flames of Bolshevism and anarchy would be so fed that even in America we
would have little hope of escaping a great conflagration. They are the
ones who are determined to see that their immense profits are
uncurtailled, whose homes must have ten bathrooms each; while great
numbers of their workers without whom they would have to close up the
industry--hence their essential partners in the industry though not in
name--haven't even a single bath-room and with families as large and in
many cases larger.
They are they who must have three or four homes each, aggregating in the
millions to build and to maintain. They are they who cannot see why
workmen should discuss such things among themselves, or even question
them, though in many cases they are scarcely able to make ends meet in
the face of continually advancing or even soaring prices, who never
enjoy a holiday, and are unable to lay up for the years to come, when
they will no longer be "required" in industry. They are they therefore
who have but little if any interest or care for even the physical
well-being of their workers, say nothing of their mental and spiritual
well-being and enjoyments--beyond the fact that they are well enough fed
and housed for the next day's work.
They are they who when it is suggested that, recognizing the change and
the run of the tide, they be keen-minded enough to anticipate changing
conditions and organize their business so that their workers have some
joint share in its conditions and conduct, and some share in its profits
beyond a mere living wage, reply--"I'll be damned if I do." It doesn't
require much of a prophetic sense now however, to be able to tell
them--they'll be damned if they don't.
There is reason to rejoice also that for the welfare of American
institutions, the number of this class is continually decreasing. Did
they predominate, with the unmistakable undercurrents of unrest, born of
a sense of injustice, there would be in time, and in a shorter time than
we perhaps realize, but one outcome. Steeped in selfishness, making
themselves impervious to all the higher leadings and impulses of the
soul--less than men--they are not only enemies of their own better
selves, but enemies of the nation itself.
Bolshevism in Russia was born, or rather was able to get its hold, only
through the long generations of Czarism and the almost universal state
of ignorance in which its people were held, that preceded it. The great
preponderance and the continually growing numbers of men with
imagination, with a sense of care, mutuality, cooperation, brotherhood,
in our various large enterprises is a force that will save this and
other nations from a similar experience.
I have great confidence in the Russian people. Its soul is sound; and
after the forces of treachery, incompetence and terrorism have spent
themselves, and the better elements are able to organize in sufficient
force to drive the beasts from its borders, it will arise and assert
itself. There will be builded a new Russia that will be one of the great
and commanding nations of the world. In the meantime it affords a most
concrete and valuable lesson to us and to all other nations--to strike
on the one hand, the forces of treachery and lawlessness the moment they
show themselves, and on the other hand, to see that the soil is made
fertile for neither their entrance nor growth.
The strong nation is that in which under the leadership of universal
free education and equal opportunities, a due watch is maintained to see
that the rights of all individuals and all classes are nurtured and
carefully guarded. In such a government the nation and its interests is
and must be supreme. Then if built upon high ethical and moral standards
where mutuality is the watch-word and the governing principle of its
life, its motto might through right, power through justice, it becomes a
fit and effective member of the Society of Nations.
Internationalism is higher than nationalism, humanity is above the
nation. The stronger however the individual nation, the stronger
necessarily will be the Society of Nations.
Love, sympathy, fellowship, is not inconsistent with the use of force to
restrain malignant evil, in the case of nations as in the case of
individuals. Where goodness is weak it is exploited and becomes a victim
of the stronger, when, devoid of a sense of mutuality, it is
conscienceless. Strength without conscience, goodness, ungoverned by the
law of mutuality, becomes tyranny. In seeking its own ends it violates
every law of God and man.
For the safety therefore of the better life of the world, for the very
safety and welfare of the Society of Nations, those nations that combine
strength with goodness, strength with good-will, strength with an
ever-growing sense of mutuality, which is the only law of a happy,
orderly, and advancing human life, must combine to check the power of
any people or nation still devoid of the knowledge of this law, lest
goodness, truth and all the higher instincts and potentialities of life,
even freedom itself perish from the earth. This can be done and must be
done not through malice or hatred, but through a sense of right and
duty.
There is no more diabolical, no more damnable ambition on the part of
individuals, organizations or nations than to rule, to gain domination
over the minds and the lives of others either for the sake of power and
domination or for the material gain that can be made to flow therefrom.
As a rule, however, it is both. There is nothing more destructive to
the higher moral and ethical life of the individual or the organization
controlled by this desire, nothing so destructive to the life of the one
or ones so dominated, and as a consequence to the life of society itself
as this evil and prostituting desire and purpose.
Where this has become the clearly controlling motive, malignant and
deep-seated, if in the case of a nation, then it is the duty of those
nations that combine strength with character, strength with goodness, to
combine to check the evil wrought by such a nation. If by persuasion and
good-will, well and good. If not, then through the exercise of a
restraining force. This is not contrary to the law of love, for the love
of the good is the controlling motive. It is only thus that the higher
moral law which for its growth and consummation is dependent upon
individuals, can grow and gain supremacy in the world.
Intellectual independence and acumen, combined with a love of truth,
goodness, righteousness, love and service for others, is the greatest
aid there can be in carrying out the Divine plan and purpose in the
world. The sword of love therefore becomes the sword of righteousness
that cuts out the cancerous growth that is given from to by malignant
ill will; the sword of righteousness that strikes down slavery and
oppression; the sword of righteousness therefore that becomes the sword
of civilization.
It is a weapon that does not have to be always used however; for when
its power is once clearly understood it is feared. Its deterrent power
becomes therefore infinitely more effective than in its actual use. So
in any new world settlement, any nation or group that is not up to this
moral world standard, that would seek to impose its will and its
institutions upon any other nations for the sake of domination, or to
rob them of their goods, must be restrained through the federated power
of the other nations, not by forcing their own beliefs or codes or
institutions upon it, but by restraining it and making ineffective any
ambitions or purposes that it may plan, or until its people whatever its
leadership may be, are brought clearly and concretely to see that such
methods do not pay.
That Jesus to whom we ultimately go for our moral leadership, not only
sanctioned, but used and advocated the use of righteous force, when
malignant evil in the form of self-seeking sought domination, either
intellectual or physical, for its own selfish gain and aggrandizement,
is clearly evidenced by many of his own sayings and his own acts.
So within the nation during this great reconstruction period, these are
times that call for heroic men and women. In a Democracy or in any
representative form of government an alert citizenship is its only
safety. With a vastly increased voting population, in that many millions
of women citizens are now admitted to full citizenship, the need for
intelligent action and attention to matters of government was never so
great. Great numbers will be herded and voted by organizations as well
as by machines. As these will comprise the most ignorant and therefore
the herdable ones, it is especially incumbent upon the great rank and
file of intelligent women to see that they take and maintain an active
interest in public affairs.
Politics is something that we cannot evade except to the detriment of
our country and thereby to our own detriment. Politics is but another
word for government. And in a sense we the individual voter are the
government and unless we make matters of government our own concern,
there are organizations and there are groups of designing men who will
steal in and get possession for their own selfish aggrandizement and
gain. This takes sometimes the form of power, to be traded for other
power, or concessions; but always if you will trace far enough, eventual
money gain. Or again it takes the form of graft and even direct loot.
The losses that are sustained through a lowered citizenship, through
inefficient service, through a general debauchery of public
institutions, through increased taxation to make up for the amounts that
are drawn off in graft and loot are well nigh incalculable--and for the
sole reason that you and I, average citizens, do not take the active
personal interest in our own matters of government that we should take.
Clericalism, Tammanyism, Bolshevism, Syndicalism--and all in the guise
of interest in the people--get their holds and their profits in this
way. It is essential that we be locally wise and history wise. Any class
or section or organization that is less than the nation itself must be
watched and be made to keep its own place, or it becomes a menace to the
free and larger life of the nation. Even in the case of a great national
crisis a superior patriotism is affected and paraded in order that it
may camouflage its other and real activities.
When at times we forget ourselves and speak of rights rather than duties
in connection with our country, it were well to recall and to repeat the
words of Franklin: "The sun never repents of the good he does nor does
he ever demand a recompense."
Not only is constant vigilance incumbent upon us, but realising the fact
that the boys and the girls of today are the citizens of tomorrow--the
nation's voters and law-makers--it is incumbent upon us to see that
American free education through American free public schools, is
advanced to and maintained at its highest possibilities, and kept free
from any agencies that will make for a divided or anything less than a
whole-hearted and intelligent citizenship. The motto on the Shakespeare
statue at Leicester Square in London: "There is no darkness but
ignorance," might well be reproduced in every city and every hamlet in
the nation.
Late revelations have shown how even education can be manipulated and
prostituted for ulterior purposes. Parochial schools whether Protestant,
Catholic, Jewish, or Oriental, have no place in American
institutions--and whether their work is carried on in English or in a
foreign language. They are absolutely foreign to the spirit of our
institutions. They are purely for the sake of something less than the
nation itself. Blind indeed are we if we are not history-wise. Criminal
indeed are we to allow any boys or girls to be diverted to them and to
be deprived of the advantages of a better schooling and being brought
under the influences of agencies that are thoroughly and wholly
American.
American education must be made for American institutions and for
nothing less than this. The nation's children should be shielded from
any power that seeks to get possession of them in order at an early and
unaccountable age to fasten authority upon them, and to drive a wedge
between them and all others of the nation.
The nation has a duty to every child within its borders. To fail to
recognize or to shirk that duty, will call for a price to be paid
sometime as great as that that has been paid by every other nation that
did not see until too late. Sectarianism in education stultifies and
robs the child and nullifies the finest national instincts in education.
It is for but one purpose--the use and the power of the organization
that plans and that fosters it.
Our government profiting by the long weary struggles of other countries,
is founded upon the absolute separation of church and state. This does
not mean the separation of religion in its true sense from the state;
but keeping it free from every type of sectarian influence and
domination. It is ours to see that no silent subtle influences are at
work, that will eventually make the same trouble here as in other
countries, or that will thrust out the same stifling hand to undermine
and to throttle universal free public education, and the inalienable
right that every child has to it. Our children are the wards of and
accountable to the state--they are not the property of any organization,
group or groups, less than the state.
We need the creation of a strong Federal Department of Education of
cabinet rank, with ample means and strong powers to be the guiding
genius of all our state and local departments of education, with greater
attention paid to a more thorough and concrete training in civics, in
moral and ethical education, in addition to the other well recognized
branches in public school education. It should have such powers also as
will enable it to see that every child is in school up to a certain age,
or until all the fundamentals of a prescribed standard of American
education are acquired.
A recent tabulation made public by a Federal Deputy Commissioner of
Naturalization has shown that a little over one tenth, in round numbers,
11,000,000, of our population is composed of unnaturalized aliens. Even
this however tells but a part of the story; for vast numbers of even
those who have become naturalized, have in no sense become Americanized.
Speaking of this class an able editorial in a recent number of one of
our leading New York dailies has said:
"Of the millions of aliens who have gone through the legal forms of
naturalization a very large proportion have not in any sense been
Americanized, and, though citizens, they are still alien in habits of
thought, in speech and in their general attitude toward the community.
"There are industrial centres not far from New York City that are wholly
foreign. There are sections of this city that--except as the children
through the schools and association with others of their own age yield
to change--are intensely alien.
"To penetrate these barriers and open new avenues of communication with
the people who live within them is no longer a task to be performed by
individual effort. Americanization is a work that must be undertaken and
directed on a scale so extensive that only through the cooperation of
the States and the Federal Government can it be successfully carried
out. It cannot longer be neglected without serious harm to the life and
welfare of the Nation."
Some even more startling facts are given out in figures by the
Department of the Interior, figures supplied to it by the Surgeon
General's Office of the Army. The War Department records show that 24.9
per cent. of the draft army examined by that department's agents were
unable to read and understand a newspaper, or to write letters home. In
one draft in New York State in May, 1918, 16.6 per cent. were classed as
illiterate. In one draft in connection with South Carolina troops in
July, 1918, 49.5 per cent. where classed as illiterate. In one draft in
connection with Minnesota troops in July of the same year, 14.2 per
cent. were classed as illiterate. In other words it means for example
that in New York State we have in round numbers 700,000 men between 21
and 31 years of age who are illiterate. The same source reveals the fact
that in the nation in round numbers over 10,000,000 are either
illiterate or without a knowledge of our language. The South is the home
of most of the wholly uneducated, the North of those of foreign speech.
And in speaking of this class a recent editorial in another
representative New York daily, after making mention of one industrial
centre but a few miles out of New York City, in New Jersey, where nearly
16 out of every 100 cannot read English, has said:
"Such people may enjoy the advantages America offers. Of its spirit and
institutions they can comprehend nothing. They are the easy dupes of
foreign agitators, unassimilable, an element of weakness in the social
body that might easily be converted into an element of strength. Many
of them have the vote, controlled by leaders interested only in designs
alien to America's welfare.
"The problem is national in scope * * *. The best way to keep Bolshevism
out of America is to reduce ignorance of our speech and everything else
to a minimum. However alert our immigration officers may be, foreign
agents of social disorder are sure to pass through our doors, and as
long as we allow children to grow up among us who have no means of
finding out the meaning of our laws and forms of government the seeds of
discontent will be sown in congenial soil."
Profoundly true also are the following words from an editorial in still
another New York daily in dealing with that great army of 700,000
illiterates within the State, or rather that portion of them who are
adults of foreign birth:
"The first thing to do is to teach them, and make them realize that a
knowledge of the English language is a prerequisite of first class
American citizenship. * * * The wiping out of illiteracy is a foundation
stone in building up a strong population, able and worthy to hold its
own in the world. With the disappearance of illiteracy and of the
ignorance of the language of the country will also disappear many of the
trouble-breeding problems which have held back immigrants in gaining
their fair share of real prosperity, the intelligence and self-respect
which are vital ingredients in any good citizenship. Real freedom of
life and character cannot be enjoyed by the man or woman whose whole
life is passed upon the inferior plane of ignorance and prejudice. Teach
them all how to deserve the benefits of life in America, and they will
soon learn how to gain and protect them."
It is primarily among the ignorant and illiterate that Bolshevism,
anarchy, political rings, and every agency that attempts through
self-seeking to sow the seeds of discontent, treachery, and disloyalty,
works to exploit them and to herd them for political ends. No man can
have that respect for himself, or feel that he has the respect due him
from others as an honest and diligent worker, whatever his line of work,
who is handicapped by the lack of an ordinary education. The heart of
the American nation is sound. Through universal free public education it
must be on the alert and be able to see through Bourbonism and
understand its methods on the one hand, and Bolshevism on the other; and
be determined through intelligent action to see that American soil is
made uncongenial to both.
Our chief problem is to see that Democracy is made safe for and made of
real service to the world. Our American education must be made
continually more keenly alive to the great moral, ethical and social
needs of the time. Thereby it will be made religious without having any
sectarian slant or bias; it will be made safe for and the hand-maid of
Democracy and not a menace to it.
Vast multitudes today are seeing as never before that the moral and
ethical foundations of the nation's and the world's life is a matter of
primal concern to all.
We are finding more and more that the simple fundamentals of life and
conduct as portrayed by the Christ of Nazareth not only constitutes a
great idealism, but the only practical way of life. Compared to this and
to the need that it come more speedily and more universally into
operation in the life of the world today, truly "sectarian peculiarities
are obsolete impertinences."
Our time needs again more the prophet and less the priest. It needs the
God-impelled life and voice of the prophet with his face to the future,
both God-ward and man-ward, burning with an undivided devotion to truth
and righteousness. It needs less the priest, too often with his back to
the future and too often the pliant tool of the organisation whose chief
concern is, and ever has been, the preservation of itself under the
ostensible purpose of the preservation of the truth once delivered, the
same that Jesus with his keen powers of penetration saw killed the
Spirit as a high moral guide and as an inspirer to high and
unself-centred endeavour, and that he characterised with such scathing
scorn. There are splendid exceptions; but this is the rule now even as
it was in his day.
The prophet is concerned with truth, not a system; with righteousness,
not custom; with justice, not expediency. Is there a man who would dare
say that if Christianity--the Christianity of the Christ--had been
actually in vogue, in practice in all the countries of Christendom
during the last fifty years, during the last twenty-five years, that
this colossal and gruesome war would ever have come about? No
clear-thinking and honest man would or could say that it would. We need
again the voice of the prophet, clear-seeing, high-purposed, and
unafraid. We need again the touch of the prophet's hand to lead us back
to those simple fundamental teachings of the Christ of Nazareth, that
are life-giving to the individual, and that are world-saving.
We speak of our Christian civilisation, and the common man, especially
in times like these, asks what it is, where it is--and God knows that we
have been for many hundred years wandering in the wilderness. He is
thinking that the Kingdom of God on earth that the true teachings of
Jesus predicated, and that he laboured so hard to actualise, needs some
speeding up. There is a world-wide yearning for spiritual peace and
righteousness on the part of the common man. He is finding it
occasionally in established religion, but often, perhaps more often,
independently of it. He is finding it more often through his own contact
and relations with the Man of Nazareth--for him the God-man. There is no
greater fact in our time, and there is no greater hope for the future
than is to be found in this fact.
Jesus gave the great principles, the animating spirit of life, not
minute details of conduct. The real Church of Christ is not an
hierarchy, an institution, it is a brotherhood--the actual establishing
of the Kingdom of God in moral, ethical and social terms in the world.
Among the last words penned by Dr. John Watson--Ian Maclaren--good
churchman, splendid writer, but above all independent thinker and
splendid man, were the following: "Was it not the chief mistake and also
the hopeless futility of Pharisaism to meddle with the minute affairs of
life, and to lay down what a man should do at every turn? It was not
therefore an education of conscience, but a bondage of conscience; it
did not bring men to their full stature by teaching them to face their
own problems of duty and to settle them, it kept them in a state of
childhood, by forbidding and commanding in every particular of daily
life. Pharisaism, therefore, whether Jewish or Gentile, ancient or
modern, which replaces the moral law by casuistry, and the enlightened
judgment of the individual by the confessional, creates a narrow
character and mechanical morals. Freedom is the birthright of the soul,
and it is by the discipline of life the soul finds itself. It were a
poor business to be towed across the pathless ocean of this world to the
next; by the will of God and for our good we must sail the ship
ourselves, and steer our own course. It is the work of the Bible to show
us the stars and instruct us how to take our reckoning * * *.