Evening star., 1945-01-07
Pursuit Of Ideals
Requires Patience
Mans Achievements Always Lag
Behind His Aspirations
BIZ william H. Harrison.

By William H. Harrison.
In view of recent developments in
Greece, Poland and elsewhere, there has
been an almost ostentatious display of
disillusionment in some American cir
cles. Indeed, among certain of the un-
reconstructed and more vocal isolation
lists, 1t may be better described as
kind of gleeful cynicism overfiowing
with crocodile tears and self-satished
I-told-you-sos.
Perhaps this sort of thing would not
now be SO much in evidence If, at the
time of their proclamation, the Atlantic
Charter and similar declarations of
American and Allied principles had not
been trumpeted and glorifed as nos
trums for all the ills of the world or as
rigid guarantees designed to become i'm
mediately effective at the end of the
war, but had instead been represented
for what they truly are-great and
high-minded objectives whose eventual
attainment, in whole or in part, must
necessarily be subject to the foibles and
failings Of mankind.
Even SO, whether or not the respon-
sible statesmen could have prevented
or lessened 1t by counselling against
overoptimistic expectations, the cur
rent wave of disilusionment, in its more
extreme manifestations, seems rather
on the emotional and unthinking side.
In one form it expresses itself in a
sterile defeatism and hopeless wiring
ing-of-th -the-hands, as II to say "All is
lost" In another form it finds release
in bitter charges of inter-Allied bad
faith and In perfectionist assertions
that the next peace will be tragic
failure unless every proclaimed princi-
pie Is working without hitch as soon as
the shooting stops. And in yet another
form-the worst and least justified-it
is made up of little more than shallow
and sneering wisecracks about the
"phony" morals of the United Nations
and the hoax" the authors OF the
Atlantic Charter have perpetrated on
the world
ever, the defeatists and the perfectionists
(the cynics may be excluded from con-
sideration, since they would apparently
talk and act perversely under any cir
cun1stance) Snow themselves to be some
what unmindful of human nature; for
the excessive character of their disil-
lusionment indicates that they tend to
expect too much too fast from human
ity which since the time of Adam has
never yet been able to shape its advanc-
ing society precisely according to the
specifications of its advancing ideals.
In other words, seemingly without giving
due thought to the all-important factor
of fallible man and the age-old mixture
of good and evil that is mans world,
they are prone to be impatient for the
total realization Of his noblest aspira-
tions and are therefore the more bitterly
disappointed when those aspirations are
thwarted by some hard earthly reality.
And because Of this, when a set Of
principles like the Atlantic Charter ap-
pears to be violated in certain situations.
they react emotionally and say that all
idealism is dead or that it Is no use
hoping for a future any better than the
present or the past. = @s- -
But these tuo-easily disillusioned ideal
lists clearly seem to be less than sound
in their viewpoint, for>it is not a CONTRA
~diction in terms to- say that idealism
can and ought to be realistic, or that
an ideal, even when it is in cold storage
or only fractionally attained, may well
be as real as any reality. The achieve
ments of man. after all, because Of the
nature of man himself, invariably lag
behind his highest aims, his grandest
resolutions ard the finest Of his dreams,
but to the extent that those aims, reso-
lutions and dreams slowly but surely
perhaps almost imperceptibly over
period of generations-improve his
world, they may be likened to tre-
mendous physical force, and the true
idealist, the realistic idealist, will be
patient with the gradual workings of
that force Ir the words of Carlyle:
All human things do require to have
an ideal in them; to have some soul
in them, were 1t only to keep the
body unputrefied. And wonderful 1t
Is to see how the ideal or soul, place
1t in what ugiest body you may, will
irradiate said body with its own
nobleness; will gradually, necessarily,
mold, modify, newborn or reform
said ugliest body, and make it at last
beautiful, and to a certain degree
divine
The principles and promises of such
great documents as Magma Charta and
the Bill of Rights have not yet been
completely fulfilled, but certainly the
world is far better today because of
them than it was before they were pro-
claimed. And on the higher plane, the
Ten Commandments and mighty reli-
gions like Christianity, even though they
have been honored perhaps as much in
the breach as in the observance, have
enriched life beyond calculation, lead
ing the imperfect but perfectible human
race out of the dark swamp and jungle
into the light and carrying it forward
progressively, step by step through the
ages, to new heights of material and
spiritual achievement. There have been
grave setbacks, of course, grave setbacks
like the present war, but no one, surely,
not even the most unrealistic idealist,
would say that the Decalogue and
Christian doctrine, because they have
been f~eolently ignored and outraged