CO-SINGS OF THE TIMES

At the College of William and Mary. Virginia, a recent lecturer on representative government compared the present day United States to classical Greece in the age of the decay. He declared that George Washington, alive today, would receive less attention than JackDempsey; that all of us, crazed by novelty and sensation, are undervaluing the things worth while in overestimating non-essentials.

The statement will provoke naturally various differences of opinion, but the point raised is interesting. Are we so saturated with a succession of Sullivans, Corbetts and Dempseys (with or without monocle); with day by day chronicles of the exile of Babe Ruth (now happily at an end); and the endless chain of murder, divorce, robbery, and murder again, that we, as people have slumped back into a degeneracy without morals, patriotism, or belief in ideals.

Undoubtedly crowds poured out their money to see the "Battle of a Century", and crowds invariably gather to hall a champion prize-fighter, or watch an automobile accident, or a dub being photographed; just as what O. Henry called "professional rubberneckers" have dons from time immemorial. But all this overflow of curiosity to gaze on champions, or white elephants, for that matter, is certainly not now and does not indicate a state of moral depravity any more now that it did in the days of that prince of "rubberneckers", Samuel Pepys, who "did wait two hours to behold the King his progress at the Whitehall Stairs. A very sorry show indeed!"

The lawlessness, the sensationalism, and the theatricality of the present may not be encouraging, but they are not evidences of national decay. The world is still shaky from the effects of the war; but it certainly is not standing on its head. It does not help in the recovery to call up all the symptoms of temporary relapse. As the Hooster farmer remarked to his assistant on the two man saw, "I don't mind you're riding on it, Jim, but I wish you wouldn't drag your feet!".