The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1919-08-09
The Vicious Circle

The Vicious Circle
The common mistake of all governments in
dealing with great social upheavals is to take
them too seriously or not to take them seriously
enough, says the Christian Science Monitor. That
is because any government is after all nothing
but the quintessence of the human mind which
is itself permanently unbalanced, always seeing
men and circumstances out of focus with the
ewes of Zimri,
So over violent, civil.
That every man with him was God or devil
The Greeks had saying, which has been attri-
buted to Scion amongst others, and which may
be translated Nothing too much =
What then. the governments of the world are
facing today, il they will only recognize it, is an
abstract mental condition of which the immediate
inspiring cause is human selfishness. The profit
eer at one extreme is intent piling on the pub
lie everything, in his own phrase, that it will
bear; on the other hand there is the mob ready,
at any moment, to break out in riot, and to en-
rich itself with the loot of the shops. The one
action takes place orderly and lawfully, the other
disorderly and unlawfully. But nevertheless they
both are but the extreme vibrations of the same
pendulum; and the disciplined restraint of the
first, and the unreasoning passion of the second,
are equally irresponsible inasmuch as they repre-
sent obedience to mental suggestion, not less
powerful because unseen Any person who has
watched carefully the mental force of the world
at work must have become aware of this. Greed
fattens upon greed, and even more so does injury
upon injury. The only safety in either case is
rigorous self-examination by the individual, in
the effort to bring his thoughts and his actions
into accord with Principle. One on Principles
side, slightly to adapt Wendell Phillips saying,
is a majority.
1t is majority too which the thoughtful man,
as he masters the phenomena of human existence,
from Shantung, by way of Moscow, Vienna.
Paris London and New York, to Vancouver, must
appreciate the Importance Of the more he comes
to understand it. After centuries of maneuver-
ing for position, Capital and Labor about
closing with one another. And they do the
calm onlooker notices some things curious as
they are interesting. He notices Capital falling
back on the discredited expedients of the four
teenth century, and Labor retaliating in the
spirit of primitive ferocity. There is extra
ordinary resemblance, that is to say, between the
new vagrancy laws of Kansas and the old English
Statute of Laborers, whilst the methods of the
Liverpool mob, in breaking into and sacking the
shops, allowing for all the picturesque exaggera-
ton of the special correspondent is fully in agree
ment with that law of precedents, which, as
Junius sarcasticay insists, is bred out of pre-
cedents. The bankruptcy of the human mind be-
comes more and more apparent every day.
The syndicalistic touch in the scheme for the
reorganization Of the railroads of the United
States affords a delightful example of this In
the good old days when Capital was the wicked
giant, Selfishness, and Labor the true knight of
equality and fraternity, the Socialist state was
held up as the "Bonum summum quo tendimus
omnes," as men have, for centuries, sententiously
quoted Lucretius as saying, "The highest gooc
at which we all aim" AS, however, the dints be.
gan to appear in the giants armor, the true
knight began to appear in the giants arnor, the
true knight began to modify his battle cry a
little, until one day it became fraternity anc
syndicalism. Now, to tell the truth, there is un
commonly little fraternity about syndicahsm, OF
perhaps it would be fairer to say that the fra