And I could mention a dozen instances to prove that you yourselves are forcing on the world the coming struggle between Asia, all Asia, against Europe and America, against Christendom, in other words. You are heaping up material for a Jehad, a Pan-Islam, a Pan-Asia Holy War, a gigantic Day of Reckoning, an invasion of a new Attila and Tamerlane … who will use rifles and bullets, instead of lances and spears. You are deaf to the voice of reason and fairness, and so you must be taught with the whirling swish of the sword when it is red. V You claim that altruism and the virtues are the monopoly of your creed and your race. But in reality the teachings of Jesus are not a particle more apt to lead his followers in the golden path than are the sayings of the Lord Buddha, the laws of Moses, the wisdom of Confucius, or the words of the Koran. True tolerance, true altruism teaches us that what is right in Peking may be wrong on the shores of Lake Tchaad, and what is wrong in a Damascus bazaar may be right at a Kansas ice-cream social. Such true tolerance is far broader than the limits of professing Christianity, than the limits of any established, cut-and-dried creed. It is as broad as the Seven Holy Rivers of Hindustan and as vast as Time. The creed of mutual sympathy is a very old creed: even amongst the troglodytes chosen spirits must have known it, the red-haired barbarians of Gaul must have heard of it, and amongst the lizard-eating Arabs of pre-Islamic days it must have found adherents. It is a human truth, a human principle which is the common property of mankind East and West; but Christian hegemony in worldly affairs has killed it, has blighted it with the curse of the cross. Intrinsic unselfishness and abstract goodness is older than the Gospel, the Koran, the Veda, or any other religious book. Being at the very core of that civilization from which all changes spring, it is in itself eternally unchangeable, be it clothed in the words of the Sermon on the Mount, the Prophet Mohammed’s three great principles of Compassion, Charity, and Resignation, or the famed edict of the Emperor Asoka, who many centuries before the days of Jesus declared to the world that “a man must not do reverence to his own sect by disparaging that of another man.” THE SHROUD EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY Death, I say, my heart is bowed Unto thine,—O mother! This red gown will make a shroud Good as any other! (I, that would not wait to wear My own bridal things, In a dress dark as my hair Made my answerings. I, to-night, that till he came Could not, could not wait, In a gown as bright as flame Held for them the gate.) Death, I say, my heart is bowed Unto thine,—O mother! This red gown will make a shroud Good as any other! NEW LOYALTIES FOR OLD CONSOLATIONS H. A. OVERSTREET