Madame Chiang Kai–shek New York Herald Tribune

May I not hope that it is the resolve of Congress to devote itself to the creation of the postwar world? To dedicate itself to the preparation for the brighter future that a stricken world so eagerly awaits?

We of this generation who are privileged to help make a better world for ourselves and for posterity should remember that, while we must not be visionary, we must have vision so that peace should not be punitive in spirit and should not be provincial or nationalistic or even continental in concept, but universal in scope and humanitarian in action, for modern science has so annihilated distance that what affects one people must of necessity affect all other peoples.

The term "hands and feet" is often used in China to signify the relationship between brothers. Since international interdependence is now so universally recognized, can we not also say that all nations should become members of one corporate body? ...

We in China, like you, want a better world not for ourselves alone but for all mankind, and we must have it. It is not enough, however, to proclaim our ideals or even to be convinced that we have them. In order to preserve, uphold, and maintain them, there are times when we should throw all we cherish into our effort to fulfill these ideals even at the risk of failure. ...

Man's mettle is tested both in adversity and in success. Twice is this true of the soul of a nation.

R. H. Markham
The Christian Science Monitor

As any objective person looks back upon the arduous road along which men and women have advanced, from the Egyptian pyramids until today, and also upon the road along which Americans have ascended since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock until 1942, he finds ... almost unbelievable progress. Neither Moses' contemporaries, nor Julius Caesar's contemporaries, nor Charlemagne's contemporaries, nor Luther's contemporaries, nor George Washington's contemporaries, dared believe that all the people, including workers and farmers, could ever live ... beneath their own bounteous "vines and fig trees," attending their own free schools, bowing their heads to no master, and fearing no potentate. This has resulted from the action of free men, relying on their own strength, and increasing that strength by co-operating with one another.

That is what the people of the world came here to establish, and what America must preserve for the people of the world.

This way of life is the new order, and so long as strong, co-operative men and women with character and high ideals maintain it, it will become newer and newer with every generation.

Thomas F. Woodlock
in The Wall Street Journal
as quoted in The Boston Herald

Our "victory" in the battlefield will be no victory unless we are victorious also in the spiritual field.

We already know that, at least in a general way, for we stand ready when the fighting is done to bind up the wounds of our conquered enemies, to supply them with food where they need it, and with the material needs for resumption of a normal life, and we are prepared to give them every reasonable opportunity to enrich that life, for we know that in so doing we shall enrich our own. ... We hope that these things will evoke the one thing necessary, the common will; they should be helpful toward that all-important end. All precedent supports the hope.

But these things are means and not ends. Our enemies had them in sufficiency for what they deemed their needs; they had every opportunity to increase them as the years went by, yet they took the road they did. A crushing military defeat will, no doubt, convince them that that road is blocked—for a time. But will it turn them away from that road as forever impassable? It can change the policies of our enemies, but it is a change of heart that must be achieved.

Nothing so vividly demonstrates the disease that has been sapping the vitals of our boasted western civilization as does the fact that it should have produced this appalling problem. Whatever else we do in preparation to deal with it, one thing is indispensable; that is, to search our own hearts to see to what extent we too are sick with it.

We already half suspect its nature. Vaguely we feel that we have forgotten something in our calculations and that that something is our own nature and its origin. There is stirring among us—of that there is no doubt—a long-forgotten or ignored sense of religion. We have at least reached the point where we are not ashamed to speak the word with apologies!

The more we restore it to its true place among ourselves the better hope we can indulge for restoring it among our conquered enemies. There is no other thing upon which a common ideal, a common purpose, and a common will can be founded among the nations.

Rev. C. R. McBride
Free Press, Burlington, Wisconsin

Why can we see things so clearly in one realm of life and be completely blind to the same truth in another realm? Everyone knows that what is planted in the spring will be reaped in the fall, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. No one is fool enough to think that by sowing Canadian thistles he can reap a bumper crop of everything but thistles. Like produces like, always and eternally. On this one can depend. ...

The big task before mankind—the work of the church—in this titanic struggle is to sow with prodigal abandonment the fertile seeds of love. To do so is a task of great proportions—but it can be done. In some places, by some people, it is being done. But all of us must begin now to understand the other fellow and to appreciate his good qualities. We must replace the seeds of hatred with the seeds of love. Said Jesus, "Love your enemies."

Reporter
Two Rivers, Wisconsin

Men almost everywhere seem eager for peace and order. Science, invention, and transportation have almost prepared the world for a new age.

The prospects are brighter, in the long view, because at last men begin to see an equality not only of nations but of races. The material equipment is ready. All that remains is to recognize and act on the principle that God "hath made of one blood all nations ... of the earth."

If mankind can rise to that, the millennium may come.

Herbert Barnes
Evening Chronicle
Newcastle-on-Tyne, England

There is a Chinese proverb which seems to me so wise and appropriate for the present day that I want to pass it on. Here it is: "It is better to light a candle in the darkness than to curse the darkness." ...

It would be folly to minimize the fact of how great the darkness is! Many lights have gone out around the world. I need not specify them. But I will not curse the darkness. I will try to light a candle in it. There is a light that is shining still, and the darkness has never put it out.

"Blood, toil, tears, and sweat" characterize this age—oppression and tyranny and the agonies of war. Against all this, and in spite of all this, the Christian is not conquered or beaten down. He has an inner even before the outer victory is his. Notwithstanding the tyranny and oppression, he has an inner freedom; notwithstanding the disturbing facts of war, he has an inner peace.

There is an inner wealth of the spirit that is his. It is the only kind of wealth that finally matters. Wars have to be paid for. There will be bigger and bigger budgets, heavier and heavier taxes. Austerity has come to stay for a long time. Life is going to be a stern affair as far as we can see ahead. But we are not impoverished within.

They tell me in the libraries that more and more good books are being issued. They tell me in the musical world that music has found the souls of more and more of our people. Certainly our friendships are warmer and deeper—more permanent and sacrificial. Whatever may be the truth about churchgoing, it is certainly the truth to say that real religion counts for more. ... That there is this inner freedom, thank God. Richard Lovelace sang of it in his prison three hundred years ago:

The words are still true. We can still maintain the inner integrities of the soul.

Amid all the tempests we can still know the peace of soul that comes to those who do their duty. There is a peace that comes, and only comes to committed people. "Peace I leave with you," Jesus said, "my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you." The peace and composure of one who served Truth to the end!

This is the stage to which we have come—that we must have faith enough and courage enough to follow the light. It is not enough to curse the darkness. There is a light the darkness has not put out—and never can!

[Printed in U.S.A.]