The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1919-06-28
The Great Unrest

The treat Unrest
ct is a law of the human mind that every
great war is followed by period of social un-
rest" says the Christian Science Monitor. ut
is not scientifically law but it gets its apparent
Endorsement from the suggestive insistence of
material reasoning. If you ask why this should
lie, the reply given is an exceedingly simple and
apparently conclusive one. The dislocation of
trade has caused prices to soar, the DISARMAMENT
of armies has flooded the labor market, the tenn
porary depletion of industries has produced a
shortage of manufactures, and so ad infinitum
OF course this is only very roundabout way of
saying that the human mind itself has been in
the wars, and in consequence is suffering from
confusion bordering upon chaos But the human
mind always prefers cropping its way through a
maze to following the high road and so it offers
twenty material explanations of an obvious meta
physical fact.
'It is curious fact, however, of which notice
might be taken by the world, if the world were
not too matter-sodden to be capable of so doing,
that in spite of all the warnings of history no
government ever really prepares for what has
come to be called the period of reconstruction.
1t was just the same when the hundred years of
grand Louis for the predominance of French
ideals in Europe had been brought to close by
the peace of Utrecht No one then but that SUBJ
lime rascal Cartouche seemed to know how to
take advantage of the conditions obtaining.
century later, after Waterloo, it was once more
precisely the same No comprehensive effort had
ben prepared to deal with the prophesied disor-
ganzation and distress, so that recourse was to
the primitive methods of Peterloos.> Another
hundred years passes, and so it is again today
The press the platform, and the soap box have
showered warnings, advice, and even threats upon
the governments of the world, with just about as
much effect as if they had been talking to the
Seven Sleepers or those eminent reactionaries
Louis, Castlereagh, and Metternich.
THE passing of the centuries has not, how.
ever made the policy of reaction either an advis-
able or a stable one. This may be seen in the
temper of the masses. Bolshevism is a very diff
ferent thing from the burning of hayricks, ane
Wnnpegs bear no relation at all to Chartist riots
y great unrest is mastering the human mind. Il
may be observed in its altogether unrelated mani
festations, in the japanese boycott in China, the
coal inquiry in London, or the /. W. w. activities
in America These, perhaps, indication:
which might have been looked for. But side b5
side with them are totally unlocked for explo
sions of the conservative temper, such as the re
volt of the actors, the formation of the middle
class union, the strike of priests at Loretto. No
is this by any manner of means ALL Every on
who understands history knows that the who'll
condition of the world is approximating to tina
which ushered in the Renaissance was European
movement. The unrest of today is world move
lnent.
"A great effort is being made to show tina
this unrest is all the result of specific mesmer
ism labeled bolshevism. But this is putting tn
cart before the horse. That bolshevism is mes
ineric there seems no reason to doubt, but bo
shevism is also an effect, and never cause. Bo
shevisn, in short, is the result of the unsettlin
of the human mind by the Armageddon, actin
on the essentially emotional and uneducated mer
tality of the Slav 1t is exactly this that make
it mesmeric, for the emotional mentality, muse
to scientific thinking and so to protect itself,
swept off its feet and hurried into excess in
way impossible with mentality trained to har
reasoning And this is where the intellectual
caught as easily as the uneducated. Of cours
the anarchist everywhere has striven to adar
bolshevism to his purpose. He has been success