In the battle against defeatism, we all have a role to play

This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on June 22, 1940.

Last week, I wrote something about the graduation exercises which are taking place all over Canada, with pomp and circumstance, colour and music, oratory and roses.

A great army of young people, who have been hitherto sheltered by school walls, shepherded by teachers, their waking hours bounded by regulations and timetable, now find themselves released from all of these. Hitherto, their life has flowed like rivers, disciplined by their banks, but now they are facing the open sea.

We, the older ones, are sorry they have to face such a dangerous and troubled sea, but a skilful and well-trained sailor is not daunted by rocks, waves or weather. So may it be with Canada’s 1940 classes.

I hope each of the graduates will squeeze every drop of pleasure out of these wonderful days. Looking at their bright faces, I find it easy to enter into their joy. Even Friday night has a thrill all its own, but the end of the school days is a milestone in our memories which no one can ever forget.

Looking at these young people stepping out into an uncertain world, I hope that they will retain their sense of fun and their infinite enthusiasm. Youth is the time for exuberance, dreams, hero worship and ambitions. A cynical youth is “out of character.”

Cynicism is a sort of poison ivy and has no place in the garden of youth. If it has any place in the world at all, it belongs to old age, bent, crabbed, disillusioned old age, looking at life with a rheumy eye.

Education, properly understood, makes us aware of life, sensitive to its thrills, its beauty, its heroism. Education should be something that makes us able to endure the evils of life, giving us an inner armour to withstand its cruelties. There is a healing in beauty.

“My heart leaps up,” Wordsworth said, “when I behold a rainbow in the sky.”

I wondered, as I looked at the young people, if their years of learning have given them a burning quest for more knowledge. That, after all, is the test of education. There was a phrase used years ago to describe a school where girls were sent to receive the last touches on their education. They we called “finishing schools.”

Happily, that phase is gone forever. Education is never complete. We follow the gleam. The larger the circle of light, the larger looms the circle of darkness.

I believe there has come a great awakening to all of us in these past few months. The future does not bother any of us very much until it begins to turn into the present, and that is what has happened. We have all heard our ministers speak of the Battle of Armageddon, where the powers of light and the powers of darkness would engage in deadly combat. It had a faraway sound and in the security of the present we were able to dismiss it lightly. To us it was something like Mother Shipton’s prophecies — interesting but vague.

Now we know that there are two ideologies in the world — ideology is a big word much used these days, meaning simply a way of thinking. Democratic people think in a certain way. There are certain fundamental principles which we have been taught and which we have taught our children. They are so readily accepted that we call them selfevident truths. We did not believe that they could ever be challenged.

Now we are faced with a new ideology, which contradicts everything that we have been taught. We know it is wrong. We tell ourselves that it can never prevail — that man was born to be free, that people must think for themselves, that character must be build on the firm principles of honesty, justice and kindness.

The German ideology contradicts all this and teaches that the common people do not need to think at all. In Mein Kampf, Hitler writes that he intends to keep his young people marching, for there is something in the rhythmic pounding of feet which mechanizes the mind.

The dictators agree on this one thing, that common people should not think. They have only one thing to do, and that is obey, and they must do that without question.

Naturally, religion has to be overthrown before the people can be reduced to this state of mental apathy. The core of religion is that man is made in the image of God and is therefore a responsible, intelligent being, and this can have no place in the doctrine of terror and force.

The intellectuals of Germany, who have been fortunate enough to get away from the reign of terror, tell us that not one bar of music or one line of poetry or one imaginative and creative story has been written in Germany since the Hitler rule has spread its full paralysis. And this is the danger that threatens the world.

Because brave men and women are resisting this terror, we in Canada and the United State are still immune, free to move about, attend graduation exercise, sit at peace at our own desks, writing our own thoughts free and unhampered. But every day the danger draws nearer to us.

Dorothy Thompson says that if Hitler wins, it will not be by guns or diving planes, he will win by the defeatism in the people who are fighting against him.

In this battle against defeatism, you and I have a part to play. We have been free so long, we do not know how to value our freedom.

Who makes up the Fifth Column in Canada? Anyone who lowers our loyalty to the cause of God and humanity. Anyone who throws cold water on our efforts to help the cause of our Allies. The armchair critics still milling over the mistakes of the past. The people who “by innuendo or gossip” endeavour to throw suspicion on those in authority.

“A man’s worst enemies are those of his own household,” so we must list among the fifth columnists the bad tempered people who lower the efficiency of their family by their sulks and rages. Also, the people who wring their hands over the present situation instead of working in some of the agencies for public welfare. The indifferent ones who say: “The war means nothing to me — I do not even read the newspapers.”

The great withdrawal from Flanders was made possible by the dauntless spirit of the men. It was a miracle of character. One commentator from London said: “An Englishman fights best when he has a prayer in his heart.”

You and I must have that prayer, too, as we go about our work. God save humanity!