TO 
 
 The World Reach of Oar Task 
 
 By 
 
 CHARLES ALVIN BROOKS 
 
 Student Fellowship for Christian Life-Service" 
 
 25 Madison Avenue 
 New York City 
 
Address delivered at the Student Conference 
 University of Illinois 
 Champaign, Illinois 
 February 17th, 1922 
 
 CHARLES ALVIN BROOKS, Secretary 
 City and Foreign Speaking Missions, 
 The American Baptist Home Mission Society 
 
THE WORLD REACH OF OUR TASK 
 
 AMERICA occupies a unique position in two 
 regards. In spite of everything we are the 
 hope and reliance of the world today; and, we 
 are the meeting place of the ends of the earth. One 
 of the most humbling impressions an American gains 
 from Europe today is the almost pathetic faith which 
 the masses of people repose in us, in our good inten- 
 tions, in our motives and aims. One can only devoutly 
 wish that we may never fail them or betray this con- 
 fidence. 
 
 It is a difficult thing to explain how this has come 
 about — this confidence in America. It is a thing 
 which no wise man among us would dare claim for 
 ourselves and which provokes, not boasting or self- 
 righteousness, but true humility and an utter sense 
 of unworthiness. Yet it is the cherished belief of 
 many simple-hearted souls whose knowledge of the 
 world is not large and who have insufficient data 
 or experience for making such a dangerous general- 
 ization. Reason enough there is we know, for sus- 
 picion and doubt. But still it is true, the world 
 expects something different of us — something more 
 of us than of others. 
 
 America is a cosmopolitan nation and for better 
 or worse this land of ours is the meeting place of 
 the peoples of every nation. The ebb and flow of 
 international and inter-racial life, to and from Amer- 
 
 3 
 
ica, is the medium for carrying the best and worst 
 of America to the uttermost parts of the world. 
 Whether we will or no, by very virtue of our place in 
 the world, America is a missionary nation. 
 
 A mere enumeration of these various elements 
 arrests the imagination. Here are the diplomatic 
 corps with their secretaries and attaches, number- 
 ing, in all, thousands, coming from all lands. 
 There are more thousands of travelers who visit us 
 annually, with eager curiosity, note books in hand, 
 studying our habits and institutions. Business and 
 commerical agents who are resident in our great 
 centers, number more thousands still. In American 
 schools of various grades are over ten thousand for- 
 eign students, young men and young women out of 
 Latin- America, Europe, the Orient and the Islands 
 of the Sea, young men and women who are going to 
 be the leaders of tomorrow in the lands from which 
 they came. Who can measure the potentialities of 
 such a group? 
 
 The most numerous of all are the great masses of 
 immigrant folk, many hundreds of thousands of 
 whom "are birds of passage". They are here for 
 awhile, then go home to become missionaries of the 
 American idea and spirit. All these, for better or 
 worse, are the interpreters of America. 
 
 If we could trace these various influences to their 
 farthest reach, it would stir within us mingled feel- 
 ings and in all likelihood would considerably jar our 
 complacency. 
 
 It is possible, however, to trace some of the influ- 
 ences, and from these we are able to imagine others 
 
 4 
 
which escape us. We have said that for better or 
 worse the process goes on. Let us first concentrate 
 on the worst. 
 
 America's Failure 
 
 During a year in Europe we met repeatedly in 
 various stations, crowds of returning immigrants. 
 We could recognize them at a glance, with their 
 queer bundles, herded like sheep, led by some one 
 who acted as interpreter, looking for all the world 
 precisely as they did when they landed at Ellis Is- 
 land; pathetic, tragic figures, many of them. We 
 always took pains to seek an interview and found 
 almost without exception that they depended upon 
 an interpreter to speak with us. They had lived in 
 America, many of them for years, but had missed 
 America. America had failed to establish vital rela- 
 tions with them. Some of them were broken in 
 health; many were sullen and dispirited, suspicious 
 or indifferent. They resented America's failure to 
 adjust her relations with these humble, simple people 
 who had brought to America dreams and hopes, 
 rosy and bright. They had brought ambition, brawn 
 and sinew and had left behind health and youth and 
 joy and were carrying away as the great souvenir, 
 disillusionment, and the burnt-out enthusiasm of a 
 great venture. If we had the imagination to picture 
 it all we could not retain our complacency in the face 
 of the revelation. 
 
 In a number of the Atlantic Monthly, early in 1921, 
 a writer recounts his intercourse with out-bound 
 migrants who were turning their backs on America 
 with nothing but dislike and bitterness. We felt as 
 
 5 
 
we read that article that it was over-drawn. That 
 these people would all be harking back to America 
 and glad to get back to "God's Country" we were 
 very sure. We feel that way because we see only 
 what we want to see. This is not all of the story 
 and there are volumes to be written in rebuttal, but 
 none of it can change the fact that multitudes leave 
 America to go home with very different feelings 
 from those with which they came and without hav- 
 ing discovered America or being discovered by Amer- 
 ica. 
 
 We are all interested in students, the keen alert 
 Orientals and others who are often the brightest 
 of their class. Ten thousand of them! What a re- 
 sponsibility ! The man who sat down by the late Yuan 
 Shih Kai of China and whispered into his ear that 
 the brilliant strategy for him was to proclaim Con- 
 fucianism the state religion of China, was for four 
 years a student at Columbia University. Who it 
 was who failed we cannot say, but some one missed 
 a golden opportunity. The greatest, the unspeak- 
 able tragedy, is that which has befallen more than 
 one student who came to America with a fine Chris- 
 tian enthusiasm and eager expectancy, only to lose 
 faith and return disillusioned and bereft. An awful 
 responsibility rests on the souls of all who willingly 
 or unconsciously perpetrate such crimes in the name 
 of higher learning. The social life of some of our 
 institutions has outraged the sensibilities of these 
 same students. 
 
 An Oriental diplomat spent a Sunday in New 
 York City before sailing for home and was invited to 
 a Christian service. He replied that this was the first 
 
 6 
 
invitation accorded him in the entire period of his 
 sojourn in the United States and expressed an un- 
 complimentary opinion of the sincerity of our pro- 
 fession. 
 
 The writer was on his first visit to San Francisco, 
 a few years ago, and made a tour of the infamous 
 "Barbary Coast," the open vice section of the city 
 where the doors swing free and wide to the open 
 mouths of hell on every side. Just before him in 
 the street, laughing and jeering, he saw a group of 
 Hindus, "seeing America." What their impressions 
 of Christianity were one may well imagine. We 
 may protest as much as we like that America is not 
 all like that, but America tolerated that and has no 
 answer to make in defense. 
 
 One of the most difficult things Mexican mission- 
 aries have to combat is the influence of the border 
 of the United States. Mexicans who have lived within 
 our borders and have been exploited and found many 
 of the shrewd "Gringos" unscrupulous, do not make 
 the charitable allowance that all Americans are not 
 like that. We know of one church not far from the 
 border which refused hospitality to a Mexican con- 
 gregation who wanted to worship in their building. 
 A rather sad commentary on their missionary spirit, 
 we must admit. 
 
 Our missionaries in Japan and India have been 
 having a difficult time explaining how it is possible 
 for America to love the Japanese in Japan and the 
 Indian in India enough to send them missionaries, 
 but not enough to give them a square deal when they 
 come into contact with their nationals in America. 
 
 7 
 
We sympathize with the missionaries and admit it 
 is a difficult thing to explain with perfect satis- 
 faction. 
 
 Every failure of America to deal justly makes the 
 progressively-minded men and women in foreign 
 lands sick at heart. America is the hope of the 
 progressive world and if America fails where shall 
 they turn? 
 
 American cities are "set upon a hill" and it is diffi- 
 cult to make Shanghai, Bombay and Tokio Christian 
 while New York, Philadelphia and Chicago are still 
 dominated by corrupt politics and the Christian 
 Churches if not impotent at least give the appear- 
 ance of being so. 
 
 The Better Part 
 
 But there is a better, a more cheerful and reas- 
 suring side, which stands out in sharp relief against 
 this dark background. 
 
 A few years ago two Chinese were baptized into 
 the membership of a church in Spokane. Not long 
 after, one of them came to the pastor and announced 
 his intention of returning to China. He gave as his 
 reasons his desire to help forward Republicanism and 
 his wish to tell his family of his newly found joy in 
 Christ. He said goodbye and went back. Years 
 elapsed until one day the pastor, on a visit to his 
 former field, came face to face with this same man 
 in the streets of Spokane. After greeting, the Chi- 
 nese explained his presence in America. China 
 was now a Republic. His immediate family and 
 many relatives had become Christians. They had 
 as a family, by their own efforts and at their own 
 expense, established seven mission stations in China 
 
 8 
 
and had assumed the financial responsibility for their 
 maintenance. He had returned to earn his share of 
 the running expenses of the missions. From the 
 street he doubtless looked like any other Chinese 
 and was probably thought of as a "Chink" by some* 
 But there he was, a prince of the Kingdom of God, 
 who expatriated himself for the salvation of his 
 people, dreaming his great dreams, praying his 
 great prayers, a link in the chain which binds Amer- 
 ica and China and the whole round world about the 
 feet of God. 
 
 Just before leaving for Europe, a group of Rou- 
 manians from the Eastern Central States called at 
 the national headquarters of our Home Mission 
 Society to secure some aid in getting their passports. 
 They were a part of a company of about a hundred 
 and fifty who were going back home after the war. 
 The writer had not been long in Europe before he 
 received a letter from a Congregationalist mission- 
 ary returning from his furlough to his field in Af- 
 rica. He had crossed on the same trip with these 
 men and was so impressed by what he had seen that 
 he felt constrained to write concerning the impres- 
 sion they had made upon him. Every day these men 
 had gathered for a service on the deck of the ship. 
 They sang, read the Scriptures, prayed and testified. 
 Their fellow passengers were filled with boundless 
 amazement. Were these men not immigrants ? Were 
 not immigrants considered ignorant and degraded? 
 How then came it that these men were clean, bright, 
 honest, self-respecting, up-standing men? The ex- 
 planation was eagerly given. They had become Chris- 
 tians. A new life had come to them in America. 
 
 9 
 
From churches in Akron, Cleveland, Detroit and else- 
 where they were going back home to Roumania # 
 
 The second chapter of that story has for its scene 
 the hills and valleys of Transylvania. They scat- 
 tered among the villages and farms to kindle the 
 flames of what J. A. Frey calls, "God's fire." They 
 were persecuted but remained undaunted. No less 
 than twenty new groups of believers have been form- 
 ed directly as a result of this volunteer missionary 
 witness. The native churches have been strengthened 
 better methods and higher standards, learned in 
 America, have been introduced. We can never for- 
 get the influence these men exerted in a conference 
 in Bucharest when they pleaded for a new under- 
 standing and appreciation of childhood as they had 
 learned it "in America." It made all our task seem 
 more splendid and all success more wonderful when 
 we caught that insight into the wide reach of the in- 
 fluence set in motion over there. 
 
 Probably none of the new nations which have 
 emerged from the chaos of this war make such an 
 appeal to the American imagination as Czecho- 
 slovakia. America has played a most important 
 part in shaping the policies of this nation. Scores 
 of young men who had learned the practice of dem- 
 ocracy in America were active in shaping the policies 
 and trend of things in the new regime. 
 
 One of our most trusted home missionaries was 
 sent by our Society to cooperate in the denomina- 
 tional plans for Europe. As a personal friend of 
 President Masaryk he was entrusted with several 
 important missions to Germany, Poland, Hungary, 
 Austria and to the United States. When the time 
 
 10 
 
came for a survey of the public school situation in 
 Czechoslovakia, the new government invited one of 
 our layman, a deacon of a Bohemian church in Chi- 
 cago, Professor Zmrahal, to come to Czechoslovakia 
 to perform this important task. He was converted in 
 Chicago, is a University trained man and principal 
 of one of the public schools of Chicago. His survey 
 was not only technically well done, but was made 
 with rare insight and appreciation of the higher 
 values, which lent it unusual worth. 
 
 An interesting incident in connection with the 
 first few months of the new national independence 
 is connected with one of our younger Bohemian mis- 
 sionaries, then of Cleveland. When on the occasion 
 of our second visit to Prague we alighted from the 
 train, there on the platform awaiting our arrival 
 was Rev. A. Knoblock, who had as a young man been 
 converted in one of our Bohemian churches of Chi- 
 cago and who for some time had been a successful 
 pastor. As we expressed our surprise at seeing 
 him there he told us the story of his mission. One 
 day one of the members of a Bohemian church in 
 Cleveland came to him with a thousand dollars, the 
 bulk of his savings and offered it to him for his ex- 
 penses to visit Czechoslovakia for a few months' 
 evangelistic campaign. It represented hard-earned 
 savings, but he knew that the hour of great oppor- 
 tunity had come and his pastor should go to meet it. 
 The young man spent three months in an evangel- 
 istic campaign and witnessed more than two hun- 
 dred confessions of faith in that time. He has since 
 returned to Czechoslovakia for a term of years, an- 
 
 il 
 
other contribution of our American missionary en- 
 terprise to the evangelism of new Europe. 
 
 Poland is a close competitor of Czechoslovakia for 
 a place in the hearts of Americans. When the first 
 draft of the new Constitution was submitted it cre- 
 ated misgivings, if not alarm, among those who were 
 keenly anxious that this knightly nation which had 
 "come back" so gallantly should give unmistakable 
 guarantees of religious liberty, without which there 
 can be no assurance of full civil liberty. Conster- 
 nation reigned among American friends when it was 
 proposed in the new Constitution to provide that 
 "the President of Poland must be a Roman Cath- 
 olic." There followed another provision which de- 
 nied to Protestants the privilege of having any rela- 
 tions with similar bodies outside of Poland. When 
 this news reached America an amazing thing hap- 
 pened. In all the great centers of Polish life in 
 America, mass meetings were held. The Polish 
 press began the discussion of the Constitution. Mr. 
 Paderewski was in the country and put all his popu- 
 larity and personal prestige behind the Constitution 
 as proposed. But such a sentiment was created that 
 Poland was obliged to heed it and the Constitution 
 was modified. The provision now obtains that the 
 President must be a Christian and the other obnox- 
 ious limitations referred to were removed. There 
 could hardly be conceived a finer or more spontane- 
 ous reaction to American idealism than this. Here 
 again we see the far reach of the American spirit in 
 shaping the destiny of New Europe. 
 
 12 
 
Patriotism In Terms of Larger Brotherhood 
 
 • We like to think and in a sense it is true, that 
 these finer influences are unconscious, that in Arner-^ 
 ica the air is electric with idealism and surcharged 
 with regeneration energies. But in another sense 
 these things are not true. America is confusing and 
 baffling. It is good, but it is bad ; it is kind, but it 
 can be cruel ; it invites, but it also repels ; it rewards 
 some, but others it robs. 
 
 During the war an intense, almost fanatical pas- 
 sion for Americanizing the foreigner was born of 
 bur war psychology. Much of this was irrational 
 and not a little injustice was done in the name of 
 patriotism. A calmer mood has succeeded those ex- 
 cesses of emotion but something of understanding 
 and sanity should abide with us, concerning our re- 
 sponsibility for the foreigner. 
 
 We have need of a new interpretation and scope 
 for our patriotism, a moral equivalent for war, as 
 William James would say. If patriotism is love of 
 country rather than hatred of other nations, we 
 must learn to express our love in practical service. 
 
 We need to create a new spiritual atmosphere, a 
 new spiritual climate, warm with kindliness and 
 friendliness and an evident desire to understand the 
 stranger within our gates. 
 
 We need to cultivate a new respect for people of 
 other lands and speech. Nothing so reflects upon 
 the real character of our culture as a failure to ap- 
 preciate the real worth of others. A fellow traveler 
 in a Pullman once greeted a Chinese as "John" 
 and asked where he was going. It happened that 
 
 13 
 
his name was not John and that he was on his way 
 to address four thousand college students at an in- 
 tercollegiate gathering. His name today is known 
 among intelligent people around the world. It was 
 C. T. Wang, then a student at Yale, later the Vice- 
 Speaker of the Chinese Senate, head of the Chinese 
 delegation to the Peace Conference in Paris and a 
 member of the Chinese delegation to the Washing- 
 ton Conference on the Limitation of Armaments. By 
 way of special interest it may be mentioned that two 
 laymen of Michigan invested in his education at 
 Yale, an investment paying many thousand-fold re- 
 turns. 
 
 We need to love our country well enough to be 
 willing to give something of ourselves, our home life, 
 our personal interest and direct attention to the 
 business of interpreting the essence of our national 
 spirit, the valuation we put on human personality. 
 This is our Christian motive, our impelling power. 
 We may entertain foreign students in our homes; 
 become a friend to some young man or woman who 
 comes within the scope of our influence; deal with 
 the foreigner in our business relations with great 
 scrupulousness ; become a champion of the exploited 
 and a friend to man. We need a revival of human 
 brotherliness and Christian sympathy and under- 
 standing. This is not only patriotic service, it is 
 preeminently Christian serivce. We cannot rely 
 upon a few salaried men and women to relieve 
 us of our responsibility. It is the duty of every 
 Christian man and woman to accept the opportunity 
 to become dynamic centers of this spirit of friendli- 
 ness and service and see to it that it is not in pious 
 
 14 
 
platitudes but in the spirit and passion of Him who 
 loved men for what they were and what they might 
 become, who broke down the barriers of race and 
 nation to make of all men a new brotherhood — the 
 Kingdom of God — and who said, "Other sheep I 
 have who are not of this fold. Them also I must 
 bring and they shall hear my voice and shall become 
 one flock, one Shepherd." 
 
 15