Christianity and Problems of To-day: Lectures Delivered Before Lake Forest College on the Foundation of the Late William BrossFinley, John H. (John Huston)
Religion
Christianity and Problems of To-day: Lectures Delivered Before Lake Forest College on the Foundation of the Late William Bross
Finley, John H. (John Huston)
Christianity -- 20th century
So it is not by accident, I think, that we have put the stars in
the field of our flag. They are cosmic symbols gathered from the
immeasurable universe, not from pieces of earth and stretches of
water, which together make up what we are accustomed to call,
whatever our origin, "our native land"--a people of clearly
defined national personality, but of planetary consciousness and
of interdependent destinies.
But in this land of Copernicus, where "the capital event of modern
thought" occurred, I found that only two million eight hundred
thousand children of school age out of four million six hundred
thousand had any schooling whatever. It was hoped by the minister
of education that by 1928, if only the fear of a new partition of
Poland could be removed and credits found, they might make some most
elemental provision for the rest--_and this only because so many of
the young men of Poland had perished in the World War that the coming
generation would be a smaller one_. I could present statistics of
like import for other European states. They would all support my
thesis, that since we have had a World War for freedom, we should
have a world plan for giving the children who have suffered in this
divided earth (the millions of "Pelegs") an elemental chance to enjoy
that freeing of the soul which is, with the unity of mankind, the
ideal end of the state.
A plan which I proposed some time ago, and which I have now taken
courage of the support in modified form by men of large financial
and organizing experience to defend, is that the Allied debts be
made a permanent trust fund, to be administered for the education of
the children of all peoples, so far as they can be so applied. The
proposal has been characterized as "good business," not to demand
the full payment of these debts with interest of that which we
loaned, but spent largely at home, and after we entered the war.
The fundamental thought on which I should base the proposal is that
the world, as a whole, owes something to the children who have no
fair chance in it because of what those upon whom they are naturally
dependent have sacrificed for the good of the world as a whole.
My original proposal was that the principal should be cancelled as it
was so spent, but Judge Lovett, president of the Union Pacific, has
proposed merely the application of the interest at a moderate rate
annually to this purpose if and when it can be paid, though he has
given it a broader scope--putting education last--the care of widows,
orphans, and crippled first--but ultimately it should all be devoted
to education.
A ten-billion dollar war debt converted (as a thanksgiving offering
for deliverance from something worse than the world knows even at its
worst to-day) into a perpetual trust fund for the children of the
world, especially for those who have come "trailing clouds of glory"
into a part of the world where they haven't a chance to come into the
heritage of their generation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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