THE EUROPEAN WAR
War! The news caught at the heart of the world, and stopped it.
For a time the whole business structure of every nation on earth
trembled, threatened to crumble into ruin, under this weight, to which
it had been building from the beginning.
Greed, grasping selfishness, a policy of "each man for himself, against
other men," these are the foundations on which nations have built up
their commercial, social, industrial success. These are the things which
always have led, and always will lead, to war, to the destruction of
those structures they have built.
Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, Russia, England, Japan, Turkey,
Italy--one by one they crashed down into the general wreck. Everything
good that the centuries had made was buried in the debris. The world
rocked under the shock.
Here in America we read the reports in dazed incredulity. It could not
be possible, it could not be possible, we said to each other with white
lips--in this age, now, to-day--
For, living as most of us do, on the surface of things, among our
friends, in an atmosphere of kindliness and helpfulness, we had been
cheerfully unconcerned about the foundations of our economic and
industrial life.
In the winter there are thousands of unemployed men--we try to give each
one a bowl of soup, a place to sleep. Our street corners are
unpleasantly infested with beggars--we pass an ordinance, arrest them
for vagrancy, feed them a few days and order them to leave town. The
city is full of criminals--what are the police doing? we inquire
testily. We build another prison, erect another gallows.
We are like an architect who, seeing threatening cracks in the walls of
the building, would hurriedly fill them with putty and add another
story.
Henry Ford read the news from Europe. He saw there a purposeless,
useless and waste of everything valuable. He saw a machine, wrongly
built for centuries so that each part would work against all the other
parts, suddenly set in motion and wrecking itself.
It was a repetition, on a larger scale, of a catastrophe with which he
had been familiar in the business world. How many companies in his own
field had been organized in the early days of the industry, had gone
into business with the one purpose of getting all they could from every
one, workers, stockholders, buyers--and had gone down in ruin! Only
those companies which had been built on some basis of fair service had
succeeded, and these had done so in proportion to their real value to
others. Whether or not this principle is recognized by those who profit
from it, it is the fundamental principle on which business success is
built.
"The trouble is that people do not see that," said Ford. "A man goes
into business from purely selfish motives; he works for himself, and
against every one else, as far as he can. But only so far as his
grasping selfishness really works out in benefit to other people he
succeeds. If he knew that, if he went to work deliberately to help other
people, he would do more good, and at the same time he would make a
bigger success for himself.
"But instead of that, he gets more and more selfish. When he has got a
lot of money, and becomes a real power, he uses his power selfishly. He
thinks it is his grasping policy that has made him successful. Why,
everything I ever did selfishly in my life has come back like a
boomerang and hurt me more than it hurt any one else, and the same way
with everything I have done to help others. It helps me in the end every
time. It is bound to. As long as a machine runs, anything that is really
good for one part is good for the whole machine.
"Look at those fighting nations. Every one of them is hurting itself as
much as it hurts the enemy. Their success was founded on the fact that
they have helped each other. England got her dyes and her tools and her
toys from Germany; Germany got her wheat from Russia, and her fruits and
olives from Italy; Turkey got her ships from England. They were all
helping each other. Their real interests--the comfort and happiness of
their people--were all one interest.
"Left to themselves, the real German people would never fight the French
people, never in the world. No more than Iowa would fight Michigan. Race
differences? They do not exist in sufficient degree to make men fight,
and they are disappearing every day. See how the races mix in America! I
have fifty-three nationalities, speaking more than one hundred different
languages and dialects, in my shops, and they never have any trouble.
They realize that their interests are all the same.
"What is the root of the whole question? The real interests of all men
are the same--work, food and shelter, and happiness. When they all work
together for those, every one will have plenty.
"What do people fight for? Does fighting make more jobs, better homes,
more to eat? No. People fight because they are taught that the only way
to get these things is to take them from some one else. The common
people, the people who lose most by fighting, don't know what they are
fighting for. They fight because they are told to. What do they get out
of it? Disgust, shame, grief, wounds, death, ruin, starvation. War is
the most hideous waste in the world."
In the first terrible months of the war the American people, in horror,
echoed that opinion. With the spectacle of half the world in bloody
ruins before our eyes, we recoiled. We thanked God that our country
remained sane. We saw a vision of America, after the madness had passed,
helping to bind up the wounds of Europe, helping to make a permanent
peace which should bring the people of the earth together in one
fraternity.
By degrees that feeling began to change. We want peace. Are there a
hundred men among our hundred million who will say they want war for
war's sake? We want peace--but---- We have begun to ask that old
question, "Is it practical?" That vision of the people of the world
working together, increasing their own happiness and comfort by helping
to make happiness and comfort for each other--it is a beautiful theory,
but is it not a bit sentimental? a bit visionary? just a little too good
to be true?
"Here is a world where war happens," we say. "If a war should happen to
us what would we do? Let us begin to prepare for war. Let us take war
into our calculations. Let us be practical."
And Henry Ford, reading the papers, listening to the talk of the men in
the streets, saw the object lesson of his great organization
disregarded. He heard again the objection which had met every step of
his life. "It is a good idea, but it is theoretical. It is not
practical. It will not work. Things never have done that way." He saw
this country, already wasting incalculable human energy, destroying
innumerable lives daily, because of a "practical" system of
organization, preparing to drain off still more energy, still greater
wealth, in preparation for a still more terrible waste.
The dearest principle of his life, the principle whose truth he had
proven through a life of hard work, was in danger of being swept away
and forgotten.