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( Originally Published 1920 )
AN EDITORIAL A QUESTION which deeply troubles the general mind today is raised in the article by Dean Inge which appears in our columns this morning.1 It is a question that has many aspects, and will probably engage the thoughts of the ordinary citizen in some special form in which it is urged on him by his own experience. But, formulated in the broadest terms, " Is it a New World ? " is the question that is present in greater or less degree to the consciousness of every reflecting person in the second year after the winning of the Great War. We all remember well, or too well, with what hopes, and under the inspiration of what ideals, the nation committed itself to the most tremendous enterprise of its history. Without those hopes and ideals it could never have been undertaken and pursued as it was ; they were as real and as powerful as the titanic armaments with which the struggle was carried on. We looked forward to the establishment of a new order ; of a world better than that which had turned all its energies to the business of conflict not a world much the same in essentials, and capable of collapsing sooner or later into another welter of bloodshed and misery. We knew, whether vaguely or more definitely, what we sought, and when the guns were silent at last we began to look for the signs of attainment. What followed was a searching trial of faith ; and it is proceeding still. For some it has already proved too much. For some it is hard to keep the light burning while the darkness is still unlifted that enshrouds the future of the peoples. And to some it is given to keep the vision and the confidence that were their support through the years of the agony of Europe, even while that agony continues for so many millions who were involved in the ruin of militarism or in the outbreak of political incendiarism. Out of an unprecedented confusion of feeling and shifting of opinion the thought of the new time is slowly shaping itself. It may be, and probably it will be, long before the minds of the majority of men and women arrive at any such condition of clearness and settlement as they knew in the days before the great upheaval. The mass of people will never think alike, any more than they did in those days ; but they will come to know what they think, and why they think it, with a degree of precision which was once normal and natural, and which was reflected in the old division of parties and sections of opinion upon political or other subjects. For the present, however, the persistent pressure of more or less disturbing events, the disappearance of so many familiar landmarks, the apparent uselessness of experience as a guide, are having the effect that was to be expected, and humanity at large is able to discern little beyond the immediate practical difficulty or the urgent practical need. At no time in recent history has it been so hard to see life steadily, and see it whole. At the same time, that effort is being made by individual minds in every section of society ; and it is through their activity and controversy that new pathways of public thought are already being surveyed, new bases of conviction and new lines of cleavage already being laid down. There is nothing more to be desired than that public attention should be directed and held to these beginnings of a resettlement of our ideas ; and for that reason we think some service may be done by opening our columns to correspondence upon the broad question raised by Dean Inge to-day. There is so much upon which men have to re-examine themselves, perhaps to lead mental revolutions against themselves. On a reconsideration of familiar values, for example, are we to emerge from the present chaos with exactly the same thoughts and feelings about nationality as we had before ? It is upon the answer to that question that the existence of the League of Nations, if it is to be anything more than a shadow, depends ; for whatever authority may be given to it must represent a proportionate sacrifice of sovereignty made by each of its members. Is it a new world in the sense that such a sacrifice is to be reckoned upon ? What is the out-look for a greater understanding and sympathy between nations than existed hitherto ? An inquiry that goes deep in this connection suggests itself. How much of what we witness in the world to-day is due to the condition of nervous strain, leading to loss of balance and self-mastery, that is the legacy of a long and exhausting war ? May we look for a general recovery, in time, from that affliction, and the building up of a state of mind, and a spiritual condition, in which things will really become possible that could not be considered so a few years since ? To put the question in another way, are the peoples yet in a fit state to lay to heart the deeper lessons of the war ? Is any one nation—our own, for instance —in such a state ? It has known, in war-time, a degree of unity without any parallel in its records. Is the reaction from that to take us back in permanence to the old conditions of party rancour and class conflict, with no ground gained for a nobler sort of public spirit ? Again, in a new world religion and morals should show a new development. What is the outlook here ? We have touched upon a few only of the multitude of matters occupying the thoughts of so many who are striving to look deeper and farther than the day's perplexity and disillusion, or its flighty optimism and self-deception. If a public discussion should have the effect of adding to the numbers of those who are working for a steady point of view we should be proud to have provided a forum for it. |
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