World Affairs Institute

INTERDEPENDENCE BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICESource: Advocate of Peace through Justice, Vol. 87, No. 8 (AUGUST, 1925), pp. 449-450Published by: World Affairs InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20661000 .

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1925 EDITORIALS 449

their military experiences. "Weaker men were broken in moral fiber under the ex

periences of war," we are told. Our mili

tary friend, writing in the Porum, accepts certain facts-and some of them are facts-as the- sum of his creed. He pur sues this creed as a literalist, a fundamen

talist, and loses his perspective because of his fundamentalism.

What we are trying to say was said much more effectively some years ago by Mr. Justice Holmes, of the United States

Supreme Court. In delivering an opinion of the Court he said, "A word is not a

cyrstal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought, and may vary greatly in color and in content, ac

cording to the circumstances and time in which it is used."

We may meditate upon the divine im manence of truth, for it is truth and not the head-on collision which is at the heart of progress. And, as we have tried to say, our conception of what truth is grows with the growth. In spite of our shame over the unseemly contests of men, it does no violence to our intelligence quietly to maintain our belief in the developing reali zation of truth. We should not be called

upon to be intellectually dishonest for the sake of some "infallible code." We can afford to cultivate the impartial view of the attitudes taken by others. If in the

process we find ourselves intellectually in the dark, that is no sure sign we are in error. If there be a nobility because of the Christian aspiration within us, it should not mean the death within us of that other aspiration which we may call Greek. There surely is no irreconcilable conflict between truth and beauty. No creed worthy of acceptance can rightfully demand of its followers that they close their minds either to facts as they are or to the calls to reverence in a world where we finite mortals must sense infinity on every hand.

INTERDEPENDENCE BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE

W

E HAVE said that the acceptance of

creeds, philosophies, or systems of ethics without due regard to their relation to real business tends to lead to uncom

fortable ends. Literalism sometimes leads to disastrous results. When it was pro posed to create, possibly in Geneva, a world center of bibliography from which interna tional catalogs, indexes, and the like would be distributed to the scientific workers of all countries, certain scientific persons ap

plauded with enthusiasm. A closer ex

amination of the situation, however, re

vealed so many language difficulties, so

many great libraries in different capitals, so many vested interests, so many national rivalries and ambitions, that the job

proved to be altogether too big. But the Rockefeller Foundation, with f u n d s

amounting to over $165,000,000, settles

upon a program and goes about its realiza tion with neither fuss nor feathers. It

concentrates for a considerable period upon vital activities within limited fields. For the present it is centering its work upon

public health and medical education. But this effort is neither looked upon as per manent nor rigid. The officers of this Foundation seek direct relations with re

sponsible agencies. It undertakes nothing until a careful first-hand study has been made. When field demonstrations of the control of disease are made, the board deals only with government agencies. Plans for medical-school development are

carried out in conjunction with perma

nently established universities. No aid is given unless there be promise of qualita ive advance in a given piece of scientific administrative or educational work. The result during 1924 was: a contribution to a plan for publishing an international abstract journal of the biological sciences; bulletins of progress in medical education in many countries; greater international

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450 ADVOCATE OF PEACE August

knowledge about medical equipment and

teaching methods; direct aid to some ten of the world's leading medical schools; the maintenance of a modern medical school and teaching hospital in Peking; improvement in the teaching of medical sciences in China and Siam; a mobile staff on guard against yellow fever in Mexico and central America; malaria surveys in

Haiti, Porto Rico, Nicaragua, Brazil,

Italy, Palestine, Queensland, and the

Philippines; work against the hookworm in thirty-two States and countries in the

West Indies, Central America and Mex

ico, South America, Europe, and the Far

East; contributions to the budgets of ru

ral health services in 207 counties in

twenty-four American States and in New

Brunswick, Brazil, France, and Czecho

slovakia, not to mention other services.

Surely this is healthy creative work within the social field. Theory and practice are

hand in glove. There are literalists among the peace

workers who look upon our army and navy as bloodthirsty organizations, bent upon leading this country into war. The trou ble here is that much thinking upon the

peace movement has ended in a literalism disassociated from the facts. Take, for

instance, the corps of engineers of the

army. We admired their work in France

during the war. They built some 325 miles of barracks, provided hospital fa cilities for 141,000 beds, built railroads thousands of miles in length, cut and milled over 200,000,000 feet of lumber, installed great water-supply systems and the like. But for some reason it is not

generally known that these army engi neers are building the parks of Washing ton, dredging the channels of our rivers and harbors, and contributing in various other ways to the health and wealth of our country. This body of highly trained men is in charge of the greatest transpor tation system on earth, the water trans portation system of the TUnited States.

The civil work alone of the corps of en

gineers of the army covers the improve ment and maintenance of the continental United States and outlying territories of 200 harbors, 291 rivers, 53 canals and in land waterways, the enforcement of Fed eral regulations affecting navigable chan

nels, flood control on the Mississippi and

the Sacramento rivers and other streams, and other duties. The organization of this branch of our national labors, its freedom from scandal and red tape, its

quiet, effective work at a minimum of

expense, is now and has been for a hun

dred years one of the most romantic and

inspiring facts in our national life. It is the weakness of reformers to waste

their energies over theories, to lose every

vestige of a divine disregard for the non

essential, and to ignore the practical thing to be done. Theory is practice compre

hended, and practice is theory at work.

For sensible purposes they are inseparable.

FRENCH INTELLIGENCE TO THE RESCUE

T

0 DEFEND oneself on occasion may be both necessary and dignified; but

there is an even chance that it may be un

wise and self-defeating. But a man de

fending his enemy, especially where a

principle of justice is involved, commands

attention and influence. When the ninety three German professors and men of sci

ence, in the early days of the war, ad

dressed their letter "to the civilized world"

defending German aggression and de

nouncing German enemies, the effect was

harmful to the German cause because it

savored too much of self-interest. It is

difficult for human beings to weigh justly their own merits. The many recent Ger

man attempts to prove Germany's inno

cence of war guilt have not been convinc

ing, probably for this reason.

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