The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-10-20

None of us at this time can sit back and scruinize the world as disin crested philosopher might. but if we did we should see human nature in some of it's most stupid phases; we should see cxenpIificd on all hands the familiar old saying that some people uut off their noses to spite her faces; we should See men though ,.esssly undermining the very foundations on which they mus res. for support; we should Sc z. curious inability to dtstfn- gulsa he NEal differences be- ~, asn construction and destruc- ton.
 No doubt il is all state of mind, a sort of universal tan tru.ns that has seized upon us, in which we prove again that the most exp CT enCed aGu-ts are, af- Ter all. only children grown.
 The difference is that children, when they ba u-tenper set out to ki-k heir world to pieces, do not succeed very far because there is the solid world of adults which includes and neutraIizes all hat children can do. But when aduI-s $ art out to kick their world to pieces they may do a great deal of damage to themseIves-not to the process Of the seasons nor any fixed na- tural system, but to the social or ganization which they have cre- ated and upon which and on thelr relation to which they de- pend so largely for that which enables them 10 live.
 Children instinctively feel that whatever they may do cannot seriously mater anyway, but adults learn in a harder school, and one of the lessons they learn is that they may do things that matter infinitely.
 It may be that we are heading toward that lesson again. Ger tainly there seems to be a very unusual lack in this country of the feeling of personal responsi- bility for the maintenance and condition of things in general.
 We have become altogether 
 responsibilities to some great generality that does not exist at all, save as it exists in individ- uals. We lay this to "capitaI"; we lay that to labor; we lay something else to 'government," utterly forgetful that capital" labor government are only ourselves acting in certain ways. They are not forces apart from us. They are ourselves; their faults are our faults; their wis dom is our wisdom; their re- sDonsibility is our responsibility and no ones else.
 When, therefore, we think to throttle or otherwise punish one or the other. we awake to find it is ourselves We are thrOttIing and punishing. Whatever the calamity we threaten or invite, it falls upon all of us indiscrimin- ately. We can neither go up nor down by ourselves; the interests of us all are interlocked. in the last analysis we are simply hu- man beings trying to live togeth- CT, and often making a bad job of it.
 The point is not that this is true but that, being true, we so persistently refuse to De guided by it, and must be taught it over and over again by repetitions of needless distress.
 To bring this down to concrete affairs. look at the condition of the world and our own country's relation to it.
 The great present lack across the sea is lack of work-a plain lack of jobs. In England the government out-of-work dona- tions run into millions, and the government is in great unce- tainty as to how 1t will all end. Certainly no governme can go on forever supplying money to an out-of-work population, and