The charge is brought against them that they are without spiritual insight. I would give this accusation more weight if I had more respect for the spiritual pretensions of others. No man and no nation need lay claim to spiritual insight while clamoring for justice. The dispensation under which we are supposed to live is the dispensation of forgiveness and helpfulness. We profess the Golden Rule and yet demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Could anything be more pathetically absurd? If the world were not so wounded and stricken one might be moved to inextinguishable laughter by the pompous inanities of men who would administer God's justice in a world that has been brought to its present pitiful state by organized greed. The over-organization of humanity for profit made the Great Catastrophe inevitable and our cure for it is more and greater organizations. But "God is not mocked." When man established democracy it was implied that every citizen would prove capable of self-government, would do his full share of the work of the world. And now the safety of democracy depends, not on governments or on leagues of government, but on the willingness and ability of each citizen to do his part. In the past we went woefully astray. The ambition of every strong man was to accumulate wealth and leave behind him a family that would be freed from the need of performing the work of true citizens—that would live parasitically on the proceeds of claims on production which he established and for which he secured legal sanction. Instead of great democracies of citizens each doing their part, we developed organized, ruthless autocracies of industrialism and finance that made bloodless war on each other and established a social parasitism that amazed the world with its luxury and extravagance. But the hour of testing has come. Unless the great democracies of the West, the United States and Canada, can justify the gospel of freedom and equality they have been flaunting before the world, their fate will be quickly sealed. But if they can clothe their professions in deeds, and every citizen by his actions can show himself worthy to be a citizen of a true democracy, they will give the world the leadership it so sorely needs. To do this they must banish the old, hard fetish of justice—or if they must have justice let them render it, not demand it. If they take the true path it will matter little what happens to the wealth to which they have been devoted.
Indeed, nothing could be more disastrous to mankind than that the present swollen war wealth which is so evident and insulting in all the capitals of the world should become fixed and permanent. The establishment of this reckless wealth on a stable basis would justify the intolerable conviction that war is profitable and there would be no end to wars. The most wisely devised League of Nations could not prevent their recurrence. They would be more likely to increase than to disappear.
Let no one say that this would mean anarchy and the destruction of our social order. It would simply mean a return to the austere virtues of our fathers, under the law and order which our fathers established. Let it not be forgotten that generations of men and women have sacrificed themselves on the altar of humanity so that freedom might be made sure in his new world. With incredible labor that found its reward in the building of homes rather than in dollars they cleared away the forests and made the wilderness blossom. No one who believes in the God of nations can believe that so much high aspiration and generous effort can go down to defeat. In spite of misunderstandings, irritations, and the selfish, petty intrigues of politicians, the hope of humanity still lies with the democracies of the West. They bought their freedom at a great price, and, in spite of mistakes and follies, that freedom, and the example of their fathers, will point to them the path of duty.
[CHAPTER VII]
A BURDEN OF FARMERS
One interested hour was spent in the office of a captain of industry who attended to urgent work while I read a morning paper and awaited his leisure. As the nature of his business was largely Greek to me I could be allowed to overhear; but I was really more interested in the methods than in the matter of his transactions. The pressure of a button would bring an office boy, a secretary, or a salesman to his side, according to the needs of the moment. While he was going through his mail telegrams were delivered to him and the telephone jingled at his elbow. He dictated letters, talked over the telephone, and answered telegrams—even cablegrams—without leaving his desk. He not only talked to other business men in the city, but answered long-distance calls from other cities and ordered long-distance calls. If his activities could be traced in red lines on a map, they would resemble the charts of the nervous system I saw a few days ago when going through an Institute of Anatomy. His office was a ganglion of the modern business organism.
Listening idly to the multitude of orders that were issued I noticed presently that something was wrong. Though orders were placed and information received as through a sensitive system of nerves, the orders were being held up. There were outlaw strikes on the railways—and freight was not being moved. Stevedore unions were not only refusing to handle certain products of the company because they were packed in bags and were too dusty and messy for highly paid, well-dressed stevedores to handle, but they refused to let the employees of the company handle the stuff because they were not members of the union. That sounds absurdly unreasonable, but it is a recorded fact.
Keeping up the simile of business as a living organism, I think this would be regarded as symptomatic of a pathological condition of the circulatory system—to be technical, it might be described as arterio-sclerosis, or hardening of the arteries. A very deadly disease, and if the cities are beginning to suffer from it, the outlook is serious.