Up to Ivy to do the same to me.
This is a science. It is not merely a vision or a religion. Removing the cause of fighting may be a less exact science of mutual study and self-study, but it is approximately exact. It is also a fascinating and contagious science. We master the embryology of war between persons—the embryology of war between classes, and then between nations. The principles which we demonstrate and set up working samples of in one of these problems will prove to be the principles of the others.
If people do not believe in germs enough and are more afraid of fire, I would change the figure.
We are proposing to follow up at once, the Red Cross, which was run as a fire engine to put or help put out fires between nations, with the Air Line League which is to be run as a machine for not letting fires between nations get started.
Edward A. Filene of Boston in trying to have a successful department store found the women behind his counters got very tired standing in the street cars night and morning on the way home and took up with a will getting new rapid transit for Boston. He found he could not get rapid transit for Boston without helping to get a new government and that he could not get a new government without helping to get a new Boston.
He then found he could not help get a new Boston without getting new trade and industrial conditions in Boston and that he could not help get new ideals working in trade and industry in Boston without helping in the ideals of a nation. He then found he could not get a new nation without trying to help make several new nations. Then came the International Chamber of Commerce.
Something like this seems to happen to nearly every man I know who really accomplishes anything.
Or any nation.
Frederick Van Eeden of Holland began life as a painter with marked success but being a lively and interested man he could not help wondering why people were not getting out of paintings in Holland—his own and other people's, what they ought to and what they used to, and became a critic. He found people did not respond to his ideas of how they ought to enjoy things and then won distinction as a poet, but why did not more people get more out of the best poetry? He then wrote one or two novels of high quality which Holland was proud of and which were read in several languages, but why did not the people read novels of a high character as much as they did the poorer ones?
He decided that it was because people were physically underorganized and not whole in body and mind—like the Greeks, and became a physician.