THE BUILDER NOVEMBER 1915

THE GREATER TRAGEDY

BY BRO. LOUIS BLOCK, P. G. M., FRATERNAL CORRESPONDENT OF IOWA

(Responding to many requests, we reproduce the "Afterward" of Past
Grand Master Louis Block in his report as Fraternal Correspondent
of the Grand Lodge of Iowa, as expressive of the horror of
world-war, and the ruin wrought to the finer fellowships of
humanity. What the war means to Masonry is shown by the following
Resolution adopted by the German Grand Lodge, dated Berlin, May
29th, 1915:--"In view of the attitude of Italian Free Masons, who,
inspired by French sympathizers, took part in the political
struggle leading to the war, and thereby violated the cardinal
principle of Masonry expressly forbidding such methods, the German
Grand Lodge hereby severs all former relations with Italian and
French Free Masonry. Toward Free Masons in other hostile lands The
Grand Lodge affirms the decision adopted at an earlier date, that
all relations of various Grand Bodies be suspended from the
outbreak of hostilities.")

Beauteous the love of country is, 
The love that gives so willingly its life-- 
But, oh, we long for that more beauteous day 
When love no boundaries shall know. When man 
So love his fellow-man, where'er he dwell, 
That he refuse to slay him. Nor yet dare 
Send a soul into that great beyond 
While yet that soul's experience on earth 
For which God sent it forth is incomplete. 
Beauteous the love of country is 
The love that gives so willingly its life-- 
But may that day more beauteous soon come 
When man, though loving not his country less
Shall more than country love his fellow-man."

When we started upon our journey to visit the Grand Lodges just one
year ago, it was with the pleasantest of anticipations. For the
world then lay smiling beneath the sunshine of peace, and the
prosperity of the people everywhere was most pleasing to behold.
Involuntarily there flowed from our lips the sentence hallowed by
so many sacred memories: "How good and how pleasant it is for
brethren to dwell together in unity!"

But scarce had the warm winds of summer begun to turn the green of
the fields into the gold of the ripening grain, when a dark cloud
blotted out the sunlit landscape, and we found ourselves shuddering
beneath the somber shadows of an awful war. Shocked and stunned we
cowered aghast before a perfect welter and whirlwind of hate, that
seemed ready to tear from the human heart every last vestige of
brotherly love. Never had human eye beheld a war so vast, so awful.
The madness of murder and the lust to kill seemed to have set the
heart of man aflame, and none knew how soon the horrible holocaust
might wither even the new world with its blight. Mighty hordes of
what once were men, led on by leaders filled with the lust of
empire, by crowned-heads goaded on by commercial greed, swept down
upon one another and left the land a blackened and smoking waste.
Nation after nation has slipped into the flood and been whirled
away into the mad maelstrom. Even as we write the sons of sunny
Italy, after having so long withstood temptation, have at last
succumbed to the horrid infection, and are now storming their way
northward into the land of the Teuton, swept on by the fire of
conquest.

The madness seems to be in the air, and we on this side must curb
our desires, master our passions, and pray God for strength to
resist, or we, too, shall be swept away into the horrid flood of
flaming destruction.

Just think of it! Twenty-nine million men flinging themselves at
each other's throats; was ever horror so frightful known before?
Civilization? Was there ever any real civilization; will there ever
be any ? Will men never be better than beasts? What is to be the
end of it all? Will peace ever smile on us again, or will this
bloody, burned, and sorely burdened world blow itself into
blackened splinters as a culmination of the catastrophe ? Far
better so than that man should live on hating man, with the fire of
brotherly love forever cold and dead in his stony heart!

And yet, and yet, we Masons cannot endure to have it so. We cannot,
we dare not let it occur, that this structure of brotherly love,
which with such sore and sharp endeavor we have so steadily
struggled to raise throughout the ages, should thus come toppling
and tumbling into the dust ! We cannot suffer the temple of
humanity to be thus ruthlessly torn down! Our hearts cry out
against any such dire disaster as that.

Why is it that in every Grand Lodge we have visited since this
horrid war broke out, the Grand Master has deplored in heartbroken
accents this awful thing that has befallen us ? Was it not that he
felt that the very foundation of our structure was being
threatened, so that a mighty trumpet call was needed to rally men
round about the standard of human brotherhood, to drive back the
hordes of hate and save man from self destruction ?

When you take from Masonry its basic principle of Brotherly love
you have nothing left, absolutely nothing, not even an empty last
year's birdnest. So that with so much hate raging round the world
the very life of our order is itself at stake.

And in heaven's name what was there to fight about? Before this
awful war broke out men lived in comparative comfort and happiness
no matter what flag flew over their heads. Peace and prosperity
reigned both sides of the line dividing nation from nation. What
then did it matter to the ordinary individual whether he lived in
France or Germany? Either place was better then than is now the one
into which both are merged; one for which there is no fitter name
than "Hell-on-Earth!"

What was the cause of it all? Was it true that nations could no
more stand prosperity than could individuals? Was there a grasping
greed for gain that, under the pretense of preserving peace, built
a vast military machine made for murder on a mighty scale?
Precipitating the greatest war the world has ever known is scarcely
preserving peace.

Side by side with this foolish pretense of "fighting for peace"
stands that equally palpable pretense of patriotism--of patriotism
preached for the very purpose of hiding a passion for plunder. Away
with such vile patriotism as that ! A nation that cannot treat
another nation fairly, but hungers to devour it; that is not
willing to live and let live, is not worth dying for, much less
living for. When my nation grows so mad with greed that it will not
do right, then it becomes my duty in a higher and nobler loyalty to
humanity to abandon that nation to its fate. Yet my first duty is
to try to save it from itself. The cry, "My country, right or
wrong," is wrong and not right. For it we should substitute, "My
country, may she ever be right and do no one wrong!"

What is our duty as American Masons in this present crisis? Surely
in loyalty to our underlying principle as an institution; in
loyalty to the real welfare of the people, it must be to hold up
the hands of our President in the hour of his strenuous struggle
for peace. Not since the days of Abraham Lincoln has a lonely
leader in the White House pled so patiently with his people for the
truth, and the right, and the love to prevail, and we were unworthy
and traitorous ingrates did we fail to respond to his appeal.

For he pleads the cause not of America alone, but of that of
humanity as well, and if we, turning a deaf ear to his call, shall
join the blood-mad hordes of Europe, then we, too, shall both
deserve and meet the fate that shall surely be theirs. "For they
that take the sword shall perish with the sword !"

Here in the western world two great nations facing each other with
never an army, a fort, or even a single soldier to guard thousands
of miles of border, have for over a hundred years preserved the
peace that blesses mankind, a thing which Europe, with the greatest
armies and the mightiest war-machines the world has ever known, has
most miserably failed to do.

Yea, my brethren, man's road to hope and joy is never along the way
of war, but ever along the path of peace. As Masons we are here on
earth to learn to subdue our passions and improve ourselves in
Masonry, which, after all, is but another name for the divine art
of human brotherhood. Let us pray that we may be ever true to our
mission, ever loyal to the high calling that is ours, that each one
of us in his own humble place may do his level best to speed the
coming of the day--

"When the war drums beat no longer, 
And the battle-flags are furled
In the parliament of man,
The federation of the world !"

Then, and then alone, shall we be content to leave the issue in the
hands of the Great Architect.


MASONIC LIVING

Do we try to live Masonically
As we perform our daily tasks ?
Do we carry out the teachings
That's the question that- HE asks.

Do we apply to every second
Throughout every living day
The truths of the Square and Compass
We will find that it will pay.

Do we divide our daily lives
By the Gauge as we've been taught,
Do we always use the Gavel
On every word and thought ?

Do we meet upon the Level
Will our acts the Plumbline stand
Is our parting Square and honest
Do we hear the lodge command.? ..

Do we in the daily building
Of our lives and thoughts and minds
Have in our hearts the Trowel lesson
And use a love cement that binds? 
--James T. Wray, W. M.
Evanston, Ill.

THE HIGHER FATALISM

Whether the time be slow or fast,
Enemies hand in hand
Must come together at the last 
And understand.

No matter how the die is cast 
Or who may seem to win,
You know that you must love at last!-- 
Why not begin?
--Witter Bynner.

