Life — August 20, 1925 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

VOL, 86. “While there is Life there’s Hope” Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY $98 Madison Aven’ » New York Cuartes Dana Ginson, President R. E. Sutawoop, £ F. D. Casey, Art £ itor H editor of the At- lantic Monthly has been over to inspect Eng- land and at the request of the (Lon- don) Spectator imparted to that paper the results of his inquisition, They do not make entirely cheerful reading for the English or their friends, albeit they abound in admiration of the great English qualities. Mr. Sedgwick thinks the practice of sending out the likeliest young grad- uates of the English universities, “to administer the destinies of alien peoples and to neglect their own,” is the heavi- est tribute a nation ever paid; he com- plains of “muddle through,’ ing to “the era when volunteers won wars"; he failed to find any serious as belong- insistence on governmental economy: he wonders if the British policies of maintaining the national credit and taxing to the limit of endurance wi beat the German plan of letting credit go hang and organizing industry. Will the British methods save British trade? He wonders, doubtful of the outcome but admiring the experiment, the pub- lic courage that is behind it, the sense of “weary cheerfulness” hovering about it which he finds unmatchable. He admires, too, English lack of prejudice, the willingness to let the other man be as odd as he will, the tol- eration that Britain, he says, alone among democracies, really regards as a virtue. Parliament, he says, has lost its old distinction; — horse-racing _ flourishes, gambling increases, but “drunkenness is declining, slums are receding, crime grows visibly less.” Britain must make a better living, Mr. Sedgwick finds, if all Englishmen are to be well paid, Crain Maxweit, Vice-President Lancnorne Ginson, Secretary and Treasurer and he wonders how she can do it, but still he discerns in Trafalgar Square the very centre of the world, Mr, Sedgwick has described a nation whose life is based in faith. “Muddle along” means to them to do the best they can and leave the rest to destiny. Somehow Mr. Sedgwick's talk reminds one of what Mr. Morgan said was the chief basis of credit. Character, he told the committee of Congress, was what money was lent on. Our British brethren are not nearly dead enough yet to bury. Bro. Sedg- wick is hereby invited to take courage yibout them, and if he cares to join the ‘ev. George McGinniss at Waunita Springs, Colorado, to organize the be- lief (or hallucination, maybe) that the Anglo-Saxons are the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and so unbeatable, and inevitably predestined to work together in the service of man- kind, why, here's wishing him god- speed. ete q CHINA is still a topic. The situ: tion there is comparable with that in Mexico before the Great War, when there was a weak government that could not keep order, and foreigners were being robbed and murdered and everybody scolded Mr. Wilson for not going in and producing order. Happily China is not Mexico, and in China our responsibility is less par- ticular, and what we do must be done with the concurrence of the other cight powers that we work with. Allof them seem to want China to work out her own problems with only so much prod- ding from the outside as will assist her efforts. Maybe the Japanese have as- pirations in the back of their heads that don’t match that theory, but at least they don't admit it. The senti- ment of Boxer times that China must be taught a quite Not lessons but hospital treati prescribed for her now. lesson is sent is No one wants to embarrass her with military activ- ities, and the Russians would probably make no complaint if Chinese bandits killed all the foreigners in China, which would deubtless strike them as a timely promction of the process of making the world safe for sovicts It is a great process, this one of making the world safe for various ideas and the folks who entertain them, It is, on the whole, the most important process now working visibly in this world. It involves, of course, violent conflicts of interests. The recent pro- ceedings in Tennessee were a part of it, but so is almost everything that from the tariff to the 18th Amendment, and from the sufferings of the commuters on the New Haven road to the plight of the textile mills consequent on the decree of the fashion-makers that the fair shall shed two-thirds of their clothing. goes on, R. BRYAN seemed to lack sym- pathy with this idea of making the world safe for folks who did not think as he did. It is hoped that his sudden death will not promote the accomplish- ment of the aims that engaged him in his last days. Those aims, though they scemed to him so pious, were by no means helpful to religion, With all his gifts, which were so notable, he was a remarkable example of the limita! of the human mind, and of the objec- tion to restricting the pursuit of trut to fit, at any given time, those limita- tions. Thousands of observers could where Mr. Bryan's mind failed to reach to what to them was obv They saw him fail to understand things clear to them, at the same time that he took hard hold of some vital beliefs that men of a different training missed But the minds of all of us are more or less like that. We know or take in more than some one else does, but don’t know all about anything, and if we put the fence of what we happen to know or think around truth, inevitably we invite rebellion. S. Martin. see comicbooks.com