Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-07-05
Continued From Third Page)

row and nihilistic cultures that rise on
or Mr.. Volstead; the machinery of
Manchester or the machinery of Mos
COW; the attacks on human living made
by dead individualism Or by dying
socialism.
They are confident that all these at
lacks on the family will be defeated in
turn, II only by other and contrary at
tacks And If they needed any con-
firmation Of their confidence (Which
they do mott where could they find a
more splendid and even startling con-
f1rmation than in the genius of Wynd-
ham Lewis? Only a few years ago,
women were summoned to leave their
firesides and more or less f1guratively
set the house On fire. Only few years
ago that was Progress; that was Proph-
ecy; that was the Doom Of the domestic
superstition. condemned by enlighten-
ment and the common good.
Regarded as False.
They wait year or two and the next
philosopher who appears declares that
all that revolution was a ruse Of the
sweaters and swindlers of Big Business:
that 1t was only a delusion under the
disguise of a rebellion. The next phi
losopher will say of the Wyndham Lewis
view of the Family exactly what Wynd-
ham Lewis would say of the Pankhurst
view Of the Feminists. These fads sue
coed each other; and they have nothing
in common, except that each of them
is offered as final and each of them
Is very soon finished
All that vision of the future is a
thing of the past. 1t tries desperately
to become more imaginative by becom-
ing more impossible; to become futur-
list by becoming futile: to make I'D for
all that it has failed to destroy by
threatening what cannot be DESTROYED
Because 1t has not outlived sacramental
marriage 1t says 1t will outliva sex. Be-
cause man will not abandon mysticism
1t says 1t will abandon man. Because
woman is not sufficiently altered, she
is abolished.
In other words. 1t dwells more among
the ruins: and it is raving Every one
of It's futurist and fatalist prophecies
III the immediate past has gone wrong
1t had destroyed religion with the one
whitening epithet of medieval: and
the only result was that about half the
cultivated world began for the first time
to read st. Thomas Aquinas It said
that the modern mind could no longer
think OF anything like authority in
politics; with the result that nation
after nation set up dictatorships and
nationalist after nationalist wrote books
about the urgent need for monarchy.
I do not hold that the principles here
involved were always right; I only say
that all the predictions were always
wrong. And, having seen the Fasces
brought back to Rome and Plato
preaching TO the humanists In America
l cannot but suspect runor of pre-
mature burial in the announcement Of
the final funeral of man and woman
I do not think that youth is doomed.
1 do not believe that it will die 1 have
darker and more subtle suspicion
about it. I think that it will grow up.
Predicts Slow Growth.
But if it grows up healthily and hap
PLY. II will grow up traditionally and
slowly, and under the protection of the
family There is no space here to
argue so large matter: but out of my
warm admiration for Wyndham Lewis
penetration and sincerity, do ask him.
not to believe it, but to believe that we
believe it. 1t is not convention. it Is
a conviction: and it is the conviction
If body of men which does not d.
minish and which Is certainly not de.
stroyed.
He seems to be somewhat dispropor-
tionately disturbed by the fact that he