Twelve Trailblazers of World Community Leonard S. Kenworthy The Friendly Press Kennett Square, PA 194 38 The Four Corners Press Grand Rapids, MI 49510 © 1988 Leonard S. Kenworthy All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States The Four Corners Press P.O. Box 7 468 Grand Rapids, MI 49510 The Friendly Press Box 726 Kennett Square, PA 194 38 ISBN 9615297-1-8 Contents Preface vii Norman Borlaug - Hunger Fighter 3 Pablo Casals - Master Musician and Foe of Fascism 25 Dag Hammarskjold­ World Peacemaker 47 julian Huxley- Modern Renaissance Man 68 Margaret Mead - Interpreter of People and Cultures 89 jean Monnet- Creator of European Community 110 Alva Myrdal - Champion of Equality and Disarmament 130 Raul Prebisch - Spokesman for the Third World 150 Maurice Strong- Defender of the Environment 171 Rabindranath Tagore- Bridge-Builder Between East and West 191 Desmond M. Tutu - Opponent of Apartheid and Exponent of Applied Christianity 211 laurens van der Post- Interpreter of Africa and Proponent of Wholeness 234 Preface This is a book about 12 remarkable people, all of whom were or are catalysts of change, pioneers, innovators, and trailblazers of the world community human beings must create if we are all to survive on this beautiful but plundered planet. But it is also a book about some of the important global problems of our times and some of the international move­ ments and organizations through which these people have worked or are working to wrestle with these problems. In some respects the people depicted here differ from each other. They come from nine different countries, from five con­ tinents, and from several cultures. They have championed different causes-for improved agriculture, better education, the protection of the environment, the application of Chris­ tianity to contemporary problems, peace through disarma­ ment, the attainment of a more just economic world order, and better understanding of other people through music and literature. Several of them have been interested in more than one movement. Yet they are alike in some ways, too. All of them have been blessed with enormous energy or have channelled the usual amount of it in a highly disciplined way. All of them have been strongly motivated. All of them have been practical idealists, combining optimism with realism; they have been doers as well as dreamers. All. of them have been secure enough within themselves to be able to reach out to others. All of them have been loyal to their own nations, but they have had a larger loyalty to all the people on our planet. All of them have had a vision of the future, starting with the present and building on the past. And they have all worked patiently, per­ sistently, and often courageously to accomplish their goals. They represent human beings at their best. Nearly all of the men and women presented in this volume have lived in very recent times; some are still alive. One­ Rabindrinath Tagore-comes from a slightly earlier period but is such a splendid representative of India and several move­ ments for human betterment that he has been included. The author has known and worked with two of them and most of the others have been generous in granting him inter­ views. The secretaries, assistants, and close friends of several of the persons portrayed in this volume have been helpful in the preparation of these short essays and I am most grateful to them. The librarians at the Dag Hammarskjold Library at the U.N. and the Brooklyn College Library have been extremely helpful to me as the author and to them I acknowledge my deep gratitude. It is my hope that the readers of this book will enjoy these accounts and that many of them will want to delve deeper into longer accounts of these persons, as well as renewing their ef­ forts to contribute to one or more movements in which the persons presented here have been outstanding. Leonard S. Kenworthy Kendal at Longwood Kennett Square, Pennsylvania Twelve Trailblazers of World Community 1 Norman Borlaug­ Hunger Fighter It was a little after seven in the morning of October 20, 1970 when the silence in the home of Norman and Margaret Borlaug in Mexico City was shattered by a phone call. Dr. Bor­ laug had already left for work and his wife answered. It was a long distance call from Oslo, Norway, and the cal­ ler wanted to speak with Norman Borlaug, person-to-person. Mrs. Borlaug told the operator that he had left the house an hour ago and couldn't be reached. Then she asked if the per­ son making the call would speak to her. He said he would and identified himself as a reporter for one of the Oslo newspapers. He wanted to talk with Dr. Bor­ laug because he had just been designated as the winner of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize. Mrs. Borlaug drew a deep breath and· wondered what to say. She was accustomed to long-distance calls for her hus­ band. She was also used to surprises. But was this for real or was it a cruel hoax? She asked the reporter to tell her more. He replied that the Norwegian Parliament had just voted to give the 1970 Peace Prize to Dr. Borlaug for his work in im- 4 Twelve Trailblazers proving the world's food supply and helping to stave off famines. The news would be on the wires momentarily. The reporter wanted to be the first to interview the new Nobel Prize winner. Margaret repeated that Dr. Borlaug was out-of-town and couldn't be reached. She was sorry. That was all she could think of to say at the moment. Once the call was completed she contacted her husband's office in Mexico City and arranged for a car to take her to the wheat fields where he was working-more than an hour's drive from the capital city. With her she took a friend as a traveling companion. When Norman Borlaug saw the car coming, he hurried to the roadside. He was certain that his wife was bringing him bad news; otherwise she would not have made that trip. But he was wrong. The news was staggering, but it was good news. Or was it? He was not even sure that it was true. No plant pathologist had ever received a Nobel Prize, let alone the Peace Prize. So he decided to let the matter ride. Besides, he had pressing work to do. He thanked Margaret and urged her to return to Mexico City. Then he strode back into the ex­ perimental stands of wheat. The news was true and before long several reporters had discovered where Dr. Borlaug was. Also, a television crew had driven out to the experiment station northwest of Mexico City. There they found Borlaug, a lean, trim, vigorous, bronzed man of 56 years, examining the wheat which had just brought him world-wide fame. He was dressed in an open sports shirt, khaki pants, work boots, and a baseball cap. He told them he had work to finish but would grant them an interview later that day in Mexico City. Back in the capital he met with a drove of reporters while television cameras zeroed in on him. He expressed surprise and pleasure at the award, but maintained that it should have gone to a team of workers who had spent years trying to im­ prove the strands of wheat so that millions of lives would be Norman Borlaug 5 saved and other millions have more food than they had heretofore had. But he denied that the global problem of hunger was on its way to being solved. "We have only delayed the world food crisis," he maintained. "If the world population continues to increase at the present rate, we will destroy the human spe­ cies," he said. Questioned about the successes in developing new, high­ yielding types of wheat, Borlaug admitted that they had had some extraordinary results in the new strains of wheat they had produced. But he pointed out that whatever success they had had was "only a stopgap, not a solution." Those and other remarks reflected the modesty and cau­ tion of this remarkable man and his deep concern about the race between the population explosion and the world's food supply. As the reporters observed Borlaug, they noticed that he was unassuming and a bit shy, but they noted that he knew his own mind and was articulate. The blue-eyed Norwegian­ American, they reported, was direct, even blunt, speaking at times with passion and with an occasional trace of the Norwe­ gian lilt he had learned as a boy in Iowa. Behind the tremendous honor which had come to Norman Borlaug that day were years of struggle and back-breaking work, years of personal poverty and menial jobs to obtain an education, years of toil in the wheat fields of many countries under the glaring sun, and years of wrangling with obstinate government officials. His life began on March 24, 1914 in a rural community in northeastern Iowa. It was largely an area of Norwegian­ Americans and many of the farm families were related. Norman was the first child of Henry and Clara Borlaug. He had two parents to care for him and love him, plus two grandparents, because all four of them lived together and farmed the 156 acres that Grandpa Borlaug owned. The adults all had to work hard to make a decent living, 6 Twelve Trailblazers for their crops were always subject to nature's whims.