ready to wipe them off the face What we need is to develop a will for disarmament in the people of our country, to demand it of our Government and of the United Nations. Maynard Krueger spoke to you the other day about the "grande finesse", the plan to build armaments so as to prevent aggression and to prevent another war. At some point we will have to stop and negotiate, negotiate from strength. "Here it is", Maynard Krueger said, "and you and I will live or die by it." That is true if we have no other resources than world politics, if we rely solely upon economic and social solution. But it it not true, we do not need to live or die by it, if we believe that there is a God behind this universe and turn to the spiritual resources which we can use in our own lives. Now this doesn't mean that we can sit back and think pleasantly about the Divine, that a miracle will suddenly set aside the laws of the universe. It means that God will work through us to make a political and social program effec * own. tive, if we open our lives to the resources that are at hand. We must be ready to dare more than we can do on our own power, to get out on a limb, to lay hold of resources greater than our We may be frightened, unable to utter word, and in that moment of belief, the word will come, you are able to do it, a power will lay hold of you and work through your own life. So we must be prepared to work for unilateral disarmament. There are risks; but there are risks in the method of war. We need in the world today people who will do right as they see it, not resort to the expedient. The world will be convinced, not by what we say, but by what we are. I will close with another story. Philippe Vernier, the great French Pacifist, Protestant Clergman, was before the judge, not for the first time, because he had refused service in the French Army. He had told the judge of his belief in brotherhood and love, and the judge had listened patiently. Finally he said, "But we don't live in that kind of a world". Philippe Vernier replied, "I do." * * * VISIBLE DEEDS do not increase the goodness of the inner life, -Meister Eckhart NEW OUTLOOK East Meets West Russell N. Squire George Pepperdine College AT LEAST HALF a dozen times recently, from as many different college people, I have heard the sad, confused admission that they could see no reason for continuing to live—that they would rather die. This state of mind among some college students is the symptom of a dangerous malady. In this "century of the child," children, small as well as adolescent, are suffering because of the frantic loss of self-control which they see among the "grownups.” In a group of twelve-year-olds, one was heard to say the other day that maybe he could cut off his foot with an ax, thus he would not have to go to war. The despondency, so wide-spread, is deeprooted and based in humanity's present crisis as it finds itself severed, east from west. But in this crisis there may be the suggestion of a way out for humanity; such a possibility if wellfounded would be a sufficient reason for renewed hope. A LEGACY FOR THE SOME TIME AGO, Bertrand Russell pointed out in an article, "If We Are to Survive This Dark Time," that there is all too much reason to fear that our western culture is about to disintegrate. In his analysis he suggested that one of our great obligations is to serve posterity by noting down the achievements, the hopes, the ideals, which have made the good parts of our civilization what they are, and to pass them on so that they may be used as a bulwark in the dark times ahead which will surely result if our civilization fails. Mr. Russell referred, for precedent, to the work of Boethius who composed a book while he was in prison, in which he set forth the joys and beauties of life and listed the hopes and ambitions which mankind must learn to cherish. This work of Boethius, preserving for posterity the values in earlier Jewish, Grecian, and Roman culture, served during the dark ages of the middle period as a bridge to a culture which arose after the Renaissance. BASIC CAUSES OF Noting that today two very different conceptions of the meaning of human life are struggling for ascendency in our world, Mr. Rus 18 sell observed that there must occur either reconciliation, which seems impossible, or else victory of one over the other, if civilization is to endure. Instead, what probably will occur, he fears, is that each will destroy the other and civilization as we know it in the western and the eastern world will disappear. Now for our part, we would ask if we must give up hope. Rather, must we not take heart and fight for a kind of synthesis of these two apparently irreconcilable concepts of the meaning of life? If there is hope of our achieving such a synthesis, then there is reason for our living. For then we could expect to bring to fruition those highest aspirations which one cannot help but believe are the hope of noble men every where. In our western world, society is regarded as successful to the degree that it provides opportunity for individuals to be happy, free, and creative. In our culture there is the continuing attempt to strike a precise balance in which individuals endeavor to cooperate one with the other and society endeavors to cooperate with all individuals, allowing them to live as distinctive personalities. But this is considerably different from the cultural pattern of the eastern world, as vocally described by the peoples in the Russian sphere of influence. In the eastern world, society is regarded as successful powerful state. In such society, only when it moves as a unified, expendable in order that the prothe individual is regarded as being cesses of the state might succeed. Because we may seem to err in ascribing to the east in general what may only be true of a portion of the east, we hasten to assure the reader that we have not been unmindful that in India and China, advanced approaches to the synthesis we are about to suggest have already been made. Now we in the west commonly hold, perhaps too readily, that we are what we are partly because of the great influence upon us of Christianity, and further, we like to believe that in the eastern world Christianity is not upheld but, rather, opposed. Thus we generally infer, and again perhaps too loosely, that our exalting of the individual is peculiarly Christian holding that the individual should and that the eastern point of view, become totally subservient to the demands of the state, is antiChristian. BOTH CULTURES EXALT THE INDIVIDUAL Without implying any disloyalty to one's Christian discipleship, it must be pointed out that in the eastern world there have been great leaders of tremendous influence for long historical periods who have advocated a kind of ethic that is not unlike the Christian NEW OUTLOOK ethic. Consequently, we do not feel APPROACHES TO Even those who believe deeply west. deprivation of the east is not altogether due to the absence of Christian faith. Christian success in the west is weaker than it need be, partly because of economic ambition and also partly because of exploitation of the east; economic deprivation in the east is greater than it need be partly because of the absence of a Christian ethic but also partly because of exploitation by the "Christian" For western Christendom has been content to allow the eastern world to continue in travail, suffering under Asiatic leaders who would fatten off their own people in order that they themselves might prosper out of western trading. The west has not usually seen fit to be displeased with this arrangement. Thus, wellfounded or not, bitter feelings exist, supporting deep differences in many places between orient and occident. Resolving of these differences is partly dependent, then, upon Western Christendom's acting like Christendom should. This is a first imperative. But we believe that there is another concept held in common by the two cultures which will help in the neutralizing of their differences. As the orient regards its people expendable for the success of the state, so also in the occident-except that in Christendom the tradition has been that the people are expendable for a spiri tual state, the Kingdom of God! Now we are immediately aware that in using the term, "Kingdom of God," semantic problems arise; ambiguities and stereotypes hinder thinking at this point. Yet we are confident that such a name for the synthesis we have in mind could be understood universally. To us, the Kingdom of God is made up of those who love their neighbors as themselves. To be sure, the west, in its concern for the individual, has often neglected its obligations to the Kingdom, and so has failed to attain the deeper satisfactions that life has to offer, just as the east has also failed because it has regarded the state as a collection of individuals rather than as the Kingdom of God. But the oriental, rightly and logically enough, would have his state, however mistakenly founded, succeed in order that its individuals might eventually find meaning from life; because, after all, there beats in the heart of each human the de sire to realize one's creative potential. Thus, in spite of the seeming irreconcilable ideologies, both east and west are interested in liberation of the individual and both support the idea of the state. Individual and society then are actually two aspects of the same reality; Russian thought and American thought, at their best, each share in a portion of the truth. All of this leads us to the view that if loyalty to the Kingdom were to cover the earth, there would come to be a tone of well-being and love for one another; and individuals would come to enjoy a new-found freedom that would glorify the Kingdom ("freedom under God") and make citizenship in it a coveted prize! But any success at synthesis of oriental and occidental ideologies is dependent upon the west's ability to put first things first, that is, to recognize that faith in physineighbor will be utterly ineffeccal power rather than in love for tual. To be more specific on a few points one might ask if our nation has the courage to expend military and security insuring buda substantial portion of its present gets on feeding the people of needy lands, seeing that the needy people themselves receive such goods? Does our nation have the character that marks it as deserving of the responsibility of leadership? mediate, material goods and miliOr does it seek only after imtary security? Does it have the vision and the ingenuity to support free educational processes-not allowing them to be starved to death, or forced into a Procrustean bed of "standardization," or driven inarising out of a provision for voto a condition of pernicious anemia cational "know how" without a provision for spiritual and philosophic perspective? Does it have the moral fiber to see to it that the NEW OUTLOOK |