ch a matter for our scrutiny and control as educational
development or physical perfection. Not, perhaps, in the same way, for
our ideals belong to that private domain wherein we rightly resent
either dictation or authority from the outside. But we can apply both
dictation and authority for ourselves. With a firm determination to be
upon the right side of the great issues of the day, to uphold honor and
justice in public affairs, to uproot the tares and to sow the wheat in
the domain of national business, we can apply our whole mental strength
to a proper determination of those issues, to a correct distribution of
praise and blame, to a careful adjustment of the means to the end and
to a precise appreciation of the facts. We can satisfy ourselves that we
have heard both sides and that enthusiasm has not deadened our ears to
all appeals but the most noisy. We can see to it that our attitude is
the judicial one and that our minds are so fixed upon the truth and upon
the whole truth that there is no room for prejudice or for passion. All
these things can be reared as a superstructure upon the groundwork of
lofty ideals, for just as there can be no progress without ideals so
there can come nothing but calamity from ideals that are not guided by
reflection and by knowledge.

Never before has it been so hard to know the facts as it is to-day.
If we must give credit to the press for the diffusion of knowledge
so also must we recognize its equal power to diffuse prejudice and
bias. The newspaper and the magazine of to-day are vast and intricate
machines that supply the great majority of us with practically all the
data upon which we base our judgments. The public mind and the popular
press act and react upon one another, the press setting its sails to
catch every wind of public interest and the public upon its part
demanding to be supplied with all those departments of news to which
at the moment it is specially attracted. Commercialism and competition
have barred a large part of the press from its rightful office as leader
and molder of opinion and have reduced it to the position of a clamorous
applicant for public favor. The press, like everything else, is ruled
by majorities, and in order to live it must cater to the weaknesses of
popular majorities, it must reflect their prejudices, it must sustain
their ill-formed judgments, and it must so sift and winnow the news of
the day that the whims and the passions of the day shall