Fulton County tribune. (Wauseon, Ohio) 1883-1925, 1922-02-09


address before the American
Bar association he said that
contempt for law and the present revolt against
the spirit of authority make this age eminently
'one of sham and counterfeit" He rejected the
easy theory that these symptoms of a grave mall
ady are merely reaction of the World war. Far
from causing the moral sickness of the age, says
the solicitor general the World war was In itself,
perhaps, but one of its many symptoms. Some of
the contrbutory of the worlds disorder are
reluctance to obey laws regarded as unreasonable
or vexatious, the laws delays and laxity in ad-
minstration which have bred a spirit of contempt
and the rampant individualism which began in the
Eighteenth century with its excessive emphasis
on the rights of man and small stress on mans
duties. In proof of his contention, Mr. Beck in
stances the records of the criminal courts and
police dockets; violations of the sumptuary laws,
which in the case of the prohibition statute have
resulted in fines aggregating an estimate of more
than $3OOOOO,OO0; and "an increase In nine years
of nearly 400 per cent in the comparatively mar
row sphere of the federal criminal Jurisdiction"
I'm the greater sphere Of social life we find
the same revolt against the institutions which
have the sanction of the past" says Mr.. Beck
Laws which mark the decent restraints of print
speech and dress have In recent decades been in
creasingly disregarded. The very foundations Of
the great and primitive institutions of mankind
like the family, the church and the state-haye
been shaken. Nature itself is defed. Thus the
fundamental difference of sex is disregarded by
social and political movements which ignore the
permanent differentiation of social function or
dained by God himself"
Five plaques affecting humanity said the
pope last year in public utterance before the
College Of Cardinals The first Mr. Beck recalls
is the unprecedented challenge to authority; Sec
ond, hatred between man and man; third. ab-
normal aversion to work fourth the excessive
thirst for pleasure; fifth, gross materialism which
denies the reality Of the spiritual in human life
All these charges, says the lawyer are proved in
recent experience.
1t is, however, to widespread change in social
conditions rather than to any change of mans es-
sental nature that the solicitor general attributes
the maady of our time. 1t seems to him that
"the morale of our Industrial civilization has been
shattered. Work for works sake as the most
glorious privilege of human faculties, has gone.
both as an ideal and as potent spirit The con-
ception of work a degrading servitude to be
done with reluctance and grudging inefflciencv
seems to be the ideal of millions of men of all
classes and in all countries"
The great enigma, then which this situation
propounds TO us. and which, like the riddle of
the Sphinx will solve or be destroyed" is this.
"Has the increase in the potential of human DOW
er, through thermodynamcs been accomplished by
a corresponding increase in the potential of human
eharacterT Then Mr. Beck goes on to say:
"A morality has been substituted for in
dividua morality and group morality generally in
tensifes the vices more than the virtues of man
What true of Germany was true-athough
in lesser degree-Of all civilized nations In all
of them, the individual had been submerged in
group formations and the effect upon the charac-
ter of man has not been beneficial.
"There many paiatives for the evils which
/ have discussed To rekndle in men the love of
work for works sake and the spirit of discipline
which the lost sense of human solidarity once in
spired would do much to solve the problem for
work is the greatest moral force in the world.
II we of tffs generation can only recognize that
the evil exists, then the situation Is not past rem
edy.
II have faith in the inextinguishable spark of
the Divine which is in the human soul and which
complex mechanical civilization has not ex-
tinguished. OF this. the World in itself
a proof. All the horrible resources of mechan-
les and chemistry utilized to coerce the
human SOUL and all proved Intellectual"
AS everyone knows, law-abding citizens in a
number of big American cities have been driven
by conditions to organize law-enforcement COM
mttees-a fact which would seem to corroborate
Mr.. Beck Denver is the latest city to feel the ne
cessity of such organization. The Indictment
against the city administration Is mildly expressed
by Mrs. Mabel Stearns Noble, executive secretary
Of the Woman's Cooperative league who puts 1t
thus:
Drunkenness, immortality and gambling are our