Article August 28, 1920 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Craig S. Thoms

[The Congregationalist and Advance]

When we push inquiry back of the results of war to the conditions which made war possible, we find that the world is suffering most from the absence of good will. Had there been no ambition of conquest, no coveting of the trade or territory of a neighbor, no suspicion of motives, no heaping up of arms and drilling of troops in millions, there would have been no war. The system of defense by an armed population and systematic education in blind and selfish patriotism invented by Prussia involved a like necessity of preparation in all the other nations. The war which Prussia planned for came in due time through this absence of international good will.

We can never rebuild the world without good will—good will all round—in intimate human relations, in work, in government, in the dealings of nation with nation. The first of our great tasks is to restore the sense of personal responsibility for fair and true and kindly dealing everywhere. Suspicion, hate, envy, and malice are all destructive. There is no common prosperity, there is no individual happiness, without good will. That was our Lord's distinguishing characteristic as well as the message he most insisted on. The deepest witness of Christ's disciples is that of the good will of God toward man, and of our own opportunity of brotherly behavior toward all our neighbors.

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