The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit by Ralph Waldo Trine online

XIV THE WORLD'S BALANCE-WHEEL

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They are they who must have three or four homes each, aggregating in the millions to build and to maintain. They are they who cannot see why workmen should discuss such things among themselves, or even question them, though in many cases they are scarcely able to make ends meet in the face of continually advancing or even soaring prices, who never enjoy a holiday, and are unable to lay up for the years to come, when they will no longer be "required" in industry. They are they therefore who have but little if any interest or care for even the physical well-being of their workers, say nothing of their mental and spiritual well-being and enjoyments--beyond the fact that they are well enough fed and housed for the next day's work.

They are they who when it is suggested that, recognizing the change and the run of the tide, they be keen-minded enough to anticipate changing conditions and organize their business so that their workers have some joint share in its conditions and conduct, and some share in its profits beyond a mere living wage, reply--"I'll be damned if I do." It doesn't require much of a prophetic sense now however, to be able to tell them--they'll be damned if they don't.

There is reason to rejoice also that for the welfare of American institutions, the number of this class is continually decreasing. Did they predominate, with the unmistakable undercurrents of unrest, born of a sense of injustice, there would be in time, and in a shorter time than we perhaps realize, but one outcome. Steeped in selfishness, making themselves impervious to all the higher leadings and impulses of the soul--less than men--they are not only enemies of their own better selves, but enemies of the nation itself.

Bolshevism in Russia was born, or rather was able to get its hold, only through the long generations of Czarism and the almost universal state of ignorance in which its people were held, that preceded it. The great preponderance and the continually growing numbers of men with imagination, with a sense of care, mutuality, cooperation, brotherhood, in our various large enterprises is a force that will save this and other nations from a similar experience.

I have great confidence in the Russian people. Its soul is sound; and after the forces of treachery, incompetence and terrorism have spent themselves, and the better elements are able to organize in sufficient force to drive the beasts from its borders, it will arise and assert itself. There will be builded a new Russia that will be one of the great and commanding nations of the world. In the meantime it affords a most concrete and valuable lesson to us and to all other nations--to strike on the one hand, the forces of treachery and lawlessness the moment they show themselves, and on the other hand, to see that the soil is made fertile for neither their entrance nor growth.

The strong nation is that in which under the leadership of universal free education and equal opportunities, a due watch is maintained to see that the rights of all individuals and all classes are nurtured and carefully guarded. In such a government the nation and its interests is and must be supreme. Then if built upon high ethical and moral standards where mutuality is the watch-word and the governing principle of its life, its motto might through right, power through justice, it becomes a fit and effective member of the Society of Nations.

Internationalism is higher than nationalism, humanity is above the nation. The stronger however the individual nation, the stronger necessarily will be the Society of Nations.

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