Omaha daily bee., 1921-06-04
Psychologist World
Under Microscope,
tFrom the Baltimore Ameriean)

| In the course of an address at the
annual convention Of the Pennsyl-
vania Bankers association, James
M. Beck, the newly appointed solic-
itor general of the United States,
/ suggested that the development OF
machinery is responsible for the
unrest" of the present age and
maintained that this unrest" was
not the heritage of the world war,
/ but that the world war was a mani
! festation Of the world unrest"
! We are still too near the war to
be quite impartial about 1t. The
passions and prejudices engendered
| by it have not yet died down. All
| the evidence about the long chain
of causes which led up to 1t Is not
! yet available. and when it is it will
be conflicting and the wisest and
most impartial of men will differ
about it.. It is possibly too much to
say that the unrest of the last gen
Grafton is due to the development Of
machinery. which began in England
at the close Of the 18th century with
what is called the Industrial Revo-
| luton. What is clear enough to any
one who has been watching the trend
of events Is that for the last 20 years
everywhere. and particularly in Eu-
rope, there has been a great deal
of tension, political, industrial, eco
nomic. In the political world of
Europe all the elements for an In
ternatioraI explosion were accumlat-
ling in the few years before 1914.
The industrial countries of Europe
all suffered from acute economic dis
turbance and there was similar fric-
tion, though less frequent and wide
spread, in the United States. In,
South Africa and Australia it was
no less violent and menacing than
in Europe.
There is a great deal to be said
for the solicitor generals view that
the unrest" to use a descriptive but
vague and not very accurate term.
was at least a predisposing cause of
or facilitated the waging of the
struggle with such intensity. But,
even if this view could be upheld, no
question would be settled, though
very difficult problem would have
been stated. What brought about
this unrest" this condition Of men
tai strain? No single individual or
group of individuals, no single
cause or group of related causes.
Contributing to it were the gen.
eral speeding-up process (which
in many cases produced frayed and
irritable nerves.; misunderstanding
between capital ana labor and some
times wrong-headed and obstinate
policies, the obstinacy not being con-
fined to one side; international rival
ries and competition for foreign
trade; exaggerated conventions of
nationalism, from which none of the
more powerful nations was wholly
free-these are some of the more
obvious causes Others may be al
legged according to the taste and fan
ey of the individual. One of the
sanest and most widely read of liv-
ing historians, speaking on the sub
ject of unrest" two or three years
before the war, said that feeling of
this kind moved in cycles and came
to a head at periodic intervals Of
about 80 to 40 years. Another in
ternational explosion" he significant
ly added, ''is about due now" His
forecast was only too emphatically
verified by the events of the years
since 1914. Yet, II the student and
psychologist can analyze national
states of mind, the hopeful thing is
that the next stage will be the pos
sibility of providing remedies for
dangerous conditions Of national and
international feeling.