Peace continued

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Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal

Title: Peace continued
Language: English
Source: The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume XVI (No. 1) January 1936
Year: 1936
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Fulltext: 10 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL January, 1936 The American Chamber of Commerce OF THE Philippine Islands (Member Chamber of Commerce of the United States) DIRECTORS: P. A. Meyer, PrrriJnt C. S. Salmon, Vicr-Prrriiant ohn L. Headington, Trw/.r/r . C. Rockwell E. M. Grimm ALTERNATE DIRECTORS: N. H. Duckworth E. M. Bachrach SECRETARY: C. G. Clifford H. M. Cavender EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: P. A. Meyer, Cia/r™» C. S. Salmon RELIEF COMMITTEE: COMMITTEES PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE: P. A. Mever, Ciu/rntun C. S. Salmon Roy C. Bennett MANUFACTURING COMMITTEE: K. B. Day. Chairman F. H. Hale COhA.PK«Ctlcr D. P. O'Brien LEGISLATION COMMITTEE: C. M. Cotterman, Chairman C. S. Salmon L. D. Lockwood E. E. Selph FINANCE COMMITTEE: Verne E. Miller. Cbarrman E. J. Deymck FOREIGN TRADE COMMITTEE: H. B. Pond, Chairman N. H. Duckworth K. B. Day BANKING COMMITTEE: C. M. Cotterman, Chart j’ R LloyS RECEPTION. ENTERTAINMENT and HOUSE COMMITTEE: C. S. Salmon, Chairman SHIPPING COMMITTEE: E. M. Grimm. Cbarrma H. M. Cavender G. P. Bradford Chester Sharp INVESTMENT COMMITTEE: P A. Mever. Chairman C. S Salmon C. M. Corterman J. C. Rockwell S. F. Gachev PEACE CONTINUED We conclude our comments of November. The world of peace will be far more dynamic in every way than the present world of alternate peace and war. (Our contention is that war has become insupportable economically, therefore man will find his way out of it. We could add of course, it is morally insupportable; also, given the progress of communica tion and the distribution of universal knowledge, hence a common basic culture, that it is obsolescent; and further, that man, who has discarded dueling and placed effective bans upon private war, advances toward abolition of inter national war and has at his command even now the political mechanisms for the implementation of peace). In peace there will be public and private funds for every constructive project: men then earning a dollar, not having to give 75 cents of it for war; and governments taking a dollar in taxes, not having to use 75 cents of it for war. More than this,.economic fears of the future that so trouble men today as to lead neurologists to warn the world against wide and chronic psychosis—in plain words, insanity— will be obliterated. Conquest of the brain-destroying mala dies mainly spread by war, every army betraying its polluting propensities in its prophylactic service, will empty insane Asylums in a few generations; and far more, will transform the social viewpoint toward man’s most mystical experience, his agency of divinity in procreation. Further by way of introduction, let us agree that commerce under peace will experience constant and infinite growth. There are no limits to man’s ingenuity in adapting and con quering his environment and his capacity to use and consume what he grows and makes. One of the earliest solutions will be the convenient implementation of mere physical living. The gaining of a livelihood need not, even with today’s facil ities, remain man’s main preoccupation. In the world during permanent peace the main preoccupation will be with chil dren and youths: their upbringing, their education, the en£ couragement of their prowess much in the manner of the Jews’ ' care of their children today, and as they did all through the ghetto period. (All we will say has existing precedents). The secondary preoccupation will be with utility and beauty; it will be more intense application of the sciences, inducing revival of the arts. This sounds very limited, very simple. On reflection how ever, it is not. Survey the field of plant experimentation alone; and the field of metallurgy; and the field of physics generally; and surgery, its various branches; and physiology, the broad dissemination of its marvels. There is that union between divinity and man that makes man’s field of inquiry boundless, and boundlessly fruitful: the most remarkable step is but intermediate to greater strides beyond. All this may be granted. Senator Gerald P. Nye while in Manila in November told an audience that with war’s abolition every community in the world, of as many as 2,500 persons, could support a university; nor would it lack a great hospital and brilliant physicians and surgeons. In the world of peace, instead of strangers being feared and shunned, in every community they will be welcome: for the bizarre and valuable they bring with them, a bit of new music, mastery of a language, or an art or craft they are able to teach; because the ethical exchange of knowledge now manifest among scientists will then pertain to all of man’s activities. In cities men will know and appreciate country life; in the country, the beautiful cities, placing the keys to their gates in every approaching hand, will be admired, and what they find beautiful and useful will be patterned and borrowed and made useful and beautiful in the country too. True education will teach the basic fact of man’s physical mortality; instead of earth being ruthlessly exploited, earth man’s mother and sire, it will be respected and kept fertile and prepossessing. These tendencies, attracting the philosopher’s observation, are seen in all old countries; that is to say, in those countries where civilization has existed longest. As man hates most to see destroyed what he loves most, what has most engaged his energies, this phenomenon in itself demonstrates that man tends toward peace. How much he has tended to pre serve the ancient works of Greece despite the wars that have centered there. It is because he respects, not so much the ancient Greeks, but mankind’s matchless work in ancient Greece. Though the Acropolis is a ruin, yet its broken beauty is instinctively cherished. So with great cultural relics every where—preserving knowledge man once had, but has lost in the turmoil of prolonged belligerency. Contrast cities in the world of peace with cities of today. In the new cities, downtown streets will be long parks. Lead ing away from them will be wide shaded ways for pedestrians, others for bridle paths; and along streets left to vehicles, traffic will move swiftly and safely: the danger of crossings will be eliminated. Cars will not be parked at curbs, other accommodations will be found for them; and while mothers shop downtown, children will run at liberty in the park-like streets. Parks will bo a studied pattern everywhere; the poor, emancipated from slums, will live in! apartments sur rounding spacious courts constituting public playgrounds and having at hand nurseries, hospitals, and schools. Schools will combine the classical and the vocational. Mastery of manual arts will revive and excel Athens and Rome, Florence, Milan, and Venice. The genius of preco cious youths will be a matter of municipal concern; as much as the problem of the water supply is considered, sc will be the problem of precocious intelligence. (Water men tioned, such a precious thing as water, comprising the bulk of man’s physical body, will be drawn and poured only from January, 1936 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 11 the most captivating spigots and vessels. How bemoaning it is of man’s instinctive sense of beauty that his modern patterns derive so largely from the early ascetic Christianity that despised profane beauty for its paganism, and that this asceticism nourished in the catacombs bemoaned his vessels. If a workman must drink from a tin cup, a crockery pot or a brass faucet, he can only be conscious of bestial humility. In the country during peace, men will surround themselves with urban beauty and conveniences; the villages, where they will live because isolation on farms will be unnecessary, things beautiful and useful in the cities will be modeled on smaller lines and coordinated with their altered environment. Life will center primarily at the many scats of learning, do minantly at the universities flourishing everywhere, whence learned direction about all practical matters will come. Im mediately anything is desired to be built, it will be a matter of community concern (as of course in all cities; as in Stock holm, for example, today). The useful will therefore be constrained to be as acceptable in appearance as in useful ness. In city and country alike, travel and moving about will be incessant, and by the most rapid means, and of course at costs ridiculously low. To all the ancient games, save sheer brutality, youth will add its new ones; and winter and sum mer, in small and large communities, sharing and viewing the competitions, from interpreting Chopin and Bach to Marathons and the swimming of the distance of the English channel, will be major preoccupations. With the thwarting of the infections that ruin the brain and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation (but as a matter of fact, even forever), dullness will practic ally leave the human mind. Therefore the senility of the modern press will decamp permanently and very early. Youths, both girls and boys, will recess from sports and repair to a discourse on philosophy or a symphony concert or a rendition of true drama as naturally as their elders, and with critical intelligence. - .The world of peace will not eschew religion, instinctive in rhMij,|Who alone, perhaps, has the power to meditate as to what his life signifies and what his destiny may be. The world of peace will be deeply religious, truly so, but not, after a,while, denominational and dogmatic. So concludes the interlude on .peace and the modern insupportability of war, just a bxape of thoughts we deemed it worth while to sandwich betwee.p the exit of an old year and the advent of a new one. Mechanisms to implement permanent peace, we have said, man has already devised. That he does not use them very effectively as yet is due to his Janus-like char acter, his determination to look ahead, and his incorrigible tendency to look back. It is unscientific that peace tends to make man effete and soft. To now he has been ruled by his soldiers equally in peace and war, and it has not been their will to suggest during peace the discipline that superior ridership would of course effect. Nature made youth ascetic, that is why, indeed, armies do not suffer complete demoralization. Asceticism takes to harsh physical discipline, more susceptible of uni versal cultivation in peace than in war. WARNER, BARNES & COMPANY, LTD. LONDON — NEW YORK — MANILA ILOILO — CEBU — BACOLOD SHIPPING DEPT. 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