Journal for Anthroposophy 1968 no. 7 Spring

              RUDOLF STEINER LIBRARY
JOURNAL FOR ANTHROPOSOPHY Published twice a year by the Anthroposophical Society in America Henry Barnes, Editor
All communications should be addressed to the editor, 211 Madison Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10016. Copyrights and all other rights are reserved by the Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America. Responsibility for the contents of the articles contained herein attaches only to the writers.
Number 7
Spring, 1968
CONTENTS
THE “UNFINISHED BUSINESS OF
FREEDOM” ..................... Russell Wheeler Davenport
TWO POEMS ............................................. Eleanor Trives
LETTERS FROM A SOLDIER ................ Albert Steffen
ANTHROPOSOPHY ............................................. Karl Ege
POEM ................................................... Emma Krell-Werth
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE
GRAIL STORY FOR OUR TIME R. M. Querido
TAKE THE MAYFLY .................................. Daisy Aldan
MAO TSE-TUNG ............................................ Walter Donat
TOWARD AN INDEPENDENT
SPIRITUAL LIFE ..................................... Henry Barnes
HUMAN .............................................. Rosamond Reinhardt
PURE GOLD................................................. Henry Barnes
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
THE “UNFINISHED BUSINESS OF FREEDOM” From, the Unpublished Papers
of
Russell Wheeler Davenport
“The central problem of our time is the problem of freedom. There are many more immediate problems—
that of food, for example, as of employment. But during recent decades it has become apparent that we have reached a stage of cultural and technological develop­ment in which nothing immediate can be solved without reference to the long-range purposes of man . . . Those who are unaware of this fact can contribute to this age nothing except confusion and even bloodshed. And on the other hand, those millions who are aware of it, but who find themselves unable to reach practical applica­tions, are the prey, through their own doubt and un­certainty, of freedom’s enemies ... A pall, like the after- math of battle, seems to have fallen upon the human soul, so fruitful in the past of great, emancipative ideas. If freedom is the question of our time, few indeed are answering it.”
In these words, written during the course of World War II, Russell Davenport sounds the theme which was the leitmotif of all his later years. As managing editor of Fortune, as the friend and campaign manager of Wendell Willkie, as spokesman for “the Middle Way” of a reformed and liberated capitalism which sought an organic balance between political statism and the spheres of economic and cultural life, his life was a ceaseless striving to realize the ideal of freedom inherent in Amer­ican democracy in terms which could meet the needs of the complex life of our times. It was in pursuit of this problem—which he often referred to as “the unfinished business of freedom”—that Russell Davenport’s path
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