Evening star., 1926-11-23
NEW BOOKS
AT RANDOM
/. G.. NJ.

"This world will escape the blight
of war when man has ceased to be
human. The world will find peace
when man is extinct. For man Is
war"
Such Is the conclusion of the mat
ter in hand. Such is the last word OF
this author after 800 pages devoted
to the study of human psycnoiogy
objectified by the history Of the races
Of men.
John Carter here steps off into the
surrounding present, where certain
ardent groups hold to the notion that
man may be made perfect, that ne IS
a perfectible animal. Accepting peace
as the highest aim of civilization, man
will ultimately, so these forward look
ing ones say. do away with war as
he has, along his progression from out
the slime, cast off other outmoded
ways Of life, shed other useless and
obstructive impedimenta. 1t is from
this dream of the future that the au-
thor moves out into the domain OF
fact.
First, however, he offers clear
look-in upon individual man, upon
you and me and himself. There he
finds, as we do, that the human COM
plex consists of sets of oppositeS-
love and hate, justice and injustice,
wisdom and unwisdOm, unselfishness
and greed that includes envy,
| jealousy. ambition, ruthless and bit
ter. And, In obedience to the supreme
instinct Of self-preservation, these op-
positeS are in constant warfare, max
ing every mans heart battlefield
where no truces are declared, where
no amnesty is tolerated.
This secret individual warfare
passes on into the groups that unite
in business, pleasure, politics, social
units of every sort, where a cont1nu-
Gus and appreciable conflict presents
itself to even the dullest understand
ing. 1t is waged on the street, in
shops and offices, in drawing rooms
and in clubs. $50 far as man in
dulges the instinct for self-aggrandiZe-
ment, no matter how, he Is waging
war. Efforts to live without labor, to
profit by the energies OF other men,
to pursue happiness and find 1t In the
faVorS of women, the enjoyment of
plenty and the rearing of families
these make for war. These have pro-
duced kings and emperors. armies and
slaves. poverty and riches, cities and
creeds and civilizations and wars. 1t
is upon such that our Atlantic civil
lization has reared itself. War Is in
herent in the Atlantic way of life.
And war will persist until the Allan
tic races achieve a spiritual abdica-
ton in which they will prefer to
abandon to others the fruit Of their
labors, Scorn to receive more than
they give, cast aside their present
ideals Of manhood and honor for the
bleak ideas Of service and self -efface-
ment." And when will this day come
to us? Why, never. For these pas
sive qualities are exactly those which
CnnH CJIiNj60 n a a q
civilization. The instinct of man is
against suicide, it scorns passivity;
the way of man is the way of pas
sionate deed. All that he can hope
to do is to guide his passions into
channels that are individual rather
than collective. and this upsets the
entire principle upon which he has
built his states, the principle that in
| tegrates the passions of the individual
| to the service of the nation" War
| is the only alternative"
But the present age Is one of un-
paralleled pretense that we are better
than we actually area pretense with
out justification in it's effect on our
actions. Such Is the ease with which
we are justifying ourselves that our
very fuency Is our accusation and
our epitaph." Take a few typical in
| stances of our common hypocrisy:
why do we speak of the slaughter
of Christians by Moslems as a mas
sacre, but call the murder of Moslems
by Christians crusader"
"Why does it seem proper for
French and Spanish airmen to de-
fend the cause of civilization by drop
ping bombs on women and children
in the Riff, for British airmen to per-
form the same exhilarating maneuver
in Iraq, if 1t was manifestly barbar-
Gus for the Germans to drop bombs
on London and Paris in 1852"
"Why is it right for Great Britain
to control the Strait Of Gibraltar and
wrong for Turkey to control the OAR
danelles?"
"Why Is it legitimate to hope for
a Romanoff restoration in Russia and
disloyal to hope for communistic
regime in the United States?"
Questions Of ironic cast. to be sure,
but in actual political life they rep
resent the effect upon US of forces
and principles which are rarely appre-
ciated, and which merit at least a
tentative discussion. What are the
springs Of international politics? Why
and how do men think and act along
political lines? What and where are
the roots Of war?"
N'* X
Beyond this initial step there fol-
lows a study of Anglo-Saxon institu-
tions, since these at present, by way
of the Atlantic civilization, dominate
and guide the world. These control
ling institutions are capitalism,
communism, Christianity. diplomacy.
Each is projected in it's essential con-
tent and each stands, through such
projection, as in itself a peculiarly
wise and pacific means of human
intercourse. It is only when the pas
sions of men are injected into them
that they become causes of prompt
and unending conflict. Capitalism Is
"a beautiful and flexible expansion of
the principle of private property
made fluid and convenient. its tech
nique open to criticism, but its aim
universally benign" But what
source of warfare, this idea worked by
the hand of man himself! Commu-
nism Is a noble dream of equality
wherein every human being will be
given enough for his needs, wherein
there will be the elimination of the
fear of poverty, illness and old age;
an ideal worthy of the loftiest minds
of the race" A reality, however, Of
blood and bitterness. Christianity
reared the temple of peace, for the
happiness and well-being of the world.
But "ChriStianity as q. whole has
been the most rapacious and cruel
nest of conquerors the world has yet
produced" The League of Nations,
citadel of political idealism. has be-
come "a vehicle Of international jeal-
ousy and intrigue that has solved no
serious international problems and
has prevented no serious wars"
Here stand four cardinal interna-
tional institutions, each inherently
beneficent and pacific, that under the
flaming passions of the human heart
have become direct instruments of
war itself. "All that can be done Is
, to trace the roots Of war through