[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sia,—I am enclosing a
clipping from the New York Evening Sun, which you can read and draw your conclusions regarding the Sacco-Vanzetti case, and the judgment displayed in our Courts.
Reverse the situation, and had the trial been in Great Britain we feel these anarchists would have met their just fate much earlier. I have lived in England and I well know the discipline of your Courts. We in America arc trying hard to be human, and as an example and a sample have sent you a Lindbergh and a Bobby Jones, and the psychological effect was wonderful.
I am a writer on a small scale, and I will try to give you a few ideas on our best people, who in reality are of your blood. Human behaviour makes up human life and human behaviour is determined by the things people want, and there are two sorts of things people want. First, there are material values such as money, pleasure, position and power, and there is a great deal of power and pleasure, and we don't blame the young for looking out for a good time. But there is another set of values, not material, but social ; the things on which society has been founded, such as honesty, knowledge, fair play, sportsmanship, sympathy, understanding, justice, the sense of kinship, the sense of service, and last but not least, "the sense of humour."
In a society human behaviour is determined, not by material values, but by spiritual and social values, so that your attitude towards life if you reach up to your best should be spiritual. There are two attitudes in business ; one is that everything is business and regulated by material values. That is one idea. The other is that business has for its object the satisfaction of human need in its best manner, where the employer and the employee can best serve the public.
If you look upon business in this way the profits will take
care of themselves. The richest man in America says be has had in mind the furnishing of an article to the public produced under the best conditions and paying the highest wages, but there has been a great change in the ethics of business for years, and to-day they are better than in politics, and perhaps better than in education. Men in business now do not want to do things they were in the habit of doing. In education there are thousands going to college so that they may increase their earning power. There can be no real education that is not founded on knowledge for its own sake. The great discoveries in science, art, and agriculture
were made by men who were not trying to increase their earning power, but were trying to increase the world's know- ledge. In our economic life to-day, value on material things, there can be no real understanding, but when they put em- phasis on mutual understanding and mutual benefit there will be peace.
In the national life there never can be peace where nations are looking only for material values. If we look only upon what we get back there will never be peace. We must put first : friendship, good will, and mutual interest, and then international relations will be what they should be. In private life only that man is rich who has enough to satisfy his wants, and if he does not have enough to satisfy his wants he is poor indeed. Power cannot satisfy, but if we put social and spiritual values first we can then in a measure be satisfied. —I am, Sir, &c.,
COLIN S. CARTER.
1 East 39th Street, New York City, U.S.A.
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