are feebly echoing the "barbaric yawp" of Walt Whitman, without the
redeeming merit of his occasional sublimity of thought.

In commerce, the revolt is against the purity of standards and the
integrity of business morals. Who can question that this is
pre-eminently the age of the sham and the counterfeit? Science is
prostituted to deceive the public by cloaking the increasing
deterioration in quality of merchandise. The blatant medium of
advertising has become so mendacious as to defeat its own purpose.

In the recent deflation in commodity values, there was widespread
"welching" among business men who had theretofore been classed as
reputable. Of course, I recognize that a far greater number kept their
contracts, even when it brought them to the verge of ruin. But when in
the history of American business was there such a volume of broken faith
as in the drastic deflation of 1920?

In the greater sphere of social life, we find the same revolt against
the institutions which have the sanction of the past. Social laws, which
mark the decent restraints of print, speech and dress, have in recent
decades been increasingly disregarded. The very foundations of the great
and primitive institutions of mankind--like the family, the Church, and
the State--have been shaken. Nature itself is defied. Thus, the
fundamental difference of sex is disregarded by social and political
movements which ignore the permanent differentiation of social function
ordained by Nature.

All these are but illustrations of the general revolt against the
authority of the past--a revolt that can be measured by the change in
the fundamental presumption of men with respect to the value of human
experience. In all former ages, all that was in the past was
presumptively true, and the burden was upon him who sought to change it.
To-day, the human mind apparently regards the lessons of the past as
presumptively false--and the burden is upon him who seeks to invoke
them.

Lest I be accused of undue pessimism, let me cite as a witness one who,
of all men, is probably best equipped to express an opinion upon the
moral state of the world. I refer to the venerable head of that
religious organization[4] which, with its trained representatives in
every part of the world, is probably better informed as to its spiritual
state than any other organization.

[Footnote 4: Reference is to the late Pope Benedict.]

Speaking last Christmas Eve, in an address to the Col