The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-11-15
SOCIETY WARNED
DIR. BENJAMIN ANDREWS SAYS CIVILIZATION MAY BE SOON
 OBSCURED.
History's Circle Followed-After Pericles, Night; After Augustus, Twilight; After Roosevelt, WhatP-Race Repression and
 and Selection Urged.
New York Herald.

New York Herald.
 Dr. Benjamin Andrews, former pres ident of Brown University, now chan cellor of the University of Nebraska, yes terday sounded a warning that civiliza- ton may be at the beginning of return to the darkness of the Middle Ages. Every delegate to the convention of the Delta Upsion fraternity heard with breathless interest remarkable discus sion of the social tendencies of the day that was prefaced thus:
 q am not to be classed among the pessimists. I am in fact, an optimist, but I do not believe in ostrich optimism, and when one finds reefs coming to the surface on the track of the worlds spir- itual commerce he is none the less an optimist to try and chart the seas where they lie.
 suppose a certain penumbra be de- scried upon culture in our day, 1t is not the first instance. Even more than civ ilization in general. the especial phase thereof called culture has had its ups and downs. The age of Pericles suffer- ed sunset, being followed not indeed by darkness but by many a far stretch of chiarascuro before full days shone again. Maecenas would have scoffed had pro- phet told him that there were to sue ceed his Augustan time whole centuries during which hardly a scholar in Europe would be able to read Homer or Plato. and when even Virgil would be known to but few. Yet such centuries came. Culture Being obscured. After Athens and after Rome, when old-time culture had installed its whole grand exhibit and done it's utmost to i'm prove mems minds and hearts and lives, notwithstanding all. mental twilight fell | upon European society stayed long, set | grievously and was frightened out into noon again only by centuries of painful | toll at light making. Such reflection brings heartening along with soberness Tenacious as mediaeval gloom was It did at last give way The sources of culture gush perennially. If those pre- vious checks upon their flow were tenn porary, any future subsistence will be the more certain because of books and | schools instrumentalities once feeble but now and always henceforth invincible.
 q am impressed that a certain ob- | scuration of real culture Is at this mo- ment observable among us and that we as yet by no means see its worst.
 Judge Grosscup's Peculiarity. | pr. Andrews declared there was a dis tinct falling off in the desire to procure and promote the things of the mind. Much genuine unselhshness remains, said that speaker, hut if a fellow citizen is caught red handed in doing an act of
 considerable self-denial men gape at him
 in wonder, pitying however. rather than admlring. He gave this illustration: Re-
 gently, in Chicago, a man said to a friend from St. Louis: See that tall man
 ahead? That's Judge Peter $. Grosscup,
 who, on a salary of %oo. has just re- fused an offer of a salary of $l0O,0O0 as attorney for the Northern Securities Company in it's merger suit" The St. Louis man observed: "lle looks that way. Doesn't insanity run in the tamily?' pr. Andrews said that in this age, that is so rich in inyontloh' everything breeds a fatal uniformity lie added:
 Let shallow people laugh at New England provincialism and vent profan- ity against the South for being solid The wise rejoice that so much topical apartness survives. Well may each re-
 moter section of the country rejoice in any traits it can claim as peculiarly it's own. and pray without Pharasaism God I thank Thee that l am not as
 other sections are, or even as this New
 York"
 Business Methods Attacked.
 Again, he said:
 "I do not regard imperialism In itself as savapery. but tho imperialism which
 views inferior rac,e as our legitimate
 prey certainly is so.
 "i-nIess err our advanced communi-
 tfes now display a great deal less jus
 tioa and fairness man toward man,
 tban was formerly seen Mark the cold
 araad and ranacitv with which business
 Nt.,oartile honor is not