The Daily Alaska empire., 1933-12-27

| SO l.UEI Ol our culIS4lL G.SCGS- sion has to do with statistics and graphs and broad general tenden- cies and movements and forces and what not. that 1t gets 10 be tire some and unrzal. We are not real ly at home among these a5strac- tions and inpersonal things. and every now and then we cry out 1 with Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing" that you cannot
 Fetter strong madness in
 silken thread.
 Charm ache with air. and
 agony with words
 We must have something sub- stantial to chew, something person. al and definite to deal with. Like Leonato We then exclaim: Which is the villain? Let me see his eyes"
 And if there is not a real vIl- lain around. we invent one. We have now reached the point where Professor Tugwen is being fitted with horns to frighten ladies and gentlemen of property, and Mir. Lewis Douglas is being set up as the personal devil who is opposing the children Of light. Professor Tugwell, it appears. is leading Q sort of personal conspiracy to sub vers the Amer ic n scheme ot things. and Mir. Douglas is the hard hearted wretch who stands guard at the Treasury and is blocking the millennium which, but for him, would be just around the corner.
 If these things were true, 1t would certainly save lot of time and trouble. You get rid of Tug well, and then we all move along happily and prosperously in the good old way Or, you get rid of Douglas and, before you know it, the New Deal has been dealt and you have made a grand slam.
 I do not think these things arc true. MT. Tugwell might be as much of a Socialist as they say he is and MT. Douglas all the Tory they say he is, and still the personal diagnosis would not be convincing. It would not be con- vincing even if the President showed any symptoms of entrust- ing his whole conscience to the legendary Tugwen or to the leg endary Douglas.
 For revolutions are not made by opinions nor prevented by them. I do not think it is possible to find an instance where social order has been radically altered because some one thought some other kind of order would be better. There has to be a complete breakdown of the old order, total paralysis. and an extinction of all hope tha. it can revive. before genuine so- cial revolution occurs When these conditions do not exist, you may get a change of government. in moments of excitement even vio- lent change. you may get an Eighteenth Amendment or grand lose law, but when the smoke clears away you are pretty sure to ind the essential institutions and hab- it's of the nation the same.
 That, for example. is why Marx ism has worked out exactly con- trary to the Marxist theory. Ae- cording to that theory the first communist state should have been the most advanced capitalist state. Instead, communism is triumphant in the least capitalistic nation among all the great powers. Why? Because in Russia, and nowhere else, there was, as result of the war, a complete breakdown of the social mechanism and a collapse
 f all authority and enterprise. Had there been an communist dictator ship. there would inevitably have had to have been military die tatorship, and that dictatorship would have had the task of ere ating an economic system on the ruins of the old system. Ina the dictators happened to be com munists rather than CZarist gen. erals and Grand Dukes was. IL seems to me, due to the fact that the generals and dukes were de- feated and demoralized and dis credited men, whereas the com munists were fresh and were or ganized and ready to take power. I believe this because the com munists got nowhere at all in any country where the old order had any life left in it or any leaders capable of defending and operat- ing it. .5-
 The moral, it seems to me, is that a social system is not over thrown by conspiracies, nor by propaganda, but only by it's own weakness. The only way to defend a social system is to make it work. The only time to have fears for it is when it does not work. AS long as it works, providing the bulk Of the people with the satisfactions they normally expect from it, it is ~..A ~I-