Evening star., 1923-09-08
THE REAL BASIS OF
INTERNAWONALISM
BY DIR. FRANK CRANE.

1t Is pretty generally recognized by
those who are capable of thinking at
all that internationalism of some sort
is the way out. The world faces In
ternationalism or chaos.
The reason for this Is q simple one.
1t is that the progress Of mankind is
a growth. The human race Is an or
ganism. 1t Is living thing. And
it is a rule OF living things that they
must go on continually toward great
er perfection of organisation or
breakdown by disease or decay.
There is no stopping place. When
progress ceases ruin steps In. When
Rome stopped expanding the barba-
rian began invading.
We are rather squarely up against
ths issues at present of combining
into some sort. of an international
government that shall prevent wars
and stop the building of Oval nayies,
or on the other hand continuing to
spend our surplus production In
wasteful contention with a possibility
of blowing up the whole works at
some unfortunate moment.
lar theorists whose main hope for hu-
manity seems to lie in a better dis
tribution of goods are almost all in
ternatienalists.
| Those who advertise the league of
nations are internationalists.
Every business man who has grown
enough to realize that the prosperity
! of his own locality depends upon the
prosperity of the rest of the world is
an internationalist.
In fact, almost every one Is an In
iternationalist except the bourbons. the
chauvinists, the cynics, the job hold
ers, the reactionaries and the blath-
! erskites.
All Intelligent patriots are interna-
| tionalists because intelligent patriot
| ism is passion for making one S
country best serve the world, while
blind patriotism, septic and dangerous
patriotism, is the desire to keep ones
country isolated from the rest OF the
world or to have ones country doml-
nate the world.
| But the thing that we must not lose
sight of Is that a lasting and whole
some internationalism cannot come BY
mere machinery, but must be the out
growth of an international spirit.
| Toward the strengthening OF this
spirit every effort is valuable that in.
duces men to place the claims OF hu-
manity above the claims of city, state
and nation.
| Travel helps II the whole pass.
port nuisance could be abolished al
over the world it would be of enor-
nous benefit to the race.
| Commerce helps. Every steamship
that crosses the ocean, every railway
that passes boundary, and every
laeroplane that ignores territorial di-
visions is working away to build uI
the great ideal that shall dominate
| the future, to wit, that all human In
terests everywhere are interdepend-
ent.
| But perhaps the most important
force that is laying the spiritual foun.
| dations for world organization Is
christianity, especially that form OF
lit which Is found operating among
| missionaries.
/ have been all over the world anG
met all kinds of people; / have heard
| tarians declaim; 1 have talked witt
statesmen and diplomats and know
something of their activities; l have
met professors in universities ant
read their books; / have heard soap
box orators on the street; l have lis
tened to preachers and attended th'
rites of priests; / have perused thu
writings of the literary gentry who
scorn the commons and expose theil
polished sentences only in high ella 81
magazines; in fact, 1 have stirret
about the world considerably, and m!
Judgment is that no glass of peopl'
are doing more to prepare humanit!
than the Christian missionaries VIII,
are working steadily away iRculcat
ling into the minds of the vast multi
ltude just entering upon civilization
the broad, warm humanizing truth
lof Jesus.