been, with steadily increasing complexity and intimacy of contact, for a century or more. For good or ill, whether we like it or not, steam and electricity have Cut away the barriers of distance which through the long past have kept apart the two main streams of developing civilization. The mutual isolation was not complete, it is true; but, except for essentially incidental contacts here and there, until comparatively recent times, each half of the world went its own way. Now these two channels of civilization are becoming one—and as a result >f that fusion, a new civilization in terms of the world as a whole will develop. If we are intelligently to direct the development ot that civili- zation, to shape mankind's future as we would like it to be, we must inderstand not simply what the differences are between East and \West but also why these differences have arisen. This will require ong and careful study, from many different angles, in many dif- tcrent fields. In this article 1 attempt no more than to suggest one possible approach to that study.
I Of fundamental importance in any civilization is the relative position of the single person and the group. Each of these is a dis-
tinct element in any society, and both are essential. But the balance
ve
�[Page 78]78 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
of power between the group and the single person varies from om civilization to another.
At just this point, in fact, appears one of the fundamenta! differences between the East and the West. In the East, the group is the basic social unit; in the West, the individual holds that place In the East, the single person has had to buy his right to live b: conforming to the group's dictates; in the West, the group ha: had to buy the allegiance of the individual by giving him a large measure of freedom.
Conditions of life, such as the possible food supply. the methods used in getting food and relative congestion of populi tions, continuing more or less unchanged over thousands of years. caused this difference between the positions of the group and the single person. Long betore written history began, almost diametri. cally opposite tvpes of persons were socially most useful among the ancestors of the peoples who have made the present civilizations ot the East and the West. Only within the past century or two has an really significant change in the fundamental conditions of life even begun to develop.
Generation by generation tor thousands of years, human breed ing in the East and the West was along divergent lines. This diver: gence was determined and maintained not primarily by physica. heredity but rather by the continuing pressure of relatively stable but fundamentally different cnvironments. In the circumstances. and since the selective processes conunued over so many genera tions, it is small wonder that what secm to be differences of racial heredity should be developed--though it is casy to over-emphasize these hereditary differences.
i
What, then, was the tundamental ditterence between the con:
ditions of life of the ancestors of the makers of our present eastern
and western civilization’? Put in the brictest possible form, and
leaving detailed illustration until later, the answer is: the people ot
the East got their food. by tarming; those of the West by hunting.
�[Page 79]WHY EAST AND WEsT ARE DIFFERENT 79
Agriculture was the predominant occupation in the Fast. The .gricultural peoples also had their arts and crafts; they hunted: they ‘ought; they traded. But tilling the soil was and still is the chief «cupation and the means of teeding the people.
In this respect, the people of China and India were, of course, ‘ke those who created the early civilization of the Mediterranean pasin—and, apparently, like the creators of the Inca and Aztec
wilizations. It ts not surprising, therefore, that there should be many close parallels between what we call “eastern civilization” and the civilizations of these other regions.
In contrast to these agricultural peoples, the races of northern turope, whose descendants in comparatively recent times have
reated modern western civilization, lived chiefly by hunting. (hrough the thousands of vears during which their basic mental ad physical characteristics were being stamped upon them they sere hunters, fighters, rovers, in the main, not people settled and ved to single plots of land—even though they did have a primitive sort of agriculture. They had little of what we would call civiliza- ‘on; but they did have fairly well marked forms of social organiza- son and wavs of dealing with the kinds of problems which they raced.
Their wavs of life and organization, too, were much like those
‘ peoples elsewhere who lived by essentially the same means—the cating and pastoral peoples in northern Asia and the American vidians, tor example.
In tact, instead of speaking of eastern and western civilization,
© more properly should refer to the civilizations produced by the
‘escendants of farmers and of hunters. Conditions of living, not
-cography, brought about the differences. Nevertheless, as the
vorld is laid out today, it is convenient to speak of “eastern” and
western” as abbreviations for “those parts of the world in which
‘ie present-day civilization was created by people who were chiefly
ericulturalists or their descendants” and “those parts of the world
») which the present-day civilization was created by people who
cre chiefly hunters or their descendants.”
�[Page 80]80 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
There have been contacts between these two main sorts o: peoples. Most of the foundations of art and philosophy and tech nology on which the descendants of the hunters have built moderr. western civilization, too, were laid in agricultural lands—bein, the products of the cultured leisure which the few could secure because there were so many available to produce the necessary food and do the necessary work.
In spite of these contacts, however, the distinction remains legitimate and vital, between the agricultural peoples who fo: thousands of years dominated China, India and the eastern end of the Mediterranean basin, and the hunting peoples who for an equally long time before they even began to be civilized occupiec northern Asia and most of Europe as far south as the Alps. The farmers of the East produced one sort of civilization; the hunter of the West, another sort. We, here, are concerned with the reason: for the differences between those civilizations.
In passing, it seems worth while to remark that the essentia. differences are not affected by the fact that in recent centuries the settled farmer increasingly has come to be the typical Europear rather than the roving fighter and hunter—nor by the further tac that the last century has seen enormous changes in the methods o! life of the ordinary people as a result of the development of mod ern industry and the coming of the ‘machine age.” These change already are beginning to have profound influence toward the re: shaping of forms of social organization and the ways of thinking in the West. But these changes are too relatively recent as yet te have had much effect on the fundamental make-up and attitude toward life which were bred into the Northern European hunters through thousands of years.
IV
One characteristic agricuitural and hunting regions have in
common: the tendency always is for the population to increase up to the limit of the food supply.
This is of considerable significance in determining the difter-
ences between the hunting and the agricultural peoples, since it
�[Page 81]WHY EAST AND WEST ARE DIFFERENT 81
bears directly on the further point of the relative congestion of copulation.
The degree of congestion of population—whether the people ve in large or small communities, whether there are more people than are needed to do the work or not enough, whether the food- oroducing units are large or small—has in large measure deter- vuned the forms of social organization which have been developed, and also fixed the relative position of the group and the single person,
It is obvious that many more people per square mile can get a ving by farming than by hunting. This means that in a given large area an agricultural population will be much more thickly settled ‘hana hunting. It also means that the farmers will live and work
rore and larger single communities than the hunters.
A population of three hundred per square mile, for example, « by no means unusual in long-settled agricultural countries like (hina or India, But as many as fifty per square mile is extreme con- eestion in a region where the people are hunters or nomads, such Arabia or Mongolia, today, or northern Europe a thousand years ico. A city of half a million, too, is not particularly large in India ot China; but a permanent settlement of five thousand was prac- ‘cally unknown until relatively recently in northern Europe.
Vv
One of the direct and important results of the relative conges- n of population in an agricultural country is this: the single -rson as such is of comparatively little importance.
If three or four, or even a dozen or two, died in a farming ‘lage community of five hundred (a small village, in China), for ample, the amount of food produced was not affected. The farm- « got done just the same. In fact, these deaths sometimes were . advantage, for they removed just so many mouths to feed and 't that much more food for the rest.
If a thousand or two were killed out of an army of a hundred
‘ousand—a comparatively small army in the history of India or
ina—it did not matter much. The fighting strength of the army
�[Page 82]82 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
was not materially reduced; and plenty more soldiers were t be had.
Where, too, there were many persons eagerly seeking govern mental positions, it did not matter much if the Emperor had official: beheaded for minor infractions of his whims. The places thus va cated could be filled quickly.
In the agricultural lands with their congested populations. «: brief, the sing!e person as such had no significance whether in pro ducing food, in doing the work of the country, in fighting, in go. ernment administration, or in any of the countless other activities If he did his work well, if he conformed to the rules and tittec himself carefully into the scheme of things, the single person migh: be allowed to live. Otherwise he was killed or thrown out of th group—and he was not particularly missed; except, of course, : the hearts of the few to whom he may have been personally dea:
It is not at all surprising, therefore, that the idea of individus rights, of the value of the individual as such, should not have & veloped in the thickly-settled agricultural Last; nor that the grou: rather than the single person should have come to be the bas. social unit.
Among the hunters, conditions were reversed. Of necessity th. groups were small, for the simple reason that this was the onl way in which food enough could be secured.
The hunting bands—1.e. the food-producing units—in Nort Europe for thousands of years seldom contained more than halt . dozen people. A single self-contained unit-group (not a cor glomeration of such groups that might, taken as a whole, form
“tribe”) which could send out as many as a score of hunters 1 that could have twenty food- producers at work at the same time was large. Contrast this with the three or four hundred workin, farmers in the typical agricultural food-producing unit.
Among the hunters, moreover, a fighting band of one hundre-
effectives was a large army in the ordinary course of things. Th:
Vikings, who spread such terror along the shores of the Nort
Sea, frequently went in partics of a single boat load of fifteen o:
twenty men.
�[Page 83]WHY EAST AND WEST ARE DI} FERENT
B
5
On very special occasions, when a large number of tribes ited in a common Cause, as in some of the wars against the Ro- ns, a8 Many as twenty-five or thirty thousand fighters might be sembled. But such unions were rare, and never lasted long. More an these numbers were involved in such mass movements as those -1 the Huns and the Vandals down into southern Europe, it is true. st these were not movements of a single, united army under a ified command; they were migrations of a mass of small, com- ctely or partially independent bands which happened to be mov- -. more or less together because they were stirred by the same pulses, Even the authority of such leaders as Ghenghis Khan
lumburlaine was of the vaguest except over their immediate HK OWCES,
Several results followed from the relative smallness of the coups among the hunting peoples.
lor one thing, the loss of one eftective hunter or fighter was a
sous matter. When the food of the group depended on the hunt-
ability of three or four men, instead of on the farming efforts of
ce or four hundred men, women and children, the death or
‘cction of one of these food-producers materially reduced the
oply of food. When the entire fighting force was fifteen or
cnty, the loss of even one fighter casily might spell the difference
rscen victory and defeat—between survival and extermination
tor the whole group. |
ior another thing, among the hunters there was every possible
entive to individual initiative and inventiveness. The man who
. invent anew weapon, or a new hunting device, or a new bit
wtbor-saving machinery, was socially extremely useful because
imnercased the working effectiveness of the group.
i'urthermore, just because the numbers were few, the premium
on all-round ability. A certain amount of specialization was
cvitable and necessary. But the man who could hunt and fight
cil as give wise council and invent new tools or strategics, was
willy far more useful than the one who could do only one or two
' these things.
�[Page 84]APOSTLES OF WORLD UNITY
wANTE--Lupwik L. ZAMENHOF .
by
LID JA 7.AMENHOF
N the wall of a small wooden house in the street, called formerly Zielona, now Zamenhof Street, in the city of Bialystok, Poland, there is a tablet, telling, that on the 1st} of December, 1859 in this house was born Dr. Ludwik L Zamenhof, author of the international language Esperanto. Bialvstok is situated in the Eastern part of Poland, where « that time as even now, many races were mixed together, but no: welded into one whole. There were Poles and Russians and Lit uanians and Germans and Jews each of them speaking a different language and hating those who spoke differently than they did A true Tower of Babel with all its evil right in the center of « civilized world. How much hatred merely because of lack of us derstanding! Couldn't it be done away with, if a means of mutus understanding were given to those people? Such an idea penetrated the mind of the young boy, Ludw:: L. Zamenhof, who studied in a school in Bialystok. This idea di not leave him, when together with his family he moved to Wars. in 1873 and entered the middle school there. The thought of an artificial language became the dominating idea of his school ve.rs But how to set to this work, how to overcome thick volumes o: dictionaries, difficulties of grammar? A kind of revelation came upon him, when once he remarked in the street an inscription “Shvayzarskaia” (porter’s lodge) and nearby “Conditorskar (confectionery). These skaia showed him, how the suffixes anc prefixes could just like rays of the sun melt the hard difficulties
S4
�[Page 85]LUDWIK L. ZAMENHOF 85
ot dictionaries. In many languages they are used blindly and un- systematically, as the waters of a cataract, where unlimited powers, able to illuminate the world, are hidden.
When he was in the last class of his middle school, an outline of an artificial language—still very unlike the later Esperanto — was drawn, Some of his school fellows stood by him, but later, as thev “grew up,” they began to ridicule the young linguist, who soon found himself deserted. Some other people too, his father’s triends, advised the latter to take care of his son, lest he get lost in his chimeras and ruin all his future career. And Zamenhof was compelled, when proceeding to his University studies in Moscow i 1870, to put aside his beloved work—for a time. His books and notes were orderly packed and tied and left under his father’s care.
Hunger and misery filled his student's years. The humanitar- ian ideals did not leave his heart, but the promise of postponing them, given to his father, was as a heavy burden on it. For a time the Zionist movement interested him, but it did not satisfy him— he could not limit his feelings to merely one nation.
In summer 1881 he came back to Warsaw te continue there his studies. He asked for his notes—this was a holiday and he wanted to use them for his beloved work. But they were no more there. The careful hand of his father had turned them to ashes; let not his son busy himself with his vain ideas! The blow was hard, yet not deadly. In fact he remembered nearly everything, and soon the whole structure was rebuilt. It took him six years more to perfect and polish his language, before it was ready to be presented to the world. He did not believe grammar and words to be enough to muke up a language; it ought to have a spirit, a melody of its own.
At that time he learned of an artificial language, Volapiik,
invented some years ago by Rev. Schleyer. He rejoiced: so he was
tree, his work having been done by another! But Volapiik per-
ished. It was too hard to learn and so difficult, that not even its
author could speak it fluently. So Volapiik perished, and his own
artificial language had to be presented to the world. But together
with Volapiik’s failure the world’s trust in the possibility of the
�[Page 86]S6 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
creation of an artificial language was extinguished. Nobody woul: risk his money for the issue of a new language.
At that time the young physician married. His family bite in-law, unlike other merchants, had some sentiment for Zamenhot. work, and though not rich himself, helped in the publication « 0: the first book.
It appeared modestly in an inconspicuous form, in 188>. birthdate of the new language. It was entitled simply ‘ Ling rv Internacia,” its author hiding beneath the pseudonym of “Dr. is peranto,” which in his language meant “the one who hopes.” Henc the name of Esperanto, later on applied little by little to the las guage itself. “Ho mia kor ne batu maltrank vile’ —Oh, heart o: mine, don't beat so anxiously—wrote he, when those poor i booklets went to face the scepticism and indifference of the wor! Atter all these vears shall he not vanquish? Shall not the work o: his lite overcome the impression of Volapiik’s tailure and th: negligence of those, who : satisfied with what they have, deem ever: effort for the improvement of the world a folly :
Those little books were as seeds, thrown into the ground Thev disappeared underneath, and may have seemed to be lost to: atime, but the rains came, the sun shone—and out of the blac earth there peeped the green color, the color of Esperanto. Peop) began to take interest in the new language, letters were sent, dis ciples began to gather around the master.
But the voung language needed a careful nursing that it migh grow. Money was wanted.
At that time Zamenhof moved from city to city, trving t establish himself. Together with his wife and two little childre: he was near to misery. Nevertheless he did not refuse to be th. editor of the first Esperanto newspaper, “La Esperantisto,” founde a vear previous!y in Nuremberg. Still financially it was bevond hi: reach: no rich people were then in the movement to support th paper. “La Esperantisto” would most probably ee and eae ap all the fruits of his efforts would be buried for ever! In this difficu: moment ee came a friend, W. H. Trompeter, whose name wi
torever be dear to the FE sperantists. From his poor salary he helpec
A TR gm
6 RTT OMY OD er een, PEON Ho 4 wh oie We PE pansy’ els en ve = .
Ves
�[Page 87]LUDWIK L. ZAMENHOF 87
publication, supporting its existence for some years more. And en some vears later financial difficulties re: uppeared and finally an end to the first Esperantist paper, the fallen standard was on picked up in anothe: place. a Atter 1808 Zamenhof lived in the Jewish quarters of Warsaw, toe street which now is called Zamenhof Street. His practice as vsicnin be gan among the poorest people, whom he treated often ‘nothing, bis name thus getting known as a benefactor. His office s crowded more and more. He spent his days bent over the sick | blind eves of his patients, while in the evenings he worked to n the spiritually blind eves of mankind, unable to see a fellow “cng in one whose lips spoke a different language. The chief orks of the world’s literature were translated. His translation of © Old Testament into Esperanto is considered to be one of the est, But the promoting of the international language was always + him rather a means, than an aim. His own feelings and ideas ‘ound their expression in the little bookiet ““Homaranismo” (from
- ¢ word “homarano”—member of the human family). It is a
aching of world-patriotism, superior to all narrow national senti- ent, of largest tolerance, respecting everybody's religious feelings, ‘is a teaching of pure humanity and absolute interracial justice { equality. This work was published anonymously. The author ‘ Esperanto did not wish his own ideas to be taken as the official rogram of Esperanto, since 1905 described as a movement aiming \lusively to the promoting of the international language, while the hopes and ideas, that anyone might connect with it, should « considered as his private affairs. Yet the ideas of Zamenhof, ‘ough unforced by him, permeated the movement, and nowadays te are few Esperantists, who do not approve of the “inner idea
- Esperanto.
The life of Zamenhof was so connected with the history of
) speranto, that it is impossible to separate one from the other. All
« blows the international language had to suffer, vere blows he
mselt suttered. All its successes were his successes. When the
‘lrd Congress in 1907 was held in Cambridge, the enthusiastic
�[Page 88]88 ° WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
students unhatnessed the horses and carried him in a carriage al! over town. The French cross of the Legion of Honor and the Spanish one of Isabela the Catholic were conferred on him. He accepted all these honors, because he saw in them tributes paid to Esperanto, personally feeling always rather embarrassed. He loved his co-workers as a father loves his children, and the memory of the “Master” is always dearly cherished by them. Since 1905 the International Congresses of Esperanto have been held regularly every year, the great family has grown, the green army of peace gone onward, till in August, 1914 it started for Paris, where the Xth Congress was to be held. But that time the peaceful hymn of Esperanto did not rise to heaven; it was drowned by the roar of guns.
With greatest difficulties Zamenhof came back to Warsaw through the Scandinavian countries and St. Petersburg. The Great War spread its red over the world, walls thicker than ever stood between the nations. Only ravens soared above them with thei: funereal news. Such and such a dear friend was killed, then another perished, and still another fell. He learned from newspapers of the death of his youngest brother in the Russian army. Where were his hopes of the unity of mankind, of interracial amity? His heart did not endure. . .
Zamenhof died on the 14th of April, 1917.
A very small party of his followers accompanied him to the lace of his eternal rest. Wires brought the sad news abroad caus: ing hearts to ache and eyes to shed tears, but few friends were able to tell their last farewell to him.
The night of humanity passed. The green standard is raised
once more and the army of Esperantists continues its march. There
is a monument of gray Scotch granite on Zamenhof’s grave erected
by the Esperantists; there is another and more enduring monument
erected in their hearts.
�[Page 89]INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE
by
HELEN S. EATON
Linguistic Research Associate and Assistant Haccutive Secretary to the International Ausihary Language A socsation
iTH the growth of the international community the WW eee of language becomes an increasingly difficult one. Since the time of Leibnitz there have been at- tempts to solve it and people throughout the years from time to time have sensed the lack and have tried to remedy it. In te fifty or so years before the war, when international conferences were “few and far between,” the problem was not so pressing but with the rate of increase of such meetings and the expansion of the ternational world it is today of vital importance that we look the ‘acts in the face and that we recognize the unnecessary burden »luch is being inflicted on this world and which is one of the causes ot its being hampered in becoming the really satisfactory commun- . it could be. What are the facts? Science is international in its applications and scientific dis- verics should be at once made available to 'mankind. We find ‘iat the Social Science Abstracts which cover 3000 periodicals in _. odd languages have information which is available only to those sho read English. The same is true of the Engineering Index of ‘ne American Society of Mechanical Engineers which covers 1400 -criodicals in 16 languages. The International Union of Pure and \pplied Chemistry badly needed a journal. However, no two lan- .iges could be agreed upon; publication in three made the cost ‘ohibitive; so the idea had to be abandoned. Results of research » medicine which are beneficial to mankind are often not available
,
sy
�[Page 90]go WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
in translations for years. Under the exchange of professors systen at present in vogue f educational life, frequently the best man :; his particular tield must be passed over and a second or third bes: chosen because the latter is able to lecture in the language of tix country to which he is going.
In commercial attairs the situation is the same in its need o a means of international communication. Foreign correspondenc: catalogues, and advertising must all be done in several diffcrer: national languages if the field is to be covered.
In governmental business the misunderstandings and misin terpretations due to the extreme difficulty of absolutely accurat: rendering of phrases from one language to another may lead + strained relations. Even when only two languages are official a in the League of Nations, the burden of translating and the impos sibility of holding the interest of participants in meetings throug! the repetition of speeches in two or more languages are seriou factors which work against the smooth running of the machiner of such gatherings. The language difficulties are stressed in th: reports of many international conferences of which there are now an average of over 300 a year.
Traveling would be made easicr and of more benefit and inte: est if tourists had an easy means of communication with nationas of countries they are visiting. The hard feelings sometimes er gendered through lack of understanding would also be avoided
Radio and talking moving pictures have the opportunity to k of great value in interpreting the life and thought of a people t others. But how can they avail themselves of this opportunity there is no common speech?
One could continue enumerating the different phases of ou: modern international life that are prevented from attaining the: logical development because of the lack of an international mean of communication, It would seem that no one who gives a though: to the situation could deny the need.
Among those who are keenly aware of the need are some whi
advocate the choice of a national Lingmige as the common auxtitan
tongue. Some of their arguments are excellent in their logical con
�[Page 91]INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE gt
sions but, when we look at the psychological and the intellectual s. it scems as if these very arguments were the most conclusive st the use of a national idiom.
In this day of sensitiveness of national feelings it is difficult
hy imagine a government officially accepting as its auxiliary lan- “geone native to another country. Even if this obstacle were mounted a practical difficulty arises. There are comparatively peaple who learn to possess a second language to such an sent that they feel at no disadvantage when speaking it with cone to whom it is the mother- -tongue. The emotional conno- cons of a language are so many and so varied that no one can sire them unless he has lived for a fairly long period surrounded
c atmosphere of the language. In international communication
‘ « absence of emotional connotation is a distinct advantage—there much less danger of ambiguity. Over and over again one hears oressed the fact that in international gatherings certain valuable
s have become lost through the difficulty on the part of the ciker in making them clear in an alien tongue.
These obstructions in the use of a national language are all wiated in an artificially constructed one. The chance for ambig-
ty is negligible and what national language exists of which that
n be said? In the first telephone conversation between England
i the United States the question was asked: ‘Are you through?”
'o the English operator this meant: “Is the connection estab-
jied?" To the American it meant: ‘Have you finished?” If that
4ppens in an ordinary sentence between peoples who are supposed
‘have the same mother-tongue, it is easy to see that the possibilities
‘ misunderstanding are limitless when foreigners are using the guage.
It has been adequately denwustrated that a constructed lan- wige built on the lines of those at present in successful use is very ich caster to learn than a natural one. This is due to the absolute cwaritv, the minimum of grammar, the use of international
(turopean) elements, and the absence of idioms and national chological connotations. As the elements of thought are the .« words in these artificial languages there is no limit to the
-_
St
�[Page 92]gz WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
possibility of expansion-of the vocabulary as needed, due to the method of .naking different combinations of elements.
Among the artificial languages in use we might mention [s peranto, Nov-Esperanto, Ido, Occidental and Novial. Let anvone interested choose the one best suited to his taste. If he learns one he will be able to understand them all and to make himself intelligib!e to the speakers of the others.
Incidentally there is distinct educational value to be derived from the study of such a language. For anyone who does not cure to go deeply into the study of philology, etymology, or severa. difterent languages, it gives a language sense; it shows the corre. tion between the national languages; it teaches in an easy manner different grammatical concepts; it tends to give a more accurate and fundamental knowledge of the meaning of words in the mother tongue as well as in foreign languages.
It is interesting to note that of late years at various international meetings not especially concerned with the promotion of the in ternational language idea, the managers, recognizing the difliculty of choosing languages to be the official ones of the conference: have hit upon the plan of allowing each speaker to use his ows tongue and to have for all talks only one language of translation, namely: Esperanto, which is the most widely known of the inter national artificial languages. This has been most successful and strangely enough, has aroused no special comment from the pa: ticipants. The same idea has been carried out by the Paris Chambe: of Commerce which now prints its bills of lading in French to! lowed by Esperanto.
Within this country it is true that the need for an internation:
language does not make itself widely felt. But Americans ar
participating more and more extensively in the life of the inter
national community in spite of the aloofness of the government
On these individuals, who have themselves seen the complication
arising through lack of a common international means of commun
ication, and on those with less experience but with vision and «
desire to help make that community a real one, devolves the op
�[Page 93]INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE 93
portunity and the responsibility of overcoming the apaby of the general public.
The International Auxiliary Language Association with na- tonal headquarters at Box 118, 525 West 120th Street, New York, is engaged on three different lines of research, investigating the whole question of auxiliary language. There is a division for edu- cational research which is endeavoring to prove or disprove the various Claims made for the beneficial effects on subsequent !an- guage learning of an initial course in a Latin-derived artificial language. There is a division for linguistic research which is study- ing the structure of certain chosen European languages, national end international, in an effort to find common material for an ideal structure for an auxiliary language. And finally there is a socio- ‘ogical research division which is ferreting out information con- cerning specific needs for an international language. The directors and advisors of this research are men prominent in their particular velds. The work is carried on in a strictly scientific and neutral
rit.
ticth modern movement presented by Worry Unity in its department “The World We Live In"
�[Page 94]THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND
THE UNITED STATES
by
ELIZABETH W, BAsset tT
Teacher of History, Washington Irtams iiak School, Nee York
HAT has been the League's economic history since 1\)2<
and what has been our participation in this ficld:
In 1914 the American Federation of Labor adopted
proposals for the reestablishment of fraternal relations and the protection of workers. This was the starting point of a whole series of similar resolutions. In compliance with these pro- posals the Peace Conference set up a Committee on Social Legisla: tion with Gompers as President. They drafted Part 13 of the Treaty. Wilson often referred to this as the “Magna Carta o: Labor.” The purpose is not to standardize labor conditions but to establish an international minimum. The Washington Conference in 1919 was the manifestation of the activities of the Internationa! Labor Organization. The United States has offered scientific col: laboration, not legislative, because here the cost of production 1s based on dear labor and cheap raw material and there, just the reverse. Mr. R. Brookings pointed out that “the only source of economic improvement is the increase of productivity per capit. If Europe would follow our example of industrial efficiency bs adopting labor-saving devices and standardizing mass production, and our economic democracy of a relatively high wage through which to distribute equitably among the workers, the resi'ting increased production per capita, they would soon find their coon omic well-being greatly improved.” In 1023 at the suggest oo! the Economic Committee the League called a Conference on cus
4
�[Page 95]THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND THE UNITED STATES 95
toms formalities and an invitation went to the United States. "No,"
4 our Government, “this is not a subject of an international
convention.” After consultation between Berne and Geneva, two
\perts from the Treasury Department, one from the Commerce
Department, and one from the Tariff Commission, were sent. In
ov
‘noir desire to inspect the customs formalities of other countries,
cy forgot their objections to have their own inspected. In con-
»cction with this general move to simplify the transit and com- ssunteation facilities as a prerequisite to economic betterment, the
j
i cugue requested the United States to assign someone to act as biter in the distribution of shipping on international rivers, par-
ticularly, on the Rhine and the Danube. Mr. W. Hines was sent 1922. As the result of his experience he expressed the thought ‘at we do not adequately realize that the existence of the League as developed an ever strengthening international sentiment. In ‘cterence to the abolition of import and export prohibitions and ‘ostrictions, Mr. Hugh Wilson stated that the American Delegation
w.lvs opposed a reservation with regard to raw materials when
..ch reservation would constitute a virtual monopoly. It is the
oinion of many inside and outside the League that some system
ot international rationing must be arranged so as to assure adequate
. plies of imported foods and raw material, where needed. Back
2 1025 an International Control Board was set up in connection
ith raw opium. This was the first attempt to set up machinery
‘or an international control of a raw material. Unfortunately the
’ {
nited States withdrew; but the attempt represents the evolution
- this new approach to this most vital of economic problems. The
~scussions at the World Economic Conference and those that have
lowed, show that Europe is growing more and more aware of co advantages of large scale production which secures access to ve markets; so well illustrated by the American producer. The
conomic advantage it offers promises the raising of the standard
‘ living of millions of the people of Europe.
In still other lines have American citizens in a private capacity
sca their wholehcarted cooperation to the varied problems of
¢ League. Mr. A. Elkus was one of the Rapporteurs in the
�[Page 96]96 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
Aaland Islands case; Mr. N. Davis served as Chairman of the Special Commission set up by the Council to arrive at conclusion: covering the points at issue in the Memel Controversy; and M: D. H. Miller served in the Upper Silesian Boundary Settlement The Greek Refugee Settlement was greatly aided by Mr. Mor ganthau and Mr. C. Howland. It was Mr. Root's work on th: Committee of Jurists that made the Statute of the World Cour possible, since he suggested the formula reconciling the conflicting interests of large and small states, both requiring representation Dr. B. Moore sat among the first judges to be elected by the League Mr. Wickersham was working with the Committee for the pro gressive codification of international law. In the financial fiel: Mr. Jeremiah Smith superintended the financial reconstruction o: Hungary and the Dawes Commission took the reparations questio: out of the field of European politics so that the League had bette: sailing and France began to show a more truly League spirit. D: Parker Gilbert then occupied the important position of Agent-Ge: eral for reparations payment under the Dawes Plan until the Youn; Plan was substituted for it. This plan of Mr. Owen D. Young an: his Committee, contains two outstanding features; it fixes the tot: of German Reparations and what is more significant of the time it establishes an International Bank. Henri Berenger says, “Th: Bank is as necessary now as national banks were a century ago. tv nations have become mere provinces.” That this Bank is as muc anathema in the United States as is the League of Nations, may > scen in Secretary Stimson’s declaration that the Government wou. not permit any officials of the Federal Reserve System, cithe: themselves to serve or to select any American representative member of the proposed International Bank. Mr. Gates McGarrz was recently appointed to the position of President of the Buns
Although the United States is not a mandatory power, ts mandate system cannot be overlooked when dealing with our psi ticipation in League problems. It was Wilson who said in 101 that “the former German colonies and the subject peoples of Turkish Empire, should be declared the common property ot t League and administered by the small nations. The resources «
�[Page 97]THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND THE UNITED STATES 97
all the colonies, should be available to all members of the League.” He did not win his point about the administration by small nations but he did prevent their annexation. “There is a feature about this Covenant which to my mind, is one of the greatest and most satis- tying advances that have been made. We are done with annexation of helpless peoples. We recognize in the most solemn manner that the helpless and undeveloped peoples of the world, being in that condition, put an obligation upon us to look after their interests primarily, before we use them for our interest.” He was again doomed to disappointment when the Senate in June 1920, by a vote of 23 to §2 declined to give the President permission to establish an American mandate over Armenia. George Beers was one of
Wilson's most indefatigable coworkers in evolving this system. The League's eftorts along the line of Intellectual Cooperation, have not brought much coordination into their results. Dr. Milliken and Dr. Duggan, to mention but a few prominent names, are de- voting much of their thought and time to the furtherance of this phase of the activities. And lastly we have Dr. Shotwell’s untiring ettorts to awaken public opinion here and abroad, to a state of world mindedness that will be able to accept his Geneva Protocol and will be able to make out of the Paris Pact more than a gesture ot goodwill. When we as Americans hope for a truly great Amer- a, it is to these men that we may turn for inspiration and say ith Thomas Huxlev—"'Size is not grandeur, and territory does not ‘ke a nation. The great issue is what are you doing with these
things.”
It is fitting before closing this subject to look briefly into the
-iestion—How much does the United States as the wealthiest and
ost powerful nation in the world today, retard world progress
its non-membership in the League? Mr. Root believes that no
ation in the world needs more information and training in inter-
cational affairs than we do. We have been engaged for so many
rs in the Fnilding up of an empire in this vast. continent, and
vc until very recently thought but little and known but little
ut international affairs. There can be no doubt that membership
the League, an excellent international training school, would
�[Page 98]98 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
gradually relieve us of some of our conservative proving: cis:
M. Lechartier says that our membership “would afford that bo
immeasurable and decisive moral strength and confer on us .
arbiter in eventual conflicts, a unique opportunity to maint. ¢)
dearly acquired and actually too fragile peace of the world.” M;
States to enter however, until at least 75°¢ of its population 4
convinced that it is the right course to take. But let us turn :
more concrete matters. One of the knotty problems is the uric
food resources. Mr. A. E. Taylor gives an excellent resumé ott)
situation when he writes, ‘that the Great War effected a deciine «:
production in Europe and in Russia and a distortion of producti:
elsewhere. The first direct war injury in belligerent countries :
agriculture, was the destruction of workers. War inflicted a hess,
reduction in the world herds of domestic animals. The hea
European importation of bread grains since the war has been ne.
essary in part, because the domestic areas have supplied relatives
less to the cities and used relatively more in subsistence. cithe:
directly or in the form of animal products. Disorganization «:
markets throughout the world has contributed to reduction in th:
effective utilization of food resources. Countries refuse to rel:
quish war born industries that have made them less dependent «:
foreign goods. The world relations of creditor and debtor cou:
tries have been fundamentally changed, with enormous growth ©
international obligations.” What has this to do with us? Winat
our reaction to this situation? As the creditor nation we are &
manding the payment of these debts. In the name of self-preserv.
tion we are raising our immigration barriers and our tarift barrie:
higher than ever before. And yet economic and financial collad
oration between the American continent and the European bh.
become the indispensable condition for the reestablishment ot th:
economic equilibrium of the world. As far back as 1921 Wilso:
made it clear in his veto of the Emergency Tariff Bill that this »
clearly no time'for the erection of high trade barriers. He indicate.
that “they would strike a blow at the large and successful ctiort
which have been made by many of our great industries to plac
�[Page 99]THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND THE UNITED STATES 99
“omselves on an export basis; that they would stand in the way
the normal readjustment of business conditions throughout the
rid. as vital to the welfare of this country as to all the other
suons.” The United States once held to reciprocity and now
‘ands by the policy of the most-favored-nation treatment. Our
ates are so high, our policy of protection so all-embracing, so
“clined to extension to every blessed article on the demands of
uh interested group of producers, that our policy amounts to
versal severity and universal ill-treatment. Removal of duties
» toodstufts and on fundamental raw materials and moderate pro-
tion on manufactured goods, would seem imperative. Even those
wong us who say most about holding aloof from European com-
ations say much about the maintenance of friendly relations
‘hall and the promotion of mutual good feeling. Why not put
‘our tariff policy some element of real favor and genuine friend-
vss’ Closely linked with this policy is our handling of the
ot settlement. Mr. A. G. Gardiner holds with many others that
cose expenditures on the war were incurred for a common object
od should not have the same binding force as they would have
the more material relations of commerce. It is his opinion that
\rnerica is not contributing her share to the comity of nations, and
— cannot forget, he continues, that “it was her refusal to agree to
© © Covenant that is responsible for our present troubles, for the
sos and confusion which have characterized European Diplomacy
.¢ 1010. It is impossible to lay a permanent foundation for peace
ong nations when the greatest nation of them all remains aloof.”
c extent ot her wealth, the quantity and quality of her popula-
i. her superb geographical position, and her great pacific tra-
tions, have all conspired to give America a unique position of
‘cdominence among, nations. That position carries with it great
uvilcges but it also involves great responsibilities. “Even from
narrowest material point of view, she cannot afford to be
“iutterent to European political and economic chaos. She must
come vitally interested in the stability of European institutions as
continues to amass large holdings of property there. Perhaps |
most disquieting results of the debt settlements the world over,
�[Page 100]100 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
lies in the impetus that fixed international payments seem to give to the development of offensive and defensive controls of pro- duction and commerce.”’ The Stevenson Act, the Cartels and the proposed United States of Europe are in this category. If nationa! sovereignty continues to violate the principle of international jus. tice or adopts a policy of isolation, there must always exist an atmosphere of futility surrounding any international conference. As a state-member we should be learning another great lesson along with those powerful states that have accepted the grave responsibility of controlling and educating the backward races who are unable to stand alone in the strenuous conditions of the moder: world. We might abandon the idea that methods and policie found suitable to ourselves are necessarily the best suited to the evolution of backwood peoples and peoples of an alien race. We might avoid the humiliating experience of being faced with th question—Why does America distrust Geneva? Why does Americ: refuse to support the efforts to organize an American League 2t Santiago? Is it because Washington clings to a policy of aggressive imperialism and is therefore disinclined to submit its conduct tc the judgment of the world? There is one more item that bear: consideration. How can the League operate fully under its sanctiors or the Pact of Paris be upheld, if the signatories cannot depenc upon the intcrpretation the United States may choose to put upor their acts. If a blockade is in force will she stand for her full ri ight: as a neutral? Would she, in fact could she be neutral in case o: a flagrant violation of the Peace Pact? In the last analysis, we mai quote the words of an English observer—"The United States wil be brought into the League of Nations and the World Court, no’ by appeals on the score of duty or humanity, but by the inexorab!: logic of events. In the end enlightened self-interest will lead u
where impassioned eloquence cannot persuade us to go.”
(Comeluded)
�[Page 101]ORIENT AND OCCIDENT
by
HANS KOHN
Doctow June, Umveraty of Prague
Il. THE PoniticAL ProBLEM
The Struggle for Freedom HE clash between the Orient and the Occident continued during the Nineteenth Century to a time when the mighty realms of the Orient—the Ottoman Empire, the domain of the Great Moguls in India and the Chinese Empire—were tor decades in a state of political disintegration and cultural tor- pidity. Through family dissensions, corruption and the administra- tion of harem favorites, the once powerful dynasties which had produced distinguished ruling personalities, were broken up and weakened. Thus they offered only a feeble resistance to the advance ot the West. Even the smaller states in North Africa and Asia presented the same picture. At the beginning of the Twentieth Ccntury the form of government in every country of the Oricat was “11 dUtocracy——W hether the autocracy of a native court, as in Moroc- Go, Turkey, Persia or China, or the autocracy of a foreign bureau- cv like the British in India or the Russian in Central Asia. A oluatary or involuntary alliance of both these forms was entered nto in many instances, whereby the European autecracy ey seness thie native an undisturbed, even if very limited, exercise of author- This was the case in Morocco after the declaration of the _tectorate, in Egypt. in Bokhara, and in the native principalities o: British India and the Dutch Vast Indices. The strugg!e against soiutism began in the Twenticth Century in the most important trics of the Orient wader the iafuence of western ideas of
ae
�[Page 102]TOU WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
democracy and popular participation in legislation and administra- tion, with the simultaneous growth of a national consciousness. This national consciousness was as firmly rooted in the instinctive aversion to every form of foreign rule (and to the menace to traditional ways of living, which this rule entailed) as it was in the acceptance of European ideas which, for the first time, raised the obscure group-fecling to a definite consciousness. The struggle was not everywhere a struggle against foreign rule, but even in those countries where it was directed against their own royal houses it was also a struggle motivated by fear in the presence of a foreign rule to which the corruption and incompetence of the domestic autocracy seemed to open the gates.
In the course of twenty years this struggle has completely changed the political structure of oriental governments. This has occurred most noticeably in both great oriental cultural spheres— in Turkey for the Western-Islamic sphere and in China for the east- ern Orient. Richard Hartmann’s statement that “twenty vears ago the Ottoman Empire was a super-national autocracy founded on a religious basis; today Turkey is a national democratic republic, and his expression, “a jump out of the Middle Ages into the Twentieth Century,” are true, in all essentials, for China as well. The Chinese leaders have ‘exchanged medieval-oriental for modern western thought,” just as the Turkish have. The Turkish leaders, it is true, have advanced considerably over other peoples in this matter. The Hatt-i-Sherif of 1830, and still more the Hatt-i-Hu- mayun of 1856, were already steps in the transformation of the medieval-religious basis of the government. But they remained faint-hearted attempts at reform from above, which hardly affected the social life. Even among the intelligentsia there was as yet no corresponding national consciousness which could have become the motive force behind governmental reforms. In the 70's the weight of western ideas began to permeate, for the first time, the Turkish intelligentsia; but the thirty-vear period of Abdul Hamid’s reign
raised a dam against them. The administration feared, and rightly,
a dissolution of the empire (founded on a religious, super-natione!
basis) and of the absolute power of the sovereign, which was here
�[Page 103]ORIENT AND OCCIDENT 103
even stronger unifying bond than in the similarly formed gov- crnments of Austria-Hungary and Russia. In the first decade of the Twentieth Century the movement of the Turkish intelligentsia, which originated, characteristically enough, in the European centers ot the empite—in Salonika and Constantinople—succeeded at last in overthrowing the autocracy by force. But the Ottoman Empire was destined to go to pieces in any event on the internal conflicts evoked by the nationalism of the young Turks and the correspond- ing but opposed nationalism of the Christian and Arabic popula- tion. The final reorganization and renovation followed as a matter of course, no longer from Constantinople but in the struggle with Constantinople, focussed in Angora, the center of the Anatolian homeland of the Turkish people. The new Turkey has not even the name in commen with the old Ottoman empire, any more than the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics ha: with the empire of the czars. A lay republic has taken the place ot the religious autocracy in Turkey in the same way as in Russia and China. For all the shrinkage of her provinces Turkey is again, for the first time in one hundred and fifty years, mistress in her own house. What she has lost in extent, through nationalism, she has gained in concentration and intensity.
The Turkish Revolution, in its beginning, affected Egypt and Persia also. In Egypt the first flare of an Egyptian national consciousness under Arabi Pascha was as much concerned with the struggle against the autocracy of the local prince as with the struggle against the foreign rule which threatened the land in the torm of British occupation of the country for the safeguarding of the Khedive's authority. When the Egyptian movement for freedom awakened to new life under Mustapha Kamel's leadership in the nrst decade of the present century its effort was directed, above all else, against the British occupation, as the far more dangerous pattern and prop of every autocracy. But when this eftort passed ‘nto its decisive phase after the termination of the World War the
levptians, in their movement for freedom, fougad themselves op-
posed again and again to an alliance between the native court and
aristocracy on the one hand and foreign rule on the other. The
�[Page 104]104 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
autocracy of the corrupt court in Persia, reduced to a tottering condition by the revolution in the second lustrum of this century, was likewise sustained by Russia. Not till after the World War was it possible even here to overthrow and banish the dynasty and to win from within full independence for the country. Elsewhere circumstances were different, as in Japan, Siam and Afghanistan, where the autocratic rulers were strong personalities who recog- nized the situation and on their own initiative carried out the necessary retorms, thus holding out successfully against the struggle of their states for independence of foreign influences.
In British India the struggle against the British bureacracy
was further aggravated by all the animosities inevitably evoked by
a race-contrast, already great in itself, which was sometimes ac-
centuated by the English. Here also, the effort previously restricted
to the intelligentsia passed into a new phase after the World War,
‘when it was possible to enlist the great masses in it. The most
difficult problem presented itself in the reorganization of the colos:
sal realm of the millions of Chinese. Here, as in Turkey, the strug-
gle went on against dynasty and foreign rule simultaneously, but
with the fall of the dynasty it was still undecided, and rose for the
first time to its full intensity. The Chinese chaos easily intimidated
the observer, who pointed in the face of it to the ordered peace in
French Indo-China or in Korea under Japanese subjection. But the
peoples of the Orient, awakening to a national consciousness, were
exactly like the European peoples: they preferred sclf-government
to a good government, even though the self-government be pur-
chased at the price of less order and greater suffering. The transition
of vast European areas from oie cultural stage to another took place
in a similar manner under great disorders, often accompanied by
enormous outrages. So it was at the time of the Thirty Years’ War,
the consequences of which weighed heavily upon Germany for a
half-century !onger; and at the time of the French Revolution and
the Napoleonic Wars; and so it is today in the provinces of the
Soviet Union. Many great countries of the Orient must still go
through a turmoil of this kind before the new order can appear
within them, unless a senerier statesmanlike wisdom and a sympa-
�[Page 105]ORIENT AND OCCIDENT 105
thy which understands and anticipates the inner nature of historical processes combine to carry on the contest against acquired interests.
Capitulations
The struggle for freedom among oriental peoples expresses
itself in the endeavor to gain recognition of perfect equality of
rights with western nations. Until the end of the World War this
recognition was accorded to only one government, Japan. All other
oriental governments were limited in their sovereignty, if not ac-
tually subjected to Europe according to the terms of a protectorate
or some other dependence. Limitation of sovereignty assumed, first
ot all, the form of capitulations. Hence the struggle for their re-
moval—a struggle in which the attitude of the Soviet Union against
oriental governments rendered important aid. The treaties which
were concluded by the Bolshevists with China, Persia, Afghanistan
and Turkey after the Russian Revolution meant a revolutionization
in the negotiations of European powers with Asiatic governments,
since they renounced all privileges and concessions and recognized
the oriental peoples as having full and equal rights in the new
world-wide, self-evolving community of nations. On March 16,
1y21, Russia concluded a treaty with the government of Angora,
in the preamble of which was the following: “Both parties recog-
nize the common purpose of the national movement for freedom in
the East and the struggle of the industrial population of Russia for
anew social order, and proclaim most emphatically the right of the
peoples of the Orient to freedom and independence and a form of
government in conformity with their desires.” On February 26,
1021, the treaty with Persia was concluded, in which the following
was set forth: “In the desire to see the Persian people independent,
prosperous and in full possession of the free disposal of their prop-
erties, the government of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet
Republic declares the agreements, treaties, stipulations and settle-
tents signed by the czarist government with Persia and intended
to reduce the rights of the Persian people, null and void and of no
cifect " In addition to this, Russia declared the debt obligations of
Persia on earlier loans cancelled, and surrendered without compen-
�[Page 106]106 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
sation the roads, railways, harbor facilities and telegraph lines built by the earlier Russian government in northern Persia. Russian
Orthodox religious propaganda in Persia was prohibited, and the property of the missions of the Russian Church in Persia fell to the Persian people. By the terms of the treaty Russian citizens in Persia were made subject to the jurisdiction of Persian courts, in accord- ance with Persian law. The treaties which Russia concluded with Afghanistan on February. 28, 1921, and with China on March 31, 1924, were made in a similar spirit. Thus it came about, too, that the great leader of the Chinese people, Sun Yat-Sen in his mani- festo before his death in March, 1925, referred to the Soviet Union as an ally in the struggle for the liberation of oppressed peoples of the world.
The repeal of capitulations is a symbol for oriental states not
only of their admission as equally entitled members of the com-
monwealth of civilized nations, but also of the final step in the
transition from medieval to modern governmental and legal pro:
cedure. Capitulations in accordance with which the European in
the Orient enjoys the benefit of extra-territoriality and is subject
neither to local laws nor to local justice, and often not even to the
taxing power of the oriental state, are a remnant of medieval
international polity, when the stranger had no legal status in a for-
eign country or in foreign territory according to territorial law, but
was treated according to his own personal law. Exclusion from the
territorial common law was originally a disregard of the foreigner
who was evidently unworthy to share in the religious or tribal
community in the midst oi which he found himself. The life of
the foreigner in the Orient, in his own quarter of the city, in con-
formity with his own law, under his own government and with
his own budget, was indeed consistent with the character of the
loose governmental organization of the Middle Ages. The Ottoman
Empire at the height of its power granted to French subjects (at
first in 1535) and then to subjects of other governments the right,
in Turkey, of free settlement and judicial and taxational autonomy.
Similar treaties were then forced upon other oriental countries—
China, Japan, Siam, Persia and others—by European powers. Event-
�[Page 107]ORIENT AND OCCIDENS: 107
ually, as oriental states began to transform themselves in the Nine- teenth Century under the influence of modern imperialism, they had a feeling that capitulations were not only a fetter on their legal and economic development but were alse an outward and visible sign of their inferiority. The authority of various foreign states within the governmental jurisdiction of another state has always ottered, conceivably, the opportunity for a continuous interference with the sovereignty of the latter and has led to numerous abuses. What was once (in an international legal arrangement of a bygone historical stage) normal, and accorded on the ground of a volun- turv understanding, had been converted into an abnormal !aw of exception which could be maintained only by force. A succession ot oriental governments have already won a complete victory in their struggle against capitulations. The capitulations accorded in Japan in 1854, which the island empire had striven to have removed since 1872, were repealed after the triumph of Japan over China in 1894. After the World War it was possible for the kingdom of Siam to conclude treaties with the capitulatory powers, according to which, after the completion of the new Siamese code, even the last remnants of extra-territoriality for foreigners will disappear. In the peace treaty at Lausanne, on July 24, 1923, Turkey obtained recognition of the repeal of capitulations. Persia recalled her capit- ulations in 1928 and placed all foreigners under the jurisdiction of Persian courts. The struggle against capitulations continues in only two countries, China and Egypt. It is clear that the European- American foreign colonies are standing fast on the retention of priviliges so valuable. But the course of history in the Orient, is working against them. Constitutional government in the Orient, centralized and rationalized after the European pattern, must de- mand recognition of its territorial sovereignty, and equalization octore its state-sovereignty of natives and foreigners living within ts jurisdiction.
(To he continued)
�[Page 108]THE NOVEL OF THE WAR YEARS
by
EVELYN NEWMAN Professo¥ of English, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida
F the group of writers of the immediate years of the War, () =: Barbusse, Georges Duhamel (Denis Thévenin),
and Roland Dorgelés hold first place for vivid and sym.
pathetic narration of actual life in the trenches, and im. mediately behind the fighting front. Fritz von Unruh, Leonhard Frank, and Herbert Eulenberg would come neater comparison with these French authors for the German material in point of time. E. M. Remarque’s more recent book Im Westen Nicht: Neues (1926) is similar in actual material. It will be discussed later because of its method of treatment. From the English side, Wilfrid Ewart’s Way of Revelation, C. E. Montague’s Rough Jus- tice, Ford Madox Ford's Trilogy,—especially the last two of the books—No More Parades and A Man Can Stand Up—and Ed- ward Thompson’s These Men, Thy Friends would be comparable. though they, too, were written much later and have a plot-structure and developed character delineation in the manner of the novelist’s traditional style. Anthony Bertram’s The Sword Falls depicts the first days of war, the mobilization, excitement and enthusiasm in London, and all the froth of passion that foamed those first months everywhere.
- Of the French trio, Barbusse is the oldest (born 18> \9. He
had done some writing before the War. Sensitive and passionate. he was one of the pre-war socialistic intellectuals. He has much of the technique and the quality of Zola’s school. Duhamel, bors 1884, had written poctry and some drama and criticism, Dorgeles
cS
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had done essay and newspaper work. They all took part-in the war from the first days. Duhamel was in the medical corps, as he had studied medicine but had deserted its practice for literature some years before.
Le Feu (1916) by Barbusse—in spite of certain propaganda chaptets—stands out in time and merit as one of the finest of the catly stories of the world was. Its dedication is “To the memory of comrades who fell by my side at Crouy and on Hill rr9, January, May and September, 1915." He makes these comrades live for us in comprehensively tender and graphic description. The book opens with a Prologue reminiscent of Thomas Mann's novel, Der Zau- herberg, as the scene is in a tuberculosis sanatorium within the vicinity of Mont Blanc. The patients discuss the news of the war dispassionately, since they are far removed from actual life at the time. The German declares, “I hope Germany will be beaten!” “Austria's act is a crime,” cries the Austrian. “France must win,” savs the Englishman. Another clairvoyant thinks of the fighters— “thirty millions of soldiers—two armies at death grips—that is one great army committing suicide.” “It should not have been,” says the deep and hollow voice of the first in the line of beds. But another says, “It is the French Revolution beginning again.” ‘‘Let thrones beware!” says another in undertone. A third, ‘Perhaps it is the last war of all.” Heads shake in dissent. “Stop war? Im- possible! There is no cure for the world’s disease.” A storm gathers with the night upon Mont Blanc. In fancy the sick men behold the thirty millions of soldiers “blinded, borne down in the world confli-t, vet in the end lifting their faces from the mud and hith of war to reveal a new will that would make a future trans- formation of a warring world into one of peace.”
This effective introduction in a background of scenic beauty
and intellectual tolerance sets the stage for Le Feu, the story of a
squad of common soldiers and their day-by-day experiences in
action and behind the line. Barbusse shows the forces that helped
to make that comradeship which was the great solace of the fighting
men. It is also the sustaining interest of the great bulk of wartime
literature, this sublimated friendship of men in mortal danger,
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holding the plot of the stories together as does the romantic love- interest in peace-time fiction. '
We see Barbusse’s soldiers: Cocon, Volpatte, Lamuse, Ber trand the sensitive soul. Cocon the mathematician is for ever giving figures about the army: ‘On the French side about 10,000 kilo- metres of trenches, and as much again on the German side. And the French front is only about one-eighth of the whole war-front of the world.” F
“Thus speaks Cocon.... ‘In all that lot, you see what : are, us chaps?’”’
Says Lamuse of the soldiers: ‘‘Mustn’t take them too serious!y, these men, .. . . they’re only kids.”
They acknowledge their fear and have little hate in general. Says Tirloir: “We talk about the dirty Boche race; but as for the common soldier, I don't know if it’s true or whether we're codded about that as well, and if at bottom they're not men pretty much like us.”
We hear of their disgust at their own civilian groups of wealthy and important men visiting the trenches in personally officer-conducted groups, their hatred of the war-profiteer and slacker, their amusement at the stories with which the newspapcrs deceived the civilian population in all lands.
“One is so comfortable there (in the trenches) with water and gas laid on, and shower-baths at every step. The only drawback is that it is rather too hot in winter.” They mock thus upon reading the home news.
Their rock-bottom commonsense, humor, and humanness
make B :rbusse’s men teil us themselves of their tragedies and simple
joys. The way the French village folk behind the lines made money
at the expense of even their own soldiers billeted between attacks
at the front, excited bitterness: “We deserve nothing. We only
risk our skins.” The innocent tale of a little boy, son of a village
merchant, reveals the ignoble business found in every fighting
country—that of the war-profiteer. Asks one of the soldiers of the
child: “Your papa, he says, doesn’t he say, ‘let's hope the war goes
on.”
�[Page 111]THE NOVEL OF THE WAR YEARS 11]
“Of course,” says the child... “because we're getting rich. He says, by the end of May, we shall have got fifty thousand francs.
“. .. he said it to mamma. Papa wished it could be always uke that. Mamma, sometimes, she isn’t sure, because my brother Adolphe is at the front. But we're going to get him sent to the rear, and then the war can go on.”
Nor are the black colonials and their share in this white men’s wart entirely omitted. Several times their shadow falls. Here is an especially good picture:
“Through the twilight comes the rolling hum of tramping MeN. «2 « ~" Africans!’
“They march past with faces red-brown, yellow, or chestnut _.. greatcoats yellowish-green, and their muddy helmets sporting the crescent in place of our grenade. Those and the 75-gun we can tuke our hats off to. They're everywhere sent ahead at big moments, the Moroccan Division. One of the sharpshooters overhears our tulk as he passes. He looks upon us, laughs abundantly . . . and repeats our words with significant shakes of his head: ‘Pas Kam’- rad, non pas Kam'rad, never. Cut head off!”
There are contrasts of beauty in scenic descriptions—a spring- time period spent by the men reprieved for their little time from the trenches: “In the sunshine of air and of earth we hear the bees, as they work and make music (in deferance to the poets), and the cricket which, in defiance of the fable, sings with no .umulitv and fills Space by himself.”
The plan of the vast army organization given by Cocon, the -;uad's statistician, is much like that of Lieutenant Tietiens in | ord Madox Ford's No More Parades. Says Cocon summing up:
lor the whole French Army that holds the lines to go by—-I'm cot speaking of those who are fixed up at the rear, where there ace twice as many men again, and services like the ambulance that ost nine million francs and can clear you seven thousand cases a -to see them go by in trains of sixty coaches each, followiny h other without stopping, at intervals of a quarter of an hour.
‘ would take forty days and forty nights.”
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Volpatte sums up the condition the surviving soldiers will fin: themselves in at the end of the war: “And you hear ‘em discussing the battles, for they're closer in touch than you with the big bugs and with the way the war's managed; and afterwards, when you return, if you do return, it’s yow that'll be wrong in the middle of al! that crowd of humbugs, with the poor little truth that you've got.
In Chapter X, we have the description of the shooting of . soldier under court martial order such as Dorgelés recounts wit such power in Les Crotx de Bois, and Montague and Bertram is Rough Justice and The Sword Falls. The sergeant speaks: “Hc was a decent sort, like ourselves. . . . He was in the front line from the beginning .. . There was the whole ceremonial . . . the colonel! on horseback, the degradation; then' they tied him to the little post, the cattle stoup.”
The end of the fierce slaughter is discussed. The work of th: future will be to wipe out the present . . . like something abomin able and shameful. And yet—this present—it had to be! . . Shame on military glory . . . shame on the soldier’s calling . . “Yes, shame. That's the true word .. . It's true in eternity, bu: it's not vet true for us. . . In our time of today, in these moments this truth is hardly more than a fallacy.”
And so *he book runs on to its closing chapters of indictmen: against the Church, State, Patriotism and Society. I shall close wit! the conversation among some wounded waiting to be taken to th: hospital. An aviator, terribly burned, talks of what he has see: looking down upon both contending armies. He describes a Sur day service: “I could make out two crowds, one among the Boche and one of ours, in these parallel lines that seemed to touch cac other. ... There were two religious services . . . the altar, the padre and all the crowd of chaps. The more I went down the more | could see that the two things were alike. . . I made out the tw voices from the earth that made up the one—'Gott mit uns!” anc ‘God is with us!’— and I flew away. . .
“It’s the truth of things that's mad.”
Les Croix de Bois by Roiand Dorgelés is also the stery 0:
a squad of soldiers, heterogeneous in class, age and occupation
�[Page 113]THE NOVEL OF THE WAR YEARS 113
Sulphart, the flaming-headed, nimble-tongued Paris factory work- er, is Companion in wit and power to Volpatte in Le Feu. Gilbert, the sensitive and refined law student may be compared to Ber- trand, Jacques Larcher the writer (Dorgelés in disguise) to Bar- busse (in disguise).
Sulphart’s satire about the rear depéts may be compared to Volpatte’s exclamation when he saw one of them: “I'd never have believed there'd be so many men in chairs while war was going on.”
The men’s repugnance towards searching even their own dead for identity medals and last pitiful belongings, the awtul food, the mud and filth of billets—usually a shed or barn filled with damp straw and manure piles—the vermin, the flies, the rats, the constant fear of front line attacks: all these things are presented vividly.
Sulphart is spokesman of the squad: “What really sticks in my gizzard... is going to have my mug split just to take three rotten fields of beet that are no good to anybody. . . What do you suppose they're geing to do with their silly little bit of wood that lies in a hollow? It’s just for the pleasure of knocking folk over.”
Sulphart’s indignation may be compared to that of many other
characters in the writings of Sir Philip Gibbs, Ford Madox Ford,
George von der Vring, and Bernard Kellermann—especially to
those in Kellermann’s story of the General who forced many attacks
upon a useless hill at Verdun, until a whole regiment was lost.
Yet there are some pleasant times, some kindly people in villages
and farms. The squad often has a good meal foraged by the
cver-resourceful Sulphart and his aids. Bourland the musical mem-
ber, has made a violin from a cigar box and strings he got from
Paris and plays the Symphonie Pathétique and Ase’s Death, or an
aria from Bach or Méditation de Thais, and everything of the pres-
cnt is annihilated until a wounded man is brought in or a shell falls
near enough to shake them from their dream of beauty. Letters
that came to a fallen comrade were destroyed by Gilbert “rather
than returned with the brutal announcement of death in the corner:
The Addressee cannot be found.’ “Over the regulation soldier's
tomb he “scattered the petals of the letters, so that the dead man
cught at least sleep under words from his own folk.”
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Again there is an account of the shooting of a man by h: own officer's orders: ‘Is it a soldier, that blue heap? . . . ‘Oh to be obliged to look on that, to keep for ever in the memory hi wild cry in which we felt both terror and horror and supplication.
“You know what he had done?
“The other night, after the attack, he was put forward for th: patrol. As he had already been out the night before, he refused There you ate. . .
He was a fellow from Cotteville. He had two boys.”
Gilbert, one of the leading characters, is killed on the battle. field. Sulphart, the other, survives. He returns to find that his wife has left him, taking every thing of value with her. When he looke: in the barracks to recover his civilian effects left there in Augus 1914, the sergeant-major told him that vermin had got into the bundles of clothing left, and they had to burn the lot. At hi lodgings, when he tried to talk to the concierge, she cried: ‘Don: go on telling me tales about the trenches; we've had our ears burs in with them!’ Out of « cupboard he pulled some dusty old papers In one of these he found an article by a “Member of the Academy.
“We have contracted a debt of gratitude to our poilus that w: shall never forget,” said the writer. “We are their debtors for a! the suftering that we have not gone through.”
Sulphart carefully treasured this article in his note book. A’ that he had for comfort was that he had come out of the war wit! his life.
Dorgelés apostrophises his dead friends at the end: “Oh, m dead, my dear dead, my poor dead. . . I think I see you wanderin; forlornly . . . seeking in the ever lasting night all those ungratcti. living folk that are forgetting you already.
“You were so young, so confident, so strong, my comrade ... you should not have died.”
German authors who were writing at about the same perio.
were expressing thoughts concerning the war similar to those
Barbusse and Dorgelés. Fritz von Unruh’s Opfergang is earlics
in date. It was written in the field in the spring of 1916. It is th.
story of a company’s attack on Verdun. Seargeant Hillbrand, th:
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shoolmaster Clemens, Captain Werner, Heinz the cadet, and Preis the drummer are the leading characters. Clemens expresses senti- ments of international longing: ‘Friends, . .. give me a flag, vis- ible as the sky, and I swing it over the earth, till arms are stayed and men reach one another their hands again.”
The night is described in vague dream-like fashion. Hillbrand goes out to reconnoitre. He mects Preis who declares that all of them (soldiers) are “little screws turned out by threes and fours and sixes and millions.” Morning and the march start together. An actor in the company is amusing the men. The captain tells them that their play is Verdun. Hillbrand who is thinking of his wife and unborn child goes into the church. There he meets the lieutenant who cries out: “But when the Babel of our fleshly life was built, our senses were confounded, so that there is no more understanding; today we have a French God, a German God, a Russian, an English, and so on.”
Outside anti-aircraft guns are shooting at French biplanes. (lemens tne schoolmaster goes to the churchyard, enters the mor- tuary chapel. There, in this place of decay, he questions the figure of the Saviour as to the reason of the captivity of the Christ idea— 4 captivity equal to that of the soldiers compelled to fight. He implores for the breaking of such captivity and marvels at the mad- ness of the world that allows no fraternity save to dead men.
A soldier-waiter goes mad and is held in the hospital. When te captain comes to see him, he can only utter the word Verdun. [he captain takes a paper from him on which is written: “A vundred and twenty-one pay oflices, forty-six ambulance companies, two hundred and eighty-five thousand woolen blankets, thirteen tnousand tons of coal, three hundred and twenty-six thousand two cundred and fifty sleeping bags, three thousand tools. . . Every Jay forty miles of barbed wire, eight thousand nails. . . Yes, the cragon of Verdun swallows that all alone! But the men. . .”
The captain throws the paper into the stove with a bitter laugh.
The curate must address the storm troop and wonders it Ver- «cn is worth the young blood to be spilled. He asks the mea if they
| be faithtul, telling them:
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“If a man throttles us, so that we get no more air, we resist since a man must have air to breathe. A people, too, must have xi: to live. You know what I mean?”
The captain wonders about the great conflagration in Euro. and hopes that ¢he “dross of madness” will burn away.
As one of the soldiers goes on his rounds through the night he imagines himself talking to his wife in their home. He tells he: that humanity is sick, and that the war is an operation that mus be performed. Heinz the cadet dreams of his mother. As the artillery opens fire, the general thinks of his attack forty vear before and of that victory: “And over the battlefields rode ou: beloved King with Moltke, with Bismarck.”
The old man dreams of “Emperors, paladins, halls of mirror: glory of colours, bridal days of the German land.”
Then he awakens to the thought: ‘Between then and now th: bridges are down. . . What will come now?”
The General orders ‘‘no retreat.” Only forty of the compan are left. The captain is killed. The curate has both his eyes pu: out and cries for death. In the village church, used as a dressing station, the actor, having had both his feet frozen off, calls out “Had I but feet! I would run from door to door and play you th: comedy of Vaux!” |
The mad waiter climbs into the pulpit and takes the crown 0: thorns from the image of Christ. He calls: “Look here, you sar: people. I cut the barbed wire off the Saviour. . . Wasn't I righ: to do it?. .. You sane people, why do you put up with it so long:
Heinz the cadet and Preis the drummer go through a symbol. ceremony of burying the Crucifixion. Clemens the schoolmaste: and Kox the pioneer, lead the company “forward out of the trenc: | more than three yards.” So ends the book.
Leonhard Frank's Der Mensch ist gut (1918) and Herbe-
Eulenberg’s Der Bankrott Europas (1920) may be compared «
somewhat the same way as Barbusse’s Le Few and Dorgelés Cro:
de Bois. Herr Frank's book is a series of episodes, the id 0"
which is made by the Waiter as a connecting link for all the oth:
characters, who gather about him with their mishaps and sorrow:
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The episode of The Mother presents her dreaming of the !rench mother whose son is about to be shot by her own son. She crics out to him that he must not shoot. But when she hears his icutenant commanding ‘Shoot or you'll be shot,” she begs her boy tv obey, even though he kills the French lad. Her son also dreams on the battlefield. In his dream: ‘Such a wonderfully fair, indes- cribably sweet music vibrating through the universe, the son had never heard. Whoso heard it became good. The headsman threw his axe away, went on his knee to the murderer kneeling by the block, and neither any longer understood their earlier life.
The son asked the good Lord who had led him into the unceilinged hall, roofed blue by the starry sky, who had written the music.
The good Lord with the sad eyes whispered: “This music would have been written by a soldier who has fallen.’”
Then he sees a fair city which he is also told would have been built by a fallen soldier. He begins reading a great book which 4 young poet fallen in battle would have written.
“To what nation did these dead belong?” asks the son.
“The good Lord tells him speaking by his weeping eyes:
“That no one knows.”
The War Cripples is the story of the Brigade Surgeon who is constantly sawing the bones of war victims. “Into this butcher's house no newspapers come. Here the interest is for the limbs sawn off.
“The men weep, calling: “My leg! Give it me!’
“But the tired orderly makes a mistake and brings a wrong leg
trom the tub.” ___ In The Hos pital Train, another cpisode, the Brigade Surgeon thinks: “On all the tracks the hospital trains are bringing the cripples into the land. .. And the peasant in bed knows that ke will never plough again since he has only one leg left.”
And when all is over there wil! be unemployment for hun-
dreds of thousands of disabled soldiers. “In the Labor Ofhces
tablets hang on which is to be read: ‘For these jobs only strong
sninjuried men can be considered.’ ”’
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The book closes with the meeting of the Brigade Surgeon ani the Waiter. They organize a great procession of cripples. This procession turns into a revolution. There is a suggestion of the presence of the Man Christ: “The uniform vanishes out of the world. Freedom and Love come into the land.”
Eulenberg’s Der Bankrott Europas is a collection of thirty short stories. Some of the best are: The Wreckage—A philosopher who had served the State by raising higher the soul of the Fathcr- land refuses to be a serf in the compulsory military serfdom. He shoots himself.
The Army Chaplain—A chaplain feels he must go into the fight as do the men to whom he gives “soft words.” He does and yields to primitive instincts in the front line. After killing many, he himself is killed.
Der Tetanus—A schoolmaster treasures his father’s last letter written in the war of 1870, while he was among the wounded in a French chateau. It reads: ‘And I tell you war is the most awful, the most debasing, the most bestially hateful misfortune that can come on mankind. .. Never forget that, my only son, as my holiest legacy to thee! If you have children—I tremble at the thought which once was so dear to me—do not give them any warlike toys, no books about war. Teach them to honour peace as the only possibility of raising us above the beasts.”
Among the sketches is a brief appreciation of Alfred Nobel. the ammunition millionaire. “In him mankind grew above itself, for its greatest destroyer became also one of its greatest benefac- tors.”
As will be seen even from these brief summaries, O pfergare and Der Mensch ist Gut are frequently phantasmagorial in char- acter; reality and dream merge te such an extent that the line is scarcely discernible. Theiy cers are not living personalities but types expressing the au...0.. sentiments and philosophy. Their books are examples of expressionism and were written when that particular phase of literary and artistic technique was at its height — the immediate war years.
(To be comtinucd)
�[Page 119]WORLD CITIZENSHIP AND ALLEGIANCE
by
Cart A. Ross
Attorney
UR list of peace institutions is a long one. May we not
learn something by trying to find out why there are so
many of them? The League of Nations must have lacked
something. The Geneva Protocol may be considered as an attempt to supply a lack in the League; so may Arbitration Treaties, Locarno, the World Court and the Kellogg Pact. Seemingly the turther we go the more we need, as all these peace institutions have proven inadequate; do we not seek to “implement” them, one and all?
In view of this universal weakness of our peace institutions, can we point to some one thing that all lack, such a thing that, should they possess it, they would no longer need “implementing?” It does little good to say that they lack power without being more specific. No one in any country seems to want the League, or any other peace institution, to have the whip hand over their fatherland; vet the need of “sovereignty” on the part of the League is often pointed out. “Sovereignty” is a proud word. Is this what is lacking; will “sovereignty” do the needed “implementing?”
Surely sovereignty, though much discussed, connotes confused thinking today. Reading from addresses of any leading journalist or statesman, we find apparent unanimity that the nation to which the journalist or statesman owes allegiance, cannot yield an iota of its national sovereignty, and consequently the only differences of opinion occur between those who contend that adherance to some one or other of our present day peace plans would limit national
sovereignty and those who contend that it would not limit national
119
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sovereignty. Let us review a few recent utterances. A prominent French statesman: ‘The conception of European cooperation should tend towards this essential end; a federation built not upon the idea of unity but of union: that is to say, sufficiently supple as to respect the independence and nationai sovereignty of each of these States.” From official League publications: “The general regulation con- cerning unanimity is, of course, the recognition of national sover- eignty. The League seeks solution by consent and not by dictation. Sovereign States are not ready to be bound by majority decisions of other States and successful international action, whether in League meetings or in inter-League Conferences, requires general consent." A leading American statesman: “Adherence to that court by the United States has been earnestly recommended by every one of our Presidents and every one of our Secretaries of State leaving since its inception. They have found no entanglemcat or limitation of the independence of the United States by safeguarded membership in it.”
On the other hand, numerous thoughtful writers like Henry
Brailsford startle us when they begin to analyze the problem of
national sovereignty as applied to our peace problem. ‘The aban-
donment of the belligerent powers during the war of their full
sovereignty was but a recognition, in a sudden flash rather of prac:
tical than of theoretic insight, of the fact that in the modern world
the sovereign state, as history has known it, has itself become ob-
solete. The fiction survives that all sovereign states are equal, and
in the League Assembly they enjoy equal voting rights. In fact they
are graded in a species of social hierarchy. The Great Powers alone
are fully independent in the sense that they are active forces in
the world. To them, and in the full sense to them alone, belong:
the luxury of framing and executing a world policy. They propose:
they consent; they, in effect, decide. The Powers of the second rank
gain consequence only as the satellites and allies of the greater
Powers. The tie is not merely one of paper and sentiment, the
Great Power is the furnisher of their munitions and the dispense:
of credit. As for the little national states of the third rank—the
Baltic Republics, for example—they are merely the outworks o!
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the European system, and little can happen within them without the consent of the Great Powers which, in effect, dowered them with independence and control their economic life by their ability to give or withhold credit. In this dangerous world, a state of the second or third rank can count on maintaining its independence, especially if it possesses territory to which a stronger Power has a claim, only if it adheres'to some armed group or to some over- shadowing Great Power strong enough to protect it. To speak of any state which is in this case, as fully independent or sovercign, is to misuse words.”
What is this thing, “The State,” “The Nation?” Why is there
such a wide variation in “sovereign” States or Nations? Where
does the Nation get “sovereignty?” How may “sovereignty” be
transferred? Do the people transfer it, or do nations surrender it,
or how is the transfer accomplished? What would a transfer of
“sovereignty” to the League involve? May we not say that sover-
cignty is the result or product of allegiance? Sovereignty is a phen-
omenon lacking any quantitative character, it cannot be exhibited
en mass, while allegiance can be enmassed. The joint allegiance of
the many citizens enmassed as in a large nation produces power,
strength, a strong nation, while the joint allegiance of the few
citizens in a small nation produces little power, a weak nation,
although the quality of sovereignty is the same in both nations.
Sovereignty is a thing that, in our opinion, cannot be divided, it
is possessed in entirety or not at all. We would go further and
assert that sovereignty is a state or quality that can be possessed
only by individuals, since it presupposes a capacity to think, to act,
to command. A fictitious creation, like a State, a Nation, lacks any
such mental capacity. It is true the State can “exercise” sovereignty,
but it does not “possess” sovereignty any more than the motor
“possesses” electricity, the power that makes the motor go. Much
confusion arises, however, when the word “State” or the word
Nation” is used to designate, not the political entity, but when it
is used in the place of or when it implies and stands for, the
collective body of enfranchised citizens; only when it thus connotes
the individual citizen, can the State possess sovereignty.
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Woodrow Wilson once wrote, “the forms of government do not affect the essence of government.” Nearly all our peace insti- tutions have the form of government, but, judged by their efficiency, they lack the essence of government. What is this essence that is lacking; is it sovereignty or is it allegiance? This question involvcs the objectives of our peace institutions. A Peace Institution in Chicago to curb the warlike activities of the racketeers is one thing, a Peace Institution in the United States to curb industrial strikes is another thing, so is a Peace Institution to curb war in the world a far different thing.
Two primary observations may be made relative to the objec-
tives of all Peace Institutions; first the objectives have some terri-
torial limits, different in each of the instances cited. This is merely
saying that a government naturally has territorial limits and our
Peace Institutions are to effect a world-wide government, while the
industrial racketeer peace movements would be limited in extent
to one country or to one city. The observation regarding the objec-
tives of Peace Institutions has to do with the class of thing or object
to be governed. Chicago racketeers are generally individuals, in-
dustrial strikers differ in this regard, the objective is to curb the
malicious activities of individual strikers surely, but something
more, since strikes imply concerted action of individuals, often the
collective body of individuals composing a Union. There is thus
involved the control of the voluntary association or corporation.
Now when we come to the world-wide Peace Institution we mect
a still more complicated situation in this regard, because, while the
objective of world peace still involves the activities of individuals,
it also involves the concerted action of individuals associated, not
in “Unions,” of a social or business nature, but the concerted action
of individuals associated in their varying and conflicting political
character. Racketeers are individuals owing an allegiance, either
natural or acquired, to some one government; strikers are likewise
individuals owing a like allegiance to some one government but
also an allegiance, somewhat similar, to their Association or Union.
However, in practical affairs this makes little difference since their
Association or Union is also subject to the same one government.
�[Page 123]WORLD CITIZENSHIP AND ALLEGIANCE 123
Soldiers are individuals and to curb war we necd to govern them. Surely if we can govern all soldiers we can curb war, but the trou- ble today is these soldiers do not all owe allegiance to one gov- ernment. To wage war—not rebellion—takes at least two govern- ments with soldiers owing allegiance to each, consequently the popular notion is that to control war there must be a super-govern- ment to control the two governments threatening to go to war. Here is where World Citizenship steps in and simplifies the matter by a simple change in allegiance. Some would call it a change in sov- ercignty, and while this is true in a limited sense, we prefer to look at the allegiance side of sovereignty and assert that World Citizenship merely requires a change in allegiance, not a change in sovereignty.
(To be continued)
�[Page 124]YOUTH DEMANDS PEACE
THE DisARMAMENT CONFERENCE by ALFRED E. GUEST
Underovaduate, Amherst Collece
ATIONS, like individuals, often make arrangements and IN eee agreements in dealing with other nations, with
little thought of possible consequences. It is only natural
to make promises which are not to be fulfilled until some future date, especially when they may secure tangible gain for the immediate present. It is as the result of this natural tendency of making promises that has indirectly resulted in the calling of a disarmament conference in February. Germany has been in a state of comparative disarmament since 1918 while France has increased armaments to unprecedented high levels. Germany naturally enough remembers a promise which allied nations made in the Versailles treaty to the effect that within some ten or fifteen years, all nations would take steps to disarm. Attempts to disarm have been almost absolute failures, and now Germany asks for a show-down. She feels that she is no longer obliged to remain in a state of disarm: ament and when other nations make little actual progress towards disarmament. It is up to the conference to decide whether the nations increase armed forces or whether the saner policy is not to reduce taxes and lighten the burden placed on every individual by cutting out completely the expense of armaments.
It is very significant that this conference is coming at a time
when the economic and financial stability of the world is being
severely tested. The conference could actually help alleviate the
depression. Let us point out the difficulties which confront the
conference. France, the one nation that is really a stumbling block
in any attempts to disarm, is not hard hit by the universal depression
124
�[Page 125]-
YOUTH DEMANDS PEACE 125
since it holds the key position in financial Europe. Hence, the expense of armaments is by no means of paramount concern to her. Other nations on the continent and in America, seem only too anxious to proceed along the lines of a concurrent and universal disarmament. France realizes her powerful position and would like to keep the upper hand. She continually veils her armament policy behind a cloak of so-called security.
In the consideration of naval disarmament, undoubtedly pro- gress will be made. Satisfactory progress has been made in the past, but at no time has the problem of land armaments been adequately handled. Whenever one hears the word “disarmament,” one im- mediately thinks in terms of naval disarmament for naval limitation is much more feasible and less complicated than land limitation. It is impossible, then, to make any reasonable optimistic guesses based on land disarmament of the past, since no steps have been made in this direction. We now have a brief survey of the setting of the conference.
As to the chances of some positive and tangible success of the
conference, we have only to take this situation and compare it with
past experiences of a similar nature to feel a little pessimistic. We
can find many reasons for feeling that the chances for success of
the conference are slim. The element of security, about which we
hear so much, is likely to provide the first problem. France says
that the only way to create peace is through security. She feels that
if she can build up a large enough armed force, she can be secure
trom attacks of other nations. In other words, her armed forces
ire purely for purposes of defense. In the past, although nations
have armed themselves with this idea of security and defense as
their aim, in the end they have had to employ this armed force.
France, in truth, fears Germany and Italy. Since Germany is in a
stage of almost total disarmament France is scarcely justified in her
arguments for armaments as security against Germany. France in-
sists on certain political guarantees from Germany if she is to reduce
armaments for she is afraid of Germany economically, and through
political guarantees, liupes to produce the same or even more pow-
erful influence than fear of arms might produce. This seems entirely
�[Page 126]126 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
unjustifiable. Germany is in wretched shape now, mainly throug) the refusal of France to grant any sort of long term credit. France hopes to keep Germany in the tight spot she is in now and wii! yield little in the coming conference. It is a question with France of continued arms or positive political guarantees.
The other difficulty lies in the faithlessness nations have in a
gentlemen's agreement. Immediately, some one may say it is alto:
gether too idealistic to talk about gentlemen's agreements in such
serious subjects as disarmament. To be sure, it is idealistic but since
all other less idealistic methods have failed, all the more chance
for its success. In the past, the countries have always been bound
by numerous alliances, guarantees and indemnities. These different
policies have not stopped war, rather they have eventually increased
the chances for war. For a time, alliances seemed to be a system
of checks and balances against the possibilities of war. They have
been built up in the interests of some sort of security. And in every
instance have they failed. Now that every sort of guarantee /.:
failed, is it not time to try something new, something a little more
appealing, closer to the people. Instead of considering the diplo-
mats, the politicians, consult the desires of the people. Disagreeable
as the policy of France may seem, it does not represent the ideals
nor the wishes of the people of that country. The desires of the
individuals of all countries are the same. The average American,
no more than the average man of any country, likes neither war.
nor high taxes. The same is true of the average Frenchman or
German. He does not care to fight and die for his country if there
is the alternative of internal and external peace. The average in-
dividual wants to eliminate armies and navies and all that pertains
to war. He, however, can not do this alone. The purpose and aim
of the conference should then be to agree to eliminate armies and
navies. If this is too drastic a measure to expect at one sweep, an
agreement to cut in half the expenditures made for armaments
would suffice for a time. Let us see just what cutting armaments in
half would mean to all the nations concerned. Germany would
remain as she is, virtually disarmed; Italy would add millions to
her revenue and so would all nations which have a distinct arm:
�[Page 127]YOUTH DEMANDS PEACE 127
ament program. France would have nothing to fear which could possibly upset her desire for security. Since nearly eighty per cent of taxes go to the War Office, taxes would be cut by nearly fifty per cent. The money which goes towards building boats for the navy is a huge waste, sirice the life of a battleship is but com- aratively few years and the upkeep of one represents over thirty millions of dollars. At the present time all the major nations have a program of boat building of considerable size, and exactly when these countries are struggling with high taxes, unemployment and poverty.
At a conference of international scope, the representatives are sent to come to agreements, but they cannot act exactly as they feel. They have their office to consider for if they were to overstep the bounds of their restrictions they might find themselves without a job upon their return. Delegates are always bound too much by custom and politics.
What probably takes place in a conference was clearly demon- strated last March at a Model League of Nations’ Assembly at Wellesley where students representing every country in the League of Nations at Geneva, came together. The Assembly proceeded rationally enough until discussions arose about mandates, minor- ities and war guilt, involving France and Germany. Then, instead of arguing logically with some definite settlement in view, the
Jclegates blew up and spent the rest of the period in disagreeable mud-slinging. No country would yield for fear of appearing to be in the wrong by showing any weakness. A little logical compromise would have brought about a friendly settlement. As it was, the delegates of France and Germany left the conference wider apart than they were before the assembly gathered.
In any international conferences, nations are just so unlikely
to change opinions. Before the conference is called, it is possible
to line up the different factions of the problem and for the most
part these line-ups remain the same throughout. But the time has
come and never have people realized it more clearly before, when
. definite understanding must be linked with a frank desire and
mutual consent to have peace. This means that some nations will,
�[Page 128]128 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
on paper, be making more sacrifices than others. In the end all nations will benefit.
A consideration of the desires and interest of the people, rather than the clever and strategic screening of politicians and diplomats, will provide the only hope of success. And so we come to the part. ing of the ways. If the old road is taken, the world will have to start agitating once again for all that is so nearly in its grasp. Peace lies just around the corner and let us hope that its vision will not be blotted out by petty squabbling over a few thousands of tons o/ naval tonnage nor a certain number of men dressed up in militar
uniform.
The second contribution to a symposium conducted by undergraduates of Amherst College.
�[Page 129]THE AMERICAN PEACE MOVEMENT
CURRENT PLANS AND ACTIVITIES F
by
RusseELL M. Cooper
Graduate School, Columbia Unizersity
one of the outstanding phenomena of our time. Smothered as it was until the close of the World War, it sprang up again with the Peace Conference and has developed until today it is assuming the proportions of a veritable crusade. Long established organizations have added secretaries of international goodwill to their staffs, and new societies have arisen by the score.
It often happens, however, that ardent members of one peace organization are hardly aware of the progress of their kindred societies; very few persons can visualize the movement as a whole. \ clearing-house for information and ideas clearly is needed. It sto this end, therefore, that World Unity is dedicating this section t its magazine. \. 2 shall endeavor to chronicle from month to month the most interesting and significant projects which come to our attention. In order to make the survey the most adequate possible, it will help greatly if our readers will send in reports of the activities in which they are engaged. Only with the widest operation can this service achieve its intended purpose.
All eyes are turned now toward the World Disarmament Conference which is scheduled for next February. While several organizations are continuing their agitation on War Debts and the World Court, there has been a decided shift of emphasis toward ‘he issues of the forthcoming conference. The groups differ some- » hat in the percentage of armament reduction which they advocate; ny insist upon total disarmament as the only solution. All unite,
T= amazing growth of the peace movement in America is
129
�[Page 130]130 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
however, in urging that the United States take the lead in the revision downward.
In order more adequately to coordinate their efforts, the na. tional peace organizations have formed an Inter-Organizationa! Council on Disarmament. Representatives of about sixty groups meet in New York City every two weeks to plan next steps in the disarmament program. They have undertaken two projects in com: mon. The first is the establishment of a store on Fifth Avenue, New York, where peace posters, pamphlets, and books are being exhibited and sold. The public thereby has ready access to the bes material available in this field. The other joint project of this group of national agencies is the promotion of Armistice Day meeting: across the country. In seventy-five of the major cities of the Unitec States local committees are working in close conjunction with this national group preparing for huge mass meetings to press the caus of the Disarmament Conference. Other activities, also, are in pro- cess of materialization.
- *» & @
Undoubtedly the most outstanding piece of mass educatior attempted recently was the World Tomorrow Week, October 2 to 31. With the theme, “How May another War be Averted? mass meetings were staged in 150 cities in the United States anc Canada. The World Tomorrow magazine sponsored the meeting: supported by a committee of 275 distinguished peace leaders unde: the chairmanship of Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick and Dr. Georg: C. Pidgeon.
Outstanding leaders in the United States and Canada discusse:
the five major proposals—disarmament, world organization, tc
moving the causes of hostility, war resistance, and education fo:
peace. The focus of attention, in nearly every case, was disarm:
ament. At every meeting enthusiasm ran high. Several cities repor
an attendance of over 5,000 persons, and in two or three cases near!
10,000 were assembled. About 200 statesmen, clergymen, and edu
cators contributed their services on the platform, while many mor
served on local sponsoring committees. On Thursday afternvon
October 29, a national broadcast on disarmament was sent out from
�[Page 131]THE AMERICAN PEACE MOVEMENT [31
the N.B.C. Studios in New York City. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Zona Gale, and W. E. B. DuBois delivered a joint appeal to the nation to back the president in a program of radical reduction.
One can not estimate the number of people reached directly oy the World Tomorrow Week program, but the total would go well over 100,000. In each city the mass meeting was considered ust the beginning of an intensive campaign. Local follow-up com- mittees are cooperating with the National Council for the Preven- ton of War and other peace societies to conserve the enthusiasm aroused and to consolidate it into an active force making for peace.
- * * &
On October 10, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom delivered its Disarmament Petition to President Hoover. Miss Jane Addams, Mrs. Helen Taft Manning and Miss Catherine Blake, accompanied by 5oo representatives from each ot the forty-eight states, presented the document signed by over 150,000 persons in the United States. The following day, October
- 1, the Women’s International League held a mass meeting at the
Belasco Theater, in Washington, at which addresses were delivered by the Hon. James G. Rogers, Assistant Secretary of State, and by the women who led the caravan across the continent.
This caravan left Hollywood, California, at the close of the annual convention of the Women’s International League, June 21. An automobile with literature concerning the Disarmament Con- ‘erence and bearing the disarmament petitions, traveled from state ‘o state, disseminating information, gathering sentiment, and secur- ing signatures. At each state border a delegation of women met en car and escorted it to the principal cities, forming a caravan
or peace. The ladies spoke at dinners, churches, theaters, mass meetings, and clubs. They teport that everywhere they were ac- corded a most hearty reception.
The petition, which was delivered to President Hoover, is
Jentical with the petition circulated by the Women’s International
vague in forty different countries. In Japan nearly a million people
ens signed it, and in Great Britain the total is over that.number.
The petition reads as follows:
�[Page 132]32 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
“The undersigned men and women, irrespective of party, are convinced that competition in armaments is leading all countries to ruin without giving security; that this policy renders future wars inevitable and that these will be wars of extermination; that gov. ernmental assurances of peaceful policy will be valueless as long as those measures of disarmament are delayed which should be the first result of the pact for the renunciation of war.
“They therefore ask for total and universal disarmament and request their government formally to instruct its delegates to the International Disarmament Conference, meeting in February, 1932 to examine all proposals for disarmament that have been or may be made, and to take the necessary steps to achieve real disarm ament.”’
In addition to the Women’s International League caravan there were ten peace caravans of college students who toured var ious states during the summer under the auspices of the Americar Friends Service Committee. The student speakers were trained 4 the two weeks institute held at Haverford College in June.
+ «*
The League for Industrial Democracy has published an emer gency magazine called Disarm! With articles by Norman Thomas Heywood Broun, Paul Blanshard, A. J. Muste, John Nevin Sayre Kirby Page, and many others, the magazine is a sweeping, graphi assault on war, war psychology, and armaments. Copies have no: been placed on news stands, but have been turned over to uner ployed inen to sell on the streets. The price is ten cents.
ft si 3 38
The National World Court Committee has launched a ni
tionwide drive for ratification by the United States Senate of th:
pending World Court proposal. Everett Colby, chairman of th:
executive committec, announces that the drive has the active sup
port of sixtv national labor, church and women’s organization:
Plans are being made for a campaign in a number of states to:
the purpose of crystalizing public sentiment in favor of the nes
protocols now in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
�[Page 133]THE AMERICAN PEACE MOVEMENT 133
More than 40,000 clubwomen in Westchester Countv, New York, are participating in a six-weeks intensive study of selected national and international questions. This is in preparation for the Westchester County World Affairs Institute scheduled to be held in White Plains on November 17 and 18. The four subjects used for discussion are: the world economic crisis, limitation of armaments, American relations in Latin America and the Pacific, and international education. The project is a joint enterprise of the women’s organizations of Westchester County.
. «& s+ *
The recent annual meeting of the National Council for Pre- vention of War marked the tenth birthday of that organization. The Council met at the Friend’s Meeting House, Washington D.C., on October 20, 21, and 22. The main attention of the meeting was directed toward the Disarmament Conference, its implications and possibilities. Other topics discussed were: debts and reparations, PhiJippine independence, our Latin American policies, the Mac- intosh Decision, and military training.
Prominent peace workers from many sections of the country were in attendance, and the occasion was one both of stock-taking of the past and preparation for an even more extensive program in the future.
ew ee
The foregoing illustrations indicate some features of the peace
movement that is sweeping across the nation. As the Disarmament
Conference approaches, the activity should become even more
tense—but more of that in our next issue.
�[Page 134]THE PEACE LEADERS REPLY
George H. E. Smith’s article on “The Twilight of the American Peace Movement,” published in our August issue, has brought forth a number of interesting comments, excerpts from which are now published as evidence of the real strength of the peace ideal at this time. This correspondence reveals the fact that important efforts are being made to coGrdinate the activities of the difterent peace organizations, and also to create a more eftective contact with the general public—the aims sought by Mr. Smith.
Froriencé BREWER BOEFCKEL Pdycation Director, National Council for Prevention of War
I agree with Mr. Smith that educational work for peace ac- cepted the post-war dri... agains: war as if it were based on a reasoned understanding instead of on an emotional reaction, but | do not find anywhere in his article, except in a quotation which he makes from Norman Angell, a suggestion as to just what the re- sulting mistake in education has been. Norman Angell points out that the peace societies have not directed their educational efforts toward showing clearly the change in the structure of human so- ciety, “of revealing the process, of showing the how and why of the futility of military force.” To anyone who has attended successive peace conferences during the last ten years, such for instance as the conferences on the Cause and Cure of War, there can be no doubt that the kind of educational work for peace which has been carried on has met with a considerable degree of success. The leaders, na- tional, state and local, of the various organizations interested in the promotion of peace are today well informed and intellectually alert on current peace problems.
As a matter of fact within the last two years there has been a notab!y increased effort in peace literature to build up such a new
Tag
�[Page 135]THE PEACE LEADERS REPLY 13§
conception of the world and to reach larger audiences. An eco- nomic survey of the United States has been made by sections, states and cities in which world interdependence is stated in terms of local products and occupations so that the fact of interdependence cin be brought home to the individual in terms of his own pocket- book. This survey has recently been taken up by a western uni- versity and graduate students are basing their theses on detailed studies along this line of their own states.
Financially and numerically the peace movement was never stronger. Consider, for example, the National Council for Preven- tion of War which was organized ten years ago this autumn. Its irst year’s budget was twenty thousand dollars, its budget last year was one hundred and seventy thousand dollars.
Many of those who are watching the peace movement closely believe that the present campaign in support of reduction of arma- ments marks a new phase in peace activity. The need for concen- tration and haste is tending to coordinate peace programs.
Puitip C. NAsH Divector, The League of Nations Association, Inc.
Frankly, it is my opinion that the peace forces of the world are
fur from being in eclipse. They have never been so strong in the
history of mankind as they are today. Fifteen years ago even the
calling of a disarmament conference was out of the question, the
dream of only a few idealists. A few years ago a caravan of the
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom would have
been met by stones and cabbages; now it is being met by governors
and mayors. A few years ago Frederick Libby was prevented from
tulking in many places in the country because he was a pacifist. That
does not happen now. I have just returned frorm an 11,000-mile
tr around the country, speaking everywhere to adequate and at
least respectful audiences. All the publicity accorded to this trip
«is cither enthusiastically favorable or simply non-committal, with
the exception of the Hearst press in the state of Washington. Their
tirade rather served to increase the prestige of my visit than to
ciminish it.
�[Page 136]136 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
As you know, about sixty national civic organizations are grouped together as a National World Court Committee and the same sixty are also loosely united in a conference for the study ot disarmament, which is secking to build up a public opinion behind the administration in its disarmament program. Never before in the history of the world or in the history of this country has there been such cooperation in behalf of effective peace measures and such public interest in them.
DorotHy DETZER
Executive Secretary, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
That immediate projects have absorbed the energies of most of the workers in the Peace Movement over the past ten years has been true, no doubt, but this has been true not because the educa: tional processes and needs have been forgotten, but because fund: have definitely limited activities—and immediate objectives such as stopping the war with Mexico, the World Court campaign, etc., which he cites, seemed too important to let slide when they became or were made by the Movement actual issues before the country. The few projects which have been accomplished have taken the united efforts of all. It may have been a mistaken technique—but it was not blindness on the part of the leaders.
What Professor Smith does not take into account is that the Peace Movement includes on its fringe such groups as the Federa: tion of Women’s Clubs. Their governing boards would not us material, for example, prepared by us. Is it waste for them then to prepare literature for their own group rather than to give their people none at all? On the other hand, this is not the case among Peace organizations as such, and more and more we use each other's material though this has its definite drawbacks. For example, the W.LL. has produced nothing in the way of literature on the Worlc Court because there was such splendid material in the field from other organizations.
That the Peace Movement needs further codrdination and plan
is doubted, I believe, by one one—that definite steps are being taken
in the direction of codrdination happens to be a fact—work on the
�[Page 137]THE PEACE LBADERS REPLY 137
World Court campaign, the London Naval Conference, the coming Geneva Conference has been undertaken under a joint pla of all the organizations working for Peace. Analysis of needs and how to supply them is also being made. Where there isn’t cooperation on given plans and projects, it often is not the fault of the national leaders who see the advantage of such joint undertakings but rather from the local committees.
In any adequate plan, this long educational process could best be assumed, it would seem to me, by organizations whose funds are permanent and stable, such as the foundations and not by the groups who live on the fifty cent pieces of their members.
No nation ever entered a war on reason. The great moments and events of our personal lives are not guided by logic but by emo- tion. The Movement now needs psychologists more than it needs technicians. It has as yet found no adequate equivalent for the drama, the color, the trappings of militarism. The Peace Movement has no formulas which create automatic emotional responses such as ‘the protection of home”—the “flag,” etc. Surely such emotional patterns can be developed.
CLARENCE E. PICKETT Executive Secretary, American Friends Service Committee
I have read with very keen interest Mr. Smith’s article on ‘The
Twilight of the American Peace Movement.” I think he overplays
a good point. In my judgment the most important kind of peace
work in this country is that which attempts to consistently inform
large movements of the American public in a dispassionate fashion
on international affairs. Generally speaking, America is still oper-
ating on the psychology and economics which were feasible in
George Washington's time. Then we were a small and insignificant
country in world affairs. Now we are a great and powerful nation
brought up on the theory of isolation but dependent upon coopera-
tion for our prosperity, consequently we often act in ways that
cause other nations to feel that we are actuated by ill will when
really it is ignorance and lack of understanding that is our difficulty.
�[Page 138]138 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE
RicHarD R. Woop Secretary, Peace Committee of the Religions Society of Friends of Philadelphia and Vicinity
While we agree that the peace movement should lay great stress on education, we have discovered two difficulties which Mr. Smith does not mention. In the first place, nobody is quite sure what the effective methods of education are, and those who are surest com- mand the least confidence. This is probably a good thing in the long run, because the forces that are seeking to educate in what | believe to be the direction opposed to peace are at present better financed and better located than are what I consider the peace forces. When one thinks of the connections between the Army and Navy and the moving-picture organizations, one can sense the tre- mendous forces that can be used in education against peace, if it were finally known how to educate.
Another difficulty about education is the result of the proper desire of this country to keep propaganda out of our public educa- tion. Therefore the peace movement can not, on any large scale, carry on an educational program that is much ahead of the thinking of the community. Work with adults therefore seems to have to go on side by side with work for children.
Finally, the suggestion is very appealing that a comprehensive program for the peace movement be worked out. This, again, is easier said than done. The peace movement includes people with, many different philosophies and convictions. There are people who honestly believe in provision for arbitration and international co- operation, but who feel that if they are to be effective they must have behind them provision for coercion, by a strong and righteous nation, e.g., the United States or France, or by an international police-force. There are others who fail to see how coercion can be applied on an international scale by any means except means that are in effect war, and who are by firm conviction opposed to war un- der any name. Such people can work together on definite issues, but find it utterly impossible to agree on a comprehensive program.
David M. Epwarps Executive Secretary, indiana Council on International Relations
Unless peace organizations make their activities more funda-
�[Page 139]THE PEACE LEADERS REPLY 139
mentally educative than they have been, the results will be increas- ingly smaller.
The Indiana Council on International Relations has mapped out a program for the coming year’s activities which we hope will, in a measure at least, remedy this defect.
We are putting on a two day Disarmament Institute on Octo- ber 2-3. We have secured the best informed persons that we know of as speakers. We are inviting to this Institute, people of leader- ship capacity from a large number of communities. We hope as a result, thet one hundred local Disarmament Institutes will be held in the state of Indiana during the next twelve months.
We are making every eftort possible to connect up with the public schools of the state encouraging education in world-minded- ness through the medium of the schools. Our work in this capacity is mostly cooperative with the national efforts, such as The Na- tional Student Forum for Study of the Kellogg Pact, etc.
C. THWING
Editor, Harmonist
The tone of the essay seems to be sufficiently—and properly— critical, but I do not find much constructive offering of a practical nature. The efforts at cooperation often lead to such compromise as to weaken the efforts at unity. Where there are diverse aims and programs, varying from xtreme left to remote right, it is hard to find common ground .< sufficient width for all to occupy to advan- tage. In politics as in religion the creeds and programs are limited in so far as they are common.
CHARLES L. CARHART
Washington Council om International Relations
[ venture to think that the policy to be favored is for each to
proceed as far and as rapidly as he may ‘without tarrying for any.”
The policy that has not heretofore been extensively advocated and
tricd out is that of the war resisters. I should be glad to see their
numbers greatly multiplied. Meanwhile, those who cannot go so far
or are solicitous about the laggards need not slacken their efforts.
�[Page 140]ROUND TABLE
World Unity joins the host of magazines and newspapers which have paid homage to Dr. David Starr Jordan the scientist, the educator and the valiant soldier in the noble army of world peace. It is a proud privilege to record here the debt owed by this publication to Dr. Jordan’s encouragement, advice and full-hearted cooperation. Even before the first number of World Unity appeared, Dr. Jordan responded warmly to the statement of purpose sent to a few representative people in America and abroad. His union of scientific intelligence and spiritual motive appears more and mote in these days of international confusion and depression to be the one human quality on which a true and enduring civilization can be based.
The breadth of appeal made by World Unity among its readers is well interpreted by the series of letters, the fifth of which appears this month. Two letters which have recently been received, how- ever, vividly express the extent to which the ideal of the magazine has penetrated. From the Secretary of the Bureau International id’Education, Geneva, Switzerland: “I should like to say that the International Bureau of Education has always found the World Unity Magazine extremely interesting and useful. The current issue of this magazine is always on view in our permanent exhibition on ‘The Teaching of Peace and International Collaboration.’ Further, the general Secretary of the Bureau has on many occasions referred to certain articles in this magazine in her lectures, and constantly recommends it to visitors at the Bureau. During the recent Summer Course for Teachers, organized by the Bureau, one of the lectures was largely based on articles which had from time to time appeared in World Unity.”
From a village in British Columbia: “Herewith is draft to pas
my subscription to World Unity for another year. That article by
140
�[Page 141]ROUND TABLE I4I
Norman Angell was the best thing I have read for a long time. When I have read your magazine I send them on to a friend, who lives thirty miles from here and comes to the railroad about twice avear. After this 1am going to send them, when he has read them, to a friend 120 miles from the railroad. Since the beginning of 1931 1 have made $300. That is pretty good so far but it may be all for the year. Next winter the clothes may be old, and sometime the eats be scanty, but I shall have the reading that will keep me in remembrance that I am part of the great world that is going through the birth pains of a better civilization and paying the price of human progress in human suffering, than which no other price can be paid.”
Such a response is more than a vital encouragement, precious though it be, to our own aims and daily work: it is the very sub- stance of world progress and betterment, the animating spirit that in time will overcome the heartless mechanisms of a competitive order and make possible an economy reflecting the ideal of coop- eration ever latent in mankind.
The tragic emergency in Manchuria brings up the whole prob- lem of East and West in a form not inviting but compelling the best resources of Western thought. Hans Kohn, in “Orient and Occident” gives us the whole background of political, cultural and economic evolution required for a sound understanding of the present conflict. Grover Clark, by a remarkable philosophic insight, makes at last comprehensible what appears to be the impassible differences between human beings who happen to be born in the Fast and those who happen to be born in the West.
A new editorial department established to chronicle the current nlans and activities of the American Peace Movement, enables the magazine to keep its readers in closer touch with important devel- opments frequently not even mentioned in the public press outside the few largest cities. The first contribution in this month’s issue resents Russell M. Cooper as a highly appreciated member of the
cuff of Contributing Editors.
�[Page 142]“A UNIVERSITY OF LIFE’’
Letters from World Unity Readers—V
It may be that ‘there is nothing new under the sun.” But the know. ledge, the appreciation, and the use made of successive revelations of that which is has ever ushered in a ‘new day.”
The World Unity Magazine mirrors forth to its readers the many and varied aspects of the present genesis of such a new age which is sensed more or less consciously by those in the several worlds of economics, politics, science, philosophy, religion, and art.
The World Unity Magazine is in itself a veritable university of life giving to its enrolled “honor students,” its responsible readers, the as- tounding discoveries in the universe of matter; presenting the stimulating programs and platforms offered by the “creative workers” of the world to accelerate the evolution of a “humanized civilization; and relating the carnest efforts of progressive members of differing colors and creeds which have indeed promoted that true civilization dependent upon and resulting In appreciation and sympathy for all.
Never has there been such a universally minded faculty of leaders consecrated to the uplift and advance of a universal civilization based upon the realization of the oneness of the family of man.
This universalized consciousness of the Jew, the Christian, the Orient- al, the scientist, the artist, etc. as expressed by their scholarly spokesmen in this World Unity Magazine will hasten into actuality that ideal but practical condition on earth which the Seers of all ages have foretold as the inevitable goal of humanity.
Therefore it seems to me that the earnest reader of this World Unity Magazine must cherish its noble service to humanity in constructively ha- stening the world’s progress towards its ideal—a “humanized civilization.”
MariE B. Moore
Progressive Education Teacher New York City
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THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
The most important topic in America today
Is present-day education preparing youth properly for their adult
life?
What evidences of change have been tested and found adequate to nect the future?
THE PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION through its service and tls magazine
Progressive Education
offers stimulating, practical answers to these questions, It translates your interest in your children, your schools, your community into helpful service.
Progressive Education is issued monthly from October to May, inclusive. It is attractive in format, wide in scope, vital in presentation oi the newer tendencies in education.
May we send you a sample copy? Better, just use the attached coupon and try it for a year. You will become a permanent reader. A sub- scription makes you a member of “The Progressive Education Asso- ciation,” with all its services and privileges. Send ior our Association booklet. Note the spectal offer below.
PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION Dept. L
7i% JACKSON PLACE Wasninoton, D. C, Date
Miease enroll me as a subscribing-member of the Progressive Education lssocia-
n, iny subscription to expire November, 1932. Enclosed is my check for $3.00. It as understood that Iam to receive the October, 1931, issue of PROGRESSIVE POLCATION, and one previous issue free of charge.
Name Kindly print your name and \iress. Be sure it is the elddress tress to which you want the tmagazine sent,
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