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Show THE CITIZEN D high adventure and tilting at windmills. But the danger to his country and people is that he has dreamed, not of a real Republic of Italy, but of a DAnnunzio dictatorship. The whole story of his life is one to inspire the fear that, like Catiline, he seeks but to revel in power as once he reveled in poetry and passion. There is the fear, indeed, that he is thinking almost solely of DAnnunzio and of making life interesting for DAnnunzio now that the old gods are unkind and the old pleasures pall. DAnnunzio, floating in an airplane over the coasts of Dalmatia and dreaming of an Italy subject to his will, hardly recalls a Cincinnatus leaving his plow to save his country. ' , THE TIGERS WAY an epidemic of extravagance has set Paris in a whirl the WHILE Clemenceau takes a lonely cottage on the coast of Vendee so . production can we make life easier and freer. You can divide the fruits of labor ; you cannot divide the fruits of idleness because there are none. The only way to produce wealth for distribution is by combining capital and labor. Capital is that part of wealth set aside to produce other wealth and that is why capital and the capitalist are of genuine value to the world. Wealth that is wasted does nobody good. Wealth that is used as capital keeps the farms, the mines and the factories in operation to produce things of value for distribution. Capital at work and Labor at work, and working together, can save the world from the abyss of want and famine and nothing else can. The great danger is that Capital and Labor will continue their destructive warfare until we have a panic and hard times like those of a generation ago when millions of men were out of work and were glad to accept long hours and low wages. that he may be free to work without interruption. Nightly the dancing salons, the lobster palaces, theatres and midnight pleasure resorts are thronged with the devotees of fashion and folly. Jewelers and dressmakers are selling their goods for fabulous prices and are amazed to find business better than in the days befqre the world tragedy. We are told that at one dancing salon the master has made hired men out of the young sprigs of nobility, who dance with dames of fashion and title for so much per dance. The revels in London, Berlin and Paris recall somewhat the Restoration period in England. The icy days of Puritanism gave way to expensively luxurious festivities in the palaces and great mansions. It was the mode to express contempt for the staid regime of the dissenters by riotous living and abasements which we read of today with amazement and disgust. The bands of morality were loosened in all walks of life and London bcame the wonder of the age for its orgies and frivolities. It was Bolingbroke or some one equally known to fame as a statesman, who, in his youth, raced naked across one of Londons squares to win a drunken wager. The moralist is apt to mistake these periods for the beginning of chaos and to speak sadly of the decline and fall of empires with the Roman empire as his text and proof. But these periods have come and gone in our modern world without bringing the fall of civilization and the triumph of barbarism. If we were to follow the analogy of the moralist we would proclaim the Bolsheviki the barbarians and picture them as battering with irresistible force at the gates of tottering civilization. But is not the figure of Clemenceau, toiling tirelessly in the lonely cottage by the sea, more typical of modern society than the revels of fashionables and unspeakable camarillas in the capitals of Europe? Our own country is comparatively free from alarming contrasts of excessive luxury and penury, for though we are the richest people in the world our rich, for the most part, are wisely abstaining from a senseless display of wealth and our poor are rich compared with those who are struggling against the handicaps of national bankruptcy back of the old battle lines of Europe. Everywhere, however, in this civilized world of ours the two extremes of society are preaching or practicing the same doctrine fewer hours of work and more hours of pleasure. It is an appealing doctrine on the lips of a labor leader who draws a pathetic picture of a mining camp where the workers have only seven nights a week in which to go to the moving picture shows or engage in social diversions. There can be no happiness, they declare, until the men have week and the five-da- y day. As usual it is the middle class, the despised bourgeoisc who must hold the balance true, and keep civilization from being wrecked by the drones. It is inspiring to sec one of Clemcnceaus age and worth clinging to the old standards of conscientious labor at a time of such peril to the social structure. He is setting an example that will appeal to all who have common sense. He teaches his countrymen and men everywhere that after the unparalleled waste of the worst and greatest of wars work is the solution of our difficulties, that only by increasing six-ho- ur 5 1919 AND 1877 who went through the panic of 1893 will recall that it was by conditions similar to those which alarm us today, but in 1877 the United States was barely saved from a panic which was being rought on by just such conditions. It is rather startling to read that communists from Europe and their recruits in this country shared in the agitation and turbulence of that day, for the Bolshevists and the I. W. W. of our day are communistic in their theories and plan of action and are fond of tracing their descent from those communists who wrote such a sanguinary chapter in the history of France immediately after the Franco-Prussia- n war. Colonel Emmons Clark, in his History of the Seventh Regiment, published by that organization in 1890, gives us a brief but illuminating review of the conditions which would have led to a nationwide panic had not the good sense and loyalty of the people prevailed over the violence of the vicious and misguided. From the history, volume 2, page 257, we quote the following : THOSE and The inflation of the currency of the country during the war (1861-65- ) the consequent extraordinary speculation and increase in nominal prices terminated in a great financial panic in 1873, which prostrated business, undermined credit and deranged the channels of trade and commerce. Habits of extravagance had been acquired by all classes of the people, and none cheerfully submitted to a reduction of income and to the enforced economy which were the natural results of the great change in the financial and business affairs of the country. For many years labor had been in great demand and had been extravagantly rewarded, and by means of trade societies had been able to dictate terms to employers. But with the prostration of business the supply of labor exceeded the demand; the reduction in wages was stoutly resisted, and the year 1877 witnessed a general strike among the railroad employees of the country which threatened to entirely paralyze trade and to result in great sacrifice of life and property. The idle and vicious hastened to enlist under the banners of those who demanded higher wages, and by riotious demonstrations and by acts of pillage and wanton destruction brought discredit upon honest labor. The communists, largely recruited of late from Europe, also availed themselves of the opportunity to swell the excitement and in threatening language to promulgate their theories of liberty and equality. In many cities the mob obtained complete control and successfully resisted the civil authorities and the military ordered to their support. The small number of regular troops, the entire absence of organized militia in some states and the inefficiency of local troops in many cases or their sympathy with the rioters left a large part of the country exposed to the dangers incident to periods of disorder. About the first of August peace was restored, in some cases by submission to the demands of the rioters, in others by compromise, and generally by fatigue, exhaustion and reaction which naturally follow a prolonged disturbance. THE ALLIANCE WITH FRANCE of the London comments on the Senates failure to ratify the ONE is to the effect that the English people arc inclined to prefer an alliance with this country to a League of Nations. There is about the comment something enigmatic which may be belief on the part of the highly significant. It seems to indicate a alliance between the English people that there is chance of a general United States and Great Britain. alliance If, however, the comment refers simply to the tripartite the United States, it is difproposed for Great Britain, France and alliance to ficult to see why the English people should prefer such an territorial one that would require the United States to guarantee the of the whole British integrity and existing political independence |
