The United Seas Part 7

"And my simple question is, how comes about this expressiveness? Why, simply there is a person who is projecting himself through this embodiment and it is the revelation of him, just as our friends' ways express the person of the friend behind them."

How grand are those words! And how helpful to men who desire the very co-operation of the seas in fulfilling their plans in unifying the races! For if Prof. Blaisdell was thus inspired with the thought of the co-operation of the waters of Lake Michigan with the historic purposes of man, what should the true freeman feel as he looks out over the Pacific? I can only tell you what I have felt in the words on the following page:

THE ALTRUISM OF THE SEA

Free from the intrusion of littleness, Standing on the sh.o.r.es of our great Western Sea, My groping thoughts, O sea, Now grapple with thy tempestuous waves.

My ecstatic soul argues with thy gales for an interpretation of the message flowing clean and strong from the "million-acred meadows" of the out-lying seas.

My straining ear listens to the clamorous, reiterating almost uninvokable voice of thy tides.

For able to speak to man, like brooks and flowers, I am inquiring, what you are about, the knowledge of your place in the amelioration of the world?

And lo, now nature's cord is struck, The secret word is caught, And this is what I hear As again I plead, "thou are not a purposeless, lifeless plangent deep.

O great sea, who's purpose doest thou fulfill?

What are thou almightily about, what doing?"

"Doing!" seems to murmur its sustained voice with its rhythmic storming of my soul, "Doing! I am doing what man is doing, what the nations are evolving, what the eternal, creative spirit living within me is urging, I am resolutely moving--crest, wave, tide and ponderous deep in sympathy with world harmony, toward democracy.

Moving from ponderous deep, tide, wave and crest toward distant lands.

Eager--so providenced--to carry to all pagan sh.o.r.es, The ships, the statesmen and the life giving trade winds of democracy."

"It is true, astonishingly," I said, "Yes now I sense it and I feel it.

And what an unconquerable will, what a purpose!

The very sh.o.r.es, they tremble with its resolution, For with man even the seas are sympathically for freemen at work!"

And then looking outward and skyward, the G.o.d of our sea going fathers, the spirit of the very G.o.d of Hosts, awoke this stronger message to my thought: "Fear not, O sons of Pilgrims For the waters engulfed not Columbus' freemen when they sailed a sh.o.r.eless sea, Nor was the Mayflower immeshed in the black jaws of an angry deep.

And yours are ships of fate!

He who omnipotently palms the oceans pilots them.

To let them pa.s.s--O ships--to bear them safely on, The tides, the storms and the winds are stayed.

"Move on, move on befriended by an illimitable peace.

Move on, move on to every slave desecrated sh.o.r.e!

Move on, the harmless, but forward momentum of these tides will take you on and on.

For the Creator worketh hitherto and they must work.

For He hath given "to the sea His decree."

Move on to Hindu, Confucian and Teutonic sh.o.r.es.

O ships of freemen, sail on!"

"Winnow me through with thy keen, clean breath Wind with tang of the sea."

--Ketchum.

VIII

Helps to Interpretation

HOW TO BECOME A WORLD CITIZEN

To become a good world citizen, it is not necessary to distribute oneself by travel everywhere--although travel is most valuable--any more than it is absolutely necessary for a worthy citizen of the United States to cross the continent or have homes in both California and New York, desirable as that may be.

Nor would one lose any interest in his nation--remembering that only a bigoted and selfish nationality does harm; and that even in a federation of the nations of the world each individual nation, like each individual State in the Union, would have its own interests and would have to do its part towards expressing the life of the whole.

Of course with the realization of a federation of the world in the future, there would be public world citizens as well as private world citizens, just as there are public and private citizens in every nation; and the public world leaders should necessarily have a higher training, a wider experience and a broader travel than the private world citizen, judging from the standpoint of leadership alone.

But independent of these things it should be remembered that every man--private or public--can acquire full world citizenship by learning to think in world terms and developing the world consciousness which makes you feel that you are a necessary part of all that exists. And this can be done by developing an unprejudiced love for humanity, by persistently opposing war, by keeping in touch with world statesmen and reading world literature, by acquiring a love for nature and the seas which comes from a faith in G.o.d, by helping to unify the world's languages and religions, by advocating constantly a central world government for the nations, by traveling when one can and by making it as easy for people to travel as possible, by attending all public meetings that deal with international movements, by never losing sight--especially in the hour of perplexity, ridicule and hardship--of the world vision which is championed on these pages and by becoming sanely religious so that you will feel that the same good spirit throbs in your breast that quickens the whole universe into harmony and beauty as well as every flower and living thing on the globe.

Here are some of the exceptional world citizens. Hear them talk in their own words:

Whitman:

"There is no trade nor employment but the young man following it may become a hero, And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd universe, And I say to any man or woman, let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes."

Browning's Christian Creed:

"That face far from vanishes, ever grows Or decomposes only to recompose Become my universe that feels and knows."

Emerson--

"I am the owner of a sphere Of the seven stars and solar year Of Caeser's hand and Plato's brain Of the Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain."

And so the star that shines from above moves on, calling all n.o.ble souls to move out by sea and land--with the G.o.d who shepherds us with His love and joy everywhere as the guide--to the grandest work of human history, the work of essentially unifying the globe. And as they go forward with this stupendous task, they will not forget to pluck the flowers by the wayside, look into the faces of children and take the hand of their fellows; but rather they will do it with a grander simplicity and a better humanity.

THE KEY TO THE VISION

The very last and most important thing that must be said on the subject of world consciousness is that man himself is the key to the vision--is that man is the fullest expression of G.o.d and that man can conquer nature and build nations, republics and a world democracy. The immanence of G.o.d in man is the secret of sanity and balance in the study of this question and also the power that is going to make the vision a reality.

And I have purposely refrained from saying anything about the superb position that man holds in this mighty work in order that you might feel the grandeur of the world vision through the power of the seas; might feel the awful majesty of the vision, its divine glory--in order that people might be arrested and caught up in its mighty enthusiasm--before discovering that the secret of bringing it to pa.s.s is the wholesome secret of a simple human life. O wonder of wonders, the simple key that balances our thought and puts our feet on the earth in this hour of tremendous vision is in man himself; is right here in our own lives--is in the engineer, the educator, the missionary, the preacher, the financier, all of whom can rise superior to nature and gain dominion over the earth. Let me express what I mean in the following on "Balboa"

who is so intimately a.s.sociated historically with the Panama ca.n.a.l and with the Pacific ocean, as its discoverer: