Publish any sort of conviction related to these morose days through which
we are living and letters will shower upon you like leaves in October. No
matter what your conviction be, it will shake both yeas and nays loose
from various minds where they were hanging ready to fall. Never was a time
when so many brains rustled with hates and panaceas that would sail wide
into the air at the lightest jar. Try it and see. Say that you believe in
God, or do not; say that Democracy is the key to the millennium, or the
survival of the unfittest; that Labor is worse than the Kaiser, or better;
that drink is a demon, or that wine ministers to the health and the cheer
of man—say what you please, and the yeas and nays will pelt you. So
insecurely do the plainest, oldest truths dangle in a mob of disheveled
brains, that it is likely, did you assert twice two continues to equal
four and we had best stick to the multiplication table, anonymous letters
would come to you full of passionate abuse. Thinking comes hard to all of
us. To some it never comes at all, because their heads lack the machinery.
How many of such are there among us, and how can we find them out before
they do us harm? Science has a test for this. It has been applied to the
army recruit, but to the civilian voter not yet. The voting moron still
runs amuck in our Democracy. Our native American air is infected with
alien breath. It is so thick with opinions that the light is obscured.
Will the sane ones eventually prevail and heal the sick atmosphere? We
must at least assume so. Else, how could we go on?
