Page:The War and the Future.djvu/22

 doubt that the world and everyday life are moving, nolens volens, toward a social structure for which the ephithet "communistic" is a relatively adequate term, a communal form of life, of mutual dependence and responsibility, of common rights to the enjoyment of earthly goods, as a result of the ever closer relationship of the world, its contraction, its intimacy resulting from technical progress, a world wherein each and everyone has a right to live and whose administration is everyone's concern.

Do not imagine that what I am saying means that I am in favor only of the new and the untried. By that I would become unfaithful to myself. Never is the artist only the protagonist and prophet of the new but also the heir and repository of the old. Always he brings forth the new out of tradition. Just as I am far from denying the values of the bourgeois epoch to which the largest part of my personal life belongs, just so am I aware that the demands of the times and the problems of the coming peace are not merely of a revolutionary but also of a constructive, yes, of a restorative nature. Ever and again, historical upheaval such as we are now experiencing is inevitably followed by a movement of restoration. The need to reestablish is as imperative as the demand for renewal. What needs to be reestablished more than anything else arc the commandments of religion, of Christianity, which have been trod underfoot by a false revolution. From these commandments must be derived the fundamental law under which the peoples of the future will live together and to which all will have to pay reverence. No real pacification of the world, no cooperation of the people for the common good and for human progress will be possible unless such a basic law is established, which notwithstanding national diversity and liberty must be valid for all and recognized by all as a Magna Carta of human rights, guaranteeing the individual his security in justice, his inviolability, his right to work and to the enjoyment of life. For such a universal basis, may the American Bill of Rights serve as a model.

I believe, Ladies and Gentlemen, that out of the suffering and struggle of our difficult period of transition, a wholly new 22