Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-11-08

the war. World trade was checked by
artificial boundaries and prohibitions.
There was no confidence among nations
Credit broke down. It was a moral
breakdown before it became a monetary
breakdown.
Getting back to primitive Simplicities
which underlie all human problems, how
ever complicated, it seems to me that the
source of all our present troubles lies in
the Illusion that we could live more lux
uriously after the war than before the
war, in spite Of all that wasted wealth
and the four and one-half years devoted
to destruction. Greed for more money,
more pleasure, more magnif1cence over
took the war-Stricken world. Nations like
England and the United States lent
money at high rates of interest to the
defeated nations, crippled by their bur-
den of war debts. The borrowing nations
had an illusion Of new prosperity for
time because of these vast loans, the in
terest Of which they paid out of the Dor
rowed money itself.
Everybody was eager to lend money
or borrow money without real security.
Everybody except the laboring classes
gambled on. futures, believing in the
but an illusion unless it were created by
hard labor and the exchange of goods.
Money became divorced from reality. 1t
Is still divorced and will remain so as long
as unpayable debts are counted as assets.
But the mirage has faded. The illu-
sion has been broken by stern facts. We
know now that all this gold being shipped
about, all these borrowings and lendingS
OF paper money, mean absolutely nothing
but confusion and chaos unless based on
confidence. Real wealth is created by
labor and the steady toll of millions
working in security and in an orderly
scheme Of life. We cannot grow rich out
Of the poverty Of our neighborS. We can
not maintain a high standard of living
on money lending, or borrowing or gam
bling. We must get back somehow to the
eternal realities Of earning what we
spend before we spend it. Perhaps we
have all been too greedy for the good
things Of life. Perhaps the materialism
of the postwar world has defeated it's
own object.
I don't pose as a moraliSt or an ascetic.
like the good things of life, but I think
there are spiritual values worth more
than wealth-such as truth, beauty and
simplicity
am follower of Gandhi, at least so
far as being distrustful of the machine,
with its Standardization of production
and it's replacement of human labor by
wheels and cogs. We cannot put the
clock back or smash the instruments of
mans inventive genius, but believe it
is one of the necessities of the worlds
recovery from its present distress that
the machine should be controlled lest
it master us all. At present it's efficiency
has outStripped the pace of the human
being. We cannot keep up with it's ter
rife output, its deadly competition with
human labor. Every day the wheels turn
faster and faster and more men or
women are displaced from the fields and
factories.
1t is running wild, this machinery of
ours. There is overproduction and under
consumption. So far we have not adj
juSted our scheme of life to its mechan-
ical energy. We may get from one place
to another faster and faster Yesterday
the record-breakerS travelled at a hun
dred miles an hour. Today it is 400.
Everything is Speeded up, including en-
gineS of destruction, so that we can kill
each other faster if we are out to kill.
New Yorks skyscrapers are no safer than
London's chimney pots if there is another
world war.
THIRTEEN years after the armistice
civilization is not sure of itself. The
ideals to which some of us pledged our
selves are not fulfilled.