First World War Centennial

LECTURE IV

THE NEW MIND: THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGE

LECTURE IV

THE NEW MIND: THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGE

I

General Introduction

WE have been considering thus far the new age, its evidence, its perils, and its values. We turn now to con­sider the new mind needed for that new age, the challenge which that new age brings. That challenge is threefold—a challenge to recognize that we are in a new age, which calls for radical readjustments, a challenge to overcome in posi­tive fashion the perils of the age, and a chal­lenge to preserve and fulfill the values of the age.

If we have been right at all in our estimate of the significance of the crisis through which the world has been passing, then it is not too much to say that the opportunity for the great­est advance the human race has ever made is still within our grasp. To build a new world according to the pattern shown us in our mount of vision—that is the challenge, the oppor­tunity, "the great adventure," to which we are committed.

There is a moving passage (writes another [Chaplain E. S. Woods in The Church in the Furnace]) in a moving book, John Masefield's "Gallipoli," where he describes how the final at­tack at Suvla Bay represented a kind of climax of effort and opportunity, led up to by infinite toil and sacrifice. "There was the storm, there was the crisis, the one picked hour, to which this death and agony . . . had led. Then was the hour for the casting off of self, and a setting aside of every pain and longing and sweet affec­tion, a giving up of all that makes a man to the something which makes a race, and a going for­ward to death resolvedly to help out their broth­ers high up above in the shell-bursts and the blazing gorse. Which is a parable as well as history." To all believers in the ideal and lovers of men, has come at last their "one picked hour," their supreme opportunity, their "final summons to fare forth with God in His Great Adventure."

For it infinitely concerns us to see that the fight for a new world is not over, but only well begun. This is no time to scuttle back to old indulgences; it is no time for petty, private aims, or for narrow, selfish nationalism. For of nations, too, as well as of individuals, it is to be written in that new age: "Whosoever would be first among you, shall be servant of all." Germany's tragic failure is new proof of it.

These five years of unspeakable sacrifice have laid their hands in solemn dedication upon the heads, especially of the remaining youth of the nations, pledging them to that further and continuous sacrifice—which is also the measure of life—that holds in itself the promise and potency of a new world. For this generation is challenged to something far greater than the Crusades, far greater than the French Revolu­tion—to a great international movement that deliberately takes into its plans the entire globe and the interests of the whole race of men.

To make the final outcomes of this war, then, not less significant than the process; to make the gains commensurate with the sacrifices; to keep keen the sense of the spiritual issues of the war; to discern and obey those eternal laws of God, which the war has once more thundered forth; to carry over into the tasks of peace—personal, national and international—the great­est ideal achievements of the war: the rare idealism with which America came into the war, the sense of the supremacy of the in­tangible values, cooperation on an unheard-of scale, the well-nigh universal spirit of sacrifice, and the new revelation of common men and common nations—this, is the new oath of al­legiance to which in this supreme hour of the world we are all summoned. Can we rise to the opportunity?

If we are truly and fully to rise to that op­portunity, it will require the commitment of the whole man, and a many-sided national and international response—political, economic and social adjustment; educational adjustment; moral and religious adjustment. What can political, economic and social forces do to in­sure a better world? What can education do? What can the moral and religious forces do? These are our questions.

We are to consider, first, the political, economic and social challenge of our times.

To knit our discussion up most fruitfully with the considerations already reviewed, and to get as concrete and definite suggestions as possible for the solution of our world problem, let us ask ourselves at this point this specific question: What practically can be done in the way of political, economic or social changes to defeat the perils which threaten us, and to insure to us the fullest harvest—both economic and spiritual—from the available values of our time?

The Threatening Perils of the New Age

The threatening perils of the new age seemed to us to be the perils of an inevitable inherit­ance of evil from the war; of disillusionment, of reaction, and of destructive revolution. There is obviously no short and simple way of meeting those perils, and yet they are very real and very great. We are far from safety at any point.

1. The specific dangers involved in our evil inheritance from the war are first to be con­sidered.

Here there are, to begin with, the perils arising from frightful destructiveness in every sphere of life and the consequent perils of a civilization near to collapse. Both call for enormous constructive efforts of every kind, not only to make good our losses, but also defi­nitely to insure a better civilization.

Then there are the perils of the infectious spread, through so long and terrible a war, of the intoxication of power; the perils of an al­most unavoidable approximation on the part of the Allies to the Prussianism they were fight­ing; and the resulting perils of carrying over into times of peace the moods and methods of war—in the ready appeal to force, the con­tempt for human life, and the persistent viola­tion of the liberties of a democratic state. These all call for a new fight for freedom, and for a more thoroughgoing democracy freed from all taint of absolutism.

There remain, in this direct inheritance of evil from the war, the perils of the inevitable reaction from the stress and strain and excite­ment of the war—in wide-spread class selfish­ness, the lure of indolence and pleasure-hunt­ing; and the perils which the war had for the inner life of the soldier. Both these causes have tended to induce a general demoralization of life, naturally to be expected after so pro­found a disturbance of normal conditions, but all the more dangerous on that account. These perils can be met effectively only in the indi­vidual life, backed by education and the great motives of morals and religion, though the community can do much sympathetically to help, by making the conditions of living what they ought to be.

2. As to the perils of disillusionment, in another's words: "The hope of a speedy world-reorganization founded on international justice and peace has vanished; the Peace Conference has given us neither the Society of Nations nor Peace. The friends of justice are disappointed and disheartened." So a writer in the New Europe sums up that situation at Paris, out of which came our present disillusionment. The perils of disillusionment we saw are the perils of losing our trust in one another, of losing our courage and our fundamental faith. Those basic perils can be met only by discerning new grounds of hope from a larger, deeper and more specific survey of world conditions, and from moral and religious considerations. All that we have reviewed under the values of the new age has here its application, and there are other particular elements of promise yet to be noted.

3. The perils of reaction, we saw, are the perils of timidity, of physical and mental in­dolence, of wearied and enfeebled wills, of despair of a forward-looking solution—all abetted everywhere by individual, party, and national selfishness. These perils can be over­come only by individual determination; by dis­criminating education, that recognizes the need of both the conservative and radical instinct, but makes clear the imperative duty of prog­ress, and definitely points out at least some of the steps to a better age; and by a growing moral and religious victory over selfishness.

4. The comprehensive peril of destructive revolution is simply, "power in the hands of the many, wealth in the hands of the few." As a thoughtful writer in the Manchester Guardian puts it:

I think the great mass of people who are learn­ing more and more to think and speak of them­selves as the "dispossessed," the "disinherited," will refuse much longer to be "the muck round the roots." And in the violence of their revolt not only the fine flower of culture but all chance, perhaps for several generations, of decent com­fort may be sacrificed. What, then, do we need?

His own answer (somewhat like that of Ralph Adams Cram) is this:

Surely a new standard of values. A power to find the good things of life in the goods of the spirit, and in those forms of wealth which in­crease in proportion as they are widely diffused. In short, I am back at that problem which so often exercised me in pre-war days, namely, the problem of evangelical poverty. If we could make plain living and high thinking the fashion, and extravagant and self-indulgent living bad form, how many of our problems would be solved?

There is much in this answer, for, as we have already seen, things in whatever quantity are not sufficient to satisfy the life of man. But the best defense, as we saw, against destructive revolution can be only the most complete justice to all, whatever that may re­quire. Without such essential justice, exhorta­tion to plain living and high thinking will be taken to be only the old device of all the gen­erations to use religion to keep the masses of men satisfied with injustice.

If, then, we are to defeat the perils of the evil inheritance from the war, of disillusion­ment, of reaction, of destructive revolution, there are required; enormous constructive ef­forts in every sphere; a new fight for freedom and for a more thoroughgoing democracy; in­dividual determination, discriminating educa­tion, and the great motives of morals and re­ligion—all applied at many points; wide-spread community improvement of living conditions; the discernment of new grounds of hope from a broader, deeper and more specific survey of world-conditions, and from moral and religious considerations; the doing everywhere of essen­tial justice in such economic changes as will give exacter meaning to the democratic watch­word—liberty, fraternity, equality; and a growing moral and religious victory over hu­man selfishness in all realms. That is the great task with which the perils of our age confront us. This survey of what is required to overcome the perils of the new age makes it plain that nowhere are political or economic or social changes enough, but that everywhere, nevertheless, they have most important help to give.

II

Defeating the Perils of the New Age

1. Setting aside for the present all the educational and moral and religious demands, let us, as Americans, get some glimpse at least of what might he achieved through political, economic or social means for the insuring of a better civilization. It is possible to give only illustrations. The program of the British La­bour Party has peculiar significance for us here. For it suggests more clearly, concretely, and consistently perhaps than any other how much might be done conceivably by political means in those enormous constructive efforts now called for in every sphere, in the new fight for freedom and a more thoroughgoing democ­racy, and in such economic changes as any true conception of liberty, fraternity and equality required. Something like this program we shall probably ultimately have to face. The Party thus defines its aim:

If we in Britain are to escape from the decay of civilization itself ... we must ensure that what is presently to be built up is a new social order, based not on fighting but on frater­nity; not on the competitive struggle for the means of bare life, but on a deliberately planned cooperation in production and distribution for the benefit of all who participate by hand or by brain; not on the utmost possible inequality of riches, but on a systematic approach toward a healthy equality of material circumstances for every per­son born into the world; not on an enforced do­minion over subject nations, subject races, sub­ject colonies, subject classes, or a subject sex, but, in industry as well as in government, on that equal freedom, that general consciousness of con­sent, and that widest possible participation in power, both economic and political, which is characteristic of democracy.

Professor A. B. Wolfe puts in this compact and philosophical form a corresponding Amer­ican view of the case for democracy:

What then is democracy? Democracy is a spirit, an attitude, an insight, a view-point, and an ethic. All ethics is at bottom a calculus of ends and means. The fundamental meaning of democracy must be ethical, not political. Thus understood, democracy holds (1) that every in­dividual is an end in himself; (2) that no indi­vidual is to be regarded primarily as a means to the fulfillment of the purposes or desires of any other individual; (3) that no class or group of individuals is to be regarded primarily as a means to the interests of another class as end; (4) that opportunity, and, so far as opportunity is de­pendent upon them, material wealth and income, should be distributed to individuals in proportion to capacity and willingness to use them for the collective good; (5) that the collective good will be highest when opportunity, which at best is limited in quantity and quality, is distributed so that each individual is enabled to develop his potential powers and capacities in like proportion to the development of these potentialities in every other individual; (6) that the means to the utili­zation of individual capacity and the develop­ment of individual happiness can be found only in the willing, fair-minded cooperative work of individuals and groups, all of whom accept and live up to the foregoing principles; and (7) that to secure the operation of these principles all forms and devices of autocracy, and of the master-and-servant ethics, whether in the family, in national political life, in international relations, or in industry, must give way to government by the people as a whole.

Is there anything in that aim that ought not to be sought in these days of world reconstruc­tion?

2. When we think of these days of unrest and the multiplied violations of freedom even in America, can we doubt a more elemental truth, that our government, state and national, is solemnly bound not only to cease its un­warrantable interference with freedom, and the plans for further interference through sedition laws for peace time, but also to give the fullest protection to freedom of discussion? Surely the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Friends is basicly and everlastingly right, when they say:

There is one way—and one way only—in which we can hope to achieve sane and peaceful prog­ress. It is the way of education, of increasing understanding of the causes and cures of this great unrest. And there is one condition—and one condition only—upon which we can hope to follow this path of peaceable and orderly ad­vance. It is the condition of individual liberty, liberty to interchange ideas and information, lib­erty to speak and write, liberty to discuss. In any other direction lies stagnation or upheaval. . . No man can measure the harm that may ensue if we continue these encroachments upon freedom of expression. History is replete with lessons of the folly of suppression. ... No easy indifference will suffice to maintain freedom among us. Liberty asks of us a price, the price of tolerance toward those to whom we do not wish to show tolerance. But it is only the un­pleasant or hated utterance that really tests the quality of our liberty. "The supreme test of civil liberty," a noted English lord has said, "is our determination to protect an unpopular minor­ity in time of national excitement" Every one of us has some power to help at this vital point.

One is glad to hear the same doctrine un­equivocally declared in the Senate by Senator France:

We hold it to be an elemental and self-evident truth that there can be no free government with­out practical and absolute freedom of speech, an uninfluenced and unfettered press, and the un­abridged right of the people to assemble to peti­tion for a redress of their grievances. We de­mand the immediate restoration of these rights, the repeal of the unconstitutional and tyrannical Espionage act, and a recommendation of amnesty for all political prisoners held under this federal statute only for political opinions or for words spoken or written, as distinguished from direct incitement to violence, acts of violence, or overt acts against the government. You have con­demned Bolshevism for its confiscation of real and personal property. But that is a worse form of Bolshevism which confiscates real and personal rights. Confiscation of real and personal prop­erty affects the few. The confiscation of real and personal rights impoverishes all.

III

Preserving and Fulfilling the Values of the New Age

But we are to ask, also, how political, economic and social changes may serve not only to withstand the perils of the new age, but to preserve and fulfill its values. Those values we conceived to be the values involved in some of the outstanding characteristics of the present world-order; in the help of the moral demonstrations of the war; and in the greatest ideal achievements of the war.

1. In the first place, there are great grounds of hope in some of the outstanding character­istics of the present world-order: world sol­idarity; prodigiously increased resources of power and wealth and knowledge made possible through modern science; forced scientific co­operation on an unheard-of scale; the world­wide trend toward democracy and the universal diffusion of knowledge; the establishment of a League of Nations to Enforce Peace, even granting its limitations; the steadily growing internationalism; and the deepening sense of the necessity of a larger and more significant goal for social progress.

These characteristics alone make this a great age, surely not to be despaired of. And there is scarcely one of them—as our previous dis­cussion has already suggested—that either cannot be used, or will not directly help, to a better social order, a finer civilization.

Let us take one concrete illustration—and a test case—the hopes from the League of Na­tions, in spite of the great obstacles it has en­countered. So much is here at stake that it is worth while to quote at length Professor Seig­nobos' able discussion of this vexed question in the New Europe:

Should so many obstacles make us despair of the League of Nations, of general disarmament and a permanent peace? Must Europe resign herself to reverting to the costly and fragile ex­pedients of pre-war days—the armed peace and balancing alliances? Or is there still some hope of an international future different from the past? . . .

If the work of the Conference has been im­perfect, it has not been in vain, and its creations, incomplete as they may be, offer a very hopeful perspective. The League of Nations is born (the Conference has drawn up its birth certificate): it is not still-born, as the adherents of military tra­dition would fain have us believe. It is as yet only a permanent alliance of former belligerents, but it is so constituted as to be capable of enlarge­ment into a real League of All the Nations. We may sum up as follows the grounds for hoping that this transformation may be achieved:—(i) The territorial settlement of Europe, which is the most reasonable part of the work of the Conference, establishes between the various States a new balance, more favourable to inter­national peace. It reduces the number of the Great Powers, which are always more disposed to disturb the peace, less resigned to the limita­tion of their sovereignty by obligations of inter­national morality; while the three fallen Powers are just the three military monarchies, those most hostile to peaceful order. It creates four States of medium strength—Poland, Czecho­slovakia, Jugo-Slavic and Rumania—strong enough to form a barrier against the old aggres­sive empires, but not strong enough to pursue an aggressive policy themselves. This distribution of forces, which had not been known in Europe since the sixteenth century, facilitates the entry of the various States into the League of Nations, whose nucleus is formed by the three great dem­ocratic Powers—Britain, France and Italy—each eager to avoid war.

(2) The League is open to the neutrals of Europe and America, who are already beginning to enter. These are all medium-sized or small States, democratic in constitution and pacific in policy. They will bring with them the desire to make the League universal and will introduce a current of international opinion such as will tone down national egoisms.

(3) The League has received from the Con­ference several effective functions—notably the administration of mixed territories—the State of Danzig, the State of the Saar (with Fiume and the Straits to follow): the control over the rights of minorities; the supervision of extra-European territory disposed of under a mandate. These functions have brought and will bring into being organs that will serve as precedents for the crea­tion of other international organs.

(4) The League has received several interna­tional powers—the right of inviting States to revise the treaties, the right of urging upon them the reduction of armaments, the right of holding them to the acceptance of arbitration in cases of dispute. These are as yet merely moral powers without "sanction"; but they can exercise an irresistible pressure on the various Governments, when once they have the backing of a strong in­ternational public opinion.

(5) The League has created and already set in motion a permanent international organ—the Secretariat—an office for the registration of all international treaties, designed to become a centre of information for all facts of international char­acter and the instrument of concentration for all international services. The Secretariat, provided with a permanent international staff, will be a centre where international public opinion will form, and whence it will permeate to the Gov­ernments.

(6) The League has created an international Labour Commission, which has already prepared international legislation on conditions of work and constituted the International Labour Bureau. These organs place those in power in each coun­try in personal contact with the leaders of the working-class, the class most opposed to war, most eager for complete disarmament and lasting peace. In proportion as Labour extends its power in the internal politics of the various States, it will give added force to the League of Nations to assume direction of world policy.

(7) The Governments, out of fear of limiting their sovereignty, would not permit the creation of any international powers—neither legislature nor judicature, nor even army; they merely formed an executive, consisting solely of repre­sentatives of the Governments. But those in power, instead of being represented according to the traditional method by members of the diplo­matic bureaucracy, will be present in person at the deliberations of the executive. . . . For the head of a parliamentary Government is not an official, but an elected representative of his Parliament and subject to the public opinion of his people. The League of Nations, then, is al­ready provided with a tolerably representative executive. The permanent Court of Justice which is at present being organized, only has restricted powers; but it will be sufficient to ex­tend it in order to make of it the supreme inter­national court. . . . The League will at first only be a confederation without any international government. But every durable confederation ends by transforming itself into a federation.

The path which leads to the League of Na­tions is still encumbered by obstacles piled up by the Governments. But it has been clearly marked out, and if the nations once set forth upon it, they will in time reach the goal of their desires. [The New Europe, March 25, 1920, pp. 251-253.] Such development of the present League of Nations would be politics of a high order, and make directly for a better civilization.

2. Besides the values involved in certain outstanding characteristics of the present world-order, there were mentioned, it will be remembered, the moral demonstrations of the war, and the greatest ideal achievements of the war. The moral demonstrations of the war were these:—that we should get rid of shallow views of progress, of creed, and of morals; and that we should be certain of the inescapable grip of the laws of God upon the life of na­tions as well as of individuals. The greatest ideal achievements of the war were considered to be: the rare idealism with which America came into the war; men's deepening conviction of the supremacy of the intangible values; co­operation in a great cause on an unheard-of scale; the largest measure of the spirit of sacri­fice the world had ever seen; and the resulting new revelation of common men.

Now both these moral demonstrations of the war and these greatest ideal achievements of the war,—if they continue at all to be vital realities—cannot help affecting in the long run political, economic and social conditions. But both, as their names indicate, bear so directly upon the educational and moral and religious challenge of this new age, that here, too, I must content myself with a single but inclusive illustration, bearing upon political and social changes.

The new revelation, in the war, of common men should mean a new birth for democracy,—a truer, more consistent and more thorough­going democracy than the world has ever yet seen, in line with something like the British Labour Program, or Professor Wolfe's parallel statement. The common men have earned this right. That would be the only ultimate justi­fication of the war. It must be a democracy rooted at every point in the spiritual principle of reverence for personality, the sense of the priceless value and the inviolable sacredness of every person. Every relation in the democ­racy—personal, industrial, class, national, racial—must be tested by that principle. There must be no use of persons as things, as mere means, as comfortable but despised conveni­ences. It must be a democracy as radical as the essential and radical democracy of Christ, that shall not be able to doubt that property and institutions are made for men, not men for property and institutions. It must be a democ­racy eager to measure up to the included prin­ciples of obligation according to power, and of "first in service."

For such a democracy we must all get ready here in America. Ultimately it will come, with or without our consent. But it ought to come by the clear and glad choice of the whole peo­ple. But the discouraging thing in the political field to-day is that there is no evidence that either of our old parties is grappling earnestly with these problems of a radical democracy, or is anything but selfishly reactionary. One of the ablest of our American editors has said that the most conservative parties in the world are our two chief American parties. And it is no credit to America that that is true. A Republican Senator brings a like charge:

Judged by their legislative records in Congress during the last three years, both of these two great parties are as decadent as the issues which first quickened them into being.

One of two things is likely to be true: either we shall have an essentially new party, dealing earnestly and honestly with the issues of a radical democracy by political means, or we shall have such a democracy forced upon us along industrial lines.

In any case, that new birth for democracy will require the patient working through of the baffling problems of a truly democratic policy, in the interests of the whole people, as to the discovery and use of natural forces; as to the control and utilization of natural resources; as to the management and ownership of public utilities: as to cooperation and democracy in industries; and as to those manifold social mal­adjustments that still blot our record as a na­tion.

One does not wish to leave this economic issue vague. There is a direct challenge to Christian laymen in it, as Professor Small has said:

Since the armistice, the main problem of the Western nations has shifted. The central human question now, and probably for generations to come, is, What is right, and how may we realize the right in economic relations? Even in the countries which are least pacified and between the countries that are trying to organize stable peace, this demand for economic justice is the pivot of all the rest. Since this fundamental question of economic justice has taken possession of the big world, the direction of religious dynamics must and should change accordingly. . . . Both in general and in the concrete the Christian demand is for a Christianity able to vitalize economic righteousness. ... As I have said, of late there has been no lack of Christian declaration that Christianity, whether churched or un-churched, must make the cause of economic jus­tice its own. Yet evidence is still lacking that the leading laymen in the American churches are willing to throw their influence in favour of recog­nizing the problem of economic justice as the chief spiritual issue of our period. It remains to be seen whether the balance of power will apply the full force of organized Christianity to investigation and settlement of that problem. [The Christian Century, April 29, 1920.]

In the working out of all these difficult prob­lems here in America, there is both need and opportunity to make new and fruitful applica­tions of our guiding principle of reverence for personality. For it suggests a vital test in the choice of methods in the various forms of co­operation and state action: namely, the careful preservation of individual initiative. For nothing is more important, both for the indi­vidual himself and for society, than that the individual should be encouraged to the fullest exercise of his own initiative, and so to the largest contribution to the community life. By being most true to his own individuality he will be most true to all. It is, thus, of prime importance for the progress of the race in this after-the-war age that a sharp discrimination should be made between those forms of co­operation and state-action that tend to check and repress individual initiative, and those other forms of cooperation and state-action that definitely encourage such initiative and seek the best and largest contribution from each citizen and class and state and nation. Socialism seems often to fail here to exercise a much needed discrimination. It is one thing to resist innovations, adopted for the period of the war, which threaten personal liberty after the war. It is quite another, in a merely standpat attitude, to resist innovations which consist in a remodeling of our national and in­ternational organization, "so that it operates more efficiently and more humanely." One of the great issues of the time, therefore, is the decision that the enormous powers of forced cooperation and organization characteristic of our time are to be guided by a deep sense of the need of individual free initiative, and to be used for the constructive enterprises of the kingdom of God, for the true progress of the race.

This is in full harmony with the fundamental thought of Bertrand Russell's Principles of Social Reconstruction in judging what is the right direction of movement in any given time:

There are two general principles which are al­ways applicable.

1. The growth and vitality of individuals and communities is to be promoted as far as possible.

2. The growth of one individual or one com­munity is to be as little as possible at the expense of another.

A great moral and religious conception un­derlies these principles, as he elsewhere says:

The first and greatest change that is required is to establish a morality of initiative, not a mo­rality of submission, a morality of hope rather than fear, of things to be done rather than of things to be left undone. ... It will be in­spired by a vision of what human life may be, and will be happy with the joy of creation, living in a large free world of initiative and hope. It will love mankind, not for what they are to the outward eye, but for what imagination shows that they have it in them to become.

This is in the very spirit of Christ's faith in men and reverence for them. There is need here for earnest study, and loyal cooperation and determination on the part of Christian men and women.

And beyond all the borders of America itself an enlarged and deepened democratic ideal will require world-vision, world-thinking, world-responsibility. That America should refuse finally to take her full share of responsibility, in mandatories or otherwise, in the cooperative endeavour of a vigorous growing League of Free Nations would be not only irremediably to sully the rare idealism of her war record, but also eternally to shame her people. The time of her isolation is gone. Those are blind who deny it. It is impossible that we should stay in our present state of shame and humiliation.