PLACE OF PEACE AND HARMONY

AMERICAN FREEMASON, OCTOBER 1914

TO THE superficial observer of events, present world happenings would
seem to give the lie direct to all expressed aspirations for kindliness and
brotherhood among men.  Under a surface of false calm, as it now
appears, the age-old race rivalries and undiminished hatreds of the nations
seethed and gathered force to the final outbreak of primal savagery.  For
some two thousand years the precepts of "peace on earth, good-will to
men" have, to outward showing, fallen upon unheeding ears.  The mad
impulse of a moment, or economic stress, or political exigency, or the fears
and ambitions of kings-these, singly or in combination, have been sufficient
to involve the peoples in warfare as barbarous as any that have blotted the
pages of history.

We have boasted, and but just now, that the channels of commerce,
reaching to all lands, could not again be clogged by conflict between the
nations.  We had fondly believed that international finance had a power to
hold for peace, whatever the provocation for war.  We had argued that the
growth of humanitarian sentiment, the recognition of the brotherhood of
men beyond political or racial boundaries, and the rise to power of the
masses as against the classes long privileged to rule, would suffice to
check inordinate ambition and prevent strife among the great Christian
nations.  Yet these influences, and others imagined potent, have proven but
useless barriers when a seemingly sudden impulse seized upon Europe
and set loose a flood of long-pent passion.

If, indeed, there is purpose and meaning to civilization, it is that the brutal
instincts shall be bred out or weeded out, and that the better, finer, kindlier
qualities of man be given freer opportunity for growth.  The process has
been slow - so slow at times that the lover of his kind might have despaired
of any real progress being made.  But surely as the centuries have passed,
so sure has gain been made toward a goal as yet beneath the farthest
horizons of mantal vision.  It is no vain thing, nor beyond a reasonable
hope, to expect a time when wars shall be no more, even though the
aspiration be uttered when the greatest war of history is in progress.  Slow
growth to good, indeed, yet with the good forever making gain! For that we
name evil in man and in the world, and make as if it were something
tangible and real, is no more than lack, the negative and non-existence of
good.

Until but yesterday, as I say, we had preached the coming, or even the
presence of world-wide peace, and even as we were speaking armies were
moving over areas greater than ever barbarian hordes had overflowed.  We
had listened to sweet voices here and there proclaiming the brotherhood
of man, the solidarity of the toilers, the oneness of commerce, the fluidity
of finance, and had believed the millennium was at hand.  Yet the fathers
had planted an evil seed, and their children must reap the harvest in blood
and sorrow until the full mete is weighed in the balance of inexorable
justice.

Europe once before in the throes of agony threw off the weight of a
thousand years of wrong.  In the fires of revolution were burned, root and
branch, the dead and thorny undergrowth of feudalism, that had stayed or
periled the advance of men.  Yet even while the flames ran, the forces of
reaction were present to beat down and extinguish the living fire so that a
new growth was made possible for the future, to curse with its
entanglements the aspirations of a new generation.

It is no more than this renewed growth of feudalism - a carrying over into
the twentieth century of the ideas and ideals once believed to have been
destroyed - that has made possible the present struggle between the great
nations of Christendom.  It had been hoped that out of revolution, a century
and more ago, democracy had arisen, full-panoplied, and able to resist the
reactionary efforts of those who would erect again the fallen thrones and
prop the tottering altars of absolutism.  Yet there has been put forward
again the doctrine of the "divine right" of kings, the pushing back of the
peoples from any voice of decision, even when their fortunes and their lives
were imperiled.  There has been witnessed, within our own times, the
growth and steady encroachments of a military caste, in all things arrogant
and extravagant, seeking to use the masses only as weapons docile or
insensate, to be directed by their own hands and used for their own
purposes of further power.

It is realization of these facts - not perhaps exactly as here expressed - but
in the main as stated, that has set the sympathy of the world against any
further extension, or even glorification of militarism.  It is a knowledge of
conditions, however vague to the generality, that has resulted in a grim
determination, even among neutrals, to bear with discomforts or losses
uncomplainingly, if so be that the conflict shall finally reduce the arrogant,
saber-clashing class to its proper inferiority.  It is an anomaly that the
fighting man - the trained murderer and bravo - should hold higher place
in estimation of the world than the inventor, the engineer, the director of
commerce, or the artisan that brings his skill to the benefit of his fellows.

We can not blame any one of the peoples for the present recrudescence
of barbarism.  In spite of appearances the peoples of all the countries are
committed to peace.  They have, and especially of late years, been
reaching out toil-worn hands to grip in fellowship palms equally calloused
with their own, and beyond all national borders.  They have dared, in
despite of rulers, to voice belief in the brotherhood and solidarity of man. 
They have discovered that those who labour, and those who accomplish
real things, whether with brain or brawn, have in every land the like
aspirations, the like difficulties, and that mutual help should surmount the
dividing influences of race tradition and environment and differences of
language. It was a knowledge of this growing consciousness of the larger
destiny stirring the masses, a fear that these would soon get out of hand,
and prove no longer the obedient tools of rulers "by the grace of God" who
have rushed the nations into war.  Read the cold-blooded diplomatic
exchanges that preceded the declarations of hostilities, and read into them
your own knowledge of the ruling class, eager for the glory of slaughter, for
the spoils of conquered peoples, for a breaking of all laws that men have
made or that God has commanded - read these, and then as neutral, but
thinking, Americans, place the blame where blame belongs - upon those
who have, in every nation made militarism a deadening, drowning weight
upon the necks of men, forcing them to the killing of their fellows as the
lesser evil of their fate.

It would seem that the various boasted agencies of civilization - fraternal
and religious, to mention no others - might have been sufficient to have
held in leash the passions of men, until a more sober judgment could have
gained ascendancy.  But if these have the force with which they have been
credited, the moment of supreme opportunity was allowed to pass.  The
Freemason (London) makes note of the lost chance for the fraternity.  In
the opinion of its editor there were times, just before the actual outbreak of
war, when the full force of Freemasonry, if exerted in all countries, including
America, could have averted the present great conflict.  For myself, I doubt
very much whether any such influence can be ascribed to the Craft.  The
unfortunate divisions that have for so long existed between sections of
Freemasonry would have precluded united action, and only by a positive
union of sentiment and effort could the fraternity have had any effect in the
great world of thought.

The function of Freemasonry, in my opinion, is not to seek a position as
mediator between quarrelling or contending nations.  We have seen with
sorrow, perhaps with despair, that richly endowed peace societies have
been helpless, that diplomacy has been without avail, when once the brute
passions of the nations were aroused. In such arena Freemasonry, though
it included every man of its membership in every country under the sun,
could have accomplished nothing.  The work of the fraternity is for other
and happier times - to work while yet there is peace, with every other
agency of enlightened times, to increase and make more clearly manifest
the ideal of human brotherhood.  This is not a mere matter of formula or
pious ejaculation, but of very earnest and definite labour.  That Masonry
which goes no further than the Lodge room, that concerns itself with no
other than a restricted membership, is not a Freemasonry worthy the name,
nor worth the adherence of any thinking man.  I am tired of the petty
teaching of the Craft that would have all good done for and by the
individual; that would hold observance of the moralities as the highest and
best that can be accomplished by our association.  With good men it is not
needed that they should employ a vast mechanism to insure that
righteousness will prevail among them; with evil men moral suasions are
ineffective.

Greater opportunity than ever before will come to Masonry of the world with
the cessation of present strife.  Despite all untoward affairs, there will be
none to deny that there is a reaching on the part of men to the broader
consciousness of being.  There is being carried down to the minds of the
masses a conviction that brotherhood is not an unmeaning term.  New
definitions of patriotism will arise, after the impotence of these now in use
have been proven. "Man," says Renan, "is enslaved neither by his race, nor
by his language, nor by his religion, nor by the course of rivers or the
direction of mountain ranges.  A great aggregation of men, sane of mind
and warm of heart, creates a moral consciousness which is called a
nation."

It is required first that Universal Freemasonry should heal its own
differences, and become that which it pretends to be - a brotherhood of
men, knowing no boundary lines of race or nationality, having no divisions
because of varying creeds or speculations on life.  The fraternity can not be
expected to exert any appreciable influence for good so long as it is
hedged about by restrictions and split into irreconcilable sections because
leaders will make non-essentials the things all-important.  If ever the
institution we love is to make for itself place in the world of thought and
action, and to impress its teachings upon men, it must rise to a plane of
absolute agreement on principles, with true and intelligent manhood as the
one indispensable requirement and bond of union.

There must come an earnestness into the Craft that can never be gained
except from the devotion and intelligence of its membership.  Purpose must
be recognized first by Masons themselves if the institution is to make any
impress upon others.  And such purpose is of greater import than to supply
the degree mills with grist and to afford additional lapels upon which to pin
Masonic emblems.  It can not be too often or too strongly insisted upon
that Freemasonry is a purely human institution.  It has no claim to be the
repository of immutable truth; it possesses no infallibility, and must obey
the laws of change if it is to keep up with the progress of mankind.  The
trivial ceremonies that may, in another and simpler time, have satisfied
brothers, are ineffective now to hold the interest or enlist the energies of
thinking men.  Because the Craft has held to form and has neglected the
spirit, Freemasonry, at least in America, is without influence except in a very
narrow circle of its own adherents.

The work before us now is constructive - to put the fraternity into touch and
sympathy with great world movements that will urge more insistently than
ever before for justice and righteousness among men and among nations. 
The present conflict, whatever may be its outcome, will teach individuals
and peoples humility - will put again in the hearts of men the desire to deal
justly with one another.  The great ideals of Service and of Sacrifice are
being burned into the consciousness of the nations by the loss of their
bravest and best.  When the cost has been counted, to the utter-most
penny, it may be that no exorbitant price has been paid if the true kinship
of humanity is thus taught once for all; if the awful decisions for peace or
war are taken forever from princes and militarists; if the whole world,
chastened in spirit, shall put forth in the future its utmost rivalries as to
which people can most advance the welfare of all humanity.  "Let us
conceive," wrote Matthew Arnold, "of the whole group of civilized nations
as being, for at least all intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great
confederation, bound to a joint action and working toward a common
result; a confederation whose members have a due knowledge of the past,
out of which they all proceed, and of each other.  This was the ideal of
Goethe, and it is an ideal that will impose itself upon the thought of our
modern societies more and more insistently."

To these aspirations of the idealists war would seem just now to have given
the lie.  To some it may appear that civilization is a failure, and that the
brute rules, even among those most highly cultured and farthest advanced.
But there are deeper and more enduring sentiments than those evoked by
war; the fever passes with its hurts and pains, and with a new force the
peoples will again take up the work of peace and altruistic effort.-

The captains and the kings depart,
Still holds the ancient sacrifice.

It is not a time for abject, soul-destroying pessimism to be heard, but rather
a time for preparation for greater work and larger opportunities.  Some
such vision of the things to be must have come to Socrates, just before he
drank the fateful cup, when he said to Crito: "This is the voice which I seem
to hear murmuring in my ears, like the sound of the flute in the ears of the
mystic; that voice, I say, is murmuring in my ears, and prevents me from
hearing anything else."

In this better, greater time is American Freemasonry to have no part? Will
it be content to sit idly by, without aiding in the endeavors of humanity, the
while boasting of ancient glories, and claiming falsely a part in good deeds
accomplished by others? Will this powerful Craft continue to busy itself
exclusively with vain observances and comfort itself with meaningless
phrases? Are we so given into the hands of fraternal politicians, of the
mediocre and the unfit, that intelligence and earnestness and studied
purpose can not gain to control? Upon the answer to such question will
depend the future of Freemasonry.  It is not needed, as of highest
imperative, that numbers shall be increased.  It is not required, as most
excellent of works, that we gather all the broken threads of a forgotten
history, or that we concern ourselves with evolving vague mysticisms or
seek to prove descent from mysteries that are themselves but as myths. 
We need men of heart and head to control; men in the Lodges receptive
of knowledge, broad of sympathy and willing to work with deadly
earnestness for humanity.  Then, indeed, would Freemasonry be hailed as
a valuable ally in every righteous cause; its existence would be justified and
its work be given honour. The hour of larger opportunity approaches; are
we again to miss it, and to suffer everlasting shame because of culpable
neglect?

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