America’s Ignition
Will Levington Comfort
... The quickened pulse of America did not appear with the outbreak of war. It came with the winter cold, like all revival spirit—a strange and fervent heat, breaking down the old, vitalizing the new everywhere. No one doubts now—no one who can tear his eyes from the ground even for a little—doubts now that the new social order is upon us.
America, in opening her breasts to the agony of Europe, in her giving of solids and sympathy, has stumbled upon the ancient and perfect formula for receiving the greater good. In forgetting herself a little, her own human spirit has been ignited.
If someone announced that there lived in the Quattor Islands a man who knew the exact way to bring into the world, not only the spirit, but the action of brotherhood and fatherland, there would be some call for maps and steamship passages. If the Quattor Islands were not already on the maps, they would presently appear, but not before the earliest pilgrims had set out. And if someone should add that all expression of the arts so far in the world is wumbled and imperfect compared to that which is about to be, if a certain formula is followed; and that this man in the Quattor group has the formula—many more would start on the quest, or send their most trusted secretaries.
And yet the truth and the way is all here, and has been uttered again and again by every voice that has lifted itself above the common din.
The wise men carried gifts. You would expect to give something for the secret. You might expect to be called upon to sell all you have and give to the poor. You would not be surprised even if the magnetic Islander said:
“It is not your frankincense and myrrh that I want, though I thank you. That which I have is for you. I am more anxious for you to know and live it, than you can be to have and hold it. But the mystery is that it will not come to abide with you, while you are passionate for possession. The passion to give to others must be established within you before you can adequately receive—”
You are beginning to see how ancient is the gospel. It is old, older than that. It belongs to the foundations. Personally and nationally, the law works the same way. That which is true, is true in all its parts. There is an adjustment by which that which is good for the whole is good for the part; that which is good for the nation is good for the man; but each, whole and part, nation and man, must have for the first thought not self-good but the general good. One nation, so established in this conviction that its actions are automatically founded upon the welfare of the world, could bring about the true fatherland in a generation; and one human heart so established begins to touch from the first moment the profound significances of life.
Personally and nationally, this plain but tremendous concept is beginning to manifest itself here in America. I do not write as a patriot. It is not my country that is of interest, but humankind. America’s political interests, her trade, all her localizations as a separate and bounded people, are inimical to the new enthusiasm. The new social order cannot concern itself as a country apart. American predatory instincts, her self-worship, her attempt at neutrality while supplying explosives for the European slaughter arenas, her deepening confinement in matter during the past fifty years, have prepared her for the outright demoralization of war, just as surely as Europe is meeting today the red harvest from such instincts and activities. For action invariably follows the thought.