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Show Criticism By the Blind One of the peculiar things about modern America is that so many intelligent and thoughtful people do not in the least seem able to understand it. Pick up any magazine that is devoted to something higher than stereotyped fiction and cut-fropi-a-pattern success suc-cess stories, and you find that the prevailing note, in any articb that tries to assay the current era, is one of dark foreboding fore-boding or downright despair. That is not entirely surprising. There are tendencies in modern American life that arc ominous enough, in all truth. But in many cases the gloomy prophets seem to have a complete com-plete misconception of our entire industrial civilization. A writer in a recent issue of The Now Republic, for example, ex-ample, remarks that we owe to Jf.'nry Ford "the discovery that our national welfare depends upon attaining the maximum maxi-mum rate of destruction of our national resources." Then, after asserting that Ford's theory calls on us to waste things we. possess as fast as possible, lie comes to the questioii of world peace and makes this amazing statement: "For long we have worried about war, driven by a pre-induslrial pre-induslrial feeling that war is the enemy of mankind. But by the theory of the economic value of waste vc find that war is the basis of culture. War is our great economic safety valve. For if waste lets up, if people simply won't throw out things fast enough to create new needs in keeping with the increased in-creased output under improved methods of manufacture, we always have recourse to the stiil more thoroughgoing waste fif war. An intelligently managed war can leave whole nations na-tions to be rein. ill, thus providing work at peak productivity for millions of the surviving population." This sample of the reaction of our intellectuals to the new trend in human society fills one with a sort of stupefied despair. For we have here not only a complete misunderstanding misunder-standing of the doctrine of modern industry, as exemplified by Henry Ford; we have also a ludicrous misconception of industry's attitude toward the tragedy of war. We have a right to expect something better than this. The critics of this age of industrialism ought, at, least, to set themselves straight on its fundamental. The facile optimism optim-ism ef the ruccess magazines is not born of any more shoddy thinking than the equally facile pessimism of some of our iit ellecUials. A tremendous change is coming upon society these days. It is coming whether we like it or not. No amount of disturbed dis-turbed wailing will halt it. From our intellectual classes we should be getting not blind outbursts of peevish alarm, but ;. genuine attempt to understand what is happening and how we can get the most out of it. Weird remarks like the ones ((noted above do no one any good. |