The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1913-10-27
Crowds -

Gerald Stanley Lee has written a wonderful
new book about crowds. From the first page to
the last it palpitates, thrills and throbs, and is
as much distillation of genuius anything
Ruskin, or Carlyle, or Goethe ever wrote.
Most generations have had to die before any
body could understand them but this generation
has been more fortunate. 1t is able to under
stand itself because few great souls have
given it books to understand itself with An age
which has such books "Crowds' written about
itself, and such books as Leaves of Grass" THE
Promise of American Life" and "Chrstanity
and the Social Crisis" in which to know itself
has not the excuse other ages have had for blum
dering off into the tomb, disgraced, defeated and
ashamed.
In "Crowds' the present generation becomes
conscious of itself. Through "Crowds' it's most
liberal energies will find release. Out of it shines
the light that makes our darkness aware of itself.
Lee has the visions of Wordsworth, the
sublime aloofness of Lander, the mental
strength of a Kelvin, the spirit of Jesus, but he
has made himself child of his times, en-
tered down into the depths of his era,
shouldered its bunders, and stupdties, and sins
upon himself; has wrestled with it, struggled
with it, mastered it, and has emerged with
it purified, glorified, translated and done into
book.
To Lee the great problem of the age is it's
moral problem because even the industrial prob
lem, which occupies the surface of the times is
moral at bottom. The question he puts is, How
can the age purify itself without surrendering
any of its industrial gains?
His reply is most significant. The age can
purify itself, he says in substance by being
faithful to its own genius, by keeping right on
with its industrial developments. If the men
who exploiting our material resources will
only remain true to natures own economic laws
the process will right itself because it will be
found that morality inheres in the very essence
of things. If the various processes are kept free
they will work themselves out into righteousness
because in the long run nothing can succeed ex-
Cept righteousness. AS Bishop Buffers great
saying has it, Morality is the nature of things"
AS Lee sees the present situation we are in
imminent danger from two contrasted extremes:
State Socialism on the one hand, and Monopoly
on the other. These are the Scylla and Charybdis
between which society must now steer it's course
And the essence Of their danger lies in this, he
believes, that both interfere with the natural or
der of development. State Socialism because it
is an artificial thing built by society in it's own
interests, and Monopoly because it is an artificial
scheme built by small classes for their interests
thus warping evolution out of its Nature ordain-
ed path.
Whatever we may think of Lees solution of
the pressing problems of our age no reader can
escape the charm of his pages. They hold one
spellbound like the eye of the Ancient Mariner.
One Chicago business man didn't stir from his
chair until he had read the last page and then
went forth in his enthusiasm to purchase pages
of advertising in the great dailies and the most
prominent monthly magazines to tell his coun
trymen what an extraordinary book Gerald Stan
ley Lee had written about them.
TOO TRUE.
Washington Star.
The forgets its hospitality when
a visiting club gets the ball
Sun.