the tendency to consider one undesirable individual as typical of the group. This leads to many misunderstandings, not a few of which are caused by different indicators and standards of morality and righteousness that are employed by the various people. One group gives greatest emphasis to honesty, another to chastity, another to thrift, with corresponding variation in the censure for different vices. The pet notions of one may be ignored by another, with resulting conflict. The Moslem Afghan may consider the murder of a Christian as the greatest possible service to Allah, whereas among some other groups such an act would be considered the most serious misdeed that could be committed. The conflict of desires is one of the great disturbing elements of society. Each individual is made up of hundreds of desires, some of which are in conflict with each other. The desire to get drunk conflicts with the desire for the esteem of others or the struggle to become economically independent. Many human desires are common to large groups of individuals and can be satisfied best by cooperation. Good roads, schools, libraries, and art galleries cannot be obtained by the ordinary individual working alone. The desire for these can be satisfied only by many individuals pooling their desires and working for the common good. Civilization is nothing short of a manifestation of the ability of many individuals to live closely together in peace and to work together to satisfy desires that can be secured jointly with other individuals. This calls for emphasis on points of agreement and minimizing items of conflict. In the groups which make up society, peace and happiness prevail only where differences are not made to outweigh the similarities. If our civilization is to be perfected the groups must learn to utilize joint advantages, and this can be realized only when there is peaceful cooperation. World peace cannot be secured if the Mohammedan is determined to exterminate the Christian, or if the white man insists on subjugating and dominating men who are yellow or black. Each group must live and let live. Fortunately, science and invention are tending to make man one. The telegraph and telephone, the railway and automobile, the airplane and the radio, the newspaper and the magazine, modern medicine, and international law are all working as great educational agencies to acquaint unsympathetic groups with each other. They show to the individuals forming the groups that their individual and group interests are best served by allowing each other freedom of racial development and an opportunity to worship God in the way which appeals to them as being most nearly perfect. This can be done while at the same time there is cooperation with peoples of other races and creeds for the realization of desires which are common to all mankind and which cannot be realized unless all work together in harmony. If we could each have a world made to order we should doubtless want to eliminate some of the conditions that now lead to contention. We should probably want all of the people to be of our own particular color and shade of reli gious belief. We might even want them to be so uniform in native endowment and temperament that we could, by merely giving the order, have the goose step marched at any time. Whether or not this would be a better world than the one in which we live is immaterial for the present discussion. The fact remains that we find ourselves in a world with a population of nearly two billion people, of many shades of color, who speak hundreds of languages and dialects, and whose religious beliefs are so diverse that literally thousands of different points of view may be encountered. We may not like this situation, but there is nothing to do but make the best of it. It might be simpler to prescribe for a world full of people "as like as peas," but I fancy that it would not be nearly so interesting. Now that we have our problem, with all of its diverse elements, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to let strife take its course and allow turmoil to prevail, or shall we use our best efforts to assist these various peoples to live together in peace for the greatest good to all? And by peace I mean more than the mere absence of war; I mean a peace of mutual toleration and sympathy, so that each element of society may be allowed to develop its highest qualities. No race nor church has a complete monopoly on all of the good there is in the world. A friendly contact of each with the others is sure to result in all learning something, whereas a hostile attitude between the groups eliminates the possibility of one seeing any good in the other. In spite of the differences that are apparent on every hand it is impossible to get away from the idea of the oneness of man. Races and creeds must take second places to the biological unity of all mankind, and speaking in the large, the interests of any one group should be the interests of the whole. There seem to be distinct types, but there is no such thing as a pure race. Into every group has come some of the blood of other groups, and most nations are made up of rather complex mixtures. One almost inevitable attitude that is encountered is that each race considers itself to be the one superior strain of mankind, and those from other lands are regarded as inferior. My Hindu friend, Narayan, says that when a white man came to their home and asked for a drink of water, the water was given, but as soon as the stranger had gone, the vessel from which he drank was broken, since it had been contaminated by an individual of an inferior race. The white races have somehow come to regard mere color of skin as outweighing all other considerations. I remember hearing, in Mexico, an illiterate American coming from "poor white trash” stock refer to a well-educated and highly cultured Mexican gentleman of wealth as "that Greaser." This attitude of self-love seems to be deep-rooted in all races. When it comes to religion, the "I-am-holier-than-thou" attitude seems to be so thoroughly established that men who might associate in a friendly way in 12 03 ར་ I F business may have no sympathy whatever with each other when it comes to the worship of God. There has somehow grown up an idea in the minds of many people that they are serving God best when they are least tolerant with those whose method of worship is different from their own. Probably the fear of competition may in part be responsible for this attitude. Swift said: "We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love, one another." Bacon said: "The greatest vicissitude of things among men is the vicissitude of sect and religion," and Ross said: "There is no scourge of society worse than the strife over religion, for it is the élite who are decimated. The coarser nature, the sensualists, take small heed of religion, and reck little how others worship. It is the idealists, whose care is for the spiritual, who become frenzied at the spectacle of another man's heterodoxy." We cannot expect complete agreement in all of the shades of religious belief, since this must be essentially a matter of individual interpretation. No two individuals have had exactly the same experience, the same learning, and have thought the same thoughts; and since one's philosophy of life is influenced by all of these, there are as many separate and distinct philosophies, or points of view, as there are individuals. Even though the same sacred writings may have been handed down from generation to generation, their interpretation has been modified by the knowledge that has come to the worshipers from other sources. The same passage of scripture might mean something entirely different to an ancient Hebrew in bondage or to a heathen nation than it would to a modern Christian who had the advantage of all the accumulated information of the ages as well as the newer knowledge of the modern world. The fundamental truth behind this passage would remain the same, but the interpretation of it would need to be made by each individual on the basis of his knowledge and experience. The more perfect his knowledge and the fuller his experience, the more likely would he be to give the true interpretation, and the wider would be its application. One of the real problems in arriving at religious harmony is the tendency on the part of the people to adhere to interpretations based on varying experiences and their slowness to adjust their interpretations to the experiences of other groups or to the discoveries made by the researches of science. Because our parents have, all their lives, looked at the distant mountain peak with their naked eyes, we hesitate to use the excellent pair of binocular field glasses which make the view much clearer, but which reveal details that were not visible to those who lived before the instrument for clarifying vision was available. It is impossible for us, by all of our contention, to change the method of formation of the earth or the manner of peopling it; these things happened just as they happened. Nor can we change by argument the nature of God; he is just as he is. Why not, then, cease to fight each other just because our varying experiences lead us to different conclusions from the evidence that is available? Would we not make greater progress toward the real truth, which we are all seeking, if we sat down together in a friendly way and discussed the evidence without all the bitterness and enmity that have come down to us from inquisition days? It is not necessary nor desirable that ideals should be abandoned. Nor should we worry if we do not all come to agreement at once; but could not greater progress toward the truth be made by giving greater emphasis to the common points of belief and letting the differences work themselves out gradually? Controversy does not lead to unity or conversion, either in science or theology. Nor does persecution lessen the virility of an opposing group. There is no greater unifying force than external persecution. The road to social peace leads through the land of sympathy, illuminated by the light of understanding. Ignorance and suspicion must be banished, and their places must be taken by education and good will. This does not mean that all of the races must mix promiscuously, nor that church organizations should be abandoned, but it does mean that each race and each church must be willing to concede that some other race or church may contain some element that is meritorious, and each people must be given an opportunity to develop along the lines of its greatest capabilities. The saying of Goldwin Smith, which has been adopted as a motto by the student cosmopolitan clubs, that "Above all nations is humanity," is gradually growing into the consciousness of educated men and women in all lands. This is being aided by the exchange of students which is fostered by such endowments as the Rhodes Scholarships and the recent foundation established by Simon Guggenheim. Experiences like my own cannot help but leave their impression. The most brilliant classmate I have ever had was a Chinaman, while the honors for my most brilliant student are divided between a Russian Jew, a Japanese, and a man of Dutch ancestry from South Africa. These facts give me a broader sympathy for the people of all lands. The Master came in the meridian of times to bring peace on earth and good will to men, but we have not been very swift to carry out his mandates, nor have we allowed to sink very deeply into our consciousness his doctrine that the greatest of the virtues is charity. We have not all seen the truth expressed as follows by William Camton, in his "Vision of Peter": 'Not for one race nor one color alone Was He flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone! Not for you only-for all men He died, Five were the colors,' the angel said, 'Yellow and black, white, brown, and red; Five were the wounds from which he bled, ། LEADERSHIP AND STRATEGY IN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION THE DEVELOPMENT OF LOCAL INITIATIVE Robbins Gilman, Head Resident, Northeast Neighborhood The distinction between a neighborhood and the community is largely one of individual interpretation. For the purpose of this paper the two terms will be treated as interchangeable, but because the speaker is a settlement worker, the term "neighborhood" will be used instead of community, for to him the former suggests a more easily comprehendable social unit than the latter. Empirical deduction from a settlement window points almost wholly to the conclusion that the size of the political or social unit has in it the germ of its understandableness by those who compose it. A neighborhood, in the sense that I use the term, is generally of that size which allows a certain amount of gossip, and gossip is the fountainhead of that type of analysis which permits people to know of their mutual affairs. The more knowledge of their affairs, the wiser their concerted acts in solving them. Enough, then, for the terminology. We recongize many types and kinds of neighborhoods, and possibly a word or two on types and kinds will set us farther on our way. The neighborhood that has in it all the elements of leadership, and these elements functioning in and for the neighborhood, is probably the ideal. Such a neighborhood has, in all probability, natural boundaries or easily set bounds. The city beautiful is no doubt that city which is composed of the largest number of such neighborhoods. But unfortunately we are not dealing with that type, for it is rare, and our concern is rather elsewhere. There is the neighborhood which is congested-one that has no easily set boundaries. A neighborhood which, because of the number of persons living in it, is suffering from a social and civic inertia born of its size, or dead weight. The University Settlement in New York is situated in such a neighborhood. It is necessary arbitrarily to set the bounds of the intensive area of operations of the University Settlement-seven blocks one way, and five blocks another; these 35 square blocks are designated as the neighborhood. The mass of the population is so dense that general social intercourse is almost impossible. There is the neglected neighborhood which, because of its pocket-like situation, is nobody's concern-not even the real estate operator's-to say nothing of the public service corporation's, or even the municipality's. There is the neighborhood which is neither congested nor neglected, but which lacks what we may call a neighborhood patriotism. This may be due to the type of people of which it is composed, or to the fact that it is a sort of suburb, in the sense that the people who reside in it for the most part only sleep in it. It is easily accessible to a larger center where shops exist and entertainment may |