The Dayton forum. [volume] (Dayton, Ohio) 1913-1949, 1938-09-30


Forum Cincinnati, Ohio.
By DR.. VICTOR E. REICHERT
Rockdale Ave. Temple, Cincinnati, O. |
The events Of the past week have
made clear, with all the startling
vlyidness of lightning flash across
jet-black sky, the desperate plight |
and crisis of our present world. We
have heard the frenzied cheering of
tie mob echoing to the fierce BRAY
ado and turbulence Of the worlds
most menacing demagogue. We have
seen Britain's leading statesman,
clutching like a dying man at the
last straw, embark on the most dar-
ing and unprecedented venture Of
diplomacy in modern history For
the moment, at least, Europe has
not yet plunged into the black
abyssess of disaster but who can
doubt that all the elements conspire
to drag Us to that madness. Only
miracle, it seems, can avert the
doom that hangs, like the inexorable
Fatality Of Greek tragedy, over
the fate and destiny Of human kind.
Not in twenty years has terror so
clutched at the throats Of men and
filled their hearts with grim fore
bodings. We have sown the win 5
lessness and now the wfirlwinds Of
utter annihilation and destruction
rage about US. There is no insulation
against the hieh-tension voltage Oh
such fury. No one can count himself
aloof. No wonder that the dominant
and distinguishirg mood and malady
of our time is fear and uncertainty
confusion and disillusionment. Edwin
Arlington Robinson once spoke pro-
rhetically of his universe as "a klne
IF spiritual kindergarten, where MIL
lions Of bewildered infants are try
ing to spell God with the Wrone
blocks" If he were here today, h
might more fittingly describe ou1
scene as the vestibule or ante
chamber of cosmic charnel hons'
where witches raucously mutte
their incantations of evil and hatret
over the seething cauldron OF van
ishing hopes. This mood Of Olsen
chantment eats into the psycholog,
of every one of US. II betrays ltsel
in the distemper of our youth an
the transparent eynicism and dls
belief Of our elders. Before tn
terrific tempo of vast and sudde
lpsets in our economic, politlei
and social life, we stand like help
less. chagrined children over a jig
saw puzzle which we thought we ia
mastered but now discover cannt
he fitted into any intelligent patterl
The result of such magic, where Y
coemic hand Of social forces is fastS
than the individual eye, is that y
grow skeptical We look out on O.
keleidoscopic life with no inner cor
viction of it's wort'a, no assuraaf
it's intelligent plan, nc faith ~
good purpose.
We have lost the cock-sure jul
ilance and nonchalance Of the nln'
teenth century. The generation p'
fore us, toying with It's neW-1oui
inventions and discoveries, express
its child-like elation in the exulta
certainty of progress. Change
them meant only one thing, advanc
ment, utopian hopes. In some T
spects they were right. The eleetl
lipht was better than the old oil la1
or the Pickering gas Jet. The aut
mobile could travel faster and mt
comfortably than the sloW-moVl
horse and buggy. But the sal
inventive genius that made life M
mobile and more comfortable, q
made life more terrible and M
brutal. Suddenly without warm
III 1914 the age of mechanical
vention came to an abrupt expios
in the most brutal and deyasta'
war in human history lhat
than twenty-five years later aflo.
world war can even be contemPla'
bringing with it horrors OF suen .
tiality as to stagger even the ~
;nations of fiends and mad-n
shows how pathetically short =
memory Of men and how pfeearlo
It. thin is the veneer Of culture
civilization! s..
No wonder the shlhbolet q eha
as progress has gone up N SIN
The march of Time has not noSs'
forward to better things. bacf
.;ence and invention, education
industry, government and statee
there must be something l'ois
efficiency and skill, something
sides the most expert technique
modern planning and organlza
I. il not astounding that the
scientific age Of human nus
when all the latent forces o.
,,,anet have been summoned ps