erance to by James Bryce: "However much we
condemn reckless leaders and the ruthless caste that live for war, the
real source of the mischief is the popular sentiment behind them. The
lesson to be learned is that doctrines and deep-rooted passions, whence
these evils spring, can only be removed by the slow and steady working
of spiritual forces. What most is needed is the elimination of those
feelings the teachings of which breed jealousy and hatred and prompt men
to defiance and aggression."
Humanity and civilisation is not headed towards Ab the cave-man,
whatever appearances, in the minds of many, may indicate at the present
time. Humanity will arise and will reconstruct itself. Great lessons
will be learned. Good will result. But what a terrific price to pay!
What a terrific price to pay to learn the lesson that "moral forces are
the only invincible forces in the universe"! It has been slow, but
steadily the world is advancing to that stage when the individual or the
nation that does not know that the law of mutuality, of cooperation, and
still more the law of sympathy and good will, is the supreme law in real
civilisation, real advancement, and real gain--that does not know that
its own welfare is always bound up with the welfare of the greater
whole--is still in the brute stage of life and the bestial propensities
are still its guiding forces.
Prejudice, suspicion, hatred, national big-headedness, must give way to
respect, sympathy, the desire for mutual understanding and cooperation.
The higher attributes must and will assert themselves. The former are
the ways of periodic if not continuous destruction--the latter are the
ways of the higher spiritual forces that must prevail. Significant are
these words of one of our younger but clear-visioned American poets,
Winter Bynner:
Whether the time be slow or fast,
Enemies, hand in hand,
Must come together at the last
And understand.
No matter how the die is cast,
Or who may seem to win--
We know that we must love at last--
Why not begin?
The teaching of hatred to children, the fostering of hatred in adults,
can result only in harm to the people and the nation where it is
fostered. The dragon's tooth will leave its marks upon the entire nation
and the fair life of all the people will suffer by it. The holding in
contempt of other people makes it sometimes necessary that one's own
head be battered against the wall that
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