This Troubled World

by Eleanor Roosevelt

In spite of this knowledge, I am sure that women themselves are among the worst offenders when it comes to petty quarrels. Mrs. J—— will refuse to speak to Mrs. C—— because Mrs. C——’s dog came through the hedge and mussed up Mrs. J——’s flowerbed. No one will deny that occurrences of this kind are irritating in the extreme, but is it worth a feud between two neighbors, perhaps old friends or even acquaintances who must live next door to each other and see each other almost every day?

At the moment we, as a nation, are looking across the Atlantic and the Pacific, patting ourselves on the back and saying how fortunate we are to be away from all their excitements. We feel a little self-righteous, and forget that we ourselves have been engaged in a war on the average of every forty years since our nation was founded. We even fought a civil war, complicated by the alignment of other nations with one side or the other, though no foreign soldiers actually came to fight on either side.

The people who settled in New England came here for religious freedom, but religious freedom to them meant freedom only for their kind of religion. They were not going to be any more liberal to others who differed with them in this new country, than others had been with them in the countries from which they came. This attitude seems to be our attitude in many situations today.

Very few people in any nation today are inclined to be really liberal in allowing real freedom to other individuals. Like our forebears we want freedom for ourselves, but not for those who differ from us. To think and act as we please within the limits, of course, caused by the necessity for respecting the equal rights which must belong to our neighbors, would seem to be almost a platitudinous doctrine, yet we would frequently like to overlook these limits and permit no freedom to our neighbors. If this is our personal attitude, it is not strange that our national attitude is similar. We are chiefly concerned with the rights and privileges of our own people and we show little consideration for the rights and privileges of others. In this we are not very different from other nations both in the past and in the present.

I can almost count on the fingers of one hand the people whom I think are real pacifists. By that I mean, the people who are really making an effort in their personal lives to bring about an atmosphere which will be conducive to a solution of all our difficulties in a peaceful manner.

The first step towards achieving this end is self-discipline and self-control. The second is a certain amount of imagination which will enable us to understand situations in which other people find themselves. We may learn to be less indignant at any slight or seeming slight, and we may try to find some way by which to remove the cause of the troubles which arise between individuals, if we become disciplined and cultivate our imaginative faculties. Once we achieve a technique by which we control our own emotions, we certainly will be better able to teach young people how to get on together. They may then find some saner way of settling questions under dispute than by merely punching each other’s noses!

When we once control ourselves and submit personal differences to constituted authorities for settlement, we can say that we have a will to peace between individuals. Before we come to the question of what may be the technique between nations, however, we must go a step farther and set our national house in order. On every hand we see today miniature wars going on between conflicting interests. As the example most constantly before us, take capital and labor. If their difficulties are settled by arbitration and no blood is shed, we can feel we have made real strides towards approaching our international problems. We are not prepared to do this, however, when two factions in a group having the same basic interests cannot come to an agreement between themselves. Their ability to obtain what they desire is greatly weakened until they can reach an understanding and work as a unit. The basis of this understanding should not be hard to reach if the different personalities involved could forget themselves as individuals and think only of the objectives in view, and of the best way to obtain them.

Granted that they are able to do this, then we can approach our second problem with the knowledge that more deeply conflicting interests are at stake but that those with common interests can state their case so the public may form their opinion. Here again, if you could take it for granted that on both sides a real desire existed amongst those representing divergent interests to consider unselfishly ultimate goals and benefits for the majority, rather than any individual gain or loss, it would undoubtedly be possible to reach a peaceful agreement.

Human beings, however, do not stride from peak to peak, they climb laboriously up the side of the mountain. The public will have to understand each case as it comes up and force divergent interests to find a solution. The real mountain climber never gives up until he has reached the highest peak and the lure of the climb to this peak is always before him to draw him on.

That should be the way in human progress—a peaceful, quiet progress. We cannot follow this way, however, until human nature becomes less interested in self, acquires some of the vision and persistence of the mountain climber, and realizes that physical forces must be harnessed and controlled by disciplined mental and spiritual forces.