THE PRACTICAL PURPOSE OF FREE MASONRY: ELMER E. ROGERS.

AMERICAN FREEMASON, AUGUST 1914

UNDER the auspices of the "Sane Fourth" association of Chicago, Brother
Elmer E. Rogers delivered an address at the Wrightwood Municipal
Playground, in which more than one hundred coloured stereopticon slides
were used.  The principles of Masonry, as of application to modern life,
were plainly set forth.  Brother Rogers is practical, and urges the higher
warfare of our time, as against the brutal strife that has deformed
civilization, that is putting distrust and bitterness between the nations, and
that is draining the life-blood of the peoples and rushing humanity either to
bankruptcy or to exterminating war.  In part Brother Rogers said:

The American is writing this fact across the record of time: Ours is the
"show me" age.  People demand value received for the work of hand or
brain.  Our time is intensely practical.  The world has had its iron age and
its stone age; our is the arithmetical age - the age of figures.  Even the
religious life is not an exception.  Put a question to the ordinary American,
and he asks a dozen others in return; the gist of it all is: Where do I come
in? He is thinking for himself, not taking his politics or his religion from
other men without digging to the reasons for acceptance.  In other days
men generally worked without thinking.  Now the average man does more
serious thinking, even though he may work less strenuously.

We want to do things, and to know we are doing them.  There is no boy
but would prefer to shoot a bombshell than a fire-cracker.  That is the
practical arithmetic of the American illustrated; it is a straw that shows
which way the wind blows.  The boy demands the excitement and
inspiration of the detonation; it is the personal return and recompense for
his effort and expenditure.  This is a Fourth of July illustration, but it shows
the American spirit in the bigger and more serious things.

Once when a nation began war, the average citizen asked no question;
patriotism was supposed to cover all the sins and ambitions and follies of
leaders, and to risk all upon the strife.  Now the ordinary citizen asks: Why
and what is the quarrel? Where do I come in and what is the advantage to
me and mine? I am not interested in the killing of fellow humans unless by
their being put out of the way I and my neighbours are benefited.  This is
the larger, better patriotism; the kind that Masonry, with its ideal of the
larger brotherhood, has been teaching for some centuries.  The peace
question is not sentimental; it is eminently practical.  Is the killing of men
over some line marked on land or over some stretch of sea going to do my
country any real good? And then comes realization of the truth that all
physical warfare is detrimental; that it puts back the betterment of the race;
that it takes the earnings of toil for wholesale murder, the while the toilers
live in penury, and the noble ideal of the brotherhood of man is lost sight
of in the passions engendered of conflict.  There are vast preparations for
war, but nations will no longer fight for the glory of militarists, or for
exercise, or to further private greed.  The nobler and grander warfare of
commerce, of the arts and sciences, of invention and the triumphs of
statesmanship demand higher qualities of mind than for success in battle,
add there results are far greater and more lasting.  Patriotism no longer
stands ready to support warfare for its own sake; war today must appeal
to righteousness and to the sense of justice as between the peoples.  The
highest patriotism is that of peace and of even-handed justice; the pomp
and glory of war, with its ghastly train of death and desolation has no
longer an appeal to the thinking men of America.

Brother Rogers has achieved a reputation for very practical applications of
Masonry, and this Fourth of July speech, so different from the lurid appeals
to so-called patriotism that are heard on that anniversary, strikes a new and
sane note of American citizenship.  The "sane Fourth" movement holds in
it much for good; its highest purpose will be attained if others, likewise
inspired, will seek to lead the spirit of Young America to the illimitable
conquests of peace.  There may be less red fire and the metaphoric glitter
of steel, but there will be happier homes, men better fit for the struggles of
daily life, and no aftermath of grief and desolation such as follows the
delirium of warfare.

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