CHAPTER I: Concerning One\'s
Letter Box
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?