esent system under conditions as they have come to be. This
cannot continue indefinitely, for it is so hopelessly defective that it
is bound to bring about its own ruin, with the probable substitution of
some doctrinaire device engendered by the natural revolt against an
intolerable abuse. If only we could see conditions clearly and estimate
them at something approaching their real value, we should rapidly
develop a constructive public opinion that, even though it represented a
minority, might by the very force behind it compel the majority to
acquiesce in a radical reformation. Unfortunately we do not do this, we
are hypnotized by phrases and deluded by vain theories, as Mr.
Chesterton says:

"So drugged and deadened is the public mind by the conventional public
utterances, so accustomed have we grown to public men talking this sort
of pompous nonsense and no other, that we are sometimes quite shocked by
the revelation of what men really think, or else of what they really
say."

We do, now and then, confess that legislation is as a whole foolish,
frivolous and opportunist; that administration is wasteful, incompetent
and frequently venal; that the governmental personnel, legislative,
administrative and executive, is of a low order in point of character,
intelligence and culture--and tending lower each day. We admit this, for
the evidence is so conspicuous that to deny it would be hypocrisy, but
something holds us back from recognizing the nexus between effect and
cause. Unrestricted immigration, universal suffrage, rotation in office,
the subjection of many offices and measures to popular vote, the
parliamentary system, government by political parties--all these customs
and habits into which we have fallen have arrived at failure which
presages disaster. They have failed because the character of the people
that functioned through these various engines had failed, diluted by the
low mentality and character-content of millions of immigrants and their
offspring, degraded by the false values and vicious standards imposed by
industrial civilization, foot-loose from all binding and control of a
vital and potent religious impulse or religious organism.

It is the old, vicious circle; spiritual energy declines or is diverted
into wrong channels; thereupon the physical forms, social, industrial,
political, slip a degree or two lower out of sympathy with the failing
energy, and these in their turn exert a degrading influence o