From the News

Dated: July 22, 1915

Free Masons and the War

Very significant is the address of W. D. McPherson, a member of the Ontario Legislature and Grand Master of the Masonic Order in Canada, dealing with the war.  Even those who are not acquainted with the secrets of the Masonic Order know that it is not limited by national, or racial, or sectarian boundaries.  It is essentially humanitarian and cosmopolitan.  Its members always take the broadest grounds.  In any conflict over human rights it is their privilege and their duty to be on the right side and on the human side.

All this teaching we can read in the Grand Master's address.  He regards war as a horrible thing -- a thing not to be resorted to except for absolute necessity.  But war is not regarded in that way in Germany.  War, it has been said, is the national industry of Prussia.  The Prussian idea is to rule the world by destruction.  The Masonic idea is to help the world by construction -- by building.  The Prussian idea is not to build, but to burn.

The Masonic Order is so broad that it has a large membership outside as well as within the British Empire.  Mr. McPherson takes not only the British view but the humanitarian view.  He says that the watchword of the British Empire is not dominion, but liberty.

For the German's belief in Germany it substitutes a profounder belief in humanity; instead of enforcing a uniform Germany it looks to the development of every other race and people within its boundaries to the highest of which it is capable; in place of the dominance of one race as the cement of an empire's unity, it inculcates spontaneous loyalty of the inhabitants to its self-governing institutions and the free spirit which informs them.

We are citizens of Canada.  We are citizens of the British Empire.  We are citizens of the world.  We are denizens of the new world.  We are children of the twentieth century, heirs of all the ages, bound in honour to preserve and enrich our great heritage, and  bequeth a greater estate to our successors.

For all these reasons it is our sacred duty and our glorious privilege to cut a pathway for humanity through the jungle to the light.  In clearing the jungle we must expect to encounter many a cruel beast of prey, many a loathsome reptile.  In such a work and such a strife we are engaged today.