Devils Lake inter-ocean and Devils Lake free press. (Devils Lake, Ramsey County, N.D.) 1905-1909, 1906-04-20

ly white. but they are all gray. In
other words. they neither believe in
the truth of the attack, nor in the hon
esty of the man who Is attacked; they
grow as suspicious of the accusation
as of the offense; it becomes we'll
nigh hopeless to stir them either to
wrath against wrong-doing or to en-
thusiasm for what is right; and such
a mental attitude in the public gives
hope to every knave. and is the de-
spair of honest men.
To assail the great and admitted
evils of our political and industrial
life with such crude and sweeping
congratulations as to include decent
men in the general condemnation
means the soaring of the public con-
science. There results general atti-
tude either of cynical belief in and in
difference to public corruption jtor else
of distrustful inability to discrimin-
ate between the good and the bad.
Either attitude is fraught with untold
damage to the country as whole.
The fool who has not sense to dis
criminate between what is good and
what is bad is wellnigh as danger
Gus as the man who does discriminate
and yet chooses the bad. There is
nothing more distressing to every
good patriot, to every good American
than the hard, scof1ng spirit which
treats the allegation of dishonesty in
a public man as a cause for laughter.
Such laughter is worse than the
cracking of thorns under a pot, for ic
denotes not merely the vacant mind,
but the heart in which high emotions
have been choked before they could
grow to fruition.
There is any amount OF good in the
world, and there never was time
when loftier and more disinterested
work for the betterment of mankind
than tend for evil are great and terri
BILE, but the forces of truth and love
ity and sympathy are also stronger
than ever before. 1t is foolish and
timid, no less than a wicked thing, to
blink the fact that the forces of evil
are strong, but it is even worse to fail
to take into account the strength of
the forces that tell for good. Hysteri-
weapon wherewith to fight for lasting
stern sobriety and truth assail the
|
public press, or in magazines, or in
books, are the leaders and allies
of all engaged in the work
for social and political better
ment. But If they give good reason
for distrust of what they say, if they
chill the ardor of those who demand
truth as a primary virtue, they there
by betray the good cause, and play
into the hands of the very men against
whom they are nominally at war.
In his ecclesiastical polity that fine
old Elizabethan divine. Bishop Hook
er, wrote t.... as5
''He that goeth about to persuade
multitude that they are not so we'll
governed as they ought to be, shall
never want attentive and favorable
hearers, because they know the mani
fold defects whereunto every, kind of
regimen is subject, but the secret lets
and difficulties, which in public pro-
ceedings are innumerable and inevi-
table, they have not ordinarily the
judgment to consider"
This truth should be kept constantly
in mind by every free people desiring
to preserve the sanity and poise in
dispensable to the permanent success
CT self government. Yet. on the other,
hand, it is vital not to permit this