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Show Kathleen Norris Says: The Way to Peace Bell Syndicate. WNU Features. k0P III "Our meals should be reduced to fare that can be universally grown and Universally distributed. Bread, of course, cereals and milk, fruits and, vegetables." By KATHLEEN NORRIS WHAT is happening to the world just now is not a mere war. It is not going to be, in a little while, the mere aftermath of a war. It is not going to be like anything that has ever happened in the world before. Make up your mind to that. Make up your mind that the immediate future is going to be filled with confusion, problems, prob-lems, demands. No generation genera-tion of women has ever been faced with such a responsibility. responsibil-ity. Once our perplexities were concerned merely with America. Now they are worldwide. world-wide. Take my lovely southern grand mother for example. She came across the plains in 1850 with a handsome Irish husband and a baby daughter. She was destined to pioneer pi-oneer in California's mountains; a town was named for her; she bore 12 more children without benefit of doctor, hospital, professional nurse, electric light, piped water, milk-bottle sterilizer, telephone no use listing list-ing what she didn't have. What she did have was a farmhouse, farm-house, fruit trees, cattle, two fruit-wood fruit-wood chests "from home," some quilts, and her grandmother's spinning spin-ning wheel. She never saw her mother again; she never left the golden state to which fate had taken her, but she lived a magnificent, full and happy life. Far From Europe's Troubles, What was it to her that Europe was boiling with wars? She had only a dim and scrappy visualization visualiza-tion of our own Civil war. She knew nothing of New York's politics, Boston's Bos-ton's culture; the troubles of the Balkans and China were as remote ,as the stars. With us, today, it is different. We are facing the results of the most hideous catastrophe that ever shook the old earth. We are sharing it. One third of the earth's habited surface sur-face has been scarred and flattened and blasted by war; countries as big as some of our states are still heaped with dead; children's eyes have been accustomed to sights that would shatter the nerves of hardened criminals; mothers of children have had to hear their pleas for food, for rest, unheard, have had to see them die. "What we OUGHT to do, all of us everywhere, in the nations that have not been invaded,", writes Maria Pendleton Smith, a minister's minis-ter's wife, "is turn to God. And not only in prayer, every hour, every minute. "But also in simplifying our lives so that we can give give give. Our meals should be reduced to fare that can be universally grown and universally distributed. Bread, of course, cereals and milk, fruits and vegetables. Clothing plain and easily cared for. Flowers on our tables ta-bles if you like, singing always, books, friendship, walks, study. But all the superficialities swept away all the extravagances that really cost the money. Our children should .be dedicated to the' great task of sharing, of giving away the extra coat, of asking the hungry stranger in to our board. Keeping Christ's Law. "If we could do this in the name of Our Lord and Master," this bold and beautiful letter goes on, "we j would build a nationality under our j own nationalities. We who followed this law and after all it is THE I 1 I 11 i j Our children should share, . , . I SHARING OUR PLENTY We in America have only a dim understanding of the havoc of war. This country has been spared most of the horror, devastation and misery mis-ery of this global conflagration. conflagra-tion. The lot of many of us has improved during these war years, in fact, thanks to plentiful plenti-ful employment at high wages, and high prices for products. A reader of Miss Norris' column col-umn writes that she believes we could and should be more generous with the good things we have. We ought to share our clothes and food and fuel and medicine with the suffering people of Europe and Asia, she says. We should trim down our living standard to a plain, solid level, and then give the surplus to the poor in the dev- J astated countries. All this skimping and sharing shar-ing would be motivated by a combination of religious fervor fer-vor and long range practical statecraft. This writer thinks that war, and the strife and jealousy that leads to ivar, could be abolished, in time, law, would be known in all countries as the disciples of Jesus Christ. We would never form a military group or ask allegiance to any one flag. But gradually, like the leaven hid in the measures of meal, we would join hands, we would come to know each other, and people the great underground army of Christ, who deliberately abandoned all thoughts of superior wealth or position, of useless multiplied possessions, of power through violence and coercion. coer-cion. The people who kept Christ's law. "We would have everything beautiful beau-tiful that He has given us in this world to make us happy. We would have love, homes, children, enough simple food and clothing, friendship, gardens, books, walks but more than all, we would have that interior peace, that ineffable joy that the world, as it is now, cannot give. Our rule would be Christ's; blessed are the meek, blessed are the merciful. He that hath two coats let him impart to him that hath none. Overcome not evil with evil, but overcome evil with good. By this shall all men know ye are my disciples, that ye love one another." an-other." Well, I don't know what sort of sermons the Reverend Smith preaches, but I suggest that he some time give his dauntless wife the pulpit. It is a long time since anything any-thing I have read or heard has opened to me the vision I received from this letter. For I know in my heart that if the tortured world is to be saved at all, this is the path. |
