Non - Members may receive this publication by post on payment of 2/6 per annum. APRIL, 1937 The Monthly Record of South Place Ethical Society CONWAY HALL, RED LION SQUARE, W.C.1. Telephone : CHANCERY 8032. " The OBJECrS OF THE SOCIETY are the study and dissemination of ethical principles and the cultivation of a rational religious sentiment." SUNDAY MORNING MEETINGS at ELEVEN O'CLOCK. • March rf—S. K. RATCLIFFE—England and Amerioa—Now First two movements of Sonata in G, Op. 78, for Violin and Pianoforte .. Brahms Vivace ma non troppo. ii. Adagio—Piu Andante--Adagio. Miss BEATRIX MARR and Mr. WILLIAM BUSCH. Hymns • No. 25. 0 brother man, fold to thy heart thy brother! No. 81. We may not think that all of good. March 28—No Meeting April 4--S. K. RATCLIFFE—Stop Playing the Camel BOSS Sol0 Caro mM ben ... Giordani Mr. G. C. DOWMAN Soprano Solo: Faith in Spring ... ... Schubert MiSS HERE SIMPSON. H ymns No. 147. Earnest words must needs be spoken. No. 123. The man of life upright. April 11—HAR DAYAL, M.A., Ph.D.—Ethical Aspects of Buddhism Pianoforte Solo: Prelude and Chorale .. César Franck Mr. WILLIAM BUSCH. Hymns No. 1. %Be true to every inmost thought. No.45. All are architects of fate. April 18—JOHN KATZ, B.A.—Religion and the Intellectuals Sonata in B fiat, K378, for Violin and Pianoforte ... Mozart I. Allegro moderato. a Andantino. tn. Rondo: Allegro Miss VERA KANTROVITCH and Mr. WILLIAM BUSCH. Hymns No. 73. Out of the dark the circling sphere. No.100. What iS it that the crowd requite. April 25—S. K. RATCLIFFE—The New Problem of Loyalty Bass Solo : Breathe soft ye Winds ... Handel Mr. G. C. DOWMAN. Soprano Solo: Loveliest of Trees ... Graham Peel MiSS HESE SIMPSON. No. 120 and 227. The heart it hath its own estate. Hymns No.28 (second tune). Oh dew of life! oh light of earth! Pianist : Mr. WILLIAM BUSCH. A Collection is made at each Meeting, to enable those present to contribute to the expenses of the Society. VISITORS WELCOME. OFFICIAL auk PARK— Opposite Main Entrance. 2 MEMBERSHIP Any person in sympathy with the Objects of the Society is cordially invited to become a MEMBER. The minimum annual subscription is 10s., but it is hoped that Members will subscribe as generously as possible and so assist the Society to meet its heavy annual expenditure. Any person may join as an Associate, but will not be eligible to vote or hold office. Further particulars may be obtained before and after the Services, or on application to the Hon. Registrar. Miss R. Ituss, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, W.C.1, to whom all subscriptions should be paid. HONORARY OFFICERS Treasure.) C. E. LISTER, Conway Hall, W.C.1. Sunday Lecture Secretary S. 0. GREEN. Conway Hall, W.C.1. Minutes Secretary... ... EDITH WASHBROOK, 33, Claremont Close, NJ.. Registrar of Members and Miss R. lints, 39, Barclay Road, Fulham, S.W.6. Associates Editor of MONTHLY RECORD F. G. DOGLD. Woodrising, TraPPS Hill. Lolightoo. Essex Librarians F. Srurno, " Enmore," 12, Durand Gas., Stockwell, S.W.9. "• I Miss D. W. Prrr, 32, Albany Road. N.4. GENERAL COMMITTEE C. E. BARRALET. H. LIDSTONE. Miss D. WALTERS. J. P. Grusotrit. MrS. LISTER. F. WASHBROOK. *J. A. GRAHAM. DORIS PARTINGTON. MrS. WATSON. MrS. HAWKINS. MISS H D ROMANES. F. C. C. WATTS. 'G. HUTCHINSON. MISS F. J. SIMONS. MISS F. WILKINS. Mrs. JAMES. F. STUTTIG. *Mrs WOOD. *Mrs. LINDSAY. MISS C. TRESIDDER *W. E. WRIGHT. *Retire at the Annual Meeting in May. Secretary: S. G. Green, Conway Hail, Red Lion Square, W.C.1. MARRIAGES. Conway Hall is registered for marriages. FUNERAL SERVICES can be arranged by the Society. Applications should be addressed to the Secretary: • • • • The Society does not hold itself responsible for views expressed or reported in the " RECORD." A DANGEROUS WORLD It is needless to dwell upon the disconcerting acceptance of the fact indicated by this title. A gas-mask for everyone, conscription for military and industrial war services, storage of foods, unlimited expenditure upon armaments. are accepted by the overwhelming majority of people here and on the Continent as indicative of a general war regarded as an early probability, almost a certainty. History is the product of force and chance, a will to war brought into action by some frontier fncident or other opportunity. While no people wants war, every people thinks it may " break out "—a phrase itself expressive of irrational causation. Can nothing be done to prevent it? For though no people wants war, every people can be forced into what their national propaganda will make them believe to be a necessity of national defence. This urgent peril can neither be understood nor guarded against until its common causation is rightly grasped. Though self-assertion and a fighting " instinct " may belong to most men's inborn equipment, or be educated by environment, they would not carry modern peoples into collective carnage, unless they were associated with the economic interests and necessities of powerful political groups, the owning ruling classes in the several nations. For war is not the only danger which oppresses modern man. The periodic slumps and depressions, with their intolerable burdens and wastes of unemployment, are an equal testimony to the irrationality and the inhumanity of our civilisation. But what, it may be asked, is the connection between war and unemployment? At first sight they may seem to be opposed. For both war itself and its preliminary process of armed preparation furnish paid occupations to those who otherwise may be unemployed. It is true that these occupations can hardly be termed economic. 3 The production and consumption they provide consist in the destruction alike of wealth and life. The large sums devoted to our rearmament from taxation and borrowing are taken, in a period of reviving prosperity, from money that would otherwise have been spent on making more consumptive goods or more capital goods for enlarged production. They constitute a substantial reduction of the real income of the nation and, by reason of the rise of prices they cause, of the real wages of the workers. These truths, however, even if accepted by our war-preparers, do not convince. For, it is said here, as in Germany, there are critical occasions when butter must be sacrificed to bullets. " We don't want to fight, but . " Why must we7 Because "national honour " is involved in a " fight for markets." The very notion that markets can be objects of and contention seems at first sight ridiculous. Why should nations find a deficiency of markets in their own country or abroad? Why should they put on tariffs to keep out foreign goods, and employ all their forces, financial, diplomatic and ultimately military, to secure " their share" of the world's markets? No nation can gain by restricting the freedom of access to the resources of the world which will enable them to be put to their best use and increase the real income of everyone by free processes of exchange. This free trade logic is irrefragable—but somehow its rationality does not prevail. Why? Because it assumes that consumers are always ready in large enough numbers to purchase and consume all that can be produced. Now this is not the fact. Production is held up periodically by reason of an insufficiency of markets. For though everything that is or can be produced belongs to somebody, who can buy it for consumption or exchange it for something else he would consume, this does not cover a situation where standards of consumption do not rise to keep pace with improved technique of productive processes in manufacture, agriculture and transport. For the classes in each nation which profit most out of these improvements are as a rule satisfied with their current standards of living, spend little more in profitable times, but save for investment a larger proportion of their increased income. So long as they use these savings to pay workers to make more plant, raw materials and other capital goods, the trouble is postponed. But when it is seen that there exists an excess of producing power beyond the limit of profitable trade, then comes a stoppage of production and employment, especially in the fundamental industries and the export trades. This recurrent deficiency of markets, home and foreign, is the direct cause of these barriers and hostilities in trade which are a direct denial of its co-operative nature and which are the secret feeders of international hostility. Each nation seeks to keep its own markets for itself and to keep out foreigners, while at the same time it uses its political power to get foreign markets away from its foreign com- petitors. This trouble arises from a chronic maldistribution of the national income, due to advantages in bargaining which put too large a share of income in the hands of the numerically smaller owning and ruling classes, too small a share in the hands of the larger working classes. Thus economic insecurity and international hostility are fed from the same vicious source. J. A. Housow. PROFESSOR T. H. PEAR ON " THE STUDY OF PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS " (February 28. 1937) Readings : (1) First Epistle to the Corinthians, 12th Verse (James Moffatt's translation of the New Testament). (2) From William James' Chapter on " Self," in his Principles of Psychology." Laurence Hyde in his book " The Learned Knife" said some cutting things about sociologists and economists. He pointed out that the physical sciences had achieved a spectacular success, but that they no longer dealt with real things but with abstractions.