Article December 28, 1918 Issue

"The balance of power"

JOHN V. DITTEMORE

It is an inherent characteristic of mortal mind to establish and attempt to assure its own safety by balancing one opposing force or interest against another. If the effort appears to succeed, it wins applause and is called shrewd or astute, and is given the praise of worldly wisdom. Since the nation is but the individual multiplied, governments have attempted to establish a similar condition of international equilibrium as a guarantee of peace, and this has come to be known in international politics as "the balance of power." The world has just witnessed its most striking example of the instability of such as adjustment and has seen what happens when peace and justice are dependent upon such frail supports as this form of human wisdom provides. It was the disturbing of the balance which tipped the scales and precipitated "Armageddon," because, let us thank God, there were nations upon the earth which knew that honor and freedom were more precious than peace. The adjustment was seemingly overthrown by governments, but back of them lay the hidden influence of those destructive qualities of thought—greed, selfishness, and the lust of power expressed in its many forms—which to-day, as always, seek to precipitate strife, confusion, and chaos, for through these conditions evil always assumes that the curtailment of liberty may be accomplished and the world may be governed a little longer by the elements of darkness and reaction.

In the mighty world conflict "to make the world safe for democracy," the physical phase of which has been so gloriously accomplished, the foes of justice and righteousness have by no means been confined to the opposing legions of autocracy. Disloyalty, treachery, and treason have been met with on every side, masquerading under such forms as often to deceive "the very elect," if unfamiliar with the methods and purposes of the "hidden hand." Step by step these insidious foes have been uncovered in the allied nations, and their pernicious activities to a large extent curtailed. Day by day, also, the weakness of disunity has been eliminated and a closer cooperation established. Finally came the hour when Mind's singleness of purpose was demonstrated, and then the "walls of Jericho" crumbled before the trumpet blasts of complete harmony of desire, thought, and action. In other words, Mrs. Eddy's prophetic utterance to her students many years before, was beginning to be established in human consciousness: "Unity," she said (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 138), "is divine might, giving to human power, Peace."

But a greater mistake could scarcely be made than to assume that a cessation of hostilities constitutes peace. The vital hour, the climax of the struggle, comes with the work of translating the physical victory into such a permanent form as will make democracy safe for the world and insure a peace which will endure because founded upon the rock of man's inalienable right to that freedom which is the "liberty of the children of God." It is in connection with the con summation of this end that Christian Scientists to-day face the largest responsibility and the most imperative call which has yet been presented to them.

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