The Third World

MR. JACKMAN:

Our distinguished guest, Paul-Emile, Cardinal Leger comes to us today as something more than just a Prince of the Holy Catholic Church--he is a man, who by his example, his life and his philosophy, represents to us all, one man's total commitment to all humanity.

He was born in a small town in Quebec and at a very early age, decided that he could best serve his fellow man as a priest of the Church.

Attending the Seminaries at St. Therese and Montreal and the Canon Law Faculty in Paris, he was ordained a priest in 1929. He became a teacher, first in Paris, and then as Superior at the Seminary in Fukoko, Japan.

In 1939 he returned to Canada to the University of Montreal and was shortly thereafter made Vicar-General of the Diocese of Valleyfield. In 1940 he went to Rome becoming Rector of the prestigious Canadian College in the Eternal City. In 1947, he returned to Montreal being consecrated Archbishop by His Holiness, and being created Cardinal in 1953.

Like all great religions, the Roman Catholic Faith demands much from its followers and particularly so of its priests. His Eminence himself has said--"to give not just what we have, but what we are".

For in 1967, Paul-Emile Leger, with the approval and blessing of the Pope, reached the conviction that he must give up his responsibilities as Cardinal-Archbishop of Montreal, to go to Africa as a simple priest to work among people who by our standards, live in intolerable poverty.

He became a pioneer--not of our materialistic age but in the barren ground of the poor, the sick, the depressed and the deprived.

He worked first with lepers and then his activities broadened to include schools for the handicapped, hospitals, initiating new projects, such as co-operatives, small industries and offering specialized skills and training to the local people.

It is perhaps not easy for us to appreciate the challenges that our guest must have faced in Africa where in many areas, the income of a family for a whole year is perhaps less than the price of a ticket for this luncheon today.

Those of you, who are familiar with the legends of our Canadian West--may recall what was said about the late Senator Patrick Burns who was one of the founders of the City of Calgary and made a fortune in meat-packing and ranching in those early days. Patrick Burns had a reputation for hard-headedness in his business dealings but in his later years, he mellowed somewhat and spent most of his later life giving away his fortune.

One day, he was approached by a group of nuns who wanted to build a school for impoverished Indian children. Burns agreed to their request for assistance and some months later, he was invited to the ceremony officially opening the new school.

At the conclusion of the proceedings, he was asked if he would speak. Now Patrick Burns had never made a public speech before--and after great reluctance on his part and considerable persuasion on the part of the others, he finally rose to his feet. He paused for a moment and then said these words: "I have a lot and I give a little--but you Sisters--you give all you have".

It is in this spirit that The Empire and Canadian Clubs jointly welcome our guest today--et pour ces raisons--j'ai le tres grand honneur de vous presenter aujourd'hui--Son eminence, Paul-Emile, le Cardinal Leger.

HIS EMINENCE, PAUL EMILE

CARDINAL LEGER:

I would like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your very kind and flattering introduction. At your last meeting you heard a speech from a former Prime Minister of Ontario, and today you are to hear one from a former Archbishop of Montreal. I don't suppose the Empire Club is having a "Be Kind to the Retired Month", but that your organizers thought we might still have something to say; and, perhaps, even, that we weren't very thoroughly retired! Still, there is a certain irony for those who know the history of our country in the juxtaposition of these two speeches.

I say a certain irony, but not an unhappy one. In front of those "prophets of doom" against whom Pope John used to rail, we, as Canadians, can point to the fact that I am here as your guest, a guest who has been treated with every mark of consideration, but who has never made any effort to conceal the fact he is a French Canadian by birth, and a Catholic priest by training and conviction. Now I do not make these points because I want to make a political speech about Canada, but for two rather different reasons.

In the first place, I want to express my gratitude for all the people of Toronto have done for me in so many ways, and to express this within a context which shows I appreciate the very genuine effort made by so many of you to understand what I have tried to do. The support both moral and financial I have had from so many of you here has involved a sensitivity and generosity on, your part which is a credit to yourselves and to your own traditions.

And this brings me to the second reason for mentioning the apparent irony of my presence here. It seems to me your invitation, and the support you have given me, is an expression of the Ecumenical Spirit at its best. Someone suggested to me the other day that the Ecumenical movement could be compared to a business concern which was beginning to fail. First of all in an effort to stave off collapse it diversifies, because it has lost confidence in its own specific product. So some Christians get involved in things which don't seem to have too much to do with their vocation as Christians. When diversification fails they seek to amalgamate, evidently on the theory that two dying enterprises will live a bit longer, and that the company pay-roll will be easier to meet. However, having lost confidence in the original product, the new company hasn't much drive, and it ends up in bankruptcy. And that, some people say, is where the Ecumenical movement is going.

Well, this comparison of the Ecumenism movement to a business concern may in fact point up some of the dangers of the movement, but it has nothing to do with what I have always understood by co-operation between people of different religious traditions and racial backgrounds. I have always maintained, and I still do, that genuine co-operation necessitates we know ourselves: so that we can be faithful to that which we cannot compromise; so that we may be brave and generous enough not to hold onto things which do not matter; so that we can understand and respect what really is different in positions other than our own. There are real differences in the world, differences of race, of religion, and of ideology, and nothing is advanced by pretending that this is not so. It is the possibility of co-operation amongst human beings who differ about important things, but who belong to the one family of man, which gives the only realistic basis for co-operation and genuine ecumenism. One of my most generous supporters is a German Protestant Foundation, and you and they have both shown a genuine concern for our fellow man, a concern which is not based on glossing over differences, but, nonetheless a concern which ought surely to light in all of us the hope that men can in fact work together for good, a hope that goes far beyond anything I myself have been able to do.

I would like now to turn your attention for a few minutes to the world situation as I see it from Africa, and if part of what I have to say involves the use of statistics I want you to try to grasp the dreadful realities in terms of human suffering behind a rather dry sounding catalogue of figures and comparisons. We are talking about human beings who suffer, who suffer as you would suffer, and who know they suffer; we are not talking about some sort of different species or different kind of being, we are talking about people who could be your parents or your children we are talking about people who could be you.

Now the most important fact about the latter third of this century in my view is not the gap between Washington and Moscow, or Washington and Peking--or wherever you want to put it (it's a bit difficult to keep up with Mr. Kissinger these days) but the growing gulf between the rich countries of North America and Europe, on the one hand, and the poor countries of Asia, Africa, much of Latin America and the Middle East, on the other. These countries are usually referred to as the Third World, or as developing countries, although, as the Pearson Report, Partners in Development, says: "Words like 'rich' and 'poor', 'advanced' and 'backward', 'highly developed' and 'underdeveloped', even 'donor' and 'recipient' are highly unsatisfactory as they may be misinterpreted. There is far more to development than economic and material progress, and gross national product is no assurance of the possession of other values and qualities." (p. VIII)

The polarization between the developed and developing countries is not just economic, though this would be serious enough. It is also racial and psychological. The growing alienation is between poor but also coloured countries of the southern half of the globe, and the rich and white people of the northern half.

The far-reaching danger of this should be obvious, but it is not without a certain historic irony. For the Soviet Union, like the United States, has now reached a level of prosperity sufficient for it to be viewed by the poor countries as being nearly as much a white--a "have"-nation as the United States. And, as an American Senator, George McGovern, has recently pointed out the revolutionary leadership has passed from Moscow to Peking and Havana, and it has, as anyone who has lived in Africa or Asia can testify, a powerful psychological appeal.

I am not here to make a political speech, nor to give you a lecture in economics, but I mention this political setting of an economic problem because I want you to see I am not talking my own private hobby or latest fad, but about something which ought to be of interest to each one of you now, and it will be a matter of vital concern for your children whether they like it or not. And the manner in which they have to deal with the Third World will in no small measure depend on what is done within the next few years.

What, then, first of all do I mean by the Third World?

I mean all those countries which cannot be called developed. Countries, for example, which have an annual revenue per capita of less than two hundred dollars, in comparison to the well over two thousand dollars enjoyed by Canada. And by this criterion over two billion of the World's population belongs to the Third World. Countries which are undernourished, and which according to the Food and Agriculture Association includes 70% of the world's people--which means that three out of four human beings belong to the Third World and are hungry. By the Third World I mean a world which is not only poor and hungry, but one which is sick. A world which not only suffers from all kinds of diseases, but which is terribly ill-equipped to deal with them--a world which has become one gigantic hospital waiting room. And this sickness has reduced productivity anywhere from 30 to 60%. It is a world which is faced with a population explosion, with no corresponding increase in economic resources. It is a world in which the service industries predominate, where capital is scarce, and interest rates for the poor run as high as 200 to 300% per annum.

On top of all this we seem to be exporting all the undesirable side-effects of our society without the means we have in Canada to combat them. There is pollution of natural resources in Africa with no means to cope with it; there is progressive urbanization, with no planning, no schemes to integrate the new poor of the cities into a human way of life.

You may say that poverty has always existed, that there has always been a disparity in wealth between countries, and this is true. There are, however, two new factors which make the situation today into an explosive one. In the first place the gulf between the Third World and our own is widening not lessening; and secondly there is the revolution in communications.

The details of the first point are set out in the Pearson Report and the trends are both dynamic and discouraging. In 1961 the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution whose aim was to accelerate the progress of the developing nations and their social advancement. The target was established of a minimum annual rate of growth of 5 % in their aggregate national income during this decade. But soon their objective turned into a mere dream.

"Our hopes for achieving the goals of the first Development Decade appear to be frustrated," said U Thant. And George D. Woods, formerly the President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, joined others in saying that this decade may recede into history, instead, as a decade of disappointment.

The expected 5% annual growth rate was based on performances recorded in the 1950-1954 period. But already in the late fifties and the beginning of the sixties, this rate had dropped to 4% and below, which means that, when allowance is made for population growth, the net improvement dwindles to 1 % per year or less. At this growth rate, the average per capita income in the less developed countries will move from the present 120 dollars to hardly 170 dollars annually at the end of the century--which corresponds to the income the Western countries had a century ago, whereas the increment for the latter, according to various estimates, will be between thirty and sixty times as big. "This is crude arithmetic. But its implications are plain and sobering," commented Mr. Woods. "If present trends are allowed to continue, there will be no adequate improvement in living standards in vast areas of the globe for the balance of this century."

There is, however, another big if attached to this forecast: if, in the meantime, something revolutionary does not happen in the world to terminate this intolerable situation by rational and reasonable co-operation, or otherwise. And with the gap widening and human dignity continuing to suffer, it is far more likely that only waves of hatred and violence will erupt from the abyss which now separates the rich from the poor of the world. And here is where the revolution in communications is important for it has resulted in a growing awareness of the gaps in development which divide the world of today. Up to now the people of the countries on the road to development have suffered both physically and morally the effects of the gap, but the situation is growing worse as they realize, as never before, the abyss which separates them from the developed countries. The transistor radio is everywhere. We should not be surprised, therefore, at the growth of a profound sense of injustice, resentment and bitterness, and, no matter how you serve the matter up the gulf between the different parts of humanity, and its exploitation by people of an ideological turn of mind, will lead us all to war unless something is done about it.

These then are the main lines of a picture concerning the Third World which I would like to impress upon you. It is a world of poverty, hunger, sickness, a population explosion and a lack of resources which is causing the gap or better the gulf--between the white nations and those of the rest of the world to grow even larger. It is a gulf which is known about, which is resented, and the resentment is being exploited. Something must be done about it if we are to avoid a catastrophe on a global scale. Whether this catastrophe is actually provoked by the increasingly depressed people of the Third World themselves, or whether their misery is used by other power blocs, with different ideologies, does not matter very much, for it will be the end of our world as we know it.

I hope I have managed to impress upon you the fact that the world is faced with a serious situation, a situation which is getting worse, and which one way or another will have terrible consequences unless something is done about it. Well, what is to be done about it? All I can hope to do is to set out some guidelines which so far as I can constitute the bare minimum if we are ever to save the world from war, and to achieve some degree of stability.

1. In the first place we must remember that the true drama of development is a human drama, a drama which affects both the people of the Third World and ourselves. It is concerned with the question of knowing how the two billion people of the Third World of today, and the five billion of tomorrow, will assimilate and apply the scientific and experimental spirit without which they will never be able to run a modern factory, nor learn the most productive forms of agriculture.

But this drama affects us in its turn, and demands new attitudes and convictions. You are all practical people listening to me today, and you may think this kind of spiritual or moral guidance ought to be saved up for Sundays. But this is where the practical man is not very practical, precisely because he neglects factors which are at work in the real world. Henry Kissinger, President Nixon's advisor on foreign affairs, has written that "The deepest problems of equilibrium are not physical but psychological or moral. The shape of the future will depend ultimately on convictions which far transcend the physical balance of power." (American Foreign Policy.) If this is the case, and I believe it is, then we must realize that new attitudes are necessary on our part, as well as on theirs. Our interior barriers are harder to dismantle than those in the outside world. Many of the difficulties we encounter today are the legacy of the greed of the white man of the West: slavery, colonialism, apartheid, the desire for profit and overweening conceit in the colour of our skin.

We in the West profess an idealistic philosophy but we often fail to get as good a hearing in the developing countries as do the Marxists precisely because we rely so heavily on economic factors. We have answers for technical dislocations, but we really haven't done very much to help in the building up of political and moral consensus in the developing nations. Unless we can frame our ideas about the good state, and the meaning of political legitimacy in terms a bit more positive than an attempt to prevent the spread of materialism or communism, then we are admitting we have lost our grip on those great ideals which helped to build the West, and that the real creativity in this modern world comes from elsewhere.

But men seek justice, morality, the spiritual life, peace and culture; all those goods which cannot be made in a factory, and which are at the heart of the best in our own traditions. And these values are just as badly needed in the Third World as machines and bridges.

2. My second guide-line is this: the immensity of the problems require rapid action without any ideological or political pre-occupations. Let me illustrate what I mean by an example I have used before, and then go on to draw some practical consequences from it.

President Kennedy had an ambition, a political ambition if you like, that an American should be the first person to walk on the moon. But he quickly grasped that if this ambition was to be realized he would have to get the project outside of politics. So he set up NASA, which secured the co-operation of over two hundred thousand scientists and technicians of all specialties, and an investment of 25 billion dollars. As a result, an American was the first on the moon. I am not concerned here to try to make a judgment on the value of the whole project, but to point out that once the decision was made, the necessary means were taken, and the thing was done.

When, however, it comes to trying to organize rational co-operation amongst rich and poor nations, and programs of self-help for developing countries, the meetings bog down and initiative is stifled under literally tons of paper, millions of pages, and thousands of documents. It is not that there is not intelligence, nor resources, nor good will at these conferences, but the plain fact of the matter is that they are not sufficiently co-ordinated. National politics plays too large a part, and public opinion is not strong enough to force our governments to do something more effective.

This past week in Chile the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has been meeting and their deliberations have displayed all the characteristics I have mentioned. Delegation after delegation has got up--the Russians, the Australians, the Canadians, the Common Market, the Eastern European countries--to explain how concerned they are with world poverty, how much aid they are giving and how their technical exports are labouring under frightful conditions to help the developing nations. But they have also been busy explaining how, given their own problems of world liquidity, they cannot do more now or make promises for the future.

Delegate after delegate from the 96 poor countries represented has replied in increasingly bitter language.

The Chinese, who have conducted themselves with immense tact, delivered on Thursday a moderate but masterly speech which said that Peking aligned itself with the poor countries as one of them. They called on the United States and Russia to stop bullying everyone and told the rich countries that they should give the Third World a better economic deal quickly. The Russian delegates did not clap at the end, but told the Ukrainians, who spoke next, to attack the Chinese as expansionist imperialists.

So too much politics, some of it of a very dangerous sort, coupled with a great deal of real good will and generosity. Yet somehow it is not enough, it does not add up to effective action--and this will only come if we have a thoroughly aroused public opinion, public opinion which has been provoked by concerned people shouldering their own responsibilities.

You know, today nothing is ever really anybody's fault. Or at least that is what we like to say. It's the computer, or one office is not in contact with another one at a crucial moment, but no one person is ever really to blame for anything. Well, I think this is an unhealthy attitude--I much prefer that of President Truman who had a sign on his desk which read The Buck Stops Here. In other words, people ought to assume their own obligations and stop passing the buck all the time, and this applies to the case of the Third World as well.

We Canadians are great at blaming other people--it used to be the British and now it is the Americans, and we say to ourselves that because things aren't our fault, then it follows we have no obligation to do anything about them. But we do have an obligation, an obligation based on our humanity and on our religious backgrounds to create a climate of public opinion which will enable our governments to do what must be done, and to show the world that Canada, at least, is serious about the plight of billions of human beings. Where does the buck stop? it stops with you, my listeners. You who have influence, you who help to create public opinion, you who have your fingers on the levers of power. We need something like a NASA for development, outside politics and international in scope. And we need the support of the citizens of the West who in an informed way will insist that their governments support whatever new and effective agency must be set up to close the gap between the nations of the world.

My own task has been a simpler and a humbler one. I have tried to act as a kind of symbol to the Africans that our traditions have the seeds of more than blood slavery and conquest within them; that the strength of the West is not merely in technology and industrialization, but carries with it, as well, the practical ideals of justice, peace, fraternity, and love.

But, I have also tried to be a symbol to you in Canada, a symbol of concern for those poorer than ourselves, of care for the sick, the hungry, the lonely and the dispossessed, a symbol of what our country and our differing traditions--political, racial and religious--are really all about.

I know that more could have been done, both to represent Canada to Africa, and Africa to Canada, yet I have tried. But what I have done was only possible with the help and encouragement of you all, and I would like to hope that what has been begun with your help, will be continued with that same help. And it is my prayer that our country will play a leading role in helping to establish a world in which peace and justice will reign over the affairs of all mankind.

Cardinal Leger was thanked on behalf of the joint meeting by Mr. Jack Brent, President of The Canadian Club of Toronto.