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BY LYMAN ABBOTT

THE MAKING OF A MINISTER

R. EDWARD EVERETT HALE died in 1909. We have had to wait eight years for this story of his life.1 It was worth waiting for. His son has written, or rather we should say edited, this life with reverencing candor--a combination rare in biographers. Most portrait painters flatter. A few satirize their sitters. The biographer who can give to the public a dispassionate portrait of one whom he loved and honored is an artist of rare ability. The task laid upon Edward Everett Hale, Jr., was for other reasons one of extreme difficulty. Dr. Hale once said to me that he had never destroyed a letter. He was a great correspondent. He had a tropically fertile mind and a passion for self-expression. One can well believe that the amount of material in his biographer's hands was "very great." It included, he tells us, "thousands of letters, many diaries and day-books, a great number of sermons as well as lectures and addresses, besides note-books, scrap-books, commonplace books, sketch-books, and other such material. His printed writings also were voluminous, and had never been entirely collected, nor even completely catalogued." Out of this superabundant material Mr. Hale has made a wise selection, though we could have spared some of Dr. Hale's letters of foreign travel if their place could have been taken with more letters of an autobiographical and self-revelatory character.

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Edward Everett Hale was born in Boston, May 14, 1822. His father was the owner and editor of the Boston "Daily Advertiser" when that journal was the recognized organ of the intellectual aristocracy of eastern Massachusetts. The daily paper was less a gatherer of news than it is to-day, but its editorial pages exercised a greater influence on public opinion. His father was a cultivated scholar; he had a fine literary sense; kept up his Latin; read French and German easily. His mother, the son tells us, was the only woman in Boston who could read German when I was a boy," by which I understand that he simply means that she was the only woman in Boston within his acquaintance who read German. The boy was born into a literary atmosphere, and from early boyhood was used to books, newspapers, and magazines, and the machinery of producing them. "All of us," he says, were born into a home crammed with newspapers, books, perfectly familiar with types and ink and paper and proof-sheets and manuscripts." The children wrote and printed books and newspapers. At one time "they wrote a whole library. It still exists-the Franklin Circulating Library-little booklets of perhaps three or four inches square in which are printed by hand youthful tales in many volumes." Thus the boy was born, not with a silver spoon in his mouth, but with a pen in his hand, and acquired the kind of culture which can be acquired only during childhood and in a cultivated home. He entered Harvard College at thirteen years of age, after four years at the Latin School. There are no advantages with out some compensating disadvantages. To an eager mind accustomed to living among books and getting knowledge by a process as natural as breathing the mechanical processes of the school were wearisome. "I may as well say," he says, "first as last, that school was always a bore to me. I did not so much hate it as dislike it as a necessary nuisance." Nevertheless, he proved himself a good scholar, both in school and college. He had parts in the sophomore, junior, and senior entertainments and exhibitions; won college prizes for two dissertations; was one of the first eight in the Phi Beta Kappa; and graduated second in his class.

The college in his time was scarcely less mechanical than the school. The students learned their lessons and recited them to the professors. He got his lessons as a matter of course, but found time in addition to read novels, study history, hunt for wild flowers, do philosophical experiments, and take an active part in college student life. I am not sure but that a college course which allowed such students as Edward Everett Hale and Phillips Brooks time for their own independent intellectual activities would not afford better training than the modern The Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale. By Edward E. Hale, Jr. 2 vols. Illustrated. Little, Brown & Co., Boston. $5.

course, which fills the student's life so full of prescribed readings that he has no time to follow his own literary inclinations. Perhaps the modern method is better for the average boy, the older method better for the willing student. Those pessimists who lament the tendencies of modern college life might do well to compare the college of 1917 with the following experience of young Hale in the college of 1837:

"On conversing this morning with those who had been present at prayers, I found that there had been considerable noise, and that one or two of our class were drunk. On going to morning prayers [they] found a good many panes broken in University window. There was a good deal of noise in Dr. Ware's recitation-room. There were one or two apples and a lemon which were being thrown constantly from one side of the room to the other, to the imminent danger of the heads they happened to be aimed at. In the evening after supper... I heard a tremendous explosion which I thought was a pump blown up. .. I found that either this, or a later explosion which I did not hear, was made by a torpedo put on the sill of one of the windows of University." Explosions followed every night for several nights, and these grew more serious as time went on. Three months later, "when we went to prayers this morning we found the chapel in great confusion, owing to the explosion of a bomb placed in front of the pulpit. The windows were all broken, almost every pane of glass being destroyed, the front of the high platform on which the pulpit stands was blown in, the plastering broken in several places where pieces of the shell had entered, woodwork of pews, window-panes and seats hurt in some places, the clock injured, part of the curtain inside of the pulpit torn away, and a couple of inscriptions in immense letters on the wall to this effect: A bone for old Quin to pick.""

Graduating at seventeen years of age, young Hale decided to enter the ministry. His mother especially, but also his father, had always desired him to be a minister, and his friends in college had known of his general intentions long before his graduation. "He did not, however, desire to study in the Divinity School. Just why is not clear. Perhaps it was in part a piece of his lifelong objection for doing anything in a mechanical way, a feeling that made him through life critical of all institutional processes of education." So the son interprets his father's motive, I think correctly. Dr. Hale was by tempera ment and training an independent. He had no inclination to model himself after any prescribed pattern, and it would have been really impossible for him to be run into a mold. He had to be himself. He was preordained to be the architect as well as the builder of his own mind.

The motive which took him into the ministry was not a profoundly spiritual one. "He was not," his son says, "very deeply impressed by the responsibilities and opportunities of a minister's life." And he says himself, "One prime reason for the choice of my profession was my desire to be in a walk where I might press my general literature." His ambition, however, was not merely a literary ambition. He chose the ministry partly because it offered an opportunity for a literary pursuit, but also partly because it offered an opportunity to be "at the same time useful and helpful to all kinds of persons who were not so fortunately placed in the world as himself." The first of these motives may have been the earlier one, but the second soon became and always remained the dominating motive of his life.

The author of Genesis has described in a figure the secret of man's double nature. He was made of earth, but into him God breathed the breath of his own life. Jesus used this figure in a play upon words which I venture to interpret to the English reader by a paraphrase: "The breath of God bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the breath of God." Dr. Hale has left a record of his experience of this breath of God upon his own soul. He was in Albany, where he had gone to aid in an effort which a few were making to establish a Unitarian church in that city. It was before his first pastorate. He was about twenty-two years of age; he was alone, a stranger in a strange city, and doubted whether the people of the so-called parish even knew that he

was in town. Sixty years after he described the experience which then came to him unsought but never to be forgotten:

Perhaps it was to this loneliness that I owe a revelation which stands out in my memories of life. I had been reading in my musty, dark bedroom by an air-tight stove. I think I was reading the "Revue de Deux Mondes." But I put the book down for what people used to call reflection, and I saw or perceived or felt that I was not alone and could not be alone. This Present Power knows me and loves me. I know Him and love Him. He is here, I am here. We are together. And it is a companionship much closer than I could have with any human being sitting in that chair.

The biographer thinks that his father was a believer in theological doctrine. That depends upon what is meant by "theological doctrine." Theology is defined by the Century Dictionary as "The science concerned with ascertaining, classifying, and systematizing all attainable truth concerning God and his relation to the universe." I do not think that Dr. Hale ever was interested in ascertaining, classifying, and systematizing all attainable truth concerning God and his relation to the universe. In 1874, replying to an inquirer who had asked for some books which would explain to him the Unitarian faith, Dr. Hale replied: "What I do or do not happen to think about one thing or another is of very little consequence, if only I have the infinite help of God's holy spirit, which does come to any man who believes God is, that God loves him, and is eager to help him as being indeed his child." It was not the organization of thought but the abundance of life that interested Dr. Hale. To this correspondent he said, "Live with all your might, and you will have more life with which to live."

This consciousness of God was the foundation of Dr. Hale's character and the inspiration of his ministry. "I know," he wrote in one of his letters, "that that divine spirit which guides us always, led me, even in boyhood, to choose such themes, shall I say, as the fit starting-places for the duties of the pulpit. That perfect love casts out fear, and that this love must show itself in action and not in word-this may be said to be a fair foundation for whatever the pulpit has to say or do." It is true that Dr. Hale was always a loyal Unitarian, and did very much to inspire modern Unitarianism. What he meant by Unitarianism he made clear by referring to its origin. “Unitarians," he said, "were first so called (in Hungary, 1563) because they believed in the unity of religion for all Christians, whatever their especial creed, whether Lutheran, Calvinist, or Socinian." His Unitarianism was that of Dr. Martineau, who objected to the title, and permitted it under protest. Not the creed, but the spirit of a church which insisted that unity should depend on the spirit, held them both loyal to the Church in which they were born. They were Unitarians because they both believed that the unity of Christendom should depend not on a common creed but on the unifying spirit of faith, hope, and love.

But Dr. Hale was much more than a preacher of ethical culture, much more than a social reformer. It is true, as his son says, the father was one of the pioneers in the modern movement for social work; but hat work was always inspired by his faith in the living God. "Hospitality, education, charity in the life of a church are all subordinate to worship," he said. This spirit ual faith converted his early desire to be helpful into a passion for helpfulness. Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt ceased to be his models. He enjoyed literature as a recreation, but he had no interest in merely playing with ideas himself. Thought became his instrument. His stories were parables. It will be diffi cult to find anywhere a keener satire of that specious internationalism which repudiates love of one's own country than is furnished by "The Man Without a Country;" or a better satire on the modern habit of self-measurement by the mere quantity of one's activity, not the quality, than "My Double and How He Undid Me," or a more inspiring interpretation of loyalty to Jesus Christ by service and sacrifice, rather than by profession, than the story "In His Name." The biographer tells us that his father regarded that as his best story, and I agree with him. It is not more popular than "The Man Without a Country," but it is the interpretation of a profounder life.

Dr. Hale was naturally an individualist. The demands made upon him by the needs of the community in his first parish, the city of Worcester, and the call of his heavenly Father which

those needs interpreted to him, made him from the beginning of his pastorate a social worker. Long before Dr. Parkhurst coined the phrase, "The church is the minister's force, not his field," Dr. Hale adopted this principle. Neither church nor pastor was concerned with spiritual experiences alone. "Wherever there were those who had no one else to stand by them in their social life-whether it were to help them to some work that should give them a daily wage or to offer them some association and fellowship which should make their lives happier or more effective-there, in his view, the Church of the Unity should be at hand to counsel and help." His first call to Boston, to a church well established and a.congregation made up of older people, but without Sunday-school or benevolent institutions, he declined. The second call to Boston won him because the church was largely made up of young people, energetic, wide awake, eager for work and for some one to guide them. What that church became under his organizing and inspiring ability, and what Dr. Hale became through its influence as a leader in every form of Christian philanthropy, is a part of the history of the American Church.

The other effect which Dr. Hale's religious experience had upon him was seen in his conversion from a conservative into a progressive. The Boston "Advertiser," of which his father was proprietor and editor, was a representative of the Whig party and an admirer of Daniel Webster. His mother's brother was that Edward Everett who ran as Vice-President on the pacifists' ticket with Mr. Bell in the campaign which elected Abraham Lincoln. Thus certainly by his training, and I think also by his temperament, Dr. Hale was a conservative. In the letters which his son publishes there is no reference found to any of the radically anti-slavery men of his time-Theodore Parker, William L. Garrison, Wendell Phillips-and only the barest references to Henry Ward Beecher and Charles Sumner. He makes no reference to the capture of Sims and his return to slavery, which inflamed not only all Boston but all New England with fiery resentment. But the abolition of the Missouri Compromise so far converted Dr. Hale that he took an active part in the Emigrant Aid Society, which had as its object the migra tion of free men to settle in Kansas and make it a free State. Before the Civil War he was hoping against hope that there would be no war, and when it came his comment was, I am exquisitely sorry now that it is here. I did not know that I could be so sorry about anything out of the family."

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But there was no doubt of his loyalty to the Union and to liberty, and at the war's close he threw himself into the work of creating what he called "The New Civilization" with characteristic energy and enthusiasm. In his college days he had written with apparent approval of a college preacher who complained that "Judea has given way to Texas, and anti-slavery and Canada take the place of salvation." But during the war he preached a sermon in favor of the war loan, and when it was over he wrote to his son that "with the end of the war the time will come for us not only to colonize the South but to convert the Southern cities by an infusion of all Christian life and charity in a way they have known nothing of." The sentence is worth quoting as an indication that Dr. Hale, in spite of his broad-mindedness, had not in 1865 gotten free from the provincialism of the Athens of America. By 1889 he had outgrown that provincialism and become an internationalist. In that year, fourteen years before the First Hague Conference, he made in Washington an address in which, so far as I know, was first publicly proposed a Permanent International Tribu nal for the settlement of international controversies.

I am inclined to think the greatest power that any man may covet for himself is the power of growing. That power Edward Everett Hale possessed in a remarkable degree. He retained his vigor of mind and body to the end. He attended the inauguration of Mr. Taft on March 4, 1909, and would have preached, if he could have obtained his physician's permission, on Anniversary week of that year, on June 6. On June 10 he died. The secret of his growth, indeed the secret of his powers, he has given to the world in his ever-memorable paraphrase of Paul's summary of the religion of faith, hope, and love: "Look up and not down; look forward and not back; look out and not in; lend a hand.”

The Knoll, Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York.

BY JEAN BROOKE BURT

When it is over and the Great Cause won,
Then you can say how hard it was to go,
We two together, underneath the sun,

Alone, on some far hill where sweet winds blow.
But now there is not time for talk, just deeds
Of sacrifice, made glorious to us all.
We will be brave for one another's needs,
Answering dry-eyed the country's call.
We will be wise, my Love, unto the end

When you must leave me, not forlorn, for now

I know our hearts flame as one fire, and blend
Like mist that gathers at a steamer's bow.
We have had days together, you and I;
Memories of these lie fresh within my heart,
So when the hour must come to say good-by,
Remembering, I will be brave to part.
When it is over, if you come to me,

Your clear eyes kind with knowledge of the fires
Of battlefields, God grant we two will see
Peace, and the waiting dreams of our desires.

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BUSINESS TO WIN

N discussing" business as usual" we have taken the position that business must be unusual, so to speak, during the war. It ought always to be remembered that all that the Government and the manufacturer do or determine not to do, as well as all that the individual does or omits doing, should have as its primary principle, not "Business for Pleasure," or, in the ordinary meaning, "Business for Profit,” but “Business to Win."

In continuing the discussion we here print a communication from Mr. F. T. Miller, whose far-sighted activities in the months preceding our declaration of war against Germany were an important factor in providing such measure of industrial preparedness as we have had. In printing this letter we wish to acknowledge it as a specially clear expression of our own views:

"The public has not been urged to cut off all water freight and travel in order to release in advance ships and seamen, which might later be needed for Government use, as evidently this would disperse the crews and lay up the ships. If this had been done, ships, when required by the Government, would be out of commission and would not be available for immediate use. On the contrary, the Government has commandeered ships when each could be put to immediate use, and the traffic has gradually been accommodated by substitutes or re-routage.

"The automobile industry has been allowed to share the use of chrome steel with the Government, to continue the manufacture of cars of all sorts and keep their organizations together in running order, so that the plants and their organizations may be in readiness to serve the Government in the manufacture of war munitions as fast as definite work can be assigned to each. The public has not been urged to discontinue the use of automobiles in order to release these plants and their labor. Had this been done, the plants would be out of commission, the labor would be dispersed, and the organizations would not be in readiness to serve the Government promptly as its requirements arise.

"A prominent financier identified with the Administration, in an address before a body of business men on December 6, is quoted by the press as having said: The great thing you can do to help win this war is to get the idea of personal responsibility, so that when the people have a dollar to spend they will weigh, not whether they can afford to spend it in the way they desire, but whether the Government can afford to have them spend it in the way they desire. . . . We must see that the dollar spent for unnecessary things is a menace to the country. .. We have seen Congress appropriate $19,000,000,000. We are demanding from labor and workshops a substantial part of this sum in twelve months. The obvious conclusion which one must at once draw from these figures is that workshops must be released; labor must be released from making all things which it has been making for our comfort, pleasure, and luxuries to the work the Government wants done."

"This principle, if applied to all industries, may not only put out of commission some plants which may be later found to be essential for Government use and make them unready to serve the Government immediately when needed, but may have a tendency to disrupt the general production of wealth by which the war industries must be supported. The question which naturally arises in the lay mind is: Why not, as the necessity for each arises, commandeer the plants, together with their organizations, while they are in running order, and, in the meantime, encourage rather than disrupt general production? "If the purpose of the War Savings Campaign' is the immediate present release of labor and plants for future Government use, then a waste in production will occur before each plant is specifically required.

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"If the purpose of the War Savings Campaign is to reduce the cost of labor and materials by limiting consumption, then why not first attempt to reduce that cost by eliminating profiteering of all kinds? The President has stated in his message to Congress, in substance, that the laws of supply and demand are now inoperative.

"If the War Savings Campaign results in the general prac tice of hoarding, it will release labor and capital only to cause hunger and bankruptcy.

"With the very human tendency toward fear, with the possi bility of a long war, and with the probability of panics caused by unexpected reverses, a campaign of unreasoned economy may easily induce the practice of hoarding and result in a serious business depression, causing deficiency of production and lowering our chances of winning the war.

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"Thrift that employs its savings for production cannot be too strongly urged. The nimble sixpence' is of more service to the country than is the slothful pound,' both in times of peace and in times of war. Production in the United States is a factor vital to the success of the Allies: the United States, unlike England and France, has the production of no other country to fall back upon.

"The general production of our country is said to be about forty billion dollars annually, and the general business about one hundred billion dollars, of which perhaps ninety per cent or more is domestic business. The economic history of the country has shown that business can withstand many adverse foreign influences, but that it is easily affected by internal conditions, even of a temperamental nature.

"The whole world is drifting from individualism to government control. It is vital that this control shall be constructive. If ships, plants, or industries are needed for the prosecution of the war, they should be taken when and as required; but an indirect releasing of labor and plants for possible future Government use through a general boycott of business or hoarding of money or materials is unconstructive control.

"In his recent address before the United States Chamber of Commerce at Atlantic City the Secretary of War said: There is but one answer to the destruction which has gone on in the

wealth of the world, and that is production of new wealth. Therefore the primary funct. of business is to produce." Government control should encourage production in such a

manner as to maintain and improve the tools of industry, which
should be operated with a view to increased efficiency until
drafted for specific war purposes.
F. T. MILLER."

WHAT THE WOMEN ARE DOING FOR OUR ARMY AND

I

NAVY

THE HOSPITABLE Y. W. C. A. IN WAR TIME

WAS blue," said a man in khaki, recently; "I was very blue, and I never would have believed it possible to have such a good time among strangers.

Said another: "When I go over to France, in the trenches, I shall think oftener of this house than of all the other places I have seen since I came to camp."

These two men were speaking of Hostess Houses. Fifty-eight of them have been built at the various camps in this country, or contracted for, and thirty-three are now in active operation.

If any one is inclined to wonder what the Young Women's Christian Association can possibly have to do with war, he will find his answer-or at least one answer in those houses. What purposes these houses serve can best be told, perhaps, in such pictures as are reproduced on the two following pages. The houses serve for the soldier as the hospitable home of a friend and neighbor, and they provide what these men need but otherwise would not have-the normal and wholesome company and influence of women. We wonder whether the men of any other armies in history could ever find the recreation, the education, and the homelike environment that are here pictured. Traditionally there has been little of good associated with women in army camps. In the category of "camp followers" there has been in former years a special stigma attached to the women of the camps. The Young Women's Christian Association has brought about a revolution. These pictures that come from North, Northeast, and West, and from the eastern and western South, record that revolution at a glance. These Hostess Houses are monuments to the patriotism and fine influence of the young American

woman.

As may be seen by the pictures, these houses vary in design; but each house is planned so as to include a large receptionroom, where the mothers, wives, sisters, and sweethearts who go to visit the soldiers in camp may meet them in homelike surroundings; a rest-room for women waiting until the soldier is off duty; a nursery where children may be left by visiting parents; a cafeteria where men as well as women may eat. Telephones or couriers summon the soldier to the Hostess House on the arrival of his friends. No summons is needed, however, for many a soldier who goes because he craves a bit of home cooking or a place that has the atmosphere of a hospitable friend's home.

It is not only in the camps that the Young Women's Christian Association provides hospitality for the men under military training, but also in communities adjoining the camps. In those communities the Young Women's Christian Association has opened no less than sixty-one centers to provide recreation for the soldiers and for other purposes. In these centers girls are taught proper respect for the uniform of the country, and advised as to how they should conduct themselves in the company of soldiers, who are regularly entertained under careful chaperonage. These and all the buildings and cafeterias of the Association are open to all men of the Army and Navy. These places afford not only meeting-places for soldiers and those who come to call on them, but also entertainments, concerts, and dances. In these centers, as well as in the Hostess Houses, there is in this way provision made for soldiers to have the company of women under proper auspices.

Of the thirty-three Hostess Houses now in use five are for colored women. The very fact that a safeguard is being thrown about white girls makes any menace to the colored girl more real. She is certainly subject to every strain and temptation in war times that is put upon her white sister. So these Hostess Houses for colored women have been provided, and colored secretaries are directing Young Women's Christian Association

work among colored girls along the same lines as that for white girls.

Among these plans for the protection of all sorts and conditions of girls is that of the Patriotic League. This now numbers some two hundred thousand members. War workers have compiled a directory of all girls in communities affected by the war, with information as to nationality, addresses, guardian's name, social, business, and religious life, etc. The button of the Patriotic League indicates that the wearer is an adherent of the type of patriotism and morale for which the Young Women's Christian Association stands. What it indicates can be told in the words of a young mill girl who, when asked by a new girl what the button meant, answered: " Well, as far as I can get it, when you wear a button and a young gentleman friend sees it, he says, 'Nothing doing here."

It is not only, however, in or near the camps that the Young Women's Christian Association is doing its war work. War has transformed the country, and, in particular, the country's industry. For instance, in the gun division of the Ordnance Bureau at Washington, the majority of the fifteen hundred employees are women. Hundreds of other employees are needed. In industries throughout the country positions left vacant by men called to the colors are being filled by women. More and more the work done in munitions factories will become woman's work. Even ships will be built by women. Indeed, the other day an English officer predicted that the time may come when English battle-ships will be entirely constructed by women, from the submission of the first blue print to the slipping off the ways.

These new and, according to familiar standards, abnormal conditions have not been without their menace to the physical and moral well-being of women. To meet these conditions the Young Women's Christian Association is making provision. In particular, the Association has felt the need of making provision for the housing of these women and girls. The Government in this respect has been laggard. The Young Women's Christian Association also feels that it must make provision for the wholesome social life of these women and these girls ; for they will not be good workers unless they are contented. More especially, the Association is assigning social workers to groups of foreign women and girls to accustom them as soon as possible to American habits and to the English language.

To meet these and other new requirements the Young Women's Christian Association has undertaken to raise a fund of five million dollars. It is estimated that this sum will meet demands up to the 1st of July next. As a consequence of its "drive" which culminated on January 17, practically all of this sum has been raised.

The President of the United States has expressed his admiration for the work of the Young Women's Christian Association and the high value which he puts upon its work, and the Chairman of the Government's Commission on Training Camp Activities, Mr. Raymond Fosdick, has said that the War Department's "attempt to rationalize the environment of our army camps would suffer considerably if it were not for the splendid efforts of the Young Women's Christian Association." What we have described here has to do only with the work of the Association on this side of the ocean. There is no doubt that its work in France, for the nurses at the front, for the girls in the French munition plants, and for our men who go overseas, will increase.

It is evident that the country ought to do what it is called upon to do by the legend on Mr. Benda's effective posters designed for the Association-"Stand behind the country's girlhood."

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LIVING ROOM OF THE Y. W. C. A. HOSTESS HOUSE AT CAMP DEVENS, AYER, MASS.

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