The spectacle is appalling. We live in an atmosphere of hypocrisy throughout. The men believe not in the women, nor the women in the men. A scornful superciliousness rules in literature. The aim of all the litt rateurs is to find something to make fun of.
Conversation is a mass of badinage.
From deceit in the spirit, the mother of all false deeds, the offspring is already incalculable. The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater. The great cities reek with respectable as much as non-respectable robbery and scoundrelism. Walt Whitman's creed in this matter has been largely shaped by the war. He found the average American in the United States' armies, under pressure of want, disease, danger, and at one time in presence of failure, to be nobler than a mere glance at the outside of political life would have reported him to be.