WESTERN CHRISTMAS
THERE is a temptation today to celebrate Christmas as a feast of the West. In a sense it is right to do so. The Western World owes its whole character to its Christian origins, so that its idea of freedom, or its devotion to science, canna be understood apart from the religious back- ground out of which they grew. But if Christmas.is particu- larly the birthday of the West, because the faith that began that day has been chiefly received by its peoples so far, the festival's message was, and remains, one for the whole world. The angelic proclamation, " On earth peace, good will toward men," had no regional bias, and Christianity stays a universal religion. It is perfectly right for Western men, when they see their way of life and highest ideals threatened, to seek to draw strength from the faith in whose light they have grown up. It would be wrong, however, if they were to turn their creed into a marching song, to use it like the old crusaders as a rallying cry against the outside world.
Such a caution becomes relevant in a world so sharply divided as at present. The Christmas tidings of goodwill and hope may seem to come oddly at a time when East and West, both destructively armed as never before, confront each other in political deadlock, when behind Russia China emerges, and where in territories affected by them both there is the problem of how quickly increasing populations are to be fed out of limited food resources. It is not an unfair qtiestion to. ask a man celebrating Christmas how he can do so with such large menaces around him. As a hopeful man, for so he is by defi- nition, he would reply that there have been many worse Christ- mases than this. He would instance the overrunning of the West by the barbarians, or the sad festivals observed during the Thirty Years War, when two strands of Christianity crossed one. another to such effect that not even the war of. 1914-18 approached the slaughter and devastation then caused to the German people. If that line of argument were not considered particularly comforting, the cheerful celebrant of Christmas might move to another. In the good company of Professor Butterfield, he might point out that the clash between Russia"' and the West is totally without novelty of any kind save in the size of the disputants. Tne suspicion and fear engendered between two great concentrations of power is the oldestspectacle in foreign politics. Communism, apart from its obvious utility as propaganda, is mere surface trapping to an old-fashioned situation which would not be in the slightest degree relieved if a Christian Tsar still stood in the place now occupied by Mr. Malenkov. Seeing the danger in its true shape does not remove it, but it should improve the season to have it firmly realised by 'people in the West that the main issue of foreign politics is the oldest known to diplomacy.
The hope of Christmas, however, is hardly to be satisfied with the promise of an endless repetition of the hard ups and downs of history. The penalties of diplomatic failure appear today to be too great. There is a wistful turning towards ideas of world government, although a moment's reflection will show that, !however desirable—if it is desirable in present circumstances—such a government for the time being is impossible. The world must develop a common mind before it can work a common constitution.
In one field, at least, there burns an encouraging light. It has been pointed out by Professor Toynbee that the one achieve- ment of Christian civilisation which all the world is willing to accept is western technology. This might at first glance seem a mean, even a deadly, gift—a knowledge of machines fated, to disrupt simple ways of life even if, through being turned to warlike uses, it does not provoke destructiveness. The pessi- mistic view, however, is not the only one. Our own industrial revolution produced an intolerable squalor, but today the working classes are better fed, healthier and better educated than ever before. They have passed through the dark night of indus- trialisation in less than two hundred years. No evidence sug- gests that other societies, in spite of painful adjustments and many social mistakes, will not also climb into a richer and brighter age by using the technological ladder.
If they do, the revolution will not have been untouched 'by what men made of the events of the first Christmas. Tech- nology, the application of intellect to work in hand, has grown naturally out of Christian civilisation. If the classical element in our inheritance had been stronger, technology might well have tarried in its development. The Platonic contempt for manual labour and dexterity of hands (matched: until recently, by the prevailing indifference among the most highly cultivated Asians) has indeed had its influence even in Britain. Many explain our present difficulties in getting enough first-class technologists out of the Universities by the distaste felt in a classically influenced society for technical work. The pure scientist who is interested in the discovery of knowledge rather than in its application seems, even in modern' eyes, to come nearer the ideal of the gentleman. The Christian stream of thought, however, and it is, after all, the main stream, has tended to glorify the application of intellect to common tasks. The monks were in their day regarded as the fine flower of the Christian world. Yet St. Benedict laid down for this elite a daily. round of harsh labour in the fields. The Benedictines quickly slackened in this part of the rule, but that was mere weakness of the flesh; it was recognition of manual labour in the rule that mattered. This attitude is widely distinct froth the Greek and Eastern contemplative ideals, and its appearance in so formative an institution as monasticism is one of the clues to the practical bent of Western society.
Technology, starting from Europe, has set a girdle round the earth. Japan and Russia have had their technological revolu- tions. India and Pakistan are coming on behind, and China will certainly walk the same road. For the first time in history the whole world will possess at least one common language. The modern, world-wide lingua franca lies in the formulas of engineers and chemists. This may well have, in the course of time, a far greater importance than now appears. If any influence at all is working towards a common mind and out- look throughout the world—and until this common mind exists all talk of world government is premature—it is technological method. Eastern nations, in accepting technology from the West, may take far more beside. Those with knowledge of Chinese and Japanese thought, for example, have remarked how far its processes are removed from Western logic. It is less that Asians think different thoughts than that their minds work differently. Our logic is not their logic, and our modes of argument are alien to them. This has been one of the main causes of the great difficulty of presenting the Christian religion effectively in the East. It will be extremely interesting to Sea whether the embracing of Western science and technology by Asia brings about a gradual change in the pattern of Eastern minds, a closer approximation to Western modes of thought, and in the end a greater understanding.
To suppose that technology has within itself the power to save the world would be absurd. The unity of mankind will not be brought about by machines. Yet the material sides of civilisations have their uses, for more than legions moved along the Roman roads. It may be that technology will carry, on its broad back influences far more powerful than its own. Perhaps this is much to expect from little, but that is also the story of Christmas. When one considers, not the theology the Incarnation, with its stupendous claims about the relation- ship of God to man, but only the vast human edifice that has been built upon it, then it becomes possible to believe in the efficacy of small beginnings. A shed in Bethlehem, a few poor peasants, and a birth : out of that Europe and the two Americas, as we know them, came to be, and the work of their peoples has not yet ended, nor has their inspiration in essentials changed.
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