Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-12-16
AN ARMISTICE WITH SELF
SIGNED ONCE A YEAR
last the Christmas Season and Help
Make the World Better?

Slo"uS Ill tHc SlTeetS tHeSe uayS VIII
have to ponder and puzzle once again in
the presence of the strange phenomenon
that we call New State of Mind.
Again, suddenly, it has become fash
ionable to be kind The poor have many
friends. Be little and forlorn and all the
world will try to befriend you. Grieve
and multitudes will turn from their own
affairs and search for ways by which
you may be comforted. The hungry will
be fed. The unprotected will find strength
and compassion gloriously upon their
side. Everybody is disposed to look back
in puzzled amazement at his days of Bit
terness and grinding strife and to feel
an overwhelming conviction that life was
made for happiness and fair play and
that the way to receive the best in exist,
ence is first to give it.
The miracle has happened yearly at
this time for many generations and yet
it cannot be explained.
Mr. Wilson and Mr.. Lloyd George and
Premier Orlando and M. Clemenceau-
wise old Clemenceau, veteran of
storms!-now face the immeasurable re-
sponsibilities of providing a permanent
peace for mankind. Theirs is task
which many men say is impossible and
of sort sure to break the heart of any
one who attempts it. Would it be too
much to say that the statesmen of the
Allied world and all the exalted intellects
of their various retinues might profit
hugely if some gift of clairvoyance per-
mitted them to know the inner mystery
of days that bring the world, once every
year, to a state of spiritual peace and
understanding? They might learn
thereby that the world never can have
permanent peace through any new style
of legislation alone. Indeed, they prob
ably know already that only amateurs at
the game of life suppose that you may
correct evil by merely putting legal
ban upon it. To put taboo on war will
not eliminate the incentives and desires
that lead to war any more certainly than
to obey the law.
All great motives, all great achieve
ments, great virtues and great crimes
begin at the heart of man. 1t is with
the heart of man that the peacemakers
must deal in the final analysis. To it
they must make their ultimate appeal
1t is the thing that must be cleaned up,
as the reformers say when they speak
of Philadelphia politics. 1t is a high
tribunal that makes most of the decisions
usually attributed to reason. 1t re-
spends once year to some great echo
out of the past to the memory of a
matchless service done in behalf of an
undeserving world.
So, it seems, human consciousness is
not altogether beyond reach by any
appeal that is obviously valid and for
the common good.
Observe, in the light of this assump-
tion, the things that are happening every
day in Philadelphia. When man jostles
you on the street you take time to real
ize that it is because some one in turn
has iostled him. The discomforts of
crowded pavements and aisles and troll
leys are accepted generously. People in
the crush establish friendly relations for
an instant with others whom they have
never seen and never will see again. Life
is warmed and pacified. People partici-
pate in the eager enthusiasms of
strangers and help others whom they do
not know to find gifts for some lad or
other overseas.
Everybody smiles with a new tender
ness at all children. We obey the traffic
laws, and realizing that the policemen
have difficult jobs we buy good cigars
for them. All of sudden, obeying some
impulse out of the air, we have approxi-
mated the goal and ideal of civilization,
the state of mind that endless wars have
not been adequate to bring about.
After the 25th of December change
will come. The old hardening process
tends to be restored. The enchantment
lifts as if all life were fairy tale. The
Peace Conference will sit at Versailles
to make permanent peace and it will
not be able to retain any of the magic
that was over the world.
Europe and America are filled with
noisy radicals, rich and poor--because
the incurable Tory is as red menace
any day as the most enthusiastic
thrower of bombs-who believe that
world peace may be brought about by
the particular sort of expressions which
it pleases them to recommend. No man