MANKIND’S GREATEST NEED JUST NOW

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 9, 4 December 1931, Page 6

MANKIND’S GREATEST NEED JUST NOW

If I must say what seems to me the greatest need of mankind at the present moment, I shall answer in one word—discipline—the threefold discipline of loyalty, courage and selfcontrol. Without discipline there can be no co-operation, and without co-operation there will be no world order, whether in the shape of a League of Nations or anything else. The truth is that co-operation among human beings is a very difficult affair, more difficult than playing the piano or learning to speak Russian. Co-operation doesn’t come by calling for it, by whistling for it, by making speeches about it or by singing its praises. We have to be trained for it, and the training is a long one. A good co-operator is really a great artist, perhaps the greatest artist in the world. Co-operation is a hard thing to learn, but the jolliest of all things to practice when once you have learned it, like playing the piano. It is a fine art—the art of war converted into the art of peace. How are we to breed co-operators—not a few specimens, not in small groups, but on a scale big enough to guide mankind? That is the question. Dr. L. P. Jacks.