e lustful side of human nature, is, we repeat, a basic
cause of that widespread dishonor and crime that are polluting
civilization to-day. Surely there are enough decent, intelligent,
noble-minded women left to halt this mad craze for criminal impropriety.
Surely they can and will take the lead for purity, decency and honor,
rather than be content to follow at long distance that road which leads
to nothing but degradation for all humanity. Women and only women, can
halt this mad delirium--this hideous craving for attention at any cost,
at all cost. Where can it end, except in utter degradation, not only for
their own sex, but for their husbands and their sons?

This utter debasement of that precious heritage called "love" is the
bitterest possible reflection upon our modern civilization. The sort of
attraction these unchaste, nakedly adorned, women "of fashion" hold out
can never inspire that precious, priceless thing which "passeth all
understanding," which survives all the travail of tribulation, that
beautiful emotion that "age cannot wither nor custom stale," which
radiates the dark places with shining light.

"Oh, woman, lovely woman! nature made thee
To temper man; we had been brutes without you;
There's in you all that we believe of heaven
Amazing brightness, purity and truth,
Eternal joy and everlasting love."

_Los Angeles Times_, Dec. 17, 1920.

The financial and business summary for December, issued by the Citizens'
National Bank, will be circulated to-day. This careful review of general
conditions classes business as unsatisfactory from the standpoint of
current activity, but hastens to explain that data supporting this
conclusion is on the surface, and then, arguing from the human
standpoint, says that there is greater need just now that we determine
when the tendency to cancel contracts, and otherwise strike the element
of integrity from our business relations, will cease, than there is that
we know when commodity prices will reach the bottom.

"To-day," the summary continues, "we are registering a very low point of
commercial morality, and as we approach the portals of a new year, a
year full of promise and plenty, there is a great need of a full
individual sense of our personal relations to one another.

"It is not a struggling that is tearing apart the commercial, social and
home circles of to-day; instead, it is the lack of struggle, a missing
ambition to stamp out the meas