AMERICA CHALLENGED BY CONDITIONS IN NEAR EAST

Professor Harlow has been for ten years professor of sociology and chaplain at International College, Smyrna, an American Institute recently destroyed by the Turks. He is now on a lecture tour, and spoke at Phillips Brooks House recently.

"Last come, we will be last to stay,

Till right has had her crowing day.

Replenish, Allies, from our veins

The blood the sword of despots drains,

And make our eager sacrifice

Part of the freely rendered price

You pay to lift humanity

You pay to set our brothers free."

Where, today, is the America, that responded so eagerly in words like these to the challenge, as she sent her sons into battle? Is the America which refused to hold out her hand to help the Near East in a national way, through accepting a mandate, as unselfish as the nation which in 1917 responded to such noble sentiments?

There is more starvation in the world today than there was in the old world before the war. Pick up your papers almost any day, and read of the countless thousands subsisting on grass and roots in Russia, and of the famished thousands on the bleak islands of Greece and on the coast of the Aegean. Never were there so many homeless people as wander today seeking a place where they may lay their heads. Can we say that, in this so called "new world", womanhood and childhood is more respected and more loved? I fear not. The public reads great figures telling of the number of women outraged in Smyrna, of the countless orphans driven into exile or thrown into the waters of the harbor--and what does it mean?

The War an Anesthetic

In that old world before the war, one such event would have cost us sleepless nights. The war, with all its suffering and atrocities, has been an anesthetic. We have become too accustomed to the cries of the oppressed to have them vibrate painfully upon our nerves and conscience. The enthusiasm produced in the fever of the war days has given place to the peril of waning idealism. Nothing could be more dangerous, if these are the facts, than to close our minds and hearts, and to drift on. I am not a prophet of pessimism, but I am aware of that ancient saying: "He who cries peace, peace, when there is no peace, shall be cursed".

"And Especially to Harvard--"

And to young America, and especially to Harvard, with her rich heritage of ideals and traditions, all of these facts ought to present a tremendous challenge, "for what you are, the race shall be". If the world seems worse, if evil seems more rampant, it is not true that all of these forces against right-eousness were not present in the hearts of men before the war. The hatred, the cruelty, the lust, the falsity, was not on the surface, but it was there underneath, and the war simply brought it out into the light. Never in history have men and women, especially young men and women with their lives before them, faced so stirring a challenge to fight the fight for the establishment of the ideals of Christ, to dedicate their lives unselfishly, unconditionally, to this warfare against unrighteousness, hatred, and bitterness.

Organized Forces of Evil

Not only are we challenged by the forces of evil, organized and deflant, but we are challenged from another side. More than six million crosses over the graves of young men, most of whom gave their lives under the impression that out of the strife and sacrifice and laying down of life, a better world was to dawn. These crosses challenge us to awake, and it is to young America especially that this challenge comes.

Two years ago a young British officer was our guest for dinner one evening in our home in Asia Minor. During the course of the meal, he took from his pocket a little book, and, handing it to me, said. "Do you mind looking at this for a moment?" Inside the cover was a long list of names, over 200 in fact. Many of these were underlined in red. Looking across the table, the captain remarked. "It is a little school, but we did our part, didn't we?" That list was the names of the men from his little school who had given their lives on the fields of France and Flanders.

This British boy, scarce 20, had been in the thick of the fight, twice wounded, since 1914. Now, late in 1919, he was helping to guard helpless women and children from massacre in Asia Minor.

With just the slightest touch of irony in his voice, he remarked: "I see America has made another record in getting her troops home this month. Don't you think there were some problems left over after the war, some of them the result of the war, which your men (some of whom have only seen five or six months of this business) ought to be helping on rather than leaving it to us chaps who have been four or five years away from home?"

There is another scene of which I am reminded. One afternoon in September of 1918, I stood on a hill north of Verdun and looked up and down a great valley. As far as the eye could reach, there were row on row of little white crosses. More than six million of the finest men of Europe lie under those crosses in France and Flanders, and on the other fields of battle. Back of those crosses and back of those boys still in the hospital wards, there are others who seem to rise. They are the young women of Europe, as well as the mothers and fathers, who paid an even greater price. All through Europe today you will meet the girls who would have been happy wives and mothers now had it not been for those crosses.

Hungry Students Attending Classes

There is another picture which goes side by side with these. It is a picture upon which I looked only last year, as I went through some of the countries of the Balkans, Central Europe, and Asia Minor. It is a picture of countless students, many of them dressed in the only clothes which they possess, old faded and patched army uniforms, young women with clothes fit only for the warmth of a summer day, hurrying to class rooms, with faces pinched by cold and hunger. Just read these words, written in a letter by a Russian student:

"Before you I stand, a student, starving while attending school. Hunger forced me to pick from garbage cans hends of herring. Not satisfied, I ate hay which I stole from a cow. This produced terrible head aches. Next I chewed small pieces of paper to satiate the gnawing pangs of Hunger. My stomach and teeth ached, and the muscles of my jaw grew tired."

Over against these pictures of sacrifice and suffering all too common throughout Europe among our fellow-students. I would have you picture-the life here at Harvard, and at hundreds of other colleges and schools throughout this country. Go down to Soldiers Field, go to the football field, or the hockey field, and look over the players, or scan the faces in the stands or on the sidelines. How many pinched and starved and ill-clad students can you count on your campus or in your Yard? Go back a few years to the gold stars in the service flag that flew so bravely over your and my Alma Mater. Can we count the number that that "little school" back in England has a right to fly? As you sit down to supper tonight in Memorial Hall, or around the cheerful table in the club or fraternity house, will no thoughts arise of your fellow-students, many of them struggling along on a few crusts of bread and a cup of weak tea all the supper they will get tonight?

Most of you will return to your homes when Christmas comes around. There will be family reunions and friendly greetings great open fires, and laughter and good times. Have you ever considered the fact that great numbers of the students in Europe have lost their homes in the war? If you will consider Asia Minor, it might almost be said that over 900 out of every 1000 students have lost their homes during the past six years. Last winter, in a cold rain, we picked up on the quay at Smyrna 40 students, all of whom had known deportation and exile, the loss of home and loved ones, and who had now fled suddenly from St. Paul's College in Tarsus to Symrua because of the French evacuation, and the turning over of Cilicia once more to the Turks. Today I do not know whether a single one of these boys is alive or where he is, for within the past few weeks you have read of the calamity which came down upon that beautiful city in Asia Minor.

The two American colleges in the city, one for young men and one for young women, had been carrying on a splendid work. We had a lower school especially for Turkish students. Today our buildings lie in ashes, or are looted. Of the more than 300 students in the men's college, I only know of 20 who are saved, though others must be among the starving refugees on the coasts of the Greek Islands or over in Greece. Of the 250 splendid young women of our college for girls. I know of only 20 who are reported saved; though we have hopes that others will yet be heard from.

Americans Most Humanitarian

Young men of America you who escaped so easily the stern and cruel demands which the long war years and the cruel days that have followed have brought upon the students of Europe, is there no challenge for you today to sacrifice and share somewhat the terrific burdens of these young men and young women of whom I have been writing? We claim to be the most idealistic nation in the world. We still hold that Americans are more interested in humanitarian efforts than people of other lands. The efforts of our American educational institutions and hospitals in many lands bear witness to the desire of countless Americans to share with other lands their struggle to alleviate suffering and to make progress toward the light.

President Faunce of Brown, who has just returned from Europe, says that the condition of Europe today is "brittle", that at any moment all Europe may break up in a configuration, where excesses worse than those of the Reign of Terror may sweep away our so-called modern civilization. Every effort to hold together through deeds of love and service, every attempt to re-awaken and stir up in Europe feelings of brotherliness and kindness, is to help build the Kingdom of God.

A man or women who goes out from an American university today determined to live for financial gain or for personal fame, is one blind to the world's needs and deaf to the challenge of God. We are summoned to go out with a vision of a new world bright before our eyes that there is one who can make that new world possible, but that upon us rests a mighty responsibility to wage eternal warfare against those forces which are seeking to prevent the coming of that new world to its own