ers, some resident at Green Acre the year round, others spending only their summers there; people of different sect, race and class, and of different character and training, but agreeing in their mutual desire to serve one aim and participate in one all-inclusive purpose. As time goes on, the underlying harmony of Green Acre will be evidenced by more and more accessory institutions, each expressing some one phase of physical, mental or soul life. At Green Acre there must be fullness of life and richness of human comradeship—a community whose motive is service, not wealth, but at the same time consciously rejecting all those artificial schemes which promise to solve life’s material problems without relying upon self-sacrifice and spiritual love.
In New England, and throughout the United States, there are today untold thousands of people who know that they are capable of responding to finer enthusiasms and higher motives than touch them in their daily lives. The motive of mere material wealth leaves them cold; they find no true distraction in physical games, no true inspiration in abstract art and science, no profit in the clash of religious doctrines.
Green Acre exists entirely to serve these awakening souls of the new day. Green Acre will serve them first of all by using their capacities at their best, kindled by the vision of what remains to be done in the spot blessed by Miss Farmer’s life and work. Green Acre will draw them out of themselves, teach them the laws and principles of unity and reveal hidden sources of conviction and joy. For a day, for a week, for a season, for a lifetime, Green Acre needs workers— but Green Acre will give more than she takes.
Green Acre Gives Hospitality to Significant Educational Activity—The Institute of World Unity
The summer of 1927 witnessed a true flowering of the purposes and ideals of Green Acre, but partly disclosed in and through the programs of conferences and meetings held during previous years. The founder, Miss Sarah J. Farmer, ever visioned as the crown of attainment for this consecrated center, a University teaching not merely cultural and scientific subjects but inculcating above all the spirit of humanitarian service and brotherly love.
A definite beginning was made in the direction of this noble ideal by the hospitality which Green Acre extended to the Institute of World Unity, an activity of World Unity Foundation, in 1927.
The purpose of the Institute was announced as “an effort to supply a new basis of faith in brotherhood and world unity through the finding of modern science and philosophy.” From August 1 to September 3, five courses were offered, each in charge of a well-known educator. A total of nearly seventy registrations was enrolled, the students coming from many parts of the United States and Canada and representing a wide variety of races and religions. This group displayed such enthusiastic interest in the work of the Institute that its perpetuation and development in future years seems assured.
The natural beauty of Green Acre, and its powerful tradition of universal hospitality, provided a sympathetic environment for the discussion of subjects which necessarily involve a new quality of human association.
Program of Lectures-1927
NATIONALISM and
INTERNATIONALISM
by
Prof. Herbert Adams Gibbons,
Ph. D., Lit. D.
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Ecole Palatine of Avignon.
Awarded the Gold Medal of the Societe de Geographie of Paris.
Member of the French Legion of Honor.
