Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 91:362 (Apr 1934)
Article: Editorials
Author: Rollin Thomas Chafer

BSac 91:362 (Apr 34) p. 129

Editorials

Rollin T. Chafer

Popular Notions Lacking Logical Foundations

A few weeks ago the members of the Byrd Expedition at Little America were cut off from the rest of the world for about a week while their radio plant was being moved from temporary quarters in a tent to the permanent building. After resumption of communication with New York and the receipt of a report of world conditions, Admiral Byrd is reported to have remarked: “I note that the world is still ‘cockeyed.’” He might have expanded his views, as is the fashion today, by treating the various technical aspects of these conditions. It is improbable, however, that his hearers would have welcomed such a recital. With one short, incisive thrust he left his meaning indelibly impressed on the memory of his radio audience. Perhaps the solitude of far-distant Antarctica with its temperature of 60 degrees below zero, isolated from the milieu of the illogical thinking so characteristic of “civilized” regions, was favorable to clarity of thought and pungency of expression. One only needs to keep his terse observation in mind, while reading current literature on the problems of the day, to fully realize its applicability. Anything seems to be acceptable to the editors of popular magazines, provided, always, that the author’s ideas are cleverly or startingly expressed.

Take, for example, the much discussed subject of the cause of and cure for war. A popular English novelist, Miss I. A. R. Wylie, presented the following as the thesis of an article in Harper’s Magazine (October, 1933): “If civilization is to survive, our old-time virtues must be brought up to date. It was these virtues, rather than our wickedness, which landed us into the slaughter of the War. If we had not been brave, faithful, patriotic, and unselfish we should never have fought at all. And our next display of high-powered old-time virtue may finish civilization altogether.” Perhaps the best shortcut method of analysis is an application to a concrete

BSac 91:362 (Apr 34) p. 130

case. The government officials of a country threatened with invasion, let us say, go into a huddle and agree to disarm their forces and march them to the border, where they order them to prostrate themselves before the invading hosts, while the defending commander shouts to the oncoming hoards: “Advance, neighbors, advance! Tramp over our prostrate bodies. Devastate our fields. At the Capital take over the reigns of government. Loot our commercial houses. Invade our homes and carry off our wives and daughters. What were once virtues to us, now are vices. We have brought our virtues up to date. Advance, neighbors, advance!” For this method of avoiding bloodshed and the threatened destruction of civilization, it is not...