"Newer Ideals of Peace."
Editor Christian Socialist: I have read studiously and repeatedly Jane Addams' illuminating book with above title. Within the compass of less two hundred and fifty pages there is suggestive subject matter that a century of humanitarian effort may not exhaust. I desire to ask your attention to the following paragraph, p. 114, Chautauqua edition:
"The surprising growth of Socialism, at the moment, is due largely to the fact that it is the only political party upon an international basis, and also that it frankly ventures its future upon a better industrial organization. These two aspects have had much more to do with its hold in industrial neighborhoods than have its philosophical tenents or the impassioned appeals of its propagandists. The Socialists are making almost the sold attempt to preach a morality sufficiently all-embracing and international to [keep peace] with even that material internationalism which has standardized the thread of screws and the size of bolts, so that machines may become interchangeable from one country to another. It is the same kind of internationalism which Mazzini preached when distracted Italy was making her desperate struggle for a unified and national life. We issued his remarkable address to her workingmen and solemnly told them that the life of the nation could not be made secure until her patriots were ready to die for human issues. We saw, earlier than most men, that the desire to be at unity with all human beings, to claim ↑the↓ [page 2] sense of a universal affection is a force not to be ignored. We believed that it might even then be strong enough to devour the flimsy stuff called national honor, glory, and prestige, which incite to war and induce workingmen to trample over each others' fields and destroy the results of each others' labor.
But there is another utterance (on page 36) too lengthy to be quoted in full in this place, that is "partly iron and partly clay," which I wish you would review sometime on its mixed merits. It ends with these words: "In time the (terms) "proletarian" and "capitalist" will become the impediment to which it will be necessary to clear away in order to make room for this mass of living and breating citizens whith whom self-government must eventually deal." She classes those terms with "the fixed forms which have from time to time been substituted for expanding and developing human life."
H. O. Hammond.
Ocheltree, Kans.,
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