THE MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY: Chapter 7/Circa 1940

The war-ridden poverty-stricken world of today seems to be struggling essentially with problems of economics and its ills seem to be primarily materialistic. Yet, I believe, that we do not begin to approach a solution of our problems until we acknowledge the fact that they are spiritual and that they necessitate a change in attitude of human beings to one another.

War is the result of spiritual poverty. People say that war is the cause of a great many troubles; but in the first analysis it is the fact that human beings have not developed the ability to rise above purely selfish interest which brings about war. Then war intensifies all of our social problems and leaves us groping for the answers.

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As we look at France today we realize that her plight is partly due to the fact that some of her people actually believed that the Communists were more of a menace than the Fascists. Both were an equal menace, for their hold on the people comes from the same sources – discontent and insecurity. The people who were comfortably off never looked below the surface in France to find out why the Communists could get such a hold on the imagination of people in a country which had supposedly so much liberty and equality.

Some people say salvation can come only through a form of selfish interest which brings about the realization by those who have their share of the good things of life, that nothing which they have in a material sense will be preserved unless they share it with those less fortunate; that some charitable way will be found to distribute more equably the things which the people as a whole lack. This would be a reaction to fear, of course, and it does not seem to me a final answer.

Somehow or other, human beings must get a feeling that there is in life a spring, a spring which flows for all humanity, perhaps like the old legendary spring from which men drew eternal youth. This spring must fortify the soul and give people a vital reason for wanting to meet the problems of the world today, and to meet them in a way which will make life more worth living for everyone. It must be a source of social inspiration and faith.