Editorial December 28, 1918 Issue

Readjustment after the War

William D. McCrackan

Lasting readjustment can only take place upon the sure foundation of scientific understanding. Numerous international misconceptions must be corrected before permanent peace can be established on earth as it is in heaven. For instance, the supposition that commerce is war has largely dominated prevalent reasoning on economic questions. A subsidiary fallacy is the belief that states instead of individuals trade with each other. There has, in fact, arisen a sort of trade strategy aping the military, by which one state seeks to circumvent another and force its wares upon it, willynilly, as though manufactured goods and raw materials were evil things, like bombs and shrapnel, with which to overcome a supposititious enemy. This war school of economics forgets that trade is an exchange of goods, or good things, and is therefore not a military adventure but a mutually beneficial expression of the law of supply and demand. Commerce cannot flourish on hostilities. Permanent peace will come when international relations of all kinds are based upon Principle, which Christian Science teaches mankind to recognize as divine Love.

Similarly, what is called the labor problem is complicated by the prevalent notion that labor and capital can be separated into warring camps. Every laborer is in some measure a capitalist and every capitalist a laborer. Capital is only saved-up labor, and labor the method of producing capital. The inequalities and injustices which obtain in the apportionment of pay and profits are often glaring, but they cannot be corrected by war. When this is attempted there ensues an unscientific, selfish struggle between those who at a given time seem to be the "haves" and the "have nots." Economically, the culprit is special privilege, not capital which every laborer is doing his best to acquire; metaphysically considered, the struggle is not between capital and labor but between mankind and its own sense of limitation, as in an athletic game the struggle is not really between the seeming contestants but between those contestants and the laws of physical limitation which they are overcoming. There is no ready-made material remedy for what is called the labor problem any more than there is for what are called disparities in foreign trade. In normal peace times individuals belonging to different nations know best what goods they desire to exchange, and their mutual interests are subserved by giving them freedom to do right by each other. These problems are fundamentally mental and spiritual and must be worked out by spiritual Science in an atmosphere of liberty. In the last analysis, Christ Jesus in feeding the five thousand and finding his tax money in the fish's mouth showed the scientific way by which humanity must eventually learn to feed itself and pay for its common expenses.

On page 353 of "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy tells the story of a workman in her brother's mills whom a practical joker set to pouring "a bucket of water every ten minutes on the regulator." When her brother heard of it he made the joker pay the workman. Mrs. Eddy draws the following homely moral: "Some people try to tend folks, as if they should steer the regulator of mankind. God makes us pay for tending the action that He adjusts."

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