Symphony No. 1 for Victory

I. Allegro Moderato

The thought of peace is but another thought;
Thoughts born of peace can liberate the world.

When from the heights of God’s exalted kingdom,
Effulgence flies and animates this sphere,
Clothing itself in human understanding.
And hearts awakened, will bestir themselves,
No more will sword meet sword upon the battlefield,
No more will lance meet lanes in argument.
The warrior and the diplomat alike
Give place to those whose clearer vision
Reveals the Light of Grace and Grace of Light,
Who serve that Holy Spirit and nothing else.
Bathed in that pristine glory they appear
Inspired to others, yet can raise their steps
In steadied measure while they tread the earth,
Perceiving far beyond both love and hate,
They pierce the veils of time and prejudice
That continue dissensions even when treaties are signed,
So that from costly war to costlier war,
The history of the world is written in blood,
And civilizations are buried in decay.

Is this terrific war with its blood lust
To be followed by other hatreds clothed
As servants of morality and rectitude,
So that the morrow will continue as the day,
Separating men as black and white,
Dividing humanity as sheep and goats?
“Vengeance is mine,” said the Lord in sacred scripture;
“Hate not,” has been the uttered word of all
Who have carried the torch of truth to men.
And yet there are a multitude of wretches
Who borrow their morals from the enemy.
And in the cause of justice end liberty,
They would extend the viciousness of mighty,
They would retain the concentration camp.
They would maintain their own secret police,
They would harass the private citizens.
They would preserve the strictest supervision,
So again those least guilty would suffer most,
And all the crimes committed at Versailles
Would magnify themselves in ghastliness,
Sowing the seeds of mounting epidemics
Whose toll of life would decimate the earth,
Leaving behind the most incapable,
And burying the hopes of all beneath the dust.

Yet there are other weaklings who stand and cry:
“Do not destroy the beaten enemy,
Do not wreak havoc on their mighty cities,
Do not set fire to homes and libraries,
For this preserves injustice and prevents
The rule of might and God upon this earth.”
But when the bloody fee is most savage,
Beyond the ruthlessness of primitives,
When in sadistic glee he rapes fair women,
When Jews and Poles fear worse than animals,
When the glory of ancient Hellas is forgotten,
And depredations of the Turk or Slav
Seem little before the torrent of the present woes,
These weaklings do not raise their voice in horror,
Even their churches, in the name of Christ,
Are praying for the Tueton, not the Greek,
Are pitying the German, not the Slav,
Nor offered once a petition to their God,
To save His people from such beastliness,
That even the knout of Czar would seem a blessing.
How can we treat like men who act like devils,
Who need the exorcism, of holy rites,
Who must reclaim their humanhood before
The mercy and the justice they would crave
Can be bestowed on them, the fallen foe.

There are the paths of Scylla and Charybdis
Which we must shun to bring true peace to earth.
Today we need an over greater insight.
To salve the mighty problems standing before us,
Else we should turn from war to greater strife.
Wisdom is not a word or sentiment,
But a fiery flame that lights the why of life;
Now is the call to more than under landing,
That man meet man in love and not in thought,
Where reason falters and passion leads astray,
The living heart illuminates the way,
And in the light of holiness gives birth
To brotherhood and justice on this earth,

But first of all we must have victory,
Victory must come before we say:
“This was the enemy, this his just deserts.”
The thought of peace is but another thought,
Thoughts born of peace can liberate the world.
The thought of justice is but another thought,
The thought of vengeance is still another thought,
Democracy another, order still another,
And all these thoughts and endless chains of them
Detract the force of thought of victory,
Impede our plans, and so extend the conflict
Even for years. So it is we ourselves
And not the enemy, who hold back peace.

The selfish man who seeks his own enrichment,
The lazy man who loafs from hour to hour,
The one to whom a contract is no honor,
Who only sees a grander opportunity,
And wastes the moneys of our government—
They harm no foe. Our army and our navy
Are the grist of this grinding greediness.
When many Americans are not yet fully won
To sacrifice their pleasures for victory,
How can this victory be gained by arms?
What motives are our soldiers fighting for?
What needs have we for sailors and marines,
If they are dying to help these parasites?
Beware, beware of further demonstrations
Of hungry heroes maimed by former brethren
Within the sight of nation’s capitol!
We want no promise. We must have action
And action now, action for victory.
We must have thought and thought for victory,
We must have prayers and prayers for victory,
We must unite, unite for victory.
Until that victory is won and fully won,
Not only must our goods be sacrificed,
Not only must our moneys be placed in bonds,
But all our inner hopes be concentrated
Upon this one grand aim: Complete Victory.

Let Frenchman strive with Frenchmen—we are not French,
Let Germans plot against Germans in their own way,
Let Francos equivocate to save their skins,
And Lavals sell themselves a hundred fold—
Be not misled. These are but the sideshows
Of a circus. We want no circuses at all,
This is an all out war for victory.

II. Andante

With light was the world created,
When finished God rested in His light,
From Peace God did come to create it,
When finished, He returned to His Peace.
This is the Peace beyond understanding.
The peace that humans crave and nations crave.

When on the placid pool a stone is thrown,
The universe is set into commotion.
The inner heart alone has touched true Peace,
The outer heart experiences joy and sorrow,
But heart is more than joy, greater than sorrow,
The heart seeks peace, knows peace, the heart is peace.

We look upon the world in vast contention,
We watch the endless slaughter and the lust
For vengeance that retains the endless turmoil.
Whence can we return, oh man? Whither go?
The cries of millions of mothers for their sons,
The crowds of bereaved sweethearts,
Each unconscious of the other,
Alike in pain, alike in callousness
What shall we say to them? What can we say?
O mothers what weep! How long will you weep?
When you weep for the stranger, as Christ has wept,
When you look at the stranger, as Christ has looked,
Your very tears will nourish the plant of Peace.
How can the new dawn arise, when we remain in our darkness?
How can the new day give blessing, when we prefer the night?
Where a thousand warnings would not serve,
A thousand pangs, perhaps, may point the way;
For the suffering heart may open itself,
The tortured breast produce its own heaven.
The God afar is not enough for us,
We must see the God in ourselves and in all others.

The victory of war must come the first,
The victory of peace will come the last.
When lance and sword are turned again to plowshares,
As even now plowshares are transmuted,
When the parliament of man is next convened,
we see no hope—only a grand cotillion
Wherein the partners change for the next movement.
For the Christian nations will some, demanding Christ,
And Islamic men will come insisting on Allah,
And the Gandhi men will come with satyagraha,
And the Jewish men will still adhere to Moses,
And the Russians will say, “Away with all religion.”
What hope is there, with people so divided?

            “O God, in every temple I see those who see Thee,
And in every tongue that is spoken Thou art praised.
            Polytheism and Islam grope after Thee.
            Each religion says, ‘Thou art One, without equal.’
            Be it mosque men murmur holy prayer
Or church, the bells ring for love of Thee.
            Awhile I frequent the Christian cloister, anon the mosque,
            But Thee only I seek from fan to fan.
            Thine elect know nought of heresy or orthodoxy,
Whereof neither stands behind the screen of the truth.
            Heresy to the heretic—dogma to the orthodox—
            But the dust of the rose-petal belongs to the heart of the perfume seller.”

                                                            Abu’l Fazl.

Shall the men of Christ attend, demanding interest?
Shall the men of Allah insist upon usury?
Shall the men of Gandhi protect the money-lenders?
And the men of Jewry forswear the jubilee?
Then all are damned, believer and heretic,
And cursed are they of every creed and faith,
Who praise the Lord and themselves deny the teachings.
“Forgive our debts” is but a mockery,
“As we forgive” is only a hollow chant
“Our debtors” continue, and we demand the pay,
In the face of God and Christ and Holy Scripture.

Is Nazi to be condemned for viciousness,
By any jury tinged with hypocrisy,
Who demand of them a nobler norm of behavior
Than they demand of themselves? With no example
Set before those craven monsters,
They will return again to beastliness,
Or else the Christian will turn upon the Christian,
And both taunt Jew with common epithets,
And Muslim impale Hindu with arguments,
And each upon the other turn his jives,
So that the dragon’s teeth are once more sown,
And wars continue after victory be won.

Now is the hour of our indecision,
Within the coming season we must decide,
Whether to turn to God or hold to Mammon,
Lest we call Christ the Lord and call in vain,
And “Allah Er-Rahman” and “Er-Rahim”
Are only vain and empty boastings.
This is no time to face another problem,
We must love victory and have it soon,
Upon the battlefield and in the councils,
But most of all within our very selves,
To really demonstrate the love of Christ,
To prove the wisdom of Lord Krishna’s teachings,
To illustrate Islam and all it means.

Sect of party and religious cult,
Place the consciousness within the mind.
Within the mind are seeds of propaganda,
And when we feed them propaganda feeds.
If we like Goebbels’ medicine we should pay
High tribute to this most astounding person,
Perfecter of perfidious propaganda.
But there is another way within the heart,
Which leads to Peace. The light of God is there,
Aye, the light of God is there.

In perfect Peace God lay.
In His dormancy He dreamed;
A beautiful dream it was, filled with all good things.
Then He said; “I shall make this dream come true.”
He awakened and shaped His dream:
He sent out His light, aye, He sent out His light.
From this light He fashioned day and night,
Form and spirit, rock and plant and animal,
And finally drew an elixir from them all,
Modeled this elixir in His own image,
Begetting man.
(Christ has said “Ye are gods,”
I say: Either Christ’s words are true or Hitler’s.
Within ourselves are also far abroad
Are Armageddon’s battler, Krukshetra’s wars).

Once Lord Buddha set beneath the Bo-tree,
His fast far greater than that of Gandhi today,
Was taken for the purpose of aiding all—
For he knew not friend or foe, party or faction,
And liberation was a supreme undertaking;
All or none, none or all; no half-way house to truth.
One cannot compromise the way to Peace.

God slept, God dreamed, God made.
His sleep was Peace,
His dream was Beauty,
His action was Form.
But His Being was wherewithal Love and Unity.
If we are gods,
If the Psalmist was right and Christ was right,
We shall know that Peace is repose.
And action is War, the mind is the cause of confusion.
When once the human heart regains itself,
A perfect picture will stand before its vision,
Peace, Victory and War commingled together,
War, Victory and Peace all facets of Life,
And man himself greater than even these.

III. March Triumphant

“For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonders that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew
From the nation’s airy navies grappling the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunder-storm;

Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of he World.”
                                    From “Lecksley Hall,” Alfred Tennyson.

For the day shall be forthcoming, and the day shall be indeed,
When we look beyond the barriers of our race and caste and creed,

When the vision we are holding of the world that is to be,
We shall make with our own doing into reality.

For the night of words is over, and the day of deeds is near,
So that if there is a heaven, we may know that heaven here.

When this ghastly sight is over, there will be no more awaiting,
For the peace we have been wishing shall come through our creating

Better palaces and churches, better factories and roads,
Better sites for water power and more beautiful abodes.

Some may call it socialism, some may call it common-sense,
But the doing, not the calling, nor the whither, how and whence,

Turns our fancies into hard facts, betokens a better life,
Than the former age has given with its bitterness and strife,

So I look from Kaiser’s shipyards to Siberia’s factories,
And alike I sea the heroes in their spattered dungaries,

And alike I see men working and alike I see men try,
To build a heaven here on earth, wad not in some far-off sky,

Mighty China is awakening, mighty China with her past,
Whose hoary nigh ancestors stand so utterly outclassed,

By tremendous sacrifices, and Thermopylaic stand,
Countless heroines and heroes in that gallant, ancient land.

And across her lengthy borders, that Colossus of the North,
Transmuted and transfigured elegantly now stands forth.

Yes, those thousands miles of borders circumscribing Cathay’s land,
Shows the men of Han and Hruska, fighting, working, hand to hand.

And the battles they’ve been waging against a craven enemy,
Has banded them together in the name of Liberty.

While across another ocean, that once Mistress of this Sea,
Stands Mistress of the whole while world because Democracy

Has broken the hard shackle that held in its fast tether,
The haughty high Imperialist, and the coolie, down, together.

But the haughty, high Imperialist has found another place.
Functioning as a elder brother to the entire human race,

So the people from far India, to Jamaica is the West,
Who together in the passed were cursed are now together blessed.

While both Americas, North and South welcome each other’s hand,
With no suspicion of ill-will is found in any land.

While standing higher than them all, sealed by their common blood,
The Parliament of men unites them all in brotherhood.

As God is neither North nor South, and neither West nor East,
And as within God’s brotherhood, there’s no greatest and no least,

So in the future parliament, men stand as God’s creations,
And the mighty are respectful to the least of all the Nations.

For truth and beauty, hope and love, have naught to do with size.
And even the littlest of the least are mighty in heart’s eyes.

“The Power of the Trinity” returned to Ethiope
The lower of God, the Power of truth, is mightier than hope,

Is mightier than might itself because it comprehends,
No good nor bad, her large no small no beginnings and no ends.

This Power here, this Power now, will bring us Victory,
That Peace that was, that Peace that is, that Peace, that is to be.

Next we may look to Africa, where, from this awful strife,
Death has given place to death, and life brought forth new life.

And as a woman suffers much at the dramatic hour of birth.
This dramatic hour of suffering encompassing the earth

Betokens Mother Earth in labor, and presently she’ll give
A better version of herself where black and white may live,

Each unto itself, may be, or each unto the other,
Who has a common parent is a sister or a brother,

And if the whole humanity will face the common light,
The blessings of democracy are true for black and white,

Or were our leaders fooling us with the Atlantic charter,
To call another parliament to bargain and to barter,

To free a hundred million souls, enslave that many more,
And only bring us, in the end, to a still more bloody war?

Now take our own democracy, these great United States,
Purged from pride and prejudice and long inherited hates,

Purged from consciousness of class, looking far ahead,
Offering fellowship and food, whose sons have bled

In civil war, taught in our schools to fight for high ideals,
Freeing the Cuban or the Czech from conqueror’s crushing heals

That self some stand has made her march, even when war is won,
To feed the starving and heal the sick, and when these tasks are done

To call upon her scientists and on her greatest men,
That one for all and all for one must be our common plan.

The Spanish speaking nations are learning all together.
That friendship can be something more than blossoms or fair weather

For in the coming centuries the wheel of life may move
Brazil or Chile or Mexico into the highest groove.

For even in America, cultures come and cultures go,
The Mayan or the Chimu rise, the Toltec and Inca fall low,

But the genius of those peoples has blended a new race,
With the blood of Europeans, destined for a higher place,

For there is neither North nor South within God’s brotherhood,
For whatever God’s created He imbued with His own good.

For the coming cycle is not based on theory,
What we do, not what we are shall make what we shall be.

If we hold to a theory, or we deny an “I am,”
The mind will battle other minds, and thus a schism

That cleave the world in parties and in the end
Disease in epidemic form shall suddenly descend

Upon us all, wherever we stand, and all the human face
Be swept in vast catastrophe from the earth’s present face,

For the Atlantic charter defer no Atlantis’s fate,
It came before, it shall come again, just so long as hate

Masters the human heart, conceived. But pain brings forth compassion
But in the brighter world to be, the heart may somehow fashion

A place for every one, whatever his outlook be,
So radical and conservative may live and both be free,

So many social orders may exist and toleration
Exist throughout the whole wide world, that every nation

May find its own existence, fit in a perfect plan
For the Federation of the World, and the Parliament of Man.