Editorial August 28, 1915 Issue

Misplaced Distrust

John B. Willis

The train was crowded, and on entering it a commuter asked if he might share a seat with an open-faced fellow, who answered most obligingly and with whom a pleasant conversation was speedily opened. The traveler proved to be a ranch owner who was making his first visit to the East, being "bound," as he said, for a brother whom he had not seen for forty years or more. He was full of questions, and frankly communicative, so that many interesting facts were gathered respecting the far-away home country.

The commuter was destined for the heart of Boston, where his companion said he would "like to look 'round a bit," so it was arranged that he should leave his valise at the terminal and be shown some of the sights as they talked their way up toward the capitol. Everything was spontaneous and brotherly and they were both having a very nice time, when suddenly it must have occurred to the Westerner that this show of fraternal friendliness to which he had responded so heartily must have some selfish end in view,—be a pretense of which it were well to beware,—and instantly the happy bond between them was severed. Suspicion enthroned itself upon the stranger's face, and offering a stumbling excuse he turned away, to avoid—as he thought—being victimized by one who was guilty only of innocently loving him!

As the commuter sat at his desk that day, he thought many times and with a sense of sadness of the blight which the world-wide rule of misplaced distrust brings to human relations and hence to human character. He thought that perhaps this brother's many experiences fully accounted for his fright at the possibility of imposition. He thought too of the separation between friends, of the discouragement and defeat of unselfish good will, and of the long delay of human redemption thus effected; of the cut-throat competition and the crowding to the wall which distrust begets in commercial affairs; of the unspeakable ills now being inflicted upon the innocent through the rule of this disposition among the nations; of the passing of elemental virtues,—simple honesty, sincerity, unselfishness,—of which even unwarranted distrust gives unmistakable evidence. But most he thought of how all these ills shrink into insignificance as compared with the desolation and decay brought upon the religious life by distrust of God, of Truth and Love.

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