futility of printer's ink must our academic pundits begin to suspect the
futility of art and letters. Words however cleverly writ on paper are after
all but words. "In a nation of blind men," we are told, "the one-eyed man
is king." In a nation of undiscriminating voters the noise of the agitator
is apt to drown the voice of the statesman. We have been teaching everybody
to read, nobody to think; and as a consequence--the rule of numbers the
law of the land, partyism in the saddle--legislation, state and Federal,
becomes largely a matter of riding to hounds and horns. All this, which was
true in the fifties, is true to-day.

Under the pretense of "liberalizing" the Government the politicians are
sacrificing its organic character to whimsical experimentation; its checks
and balances wisely designed to promote and protect liberty are being
loosened by schemes of reform more or less visionary; while nowhere do we
find intelligence enlightened by experience, and conviction supported by
self-control, interposing to save the representative system of the
Constitution from the onward march of the proletariat.

One cynic tells us that "A statesman is a politician who is dead," and
another cynic varies the epigram to read "A politician out of a job."
Patriotism cries "God give us men," but the parties say "Give us votes
and offices," and Congress proceeds to create a commission. Thus
responsibilities are shirked and places are multiplied.

Assuming, since many do, that the life of nations is mortal even as is the
life of man--in all things of growth and decline assimilating--has not our
world reached the top of the acclivity, and pausing for a moment may it not
be about to take the downward course into another abyss of collapse and
oblivion?