"Where there is no vision, the people perish."--Pro. xxix. 18.
I began this book on Armistice day, and am ending it on Peace day. This
period of about eight months has been a time of great disillusionment.
Even those little inclined to be deceived by the customary exaggerations
of politicians, and little disposed to believe in sudden conversions,
had hoped that the immense effort of this Great War was to awaken the
deadened conscience of the world; to leave a permanent improvement in
social and international relations; making class and individual and sex
competition, as also national rivalry, a less pronounced feature in the
new order; replacing greed by desire for service, war by a League of
Nations to enforce justice. But a war of justice was followed by a peace
of trickery and injustice. The victors (if not every one of them, still
collectively) claimed their spoils as in earlier wars. Clemenceau's
desire for vengeance triumphed over Wilson's principles in the center of
the world stage.
More than ever we search the future with anxiety. Amid the confusions
and compulsions, the changes unavoidable in this time of uncertainty, it
is immensely more difficult to act wisely. In the old days it all seemed
so much easier, as if life could be shuffled, like a pack of cards, into
new arrangements. War has made a difference to the whole of life,
shattered everything, as it were, in our hands, made the daily duties of
most of us much harder. We have been robbed of serenity.
When you stand at the threshold of this new difficult world, knowing, as
I do, that the milestones marking the backward path tell you, with
certainty, that the greater part of your life and your work lies behind
you, then, in these waiting days of urgency, you will want to hold a
reckoning with yourself and with life, in humility to question
everything, your own faith and what you have tried to teach to others
with all the honesty you have.
My task has been a difficult one, and it is made much more difficult by
reason of the uncertainties of our outlook, because there are now so
few principles accepted by all of us as true; every principle is faced
by a counter principle. It is so much easier to have fixed standards of
conduct than to argue every case that occurs. We have failed in every
direction to establish ideals fine enough and complete enough, and
useful enough to hold our imagination and our wills. Everyone seems to
be more or less at loose ends of conflicting purposes. Morals now are
like clothes, made to measure and to fit each wearer. Too often, in
important particulars, they change as easily and foolishly as the
fashions change.
I wish to bring people back to a disciplined freedom; to a recognition
of their own needs and the needs of others--the deepest desires of life.
A morality based on individual values is breaking down in every
direction, under the temptations and unsettlements, increased and
hastened by the war, but brought about primarily by profit seeking, by
the struggle of everyone doing as he likes, by a society so large, so
ill organized and so hurried that personal intercourse gives way to
mechanical relationships.
My position is all the more difficult as, while inclining more to the
spirit of those who, in relation to the moral questions I have dealt
with, are conservative, I yet regard very many of our accepted
conventions and our laws as productive of evil. I realize the way in
which they act so disastrously in hindering the spiritual and physical
health of our society. I am, therefore, eager for certain very
wide-reaching reforms.
I have not great patience with abstract theories of right and wrong,
rather I would test every law and every institution by its usefulness in
helping men and women. However imperfectly I have succeeded, I have set
_this aim of helpfulness_ steadfastly before me in every proposal I have
made for changes in our marriage laws and in the hindering laws which
regulate personal conduct. I do not want to discuss and consider
humanity, life, or anything else as I would like them to be, but, as
honestly as I can, I would observe and then help them as they are.
So many calamities and so much sin that could be prevented are
listlessly accepted by us as inevitable. New ideas and needs are
entangled among old; there is much of the new that is desirable to
preserve, much of the old that needs to be reformed. I would wish to
oppose two tendencies: I would prevent the too ready acceptance of the
fashions of the day, and I would also prevent a too loyal obedience to
the prejudices of yesterday. I would unite the intelligence of the
modern with the passion and sincerity of the ancient.
Such is the immensely difficult task that must be faced by every one of
us to-day. All of us are charged with heavy responsibility. Ours is a
greater inheritance than ever before there has been in the world. We
have all of us become responsible in a new and sterner way; to unite in
our search to find the new right paths. Three generations of
industrialism have created hideous abuses; we have to end them. With our
wider vision and more knowledge, with the lessons we have learned, with
the pain of our suffering, and our sacrifices still branded on our
hearts, we have to unite one with the other and all of us together to
renew and to justify life. We have to remake the world.