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THE GREATER MAN

BY

GRIER D. PATTERSON

Seven years and more have passed since that memorable day in August of nineteen hundred and fourteen when an amazed and surprised civilization stood unprepared and almost helpless before the attack of Prussianism, the Frankenstein monster of the German Empire. Prussianism, a creature of blood and iron, intoxicated by the spicy wine of power and inspired by a Satanic lust for world domination. Mankind was panic-stricken because the impossible was happening and our civilization was powerless to prevent the coming deluge of blood.

The world had resembled a huge machine, perfect in its entirety, precise and formidable. This smooth running mechanism was suddenly stopped and civilization thrown into a state of apocalyptic chaos by Germany because "in a moment of terrible delirium she had aspired to omnipotence." Aroused by the ferocity of her attack and the Godlessness of her ambition outraged Democracy rose and struck back with all the fury of an avenging angel. Imperial Germany had made the mistake that was soon to cost her her life. And so it was that four years later, after the world had been drenched

in a deluge of blood, in super-Napoleonic struggle, Democracy stood victorious over the lifeless form of Autocracy. Again had history repeated itself and again in the inevitable course of events had the passion for power led to supreme disaster.

When on November the eleventh of nineteen hundred and eighteen the last gun was fired and the Beast of Berlin was cowering like a whipped cur beneath the Allied lash, the whole world went mad with joy. Mankind looked with eager hopefulness to the future, certain that from the maelstrom of confusion and reconstruction there would emerge a new order, an order in which the high ideals of Democracy would find expression.

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Representatives from the Victorious Allies met at Versailles. All that Democracy could wish for seemed to be embodied in those ill fated "fourteen points.' But after months of bickering and delay the hopes of an eager and expectant humanity were defeated by the exponents of commercialism, revenge and reaction. A self-complacent civilization has been shattered by a series of immense and tragic events and finds itself helpless to cope with the ensuing situation. The world demands assurance that there will never again be a repetition of those frightful days of Germanic assault. It is imperative that war and its accompanying evils be forever banished from the realms of possibility.

The experiences of the past and the indications of the present conclusively prove to us that we cannot abolish war by legislation. War can be banished and the peoples of the world dwell together in peace and harmony only by advancing the standard of our manhood. There is a faulty link in the chain of any civilization that not

only permits and encourages, but makes inevitable, such monstrosities of destruction as the world had just witnessed. We are told that the Great War was fought to remove that weak link from the chain and to make a recurrence of the past tragedy impossible. If so, then indeed, the time is at hand for us to redeem those pledges that were made to the noble sons of Democracy who sleep beneath soil consecrated by their own blood. If we fail to redeem our solemn pledge to them, then in truth, the myriad dead shall have died in vain, and every tomb in France and Flanders shall be a silent accuser of our faithlessness, and every cross shall be a silent monument to the colossal treachery of Twentieth Century civilization. They shall bear mute yet eloquent witness to a recantation of solemn vows-vows doubly solemnized because they were made to the dead.

We say that Democracy won the war and are seemingly content to rest on our laurels. But we must remember that the war was only the means to the end and not the end itself. Democracy must consist of more than equal rights, it must be based more on ideals. It must be, not necessarily less political, but infinitely more spiritual.

But how are these things to be evolved? That a revolutionizing change is imperative is a very apparent fact, but a change from what and to what? Our boasted civilization has been weighed in the balance of social evolution and has been found wanting. Out of a clear sky has come the thunderbolt that has left us dazed, the realization that we are unable to solve the political and social enigma that confronts us. The breath of materialism has already touched our political, social and

religious organizations and even now they have begun to wither and decay.

Our political order has resolved itself into a mad scramble for office. Our statesmen are no longer inspired by those lofty ideals which caused our forefathers to "bring forth a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." The spirit of the profiteer is inherent in all of us.

Our social order has changed from that boasted inner Democracy of yesteryear to a snobbishness and shallowness that equals the gay social order of Louis XVI, yet lacks entirely the redeeming qualities of brilliance that marked the pre-revolutionary days of France.

But the most alarming feature of it all is the spirit of reaction and even apathy that has seized our religious institutions. The simple faiths and noble teachings of the Christ are ignored. Religion has been changed from the simplest of faiths to a complex formality. Christian ideals have been replaced by mere conformity to a shallow and meaningless ceremony. The essence of Christianity is contained in these words of our Lord, "Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind." And, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Yet like the lost stone of the temple of Jerusalem these ideals have been buried beneath a mass of conventional inanities and gross hypocrisy until an effort to find them would be almost hopeless. The civilization of the world has ever been and shall ever be measured by the standards of its manhood. Whom could we better emulate than the man of Galilee, the only perfect specimen of a perfectly

developed manhood; the Nazarene, the only man who has fulfilled Democracy's ideal who lived that through Him others might have life and have it more abundantly; whose mission in the world was one of love, to make the lives of men purer and nobler; whose doctrine was a plea for brotherly love, for peace on earth and good will among men; the only man who has ever rightly been called the Prince of Peace.

Let us return to the simple doctrines and lofty ideals of the lowly Nazarene, the only doctrines, the only ideals that have successfully withstood the assaults of time, and in ourselves there shall stand revealed the only hope of a new born world-The Greater Man.

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