A LEAGUE OF HUMANITY

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2249, 10 March 1921, Page 2

A LEAGUE OF HUMANITY

AMONG the critics of the League of Nations is the Indian poet, Sir Rabindranath Tagore, He says:—“It is founded on force —it has no spiritual foundation. Humanity is not yet ready for it. A new machine is of little advantage if it be run by the old power and for the old ends. Organisation is not brotherhood, and God cares more for a brother than He does for an empire. The great war was one of the blows of God seeking to break down our materialism, our selfishness, our narrow nationalisms. It made a dent, but only a dent, in the crust. Other blows will fall betimes. Until we learn to live together by the real law of our nature —the law of love —a veil will hide the beauty and wonder of the world, leaving us to wander alone or struggle together in confusion and strife.” In every land the poet finds men who seek the truth, “but they are outcasts for the most part —as Jesus was in liis day. They are the keepers of the soul of humanity. There is need of a League of Vagabonds, some kind #of fellowship between these men of God.” It is Tagore’s view that the world does not know the truth, “It has forgotten, if it ever discovered, that down below race, rank, religion, there is a fundamental humanity—man as man — which is universal and everywhere the same. All imperialism —except the imperialism of love —is wrong. It brings little nations and various races together like chips in a basket, but they do not unite, they simply are held together. A hen in the purpose of God the time does come for a real League of Humanity there will be men large enough to see the human race as a whole, who understand that the good of humauiiy as a.family actually exists, and

we shall not suffer such a bankruptcy of constructive faith and vision as we have in our day.”