Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-06-16
D|SCLOSES
HORRORS OF WAR
Post-BeIlum Hatred Threatens
Civilization, Says Bliss Perry
at Harvard
PHI BETA KAPPA ADDRESS

lVls 1UtS. DuI lUP COlU
calculated hatred of non -combatant
competitors for world markets, is the
great danger in the reconstruction
period, according to Bliss Perry, author
and professor of English literature in
Harvard, before the Phi Beta Kappa
today.
Mr.. Perry said in part:
"The newspapers reported, not long
ago, the accidental burning of Japan
ese tepple, famed for its priceless dec =
orations and its roofs of gold. A beg
gar had crawled under it and tried to
warm himself by lighting a tiny fire
with waste paper.
Much of our modern civilization is
still like that: roof of gold and freez
ing, reckless beggars lurking in the
underpinning. 1t is not the poets, it
is the sentimental politicians, who cry
peace when there is no peace, who argue
for our international isolation when
such thing is no longer possible.
''The war poetry of the last five
years has wrought one inestimable sery-
ice: it has told the pitiless truth, not
only about the battlefield, but about the
wrath and hate and greed that are
coiled around the foundations of u
rope. 1t says little of the pomp and
circumstance of glorious war; it goes
straight to the human facts underlying
war; it shows that world peace is con-
ditioned upon the concrete and funda-
mental issues of justice, liberty and
fellowship. Without these there can
be no progress.
"And yet my second generalization is
this: That the finest voices of con-
temporary poetry still bid us to lift up
our hearts. Poetry has witnessed in
conceivable horrors, and it sees the
brutal facts of the present situation.
1t was after the triumph Of Waterloo
that Byron wrote bitterly:
Europe has slaves, allies, kings,
armies STILL
The poets know even better than we
that every perpetuation of hatred is
postponement of peace, and that the
hatred we have to fear in the imme-
diate future is not so much the hot,
manly hatred of foes who have faced
one another on the battlefield as the
cold hatred of noncombatants, the cal
culated hatred of competitors for world
markets.
The poetic Imagination sees all this,
but it also sees something else, and
that other thing is the essential thing
namely, the ultimate supremacy of
moral forces. We may find comfort in
the words of Harvard's most distin-
guished graduate ''In all the encoun-
ters that have yet CHANGED, / have not
been weaponed for that particular oc
casion, and have been historically
beaten; and yet 1 know all the time
that ! have never been beaten; have
never yet fought, shall certainly fight
when my hour comes, and shall beat"
Emerson wrote that in prose essay,
but he never wrote more like a poet
for he wrote with the long view. Victor
Hugo, uttering strange prophecies be-
fore the Peace Convention in Brussels
in 1S4S, and Whittier, celebrating that
convention in a poem about '"The great
hope resting on the truth of Cod" were,
if you like, historically beaten.
But the chief question is, after sew
enty years, were Hugo and Whittier
right or wrong? If we think them
right, were they ever really beaten
And seventy years hence, as Harvard
men meet here, what will they say OF
our present American effort to insure
the peace of the world through league
of nations? viii they call it wrong,
or right?
Poetry, we may be sure, will take the
long view of it.
mot yet, detected though thy cause
despair,
Nor doubt of dawn for all her laggard
wing.
In shrewdest March the earth was mel
lowing,
And had conceived the summer una =
ware.
With delicate ministration, like the air,
The sovereign forces that conspire to
bring
Light out of darkness, out Of winter,
spring,
Perform unseen their tasks benign and
fair.
The sower soweth over vale and hill,
And long the foldeth life waits to be
born
Yet hath it never slept, nor once been
still;
And clouds and suns have served 1t
night and morn;
The winds are of its secret council
sworn;
And Time and nurturing Silence work
its will"