# The Modern Review/Volume 29/Number 4/A Cry for Peace

A CRY FOR PEACE
By Rabindranath Tagore
The world is crying for peace. The West is desiring the restoration of peace through a League of Powers.
But can Powers find their equilibrium in themselves? Power cannot be made secure only against power, it must also be made secure against the weak, for there lies the peril of its losing balance. The ​weak are as great a danger for the strong, as quicksands for an elephant. They do not assist progress, because they do not resist, they only drag down. The people who grow accustomed to wield absolute power over others are apt to forget, that by doing it they generate an unseen disruptive force, which some day rends that power into pieces. The dumb fury of the down-trodden finds its awful support from the universal law of moral balance. The air which is thin and weak gives birth to storms that nothing can resist. This has been proved in history over and over again, and stormy forces arising from the heart of insulted humanity are openly gathering in the air even in the present day. Yet the psychology of athletic might stubbornly refuses its lessons and despises to take count of the terribleness of the weak. This is the gross stupidity, that, like an unsuspected worm, burrows at the bottom of the muscular bulk of the prosperous and the proud. Have we never read of the gorgeousness of a power, supinely secure in its arrogance, in a moment dissolving in the air at the explosion of the outraged weak? Politicians calculate upon the number of marled hands that are on the sword-hilts, they do not possess the third eye to see the great invisible hand, that clasps in silence the hand of the helpless and waits its time. The strong form their League by combination of Powers, driving the weak to form their league alone with their God. I know I am crying in the wilderness, when I raise my voice of warning, and while the West is busy in its organisation for building its machine-made peace, it will still continue to nourish, with its iniquities, underground forces of earthquake in the vast bosom of the Eastern Continent. The West seems unconscious that Science, by providing it with more and more power, is tempting it to suicide, encouraging it to accept the challenge of the disarmed, not knowing that this challenge comes from a higher source.
Two prophecies about the world’s salvation are cherished in the hearts of the two great religions of the world. They represent the highest expectation of man, thereby indicating his faith in a truth, which he instinctively considers as ultimate,—the truth of love. These prophecies have not for their vision the fettering of the world into tameness with a closely linked power forged in the factory of a political steel trust. One of these religions has, for its meditation, the image of Buddha who is to come, Maitreya, the Buddha of love. And he is to bring peace. The other religion waits for the coming of Christ. For Christ preached peace when he preached love, when he preached Oneness of the Father among brothers who are many. And this was the truth of peace. Christ never held that peace was the best policy for policy is not truth. The calculation of self-interest can never successfully fight the irrational force of passion—the passion which is perversion of love, and which can only be set aright by the truth of love. So long as the Powers build a League on the foundation of their desire for safety, and for securest enjoyment of gains,—for consolidation of past injustice, for putting off reparation of wrongs, while their fingers still wriggle for grabbing and still reek of blood,—rifts will appear in their union, and conflicts in future will take greater force and magnitude. It is the national and commercial egoism, which is the evil harbinger of war, by different combinations it changes its shape and dimensions, but not its nature. This egoism is still held almost as sacred as religion, and such religion, by its mere change of temple and of committee of priests, will never save men. We must know that, as, through science and commerce, the realisation of the unity ot the material world gives us power, so the realisation of the great spiritual unity of man only can give us peace.