HUMAN FAILURE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 July 1941, Page 7

HUMAN FAILURE

AS DR. TAGORE SEES IT. The failure of humanity in the West to preserve the worth of their civilisation and the dignity of man which they had taken centuries to build up, weighs like a nightmare on my mind, writes Dr. Rabindranath Tagore, in a message to the Tagore Society in London. It seems clear to me that this failure is due to men’s repudiation of moral values in the guidance of their 1 national affairs, and to their belief that everything is determined by a mere physical chain of events which could be manipulated by man’s cunning or might. The consequences of this belief are proving terrible to man. Those . who built their power on moral cynicism are themselves proving its victims. Not even the terrible Mongols were guilty of such gross betrayal of humanity as the so-called civilised nations of today arc perpetrating before our very eyes. But in the very act of this condemnation one is arrested by one’s sympathy for their sufferings. For their own peoples are paying the price of these wrongs. In the midst of this insane orgy of violence and destruction I shall continue to hold fast to my faith in the final recovery of man’s lost heritage of moral worth.