Life — March 21, 1918 — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

UR admired contemporary, the Kansas City Star, has been musing on the characteristics of Celestials and Carnals, so called in this paper. It has got the general idea about their political species fairly straight, but it falls down on illustration. For example, it suggests that “the program of the Celestials seems to have been given a pretty whole-hearted try-out in Rus- sia,” where the Carnals had been smashed flat, the brotherhood of man proclaimed, and the army dissolved by way of softening the German heart. But it didn’t soften. “ Somehow,” says the Star, “the Celestials didn’t have their feet planted solidly enough on earth to make their doctrine stick.” O; they didn’t. But it is lamentably misleading to call Trotzky and Le- nine Celestials. Mr. Wilson is our lead- ing Celestial. Are Trotzky and Lenine anything like him? He may want to medicate the existing order; doubtless he does; but does he want to annihilate it? He may object to capitalistic con- trol of nations; doubtless he does; but does he want to sequestrate or abolish capital? He may believe in universal brotherhood; many good people do; but does he show any symptom of de- sire to dissolve our armies? On the contrary, devoted as he is to peace and mindful to promote it; much as he hates war and desires to abolish it; he is about the last man who would lie down and Iet the Germans tramp over him and have their brutal will with the world. VERY party has a fringe of asses; of men who have missed or lost the power to think, and can only put their heads down and go it blind. The Celestials have such a fringe; the Car- nals also. But parties are not run and should not be judged by their fringes, but by the depositaries of their intel- “LIFE: The Celestial Idea ligence and the controllers of their politics; that is, by their leaders. The jig is up with any party when its fringe of asses gets control. That is what seems to have happened in Russia. The true Celestials there vere swamped. First the rotten Rus- sian Carnals were knocked out—the Carnals who were all for the existing rotten order; who betrayed Russia in the interest of it; who sent unarmed troops against Germans and contrived an unnecessary starvation for political purposes. If ever a gang was ripe for perdition, it was those rotten Russian Carnals. The decent Russian Carnals hated them. Russia rose against them, and they went by the board. But then the Revolution ran away from Kerensky, and the huge fringe of ignorance and reckless ambition and impossible aspiration that surrounded the Russian Celestials ran away with everything, and headed duly for the steep place that leads down in the sea. s 8 8 HAT story, so far as it is gone, is tragical enough, but there is more coming, and it does not really prejudice the Celestial movement. It has been said, with a fair showing of authority, that love rules the world, and there are respectable characters who hold that nothing else will ever rule it right. But no respected character ever held that the world could get along without law, justice and order. All the Celes- tials worth considering are advocates and supporters of these essentials to human happiness. They are not anar- chists nor robbers. They do not aspire to abolish thrift, or ham-string enter- prise, or hold everybody down to an equality in material possessions. Neither do they hope or aspire to put the fool- ish in charge of the wise, to make their laws and govern them. They differ from the standard Carnals only in be- ing more persuaded that the quality of law and order and justice that has been heretofore relied on in this world is not high enough for the world’s pres- 457 ent needs, and must be bettered in the interest of everyone. e 8 ¢ T might be said that the Celestials aim to make earth more like heaven, and then it might, and probably would, be said that that was a vain hope, because conditions were so different. But what is really our idea of heaven? Is it a place where everybody goes his own gait without regard for the other souls? Is it a place where all the souls are equal in capacity, condition and office? Is it a place where the foolish are herded together to pack the primaries and run the show, or where combina- tions of the powerful make the condi- tions of celestial life difficult and sombre for the less efficient? Nobody has any such ideas of heaven. They think of it as supremely well managed, and that implies man- agement. They think of it as a place that never has to be reformed and that enjoys a blessed and eternal immunity from reformers. They think of it as a place where souls will no longer be nagged by asses who want to mould them to match bad patterns, but where, somehow, things will work right, and they will get what they ought to want, and like it. (OT any of the compromising non- sense that intrudes upon our minds when we plan for the improvement of earth assails them when we imagine heaven. We infer for it order, justice, liberty, all under an irresistible au- thority, which is love. In so far as our political Celestials model their hopes for earth on the idea of heaven they are all right. And in so far as the Carnals, even the best of them, cling over-much to the muck- rake and compute earth’s future from its past, they are a little behind-hand in their politics, They must look up if they are to rise, and look ahead if they are to go forward. As good a world as has been won't do. They must see a world that is to be. ELS. M. comicbooks.com