A poem published in London's Daily News 95 years ago

The Travail of the World

Why are the nations in travail to the utmost ends of the earth?
From the East to the West what signs are these?
What Saviour struggles to birth?
China wakes from her age-long sleep, for the Land of the Rising Sun
Has shown the East she may vie with the West for the cargo and the gun;
Yellow and swarthy, mongol and moor,
You shall rackon with these, my son.

Who shall bind the East to the West? Who shall make one these twain?
The Buddha Lord—the Enlightened One, or He the Jordan Plain?
Allah's Prophet, or He who of late by the foot of Carmel trod,
Persia's holiest Son who shone forth with the splendour of God?
Never the East Shall cleave to the West
Till the gods sharethe same abode.

The Moslem from the Koran hears the Truth that he must learn;
The Hindu in the Vedas sees the Way his feet should turn;
In Moses and the Prophets the Jew restores his soul;
The Christian in the Gospel finds the Life which is the Whole;
And all may read the self-same speech,
No matter what the scroll.

That God is one; that men are one; that Faith is ever the same;
That Love is still the nearest word to hint the nameless Name.
This is the Creed of the East and the West when you plumb to the depths, my son,
For the Word of the Lord is unity, and the Will of the Lord shall be done.
Hands are black, white, yellow or brown,
But the hue of the heart is one.