THE INTERNATIONAL MIND

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17220, 1 October 1927, Page 13 (Supplement)

THE INTERNATIONAL MIND

MOVE TOWARDS fEACE. (By “Scissibus.”) Dr. Robert McElroy, Professor of American History at Oxford University, delivered the Watson Foundation Lectures. In the first lecture on “The International Mind,” Professor McElroy said many notable things. Here are some of the most striking passages:— “For the unnumbered centuries since human society began, men charged with political leadership have searched with eager longing for one formula: A Substitute For War. They have tried alliances, negotiations, economic pressure, isolation, agreements to arbitrate. But in the fullness of Lime each of these formulas has failed: and again and again unwilling as well as willing warriors have been forced back, or have joyfully returned, to war as their very unsafe rock of defence. “It is beyond question that alliances, negotiations, economic pressure, isolation and agreements to arbitrate have, in many instances, enabled nations to avoid war. It is certain that, by their use, we have made progress toward more general peace: but it is equally obvious that the end of war is not yet. The world is still short of metal for ploughshares and pruning hooks because it must still have swords and spears. “Peace is far easier to abolish than war, not because any nation loves war more than peace, but because war may come from the will to war on the part of one: but peace only comes from the will to peace on the part of all. “Military preparedness has not brought peace; military unpreparedness has proved, like an unfenced sheepfold on the mountain, an invitation to every rambling beast of prey. Certainly there remain to-day few in any land* with full faith in the efficacy of either method. “The international mind is not the enemy of the nation, but its ally. It comes not to destroy patriotism but to glorify it. It is therefore entillcd to a welcome from every nation whose aim is justice and whose method, law. Too many well-intending patriots arc content with a patriotism which says: ‘My country right or wrong,’ heedless of the obvious fact that true patriotism can never demand Allegiance to Error and to Crime. “And too many, in every nation, arc hourly being taught the old foolish dream of national or race supremacy. The man who thinks his race born to rule other races, and teaches his children so, is not a friend to peace. He is her enemy:, for unity based upon any form of human bondage is- the vainest of delusions. We are, and we should wish to remain, Americans, English, French, German, Japanese, Chinese and Siamese, or whatever God has seen fit to make us; but wc must be free, when ‘unity all-pervading’ comes at last. “Toward that guiding star of all the world, Liberty, each race must struggle. This is not an ideal, abstract, artificial, within the power of each to hold, or cast aside. It is an instinct, one of the world’s great, unifying Instincts, which all must recognise, or pay the heavy price of ceaseless wars. “The international mind seeks not supremacy but unity: ' and international unities are many and of transcendent importance in the search for a formula for lasting peace. The things which make men alike are more important than the Lhings which make them different, and the international mind dwells upon the things which make men alike. “When we add the characteristic Aristotelian generalisation: ‘What is most known is most real,’ we have the key to the provincial mind, the mind which dwells on the things which make men different. Men know best their own nations, their own races, their own localities, and very little of those which are distant. Therefore, the known things being for them the real things, they attach to local matters, local interest, local customs, prejudices, or pre-suppositions, an exaggerated importance. “All rational minds must deal with both essentials and incidentals, with the things which make men alike and the things which make them different; but the international mind sees more clearly than the provincial mind the superior importance of essentials as compared with incidentals. The international mind appreciates the importance of wider unities; the provincial mind concentrates its attention upon divergencies, and resents the suggestion that recognition of wider unities Is desirable. “The truly educated, of every nation. owes to the advancing vision, the dawning international mind, this much at least, a vow to think of every question in the Largest Possible Terms. Viscount Grey was right when he said; ‘the large view will bring them (men) together, where the small Lew has separated them.’ And the formula which wall some day show the substitute for war, will embody the large view, because it must meet the conditions, not of one nation, but of all. “ Because America has developed a national mind out of a people representing all races and kindreds and tongues: and because Great Britain has similarly given a British mind to millions of her far-flung Empire, we believe that the same process of discovering unity in diversity may yet result in the creation of an international mind, which will think in common ethical terms, accept ■ common standards of conduct, and thus make possible a wide range of laws of world-wide operation. . . . “It will require the long patience which the French proverb calls genius to make the nations of the world understand that the vital liberties of their people will at last be more secure under an all pervading unity sustained by International Law than they could ever be as citizens of fifty odd sovereign nations, standing each alone.”