PANIC DAYS

The American people, as has been noted often by men who understand their temperament, are emotional to an unusual degree. That emotionalism has been quickened to unexpected intensity by our entrance into the German War. Whereas before we were content to view rather calmly, and in a sense of abstract interest, the outcome of the war, we have now become absorbed in it with our whole hearts.

The question of food, once academic and distant, has become intensely acute. Through the warning voice of Mr. Hoover, pronouncing the doom of starvation for the world, the people have come to understand that abundant sustenance for life is not a purely natural good, springing without labor from the ground. Such understanding was necessary to check the wastefulness and the shortsightedness which have gone with our opulence. We have, as is clearly shown, profited by the understanding.

Yet in surpassing zeal some men have gone too far. It is well enough to say that the earth goes hungry, and that all our resources are needed to feed it. It is well enough to awake the nation to the duty which it must perform. But it is going beyond necessity or reason to tell in dismal words of famine stalking abroad, and of the collapse of most of our civilization through the lack of food. Some Government officials whose word bears weight, and who should know better, from a too strong imagination have done so. There is no need for imagination, but rather for truth, for comprehension and justice in foretelling the future.

The same unleashed wild prophecies lead to hysteria. Our people are easily stirred. Such forebodings may bring on panic in which men lose control of themselves in a blind fear of the incomprehensible. There has been not so much irrational talk in Germany about starvation as in America, although here even our very poor have enough to eat, from the present German standard.

Those who, by gross exaggeration, are elevating the present food situation from a serious condition to a terrible famine may justify themselves under the theory that only by frightening the people with dark fears will the people do as they should. That rule is supposed to work well in the nursery, to guide children in the path of duty. But no prophecies that "the famine'll get you if you don't watch out" may be used to instil fortitude and determination into an intelligent nation. If we as a people need such methods of comprehending the necessary, then we have small reason to exist as a strong people, but rather as a pygmy-souled race of children. However, we need no such methods, as is quite obvious.

With all due respect to those who are presumed to possess wisdom, we would suggest that what we desire is not glossing lies, nor panicky lies, but the truth.