The following article, especially commissioned for Salient and the New Zealand University Student Press Council, was written by Mr. James Baynard-Smith, B.A., of Exeter College, Oxford.

An Idea to Win the World

Some weeks later, speaking in Helsinki on his return from Moscow, Prime Minister U Nu of Burma said, "I wish to thank you for the new possibilities Moral Re-Armament has opened up for the youth of Burma." The Moral Re-Armament World Mission of 242 people from 28 countries travelled 35,000 miles in three months at the invitation of 10 heads of state in Asia and the Middle East. They demonstrated for a billion people the ideology of inspired democracy.

From Tokyo to Cairo the response of students and of all men was overwhelming.

The Vice-Chanceller of Madras University evaluated the response of his 23,000 students following the visit of a similar task force earlier. He said, "Before you came, the students talked of nothing but Communism. Now the one topic is Mora) Re-Armament.

In Cairo President Nasser received the World Mission in his official residence. To the press he declared, "This ideology could be a solution to save the world from the conflict between the so-called West and East. We should all believe in it."

He implemented this conviction by sending 34 professors and student leaders from the Universities of Cairo and Alexandria for three weeks' training at the World Assembly for MRA at Caux, Switzerland, at Government expense.

Peking or Wellington

The students of Asia and Africa have looked to Peking and Moscow and wondered. They have long since ceased to look to Washington, London or Wellington. They feel that democracy, as we live it in the West, only breeds moral apathy, political and industrial warfare, divorce and juvenile delinquency. But in country after country, the tide of history is being turned.

"The startling, astonishing, triumphant thing about Moral Re-Armament is—it works!" So said the "New York Journal American," in a recent editorial.

Today on a colossal scale the motives of men are being changed and an answer is being brought to all the "isms", even to materialism.

There are two main reasons why millions believe that Moral Re-Armament's success is inevitable, and that it must and will become the proclaimed philosophy of nations.

First, it is universal. It is for all men everywhere. It offers black and white, East and West, right and left, the common challenge of change and" the common destiny of remaking the world. It says that, no one class, race or nation can do it alone, but all need each other as they undertake together the supreme task of history.

Second, it is realistic. It deals with human nature. Nobody is more idealistic today and nobody more in love with fantasies than the editor, politician or intellectual who, while beating himself on the chest and telling everybody what a realist he is, seriously believes you can create unity in the world without tackling human nature, thoroughly and drastically on a colossal scale. Any remedy which fails to deal with human nature avoids the root of the problem. It is too cheap.

Moral Re-Armament gets results because it gets men changed. Its philosophy is simple. Frank Buchman, its initiator, puts it this way, "Everybody wants to see the other fellow changed. Every nation wants to see the other nation changed. But everybody is waiting for the other fellow to begin. The most reactionary man alive is the person who wants to see the world different but is unwilling to be different himself."

Dr. Azikiwe was no reactionary. Zik, as he is known throughout Africa, is the Prime Minister for Eastern Nigeria, He wanted to see the world different, but he was prepared to start with himself.

Rising prevented

"Were it not for the timely intervention of MRA," he says, "there would be Mau Mau in Nigeria today." Zik knows, because seven years ago 23,000 secretly armed men awaited his word to rise and end forever the rule of the white man in Nigeria. But the word never came. Instead of going to Moscow as he had planned, Zik wont to Caux. In the unity being lived there by hundreds of people from many lands and varied races and classes, Zik saw a pattern for a free and united Nigeria.

He cancelled his journey to Moscow. He returned to Nigeria. He made peace with his political opponents and began to forge a force of men and women who would put the unity and welfare of their country before their own self-interest.

The President of the Nigerian students was one of many who rose to stand with Zik. Three years ago, during demonstrations opposing the Queen's Coronation, John Amata had torn down the flag. But this February, Amata took a leading role in the MRA all-African play "Freedom" which opened in Lagos during the Queen's visit, after a triumphant tour of the capitals of Europe.

The radical change in men like Azikiwe and Amata was what the "Eastern Sentinel" had in mind when it stated in an editorial during the Royal visit, "Many of our leaders from all parts of Nigeria, owe much to Caux, for the influence of MRA since 1949 has been greater than anyone can assess.

Produced stability

"It has produced a stability in this country without which the Queen's visit would not have happened."

What is this force which takes an ordinary student of a statesman and makes him the sort of person who can change the course of a whole nation and provide an answer to the deepest [unclear: a] of a divided world?

A diplomat of wide experience has answered it this way: "Moral Re-Armament is a phenomenon of the twentieth century. Frank Buchman has done three things. First, he clearly saw thirty-five years ago that the world was not just at the end of war between great powers but at the start of a breakdown of civilisation.

"Second, he did not stop short at diagnosis. He built an answer that works. Third, and perhaps hardest of all, he give his life to create a force to carry that answer to the world, so that today thousands of men and women in every part of the world provide an ideological army trained, tested and in action in over 118 countries to build the unity of renaissance."

You cannot join Moral Re-Armament. You cannot resign from it. Each one of us either lives it or does not. It is the simple choice in every heart whether we sacrifice our selfishness for humanity or whether we sacrifice humanity for our selfishness. Only the most blind and bigotted Relieve that we can demand to be left alone today while we continue to live selfishly, comfortably and undisturbed.

Moral Re-Armament is not just a personal matter—though it demands personal change.

It is not a moral movement—though it fights that absolute moral standards become the normal for men, cabinets and nations.

It is not goodwill—though, through change and the guidance of God, it can render effective that inert mass of goodwill in millions today which self-righteously preaches to others and accomplishes nothing.

M.R.A. is a revolution

It is a revolution, to bring social, political, economic, national and supra-national change, a whole range of motives to the whole world. But it is more than that. It is the ideology of freedom, the ideology of renaissances

It offers the chance for everyone everywhere to go into action today to remake the world to satisfy the hunger for bread, work, peace and faith that lies deep in the heart of every man.

Yes, it works.

It works in North Africa. In both Tunisia and Morocco the new nationalist Governments say that it was the new factor which MRA introduced into negotiations with France which enabled them to achieve their independence during recent months. In his message to the MRA World Mission, the Prime Minister of Morocco, Si Bekkai, said, his Government "participates whole-heartedly in the action of the World Mission of MRA."

We may not be interested in ideologies but they are interested in us. For ideologies and not economic or political theories are going to decide the future of Asia, of Africa—and of New Zealand.

New Zealanders fortunate

Anyone who spends his early years in New Zealand may count himself fortunate indeed. Perhaps no other country can give such a start to its youth, with every material and recreational blessing. But while everything on the surface is glorious, yet national character and fibre may be collapsing from within, eaten away by the confusion and irresponsibility engendered by impurity and selfishness, pride and complacency.

I can only speak for my own nation and generation, but at least that is the threat facing Britain, whose youth desperately need an answer to this sort of drift. They need a purpose big enough to give everything for. They are beginning to find it in MRA, which clarifies the inevitable connection between moral defeat and national irresponsibility. Confusion comes from compromise. Clarity comes from change. The need is universal and the answer is totally effective on a global scale. To live in the realm of the answer is normal living for our generation.

Is New Zealand to remain a fool's paradise, an outpost of decaying civilization, or will it fulfil its God-given destiny as the prototype and beacon light of a new society? Will there be revolutionary change and a force for purity welling up in the heart of every New Zealander? Clearly her people have the vision to see, the humility to listen and the courage to obey.

Just as Hillary pioneered on Everest, so New Zealand could lead the world to alpine heights in living and thinking.

In the words of Frank Buchman: "Human nature can be changed. That is the root of the answer. National economies can be changed. That is the fruit of the answer. World history can be changed, that is the destiny of our age.

"Why need there be catastrophe again, when, with God, renaissance is inevitable.?"