St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1915-09-01

Someone Feels Very Badly

ton. The war in Europe, the war
in Mexico, the war in Hayti, strikes
in scores of places, the shipping bill,
German Americans, Theodore Roose-
Welt, George Perkins, national de-
Tense, missing bank clerks-was
there a woman in the ease?-War-
den Osborne, the British note, the
German notes, Becker, Thaw, the
Eastland, will Greece cede Kavala to
Bulgaria, where is Kavala, why are
the English holding so short a line,
what will the Germans do next, are
we going to have war with Germany;
on each of these subjects we have to
have a true and honest opinion, and
we have to form it in a precious
hurry.
1t is, of course, a sheer impossible
ity, and we all shirk it. But the
avalanche of news during the last
year has taken it's toll We know
vaguely that never before was there
such desperate need for lucid and
imaginative thought, for ideas with
edge and force. We have literally to
change the whole historic policy of
our nation and enter a sphere of &C
ton infinitely complicated and per-
sistently dangerous.
In most of us there is an under
current of uncertainty which we
never knew before, an apprehension
which stirs us vaguely and darkly.
The magnitude of the task seems to
have stunned our thinking, to have
lowered the vital tone of our minds.
We run to brooding over military
events and neglect the intellectual
labors of adjusting ourselves to the
events before us. One example will
suffice. We have seen the price Eng
land is paying for her industrial mis-
takes; we have seen the folly of her
class-ruled industry compounded on
the battlefields OF Europe; we have
witnessed the agony of a nation spir-
itually unprepared for modern CO.
operation. And, having seen it, we
have done no single thing to remedy
the identical diseases in America.
We drift as if nothing had happen
ed, as If nothing were to be learn
ed
The bitter fact is that our educa-
ton is too poor, our leisure too short,
our work too crowded, for any seri-
Gus graphing with the questions
which every days newspaper sets be-
fore us. The meat is too strong for
our unexercised digestions. Our
boast that public opinion governs the
world sounds like vacant mockery.
Public opinion is created out of the
opinions of newspaper readers, and
those readers have not the teeth to
make even a dent upon the tough
issues of our time.
We teeter on the edge of war with
Germany, a war which would change
our whole future. And almost no.
where in the press, almost nowhere
in common talk, is there any indi-
cation of thought about the nature,
the possibilities, the strategy, or the
diplomacy of such a war. We for
get the problem whenever five days
pass without an attack on a decent
ly sized up. The lethargy of the Amer
lean mind is frightening. A new con-
stitution for 9,000,0 100000 people is
being created at Albany; it is lucky
chance if the proceedings are men
toned in the newspapers. Our ca
pacity for attention seems to be ex-
hausted; we are reservoirs of fact,
full to overlooking; we can take on
no more.
Explanations are possible. enough.
We could not be prepared for any
such calamity as that which dis
turbs the world. True. But behind
and stingy educational system, a
grinding and wasteful system of in
dustry, a neglect of those arts and
sciences which steady the mind and
recreate it from day to day. Our
jerry-built cities, our SCOT, the crack
ed paint of our houses, the dusty
carelessness of city life, its faring
secondhand amusements, are the
setting in which people lose the vi
tally to deal with those problems
which they dare not fail to solve.
The helplessness of our discussion is
the natural result of years of un-
ventilated, unirrigated haste. 1t is
the price of our distrust of thought,
of theory, of realism, of intellectual
integrity. How can we deal with the
labor problem now when we have al
ways left it to the cranks? How can
we deal with the international prob
lem when we have lived in isolated
Indifference? Doesn't it follow that
these problems will either not be
solved at all, or that they will be
solved ever our heads and without
our consent? Surely it is tragic to
talk of the voice of democracy when
the democracy is uniformed and
protrate before its tasks.-The New
Republic.
Uniform Legislation.
Considerable was heard at the last
session of our Vermont legislature
about uniform State legislation, and
a step toward uniformity was taken
as far as we are concerned by the
passage of one or two laws coincid-
ing with those of other states. A
conference of commissioners on un-I
form laws was in session last
week in Salt Lake City. It ap-
pears that the work has been in pro-
gress for twenty-five years. Among
the results secured are the Uniform
Negotiable instruments law adopted
in forty-seven states, the Uniform
Warehouse Receipts law adopted in
thirty-one states, the Bills of Lading
law in twelve states, the Sales law in
eleven states, the law relating to
wills executed outside the state in
ten states, the Stock Transfer law
in nine states, the Family Desertion
law in eight states and the Uniform
and Marriage Evasion law in
three states.