We do not care much about feeding the children, but we
care less about killing the men. To that extent we have
improved already.
"The day will come when we shall prefer helping our
neighbour to robbing him--legally--of a million dollars.
"Do what good you can _now_, while it is unusual,
and have the satisfaction of being a pioneer and an
eccentric."
It is the voice of the American tradition strained to the utmost to make
itself audible to the new world, and cracking into italics and breaking
into capitals with the strain. The rest of that enormous bale of paper
is eloquent of a public void of moral ambitions, lost to any sense of
comprehensive things, deaf to ideas, impervious to generalisations, a
public which has carried the conception of freedom to its logical
extreme of entire individual detachment. These tell-tale columns deal
all with personality and the drama of personal life. They witness to no
interest but the interest in intense individual experiences. The
engagements, the love affairs, the scandals of conspicuous people are
given in pitiless detail in articles adorned with vigorous portraits and
sensational pictorial comments. Even the eavesdroppers who write this
stuff strike the personal note, and their heavily muscular portraits
frown beside the initial letter.
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