you read the newspapers and
periodicals of those countries, you required no further proof of the
fact--that a nation at war is an obscene nation, its consciousness all
driven down into the physical, its voice tonally imperfect from hate and
fear, its eyes open to red illusion and not to truth.

Even in America the voice of the nationalist is a part of the old and
the unclean. The new social order does not recognise the rights and
desires of any isolated people. Humankind is basically _one_ in meaning,
in aim and in destiny. The differences of nations in relation to the
sun's rays and in character of country, environment, race, colour and
structure of mind--these are primal values, the very values that will
sum up into the essential grandeur of the whole. Personally and
nationally there are no duplicates in the social scheme. The instruments
of this magnificent orchestra are of infinite diversity, but the harmony
is one.

The spiritual source of all human achievement is already a harmonic
whole. That globe is complete. It is our business as men to make a
pattern of it in matter--to make the dream come true in flesh, each man
and each nation bringing his labour.

If a certain plant, bird, insect, beast, man or nation, rises by
intrinsic force and predation to dangerous increase, a devouring
parasite, or formidable rival, is invariably fostered within its shadow.
In good time there is war to the death.

In a doctor's office in Canada, I saw the picture of a bull-dog standing
large against the background of the accepted flag, and beneath was this
line:

"What we have, we'll hold."

I found that the picture had a national popularity. Yet a child stopping
to think would have seen breakers ahead for a nation so lost in material
things, as thus to challenge the Fates.... There is a fairy-tale of a
man building a great boat for the air. It looked to win, and in the
effrontery of achievement, he set forth to conquer God. Just then a
hornet stung him.

* * * * *

It is a conviction held here that the darkest period of American
materialism came to its end with the beginning of the war. The
generation of literary producers in manifestation at that time was
responsible for the bleakest products which America will ever have the
shame of showing to future generations.

It was not so devoid of genius as would appear; the first cause was the
difficulty in getting the best work "through." This ag