intellectual and industrial progress has far outdistanced his spiritual progress. He says to him, "Come, let us reason together. You call your thousand material devices labor-saving machinery,' yet you are forever "busy.' With the multiplying of your machinery you grow increasingly fatigued, anxious, nervous, dissatisfied. Whatever Whatever you have, you want more; and wherever you are, you want to go somewhere else. You have a machine to dig the raw material out of the ground for you, a machine to manufacture that raw material into various articles for you, a machine to transport the articles, a machine to sweep and dust, one to carry messages, one to write, one to talk, one to sing, one to play at the theater, one to vote, one to sew, another to keep things cold, another to keep things hot, another to beat the egg, and a hundred others to do a hundred other things for you, and still you are the most nervously busy man in the world. You have very little, if any, time for spiritual culture. Your haunts are not the home, the church, the literary circle, the civic forum, but the store, the office, the factory, and the business men's club. Your devices are neither time-saving nor soul-saving machinery. They are so many sharp spurs which urge you on to invent more machinery and do more business."

I think there is much truth in the foregoing observations. The Westerner has not been using machinery simply and purely to relieve life of its drudgery and give the surplus time thus created to other than material pursuits. Recently an American lady said to me: "Why do you speak against machinery -or at any rate the present use of it? It took my grandmother five hours to do by hand the sewing which I now do in one hour on the sewing machine." "Yes, madam," I replied. "But what do you do in the other four hours?" "More sewing," she answered, with a sweet smile. In this phrase we have the key to the whole situation. Every

machine invented not only claims more of our time for its use and maintenance, but inevitably leads to the creation of another and faster machine. And with this increase the seat of power shifts from man as the controller of the machine to the machine as the controller

of man. He must keep up with the impersonal, implacable force he sets in motion, and, as a consequence, he neglects spiritual pursuits. The Westerner is at present in that situation.

I am not hopeless of the future. Yet of one thing I am firmly convinced. Up to the present the evidence is very clear that religion and machinery do not go together. Thus far the factory refuses to be the handmaiden of the church. The present fondness for machinery is a juvenile characteristic. It tends to engender wonderment rather than idealism, curiosity as to what strange things the machine will do next, rather than the desire to convert material into spiritual forces. Man cannot idealize a machine without worshipping a thing that is lower than himself. Again, machinery multiplies labor, calls for constant and thorough intellectual specialization, increases indefinitely man's material wants, and thus makes the struggle for economic existence so severe as to leave no time for spiritual development. The allurements of the "job" in the industrial centers, with its "ready money," constantly tend to increase the urban and decrease the rural population, with the inevitable result that as the consumers of the food necessaries of life increase, the producers of those necessaries decrease. This is having its direful effect, not only in America, but in other countries. Emigration to the industrial centers of America is starving agriculture in the Old World. With this the stupendous problems of "capital and labor" grow more intricate and more vexing.

Through this rapid regrouping of populations in the West, society is compelled to devote the major part of the time and attention it can spare from

business to three things: food, shelter, sanitation. These are the "issues of the day" and the elements of the "social gospel." The church which does not devote itself to these problems is stigmatized as an "old fashioned, backward-looking institution." The church is no longer expected by the multitude to be purely a "house of prayer for all people," a shrine where the individual may seek the pure heart and the right spirit and where he is led to experience a new birth by the power of Him who makes all things new. No; the preference of the times is that it should be a sort of forum where “practical religion" -that is the religion of food, shelter, and sanitation-may be vigorously discussed. The minister must not be "too introspective." He must be a leader in the community advocating clean streets, pure milk, better housing "for the poor" and other essential necessities. Of course the church cannot disregard its environment. It must serve the social order in which it exists, but without dissolving into the surrounding atmosphere. At present the church is in grave danger of becoming the docile, obedient handmaiden of the factory. It is in danger of being compelled to "serve tables,' or become an alien to the spirit of the age.

But I am aware of the fact that this estimate of present conditions in the West, especially in America, would seem one-sided and tinged with willful ignorance if I should fail to speak of the mighty wave of idealism which swept this country during the World War. That remarkable phenomenon has been considered a decisive evidence that American civilization is not sordidly materialistic. This is very true. And I further assert that even without that thrilling evidence no intelligent and just observer could have called American civilization sordidly materialistic. The noble enthusiasm of the war revealed the latent idealism of America, and did not create it out of nothing. The pure flame of patriotism which lighted this

country during that period not only makes every one of us who witnessed it forever proud of his American citizenship, but will light the paths of the unborn generations to duty and sacrifice.

Nevertheless, war idealism can be said to be the exclusive possession of no one people. Nor is it necessarily the evidence of the highest state of civilization. When a man realizes that his home is being attacked, be he a vicious gambler or a good, public-spirited citizen, if he is not infirm or an abject coward he will give himself unreservedly to the defense of his home. What the Americans and the British and the French did during the war in defense of their democratic institutions the Germans also did in defense of their imperialistic institutions and the Turks in defense of their Califate. They also, after they had been made to believe that they were being attacked, placed their all on the altar of their country and fought for it with great heroism.

It is immeasurably easier to be an idealist and to look with contempt on material gain when the battle flags are unfurled and martial music thrills the air than in prosaic times of peace. And it may not be out of place to say here that there is rarely a people which after a war escapes discreditable reaction from such idealistic enthusiasm.

My criticism of Western civilization is by no means a cry of despair. Its latent forces are still great and vital. Its youth is not all behind it. It is still capable of dreaming beautiful dreams and seeing noble visions. But at present it has reached a stage of threatening material prosperity and is swaying and straining under the immense weight of its external machinery. Its body has grown so huge that it is in danger of going beyond the control of its soul.

The inescapable fact is that religion true, spiritual religion, and not only the "social gospel"-and machinery must go together if Western civilization is to endure. It is neither possible nor,

indeed, desirable that the West should go back to the too simple life of the East. But the great imperative which cannot be safely ignored is that as the East has for centuries maintained religion as the center of its simple life, the West also must maintain religion as the center of its complex life, or suffer defeat. So far in history God has been a God of agriculture. The Oriental has reared to Him altars in every field and offered to Him the first fruits of every season. Will the Occidental succeed in making God a God of industry and rear an altar for Him in every industrial center? This I consider to be the paramount "issue of the day" and the supreme challenge to Western civilization.

The East, on the other hand, can no longer safely presume to stand still, as it has done for so many centuries. Its soul must function through a larger and more complex body than it has had heretofore. The aggressive, revolutionary genius of the West has radically changed the conditions of life in its own realms and is rapidly affecting other peoples. The East can no longer remain irresponsive to the action of the new leaven. The only question here is how shall the renewal of the life of that Old World be effected?

Shall the West swallow up the East and obliterate its distinctive characteristics? Even if that were possible it would be an irreparable loss to the world. The world needs a characteristic Oriental civilization as it does need a characteristic Occidental civilization. That colorful, poetical Oriental type of life must not be utterly destroyed. Yet the West cannot fundamentally change the soul of the East without causing such destruction. On this the imperialistic colonizers seem to be bent.

At least for the last three hundred years, during which period the power of the sword has been transferred from the East to the West, the Occident has cast its awesome shadow over the Orient. It has looked upon the Orient, especially that part of it known as the Near East,

as upon a social and political world whose course in history has long ago reached its terminus; a world whose faith, genius, racial and national spirit, and its recuperative powers have only a name that they live, but are dead. To the Western merchant the East has been simply a market in which he could trade on his own terms. To the Western diplomat that ancient world has been a practically defenseless region in which, with only a little display of force, a "sphere of influence" could be established. The Oriental may cry and grumble and curse in the face of aggression, but if dealt with in a "firm manner" he soon yields and submits to the inevitable. He is by nature a fatalist and is prone to accept whatever is imposed upon him as his divinely ordained kismet. His history proves conclusively that "he is not fit for self-government,' therefore it becomes the philanthropic duty of the Western powers not to give the Easterner enough rope to hang himself, but to rule him for his own good.

The Western missionary, while sharing the views of his kinsmen, the merchant and the diplomat, concerning the helplessness of the Oriental, comes to his aid with more beneficent intents. The twofold imperative urged upon the missionary, first to obey his Master's command, "Go, ye, into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature," and, second, to save the perishing soul of his Oriental brother, provides him with a far more exalted motive than either that of the merchant or the diplomat. As a spiritual diagnostician, however, the function of the missionary (especially of the old type) has been to look for sin, and not for virtue, for defects, and not for perfections. So, in describing the Easterner to the benevolent people of the West, the missionary, apparently with no intention to misrepresent, emphasizes the ills to which our mortal being is heir. So, whatever the intents and purposes of those Western commercial, political, and religious imperialists may actually be, their resultant

activities make the East appear to the West as a helpless dependent utterly incapable of regaining its self-reliance. The Oriental, however, in spite of all the tutoring his invaders have bestowed upon him, is not yet fully convinced of that. While he realizes that, compared with his Babylonian, Hittite, Aramean, Phoenician, and Arab forefathers, he is now in a retrograde state, nevertheless he still feels that he has a soul which holds immense possibilities and is capable not only of regaining its heritage, but of establishing a future even worthier than the past. He realizes also that if he only had powerful fleets and armies to defend his realms his civilization would be perfectly satisfactory to his Western contemporaries. In any case he doubts, and for good reasons, their philanthropic intentions toward him. He considers them hostile invaders. I am perfectly certain that if the Orientals to-day only could, they would in the shortest time possible throw every Westerner now in their midst, with the exception of some American educators, into the

Mediterranean.

The decrees of the Paris Peace Conference greatly reinforced this hostile feeling in the Easterners. The whole Conference seemed to them to uncover the moral nakedness of Europe. Before that great conclave of diplomats, the Easterners' dislike for the European nations was mixed with respect; after it, that dislike became deeply saturated with contempt. The lofty moral tone of the declarations those nations made during the war led the Easterners to believe that finally the Christian nations had decided to give the Golden Rule a fair trial. Paris was visualized as a pentecostal Jerusalem out of which was to go forth the gospel of human brotherhood. The Peace Conference dashed all such hopes. There the Eastern countries found no redeemer. They had been pawned in advance by diplomatic gamesters and had no voice whatever in the determination of their destinies. England thought that her control of

Mesopotamia and Palestine (where she has invited the Zionists to be her permanent guests) was necessary to the safety of the British Empire; France had "sentiments" about Syria, which could not be properly ignored; Italy felt it her solemn duty to mother Asia Minor and even Greece thought her ancient traditions, as well as her present interests, required that she should be the stepmother of some section of the East. It was, however, pure philanthropy on the part of those nations which led them to rival one another in seeking spheres of influence in the East.

Notwithstanding my experiences at the Peace Conference, I still have faith in human nature. I even still hope that some day the East and the West will come to a fraternal and mutually beneficial understanding, even though I cannot dispel the belief that the Conference has greatly weakened the probability of such consummation.

The treatment at the Peace Conference of the pleaders for the small Eastern countries was of the comi-tragic sort. Prince Feisal, son of the king of Arabia, came to Paris to represent his father and to plead for self-government for Syria. In reality, however, he was England's guest. I was sent to Paris as the representative of Syrian societies in this country. My plan was that, if Feisal's sincere purpose was to secure for Syria true national existence, to join forces. with him in pleading for the unity and future independence of that country. If the Near East was to be placed under the mandatory system, our plea was to be for an American mandate, or none. In any case we did not want a French mandate for Syria. Prince Feisal received me as a friend and we almost lived together all during my stay of three months in Paris. We soon learned, however, that the unhappy country we had come to plead for had already been divided and “attached" by England and France. But Feisal, persuaded in his own mind that as the lineal descendant of the prophet of Arabia he was in Paris

as the symbolic image of fourteen centuries of Mohammedan history, felt perfectly confident that he was able to alter any previous agreements with regard to Syria between those great nations. "The past is past," said the confiding Feisal to me when I first met him. "Now, brother, we are in the hands of friends and we shall secure our rights." The outcome of the negotiations, however, rudely dashed this hope. "The treaty between the French government and ourselves," said Mr. Lloyd George to the Prince and me as his final word, "with regard to Syria must stand. It is a bad treaty, I admit, but we have signed it and we must stand by our signature."

War or no war, Peace Conference or no Peace Conference, at last Feisal had to realize that East was still East and West was still West. The latter still deemed its duty to be the free and untrammeled guardian of the former.

But what I recall with no little amusement of those 'conversations" was one I had with an eminent Frenchman who is now virtually in control of French affairs in Syria. "Why," I asked that dignitary, "does the French government deem it its duty to occupy Syria, while fully ninety per cent of its people do not want you there?"

"We have strong sentiments about Syria," he replied. "Our schools and our missionaries have been there for generations. Besides," he added, with an altruistic air, "if we should leave those people alone they would cut one another's throats."

"Why don't you let them do it?" I spoke again. "What have you been doing for the last four years in Europe but cutting throats on the most colossal scale the world has known? The Eastern peoples ruled themselves for centuries before France was born and still they have more throats than they can feed."

"Our views on the subject," he answered, "are different, and we have the power to carry them out."

But the remark of Prince Feisal when I reported the conversation to him is worthy to be perpetuated. It expresses with great conciseness the mind of intelligent present-day Orientals. "Can you tell me," he said to me, with a disdainful smile, "why our throats are so dear to those Western imperialists?”

The attitude which during his stay in Paris Prince Feisal acquired toward European diplomacy affords another interesting specimen of Oriental psychology. Notwithstanding the prevailing Western opinion that the Easterner is constitutionally unveracious, his fundamental instinct is faith. He trusts where he cannot see. He believes and has spoken it to the world that the way of the kingdom of heaven is childlike trust. His passive and contemplative mind is keyed to confidence. His far-famed trickery ends with small things. "Weightier matters" awaken both his integrity and his faith. So Feisal, whose knowledge of the rich and various resources of European diplomacy was rather limited, implicitly trusted his Western guides. With this simple trustfulness he came to Paris to gather reinforcements from friendly camps for the reawakened national aspirations of his people. The rod and the staff of this trustfulness failed him. The time and environment were not right for it. Suspicion with him soon gained on confidence. He was soon forced to fall back on the one instinct of self-preservation.

It was late in the evening one day when he sent a messenger asking me to come at once to his residence. He had recently had a "friendly conversation" with the heads of the French Foreign Office, when a harmonious understanding between them and the Prince was supposed to have been established. So on that evening a diplomatic communication was sent to him from the Quay d'Orsay signed by the Premier. It was intended to be a written confirmation of that "friendly conversation." It may have been due to a fail