The Washington herald., 1922-01-19
Why Not Try Christianity!

ception OF NJ. Poincare, have largely come
to the point of understanding the inter-
dependence of nations and of peoples. One very
prominent feature of the European tendency is
the attitude of the so-caled succession states
the nations Of the old Austrian Empire-toward
each other. They are negotiating treaties of
friendly intercourse breaking down barriers soft
enng animosties. Even in America largely a
result of trade depression and unemployment,
people are beginning to realize that this country
is part OF the planet Earth, and not a blissful,
privileged star all itself, of some other solar
system. The purpose of the great conference at
Genoa, called for March by the supreme council
before the Cannes meeting broke up, is to devise
practical methods for the rehabilitation of Europe,
starting with the implied premise that Europe,
nay, the whole world, is unit, that recovery and
elevation must be the lot of all, if it is to be the
lot of any.
The Nation and the Anthenaeum Qondon),
for December a. has searching article on the
condition of Europe entitled "Why Pcrish?" 1t
begins with the quotation: Except ye repent, We
shall all likewise perish" The first paragraph of
the article is quoted from account of recent
observer in Central Europe who predicts futile,
chaotic revolution of despair unless industry is
revived by some great internationally cooperative
measure. Concerning the possibility of such a
revolution, the Nation and Athenaeum says:
Eve have no means of judging whether this
speculation IS exact. But we confess to feel
ing appalled, at the thought of the moral
weakness and treachcry which such fate would
imply. Man, having everything he wants to make
hirn happy-love, pity, energy, the sciences and
the arts, subduable earth and sublime religion
having struggled through his childhood and &C
CURED the gift for social union, would be pitful
poltroon to let its difficulties battle him now. Grant
ar for bos
cmbruted him again. But it has not permanently
changed his moral nature or checked his mental
acquisitiveness. IT is will that seems want
ing, moral purpose adequate to apply the reports
OF mans intelligence to his individual and social
welfare. The war has brought home to him GER
tain definite moral information. 1t has laugh,
him, for example, that while there are wicked
and everywhere, there is no such
thing the wicked nation, and that having made
a treaty that basis, he will have to undo or to
modify it. 1t is warning to him that economic
and political transactions designed to hurt his
neighbors apt to hurt him too. All such re-
ports his religion had always made to him. But
then religion is not actual and living thing to
Christian Europe, as it is to Mohammedan or Hindu
Asia and Africa The mere day-by-day OBJ
servance of the central Christian precept which is
the Golden Rule, would suffice to stop war; famine
plague, and most social diseases and to raise the
whole western world to unimaginable condition
OF happiness, beauty, and wealth. Yet man, in the
recurring hour of his greater trials disregards the
monitor within, and rushcs, unhecding, to his
ruin.
How, then, avoid these crises of our so.
cicty? Here are we, English, Irish, French
Germans, Russians, and Americans, shipwrecked
together and liable perish The doctrine of self
subsistence will save of US; for what happens
to Vienna tomorrow may happen to Paris or
London the week or year after. The more
military or the more primitive stocks might, in
deed, survive general crash of civilization. But
man does not always want to be living the GEN.
turtles over again. The trouble is that the
imminent peril of society remains unexplored and
almost unguessed by it. While man fears what
is really not fearful at all-the loss of comfort OF
the spread of the doctrine of equality-he does not
dread the most horrible thing that could happen
to him, namely, the loss of all sense of unity OF
the human
%Why. then, not try Christianity? . As a
mystery suppose that men will never again
agree on it. But doctrine of life there is
nothing intellectually simpler We have only to
translate it into the practice of doing to others
as would that they should do to us, forgiyinp
the injuries that they have done And we have
only to transmute these doctrines of common
into politics. and let them appear as disarma-
ment, the revision Of the treaty, the withdrawal
of the occupations, the relief of the famine, the
opening of Russia, the pooling of credits the
forgiveness Of debts, the union of the, sundered
states, and the establishment and endowment OF
the league of nations, and in twelvemonth or So
Europe will have grown out of all knowledge OF
her battered and dishgured self"
Is not this pretty good doctrine for the coming
Genoa conference? Indeed, is it not the doctrine
underlying the calling of the Genoa conference;
The United States hestatcs whether or not to take
part in the Genoa conference; what would be
It's decision il reached through the guidance OF the