we daresay, a leading advocate of Prohibition,
vice-crusading and the other Methodist reforms.

But here we depart from the point. It is not that an eminent Wesleyan
should be taken in crim. con. with a member of the Y.M.C.A.; it is that
the whole Wesleyan scheme of things, despite the enormous multiplication
of such incidents, should still stand above all direct and devastating
criticism in America. It is an ignorant and dishonest cult of ignorant
and dishonest men, and yet no one has ever had at it from the front.
All the newspaper clippings that we have mentioned were extraordinarily
discreet. Every offence of a clergyman was presented as if it were an
isolated phenomenon, and of no general significance; there was never any
challenge of an ecclesiastical organization which bred and sheltered
such men, and carried over their curious ethics into its social and
political activities. That careful avoidance of the main issue is always
observable in These States. Prohibition was saddled upon the country,
against the expressed wish of at least two-thirds of the people, by the
political chicanery of the same organization, and yet no one, during the
long fight, thought to attack it directly; to have done so would have
been to violate the taboo described. So when the returning soldiers
began to reveal the astounding chicaneries of the Young Men's Christian
Association, it was marvelled at for a few weeks, as Americans always
marvel at successful pocket-squeezings, but no one sought the cause in
the character of the pious brethren primarily responsible. And so,
again, when what is called liberal opinion began to revolt against the
foreign politics of Dr. Wilson, and in particular, against his apparent
repudiation of his most solemn engagements, and his complete
insensibility, in the presence of a moral passion, to the most
elementary principles of private and public honour. A thousand critics,
friendly and unfriendly, sought to account for his amazing shifts and
evasions on unintelligible logical grounds, but no one, so far as we
know, ventured to point out that his course could be accounted for in
every detail, and without any mauling of the facts whatsoever, upon the
simple ground that he was a Presbyterian.

We sincerely hope that no one will mistake us here for anarchists who
seek to hold the Presbyterian code of ethics, or the Presbyterians
themselves, up to derision. We confess frankly that, as private
individuals, we ar