CONCLUSION
I have gone thus into detail about several countries to illustrate concretely that peace between nations and within nations is not dependent upon forms of government and national boundaries, but upon whether or not the country concerned affords all its citizens the necessary conditions for natural growth. these conditions are not the presence of wheat, oil, cotton, iron, and such things; for human beings through the long ages have shown an extraordinary adaptability to any kind of natural environment. They can survive in the desert, and build a form of social life adapted to ice and snow. The present struggle is therefore not between “have” and “have not” nations, for every nation has something the rest want, and it is entirely possible to arrange equitable exchanges. It is rather the struggle of unhappy people of all nations to secure the freedom they need to grow naturally.
In Germany, Italy, France, and Russia, I found so much confusion, strife, pain, and danger, so many movements going on in so many opposed directions, that it was all far from being a single intelligent folk-movement toward a desirable common end. Everywhere was the rumble of tanks, the tramp of marching feet, and the roar of airplane bombers in military formation. Millions of men wore uniforms concealing their individual distinctions. Their babies were drilled to wear gas-masks. Bomb proof shelters supplemented homes. Friends sometimes turned out to be spies. Terror ruled the lands.
Yet even these things bore witness to the intelligence and ingenuity of the men who invented them. If they have intelligence enough thus to command earth and sea and sky to accomplish their own suffering and death, they have intelligence enough to command them to their happiness and life. There is plenty of intelligence, but it lacks conscious direction for the good, not of one man, one class, or one race, but of all men.
When I came of a sudden from Russia to Estonia I found there just such mutually helpful direction of human intelligence and effort as I had almost given up hope for. Together with their neighbors of the Baltic alliance, Finland, and Scandinavia, the Estonians, though a poor people, in only twenty years had succeeded in securing for themselves the seven human necessities: food, shelter, occupation, education, expression, health, and love.
In this last word, highly valued in its personal meaning, but often under-valued in its social meaning of good will to man, religion is included, because all religions emphasize love as their foundation - love to God, (“for if ye love not your brother whom ye have seen, how can ye love God whom ye have not seen?”), love to the family, and to the nation. Love is the continuum within which we live; it holds us together. But it is the source of disaster when we attempt to restrict it to our own family, our own country, our own church, our own race, or our own class; for love, in its nature, is infinite, and resists all attemps to compress it within bounds. Such attempts may even lead to war. For then one limited group, bound together by love, contends with other groups, bound together by an equally sincere but limited affection. Such a segregated group acts within the body of universal humanity much as a cancer group acts within the body of a single individual.
The cure for war, then, is to make clear in our own minds and hearts what we need for ourselves that other men need equally, and then strive to secure this for everyone. What we desire for ourselves alone, or at the expense of others, we can have only by accepting at the same time the accompanying curse of inadequacy and conflict. But that which we desire for all men, that which is truly beneficial for all men, has to support in it the unquenchable desire of all men. It is, indeed, a living force, moving in accordance with that in-dwelling Intelligenc and Love that brought mankind into existence.
The power of such a universal wish the Estonians show in unique perfection. Borrowing ideals and procedures from their willing neighbors, especially methods of co operative organization; imitating the best things in the United States, such as our free public schools, our freedom of speech and religion, our democratic procedures, and our volunteer philanthropic organizations; yet inventing new forms of its own, especially the Chambers of the Upper House of the Legislature, selected from such volunteer societies; its banking system, and its land distribution, this little-known country forms an example, small but significant, of a state successfully organized to meet the needs of human beings.
(To be continued)
A Search For a Happy Country (43)
Järjejutt
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