What Has Befallen Us

WHAT HAS BEFALLEN US GEORGE M. WRONG P ESSIMISM is now the prevailing note in the outlook of many. Democracy, with some bad failures to its debit, is under suspicion and by riot a few finally condemned. In the United States people are being reminded that the first president, Washington, said that "mankind, left to themselves, are unfit for their own government," to which the second president, John Adams, added that democracy is "the most ignoble, unjust and detestable form of government." Burke thought that not more than four hundred thousand of the sixteen million people in Great Britain were fit to vote. Democracy, it is pointed out, tends to come under the control of a greedy capitalism and of a degraded press that tells only as much of the truth as suits its aims. Democracy has shown that the average man must confront opposing programmes, neither of which he understands , and yet must make up his mind to vote for one of them. While one need not support these opinions, one cannot fail to note that belief ih democracy is challenged and that our reactionary ancestors who, .a hundred years ago, thought of it much as we now think of Bolshevism , might well now, if they were alive, say "I told you so." . There is a tendency now to praise the past and to deplore the future. A grandfather may look at a young family of grandchildren with dismay; to him they are passing on into a future in which much that now gives value to life may be lacking. He himself may enjoy in his old age an income adequate for simple needs, a comfortable fireside, books, some pictures, above aU, per34 WHAT HAS BEFALLEN US haps) security. And now he sees no security for .the future. His world ha·s been shattered. He has made losses in ·his investments. · Even a pension from some source "gilt-edged" may not be quite secure. He sees little prospect that any new stable system on Jines similar to his can be established-and what are these innocent, unconscious youngsters going to do? Their play, their gaiety, are the product of ignorance. He pities them and wishes they had never been born. No doubt lack of confidence in regard to the. future haunts the mind of the statesman, of the banker, of the leader in industry, of everyone, indeed, who has a stake in society and who tries to think beyond tO-day into to-morrow. We are living in new conditions. A great war, unexampled in its brutality, has shown us how fragile is our civi1ization. Our world is both smaller and larger than that of our ancestors: smaller in that communications are rapid and that the thought qf London is known in Moscow or in Calcutta as soon as uttered and that all mankind may ponder the same ideas at the saJl?.e moment; larger because we are thus in contact with the whole range of human thought. Our modern nationalism confronts the paradox that while, on the economic side, it aims ·at nation_al self-sufficiency, on the intellectual and spiritual side it can find no enduring barriers to unity of outlook. Even on the physical side there are now few, if any, unexplored realms shrouded in mystery. The whole world is an open book. We cari all hear ·daily of the mysticism of India, of its conflicts about caste. We know a good deal about a politically restless China, face to face with an· aggtessive neighbour and at the same time living its old life with ancestor- .worship as its main social institution and a primitive agriculture as its chief industry. We hear of the barbaric 35 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QU:ARTERLY superstitions of native Africa and of the savage nationalism of a Europe talking always about war. The world has become a single great ,society, with each part in some measure dependent on all the others. To-day in this world everything is challenged. Twenty years ago a struggle began in which the leading nations formed two groups, each trying to destroy the other, while in attempting it each all but destroyed itself They did it...