ORIENTAL CONUNDRUM

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20734, 18 February 1939, Page 15 (Supplement)

ORIENTAL CONUNDRUM

Menace of Materialism :: Spirituality the Solution

TAKTING FROM ATHENS in the early morning, we landed in Alexl J andria harbour in Egypt, then on tne Sea of Galilee in Palestine, then on a lake near Baghdad, and so reached Basra, an oil town at the head of the Persian Gulf, after dark. All the way one sees the ruins of old Empires and Kingdoms, Crete, Egypt, the Turkish Caliphate, Nineveh, Babylon and Iran; and everywhere the New Nations Which Are Rising amid these ruins, Nationalist Egypt, Zionist Palestine, the Arab States, modern Turkey and Iran. The old Empires failed, corrupted by their own materialism, petrified by their own autocracy or overthrown by more vigorous rivals from outside. The new nations are the product of modern Western knowledge and manifest all the vitality which is the characteristic outcome of natural science and mechanical knowledge. Never, indeed, has the human race as a whole been so active and vehement as it is to-day. But it shows also the limitations of modern civilisation, the idolatry of the nation state, the bitter racial and class selfishness and hatreds, the concentration on purely material values, which unless they can be overcome by spirituality, will destroy the civilisation of to-day as certainly as their equivalent evils destroyed the civilisations of the past. No more obviqus instance could be found than in the present condition of Palestine. The Zionist project of enabling the Jewish people, a scattered and often a persecuted minority all over the world, to form a new nation in their ancient home was a Noble and Inspiring Ideal. And the creative work of the Zionists in agriculture, in industrial development and in education has brought prosperity to all classes in Palestine. But full success was only possible if the backward Arab population resident for centuries in the land could be won to sympathy and co-operation. Faults, no doubt, have been committed on all sides, but in the outcome the bitterness and violence in Palestine to-day not only seems to make solution by agreement for the time being impossible but is reminiscent of the terrible conditions which preceded the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in the early Christian era. Nor have the ancient religions which sprang from the Orient any adequate answer to the conundrums set by the modern world. Islam is still the dominant religion of the Middle East. It still keeps its fidelity to the teachings of Muhammad and its recognition of the universal brotherhood

and equality of all believers ■without regard for race or colour or class. But it shows no signs of offering the solution for the complex problems which have been let loose in the world by modern knowledge and modern invention, and which increasingly trouble the younger generation of Moslems as they are driven out of the static conditions of the past by economic and educational advance, and induce them to listen to the appeals of the new political religions, Communism and Fascism, which have worked such havoc in Europe. We see Evidence of This Inexorable Process, so fatal to the older creeds, as we fly down the Persian Gulf on the third day out. On the left are the great Anglo-Iranian Oil Works which bring great wealth and with its modern ways of life to Iran. A little later we pass on our right the new Bahrein oi l fields recently exploited by an American oil company. Nothing could show more clearly the process at work than this cluster of modern air-conditioned houses set down in the middle of a blazing desert, the living conditions of the inhabitants of which have not changed an atom from the days of the Prophet or as set forth in the Arabian Nights. After 1000 years of primitive desert life, simple if violent in its manners, it is not only a question of a few years before the daily press, the radio, the movie, and the chain store will follow where the airplane and the deep level drill have already arrived. How much of all this gigantic transformation can be said to be progress? No doubt the modern mastery of man over nature has . elements of progress. It breaks down limitation, widens horizons, and develops such virtues as accuracy, discipline, invention, activity and the zest for tr* ore knowledge. But it is clear that Growth in the Moral Stature of Man has not kept pace with his increasing command over nature. The widespread frivolity, sensuality, selfishness arid greed of our time, as compared with the Spartan virtues of an early Puritan age, and its consequences, international and party rivalry, fear, brutality, and wars and rumours of wars, bear eloquent testimony to this. Thus the Orient is not going to be saved merslv K substituting for its old religions the scientific and political technique cf the West. If salvation is to be found either for East or West it will be through a now spiritual uprising which will probably come from the West, which lias already experienced the inadequacy of a mainly m&tc/lalist civilisation.