Search

The article focuses on a mass of papers in the handwriting of Arthur St. Clair, the first Governor of the Northwestern Territory. In order to make this mass of historical material available for research, and at the same time to remove all temptation from light-fingered antiquarians, autograph-stealers, and other kleptomaniacs, it was determined by the Library Commissioners to recommend publication, which was authorized in February 1881. St. Clair is perhaps best known, not as the founder and civic organizer of the Northwest, but as an unfortunate general under whom the Western army suffered a terrible defeat by Indian savages.

It was long ago remarked that when men are collected in crowds they are willing to laugh at ancient and feeble jokes, that for a few minutes they are considerably affected by oratory, and, to speak briefly, show in many ways that they are intellectually inferior to themselves when alone. As regards morals, on the other hand, it is universally admitted, that a crowd of men is rather better than the average individuals composing it. The orator, for example, is certain to assume in his audience collectively greater moral worth and mote stupidity than he would venture to attribute to its constituent individuals and this assumption is not merely a fiction of the platform but, is founded upon a fact of human nature.

This article focuses on the book "A Bundle of Papers," by Paul Siegvolk. These papers are such as might form the padding of a third-class magazine without offence. They are concerned usually with the conduct of life, and contain such advice relative thereto as would form the worldly wisdom of a country gentleman, easy-going, observant, well-read, in his lighter hours inclined to garrulity, and in his heavier afflicted by a labored striving after antithesis, in which the distinction is perhaps as frequently in the but as in the thought. A legend of the Hudson, a mystery of Narragansett Heights, and the musings of a street-railway conductor vary the subject without varying the interest.

This article presents information related to the socio-political issues in the United States. When the bluff and breezy Robert W. Stewart was defying the committee in opposition to the pious wishes of the younger business tycoon John D. Rockefeller, papers like the Philadelphia Public Ledger uttered severe comments on the manners and ethics of men who had come more or less suddenly into power and influence, and who lacked the proper background to enable them to use it properly. Every day of the campaign brings new evidence of the extent to which the Secretary's clever young men are playing into the hands of those seasoned and crafty strategists who, at the proper moment, will engineer the swing toward Charles Gates Dawes.

This article focuses on Denver Post, which once proclaimed itself the best newspaper in the U.S. This newspaper has been for years perhaps the worst paper, in terms of either ethics or professional proficiency, published in any large city in the United States; yet it has regularly made from &1,000,000 to $1,500,000 a year, ranks as the richest in its size-field, and has almost saturation circulation. The Port was invariably against the best men and the most constructive project; local or national. It always chose to support the cause of reaction.

The article presents information on various publications. Harper & Bros. have in press "Modem Italian Poets," with translations and portrait illustrations, by W. D. Howells. Among the art books of the year, Lee & Shepard promise "A Bunch of Violets," by Miss Irene E. Jerome of Chicago. Two novels "A Village Maid," by Helen Hays, and "Inchfawn," by L. T. Heads are shortly to be brought out by Thomas Whittaker along with a treatise on "The Doctrine of Morality," by Dr. Fairbairn, Warden of St. Stephen's College.

For over several years the non-Communist world has been subjected to a last-ditch publicity campaign advertising Moral Re-Armament (MRA), a movement that promises to save mankind if it will only listen. During this period, MRA has done its best to make itself heard by distributing eighty-seven million copies of a booklet called "Ideology and Co-existence," by running hundreds of full-page advertisements in prominent newspapers around the globe, including better than 130 in the U.S. in one month alone; by showing several MRA produced movies and plays here and abroad; by selling and giving away thousands of books, pamphlets and magazines; and by carrying on determined evangelical efforts on the part of its followers.

This article presents information on the book "The Politics of Aristotle," with an introduction, two prefatory essays, and notes critical and explanatory, by W.L. Newman. The works of Aristotle have been sadly neglected by classical scholars in America. Yet Aristotle is the "master of those who know." It was shown time and again that Aristotle was right when his unscientific interpreters had believed him wrong. An examination of the catalogues of fourteen prominent colleges and universities of this country shows that courses in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics are offered by two universities in Greek and by two in English.

Presents several letters to the editor. Argument pertaining to the study of history in the Southern states of the U.S.; Information on Margaret Fuller, editor of "Dial"; Citation of a case about the breach of academic ethics.

The article focuses on various developments around the world in 1926. In the case of the Countess of Cathcart the U.S. has touched bottom in its Pecksniffian policy of supervising the morals of private individuals, particularly those of visitors to this country; The second article focuses on a widespread and dramatic activity in corporation mergers. Free competition has seen its day, and over great and growing sections of our industrial life is dying, where it is not completely dead; The third article focuses on the negotiations begun by the new French Ambassador for the settlement of his Government's debt.

The article discusses the revolt of the youth in the U.S. society. In talking about the revolt of youth one should never forget that one is dealing with a new concept. For thousands of years nobody cared what youth were doing. They weren't news. Today they are striking back. That is news. Nobody else is striking back. It has become only too apparent that one can no longer afford the old catch-as-catch-can morality with which civilization has muddled through to 1960. Sloth, rascality, predatory dishonesty, evasion, bluster, no longer work. The machinery has become too delicate, too complicated, too world-encompassing. Maybe it was once true, a hundred and fifty years ago, that the sum total of the immoral actions of selfish men produced a social good.

The article presents information about the book "A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza," by Harold H. Joachim. The present work consists of a commentary upon the `Ethic' based upon a very careful and well-considered study of the whole of the writings of Spinoza, together with those of the cream of his commentators. There is no trace in Spinoza of any direct acquaintance with mediaeval scholasticism. The Dutch Aristotelians were influenced to a considerable, but limited, extent by scholastics.

The article focuses on the developments taking place across the world as of August 3, 1916. In the third year of the first world war is advancing upon the world over heaps of predictions unfulfilled and wisdom proved folly. The view on the war have changed. War is the scourge of the human race. The amazing development of trench warfare was not foreseen. It obviously alters the whole problem of national defense. The moral judgments of the world have stood firm. Nothing which has since happened has altered them.

The article focuses on some recent issues in the United States. There is nothing that the American public relishes more than the opportunity to wallow in a sty of pseudo-moral discussion. When something happens to tarnish the national image of moral excellence, Americans try to restore its pristine brilliance by rituals of public atonement led by priestly commentators. The "silent" Americans who have been down on the "kids" lately would do well to look in the other direction once in a while for their villains. If they did, they would discover a U.S. Army Major, in uniform and with the apparent approval of Army Chief of Staff General William Westmoreland, criticizing elected members of the United States Congress.

This article literary appraises the book "A Vindication, of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects," by Mary Wollstonecraft. This book serves a most useful purpose now in showing the conditions, which it has been a powerful means of changing, as it did then in setting forth women injustice and their folly. Against the immoral and indecent state of opinion concerning women, Mary Wollstonecraft uttered a vigorous protest. As a specimen of fine and impassioned reasoning, her book has seldom been surpassed.

According to progressives led by Abbot Butler of Downside, director of the Benedictine order of England, together with French, Spanish and Canadian prelates, held that mere possession of atomic weapons violates Christian morality and that distinctions between offensive and defensive war were today both useless and dangerous. The Church should therefore demand that atomic weapons be outlawed. At the same time they called for stronger recognition of the rights of conscientious objectors. American prelates, on the other hand, insisted on the recognition of the use of defensive nuclear weapons, and criticized the ban-the-bomb attitude as unrealistic. In addition to that, the article presents various other information.

This article presents a moral criticism of Vietnamese conflict of 1960's. The terrible thing is that once one stray from absolute nonviolence one opens the door for the most shocking abuses. It is like distributing scalpels to an eager group, half of whom are surgeons and half butchers. The ordinary people of Vietnam show none of the signs of a nation defending itself against "aggression," except in their noncooperation with the government and the Americans. A hundred thousand Vietnamese farmers were conducting a rebellion with mostly captured weapons.

The uproar about the sinfulness of the movies is just a big, stupendous, colossal misunderstanding. The motion pictures are accused of corrupting the morals of American men, women and children. But consider who makes the accusation, a "Legion of Decency" already numbering hundreds of thousands of people and rapidly growing. By autumn it is expected that there will be at least 12,000,000 legionnaires of decency, 8,000,000 Catholics and 4,000,000 members of other denominations. By their own admission these crusaders are themselves unstained, the movies have utterly failed to corrupt them.

The article presents editorials as published in this issue of the periodical "Nation." The U.S. Secretary of Labor concurs in the decision of inspectors excluding the Countess Catheart. The press is of the opinion that this is an entirely unwarranted interpretation of the law and are hopeful that judges will be found to see that there is no legal warrant for the position taken by the Government. The very section of the law cited by the Secretary is not convincing, for he declares that the Countess admitted the commission of a crime involving moral turpitude. Close on heels of the Catheart case comes the trial of Anthony Biniba in Brockton, Massachusetts, for declaring his disbelief in God.

An enormous amount of money has been and is being spent by the Chemical Foundation, worshipers of the god of property, to sustain one of the most disreputable spoliations of private property ever recorded. Thus war and its aftermath deprave private and public morality. At no other time could responsible people fail to see that the mere effort to defend or palliate so brazen a transaction is a disgrace to every one connected with it. But it is interesting to find that those who defend it are among the great uplifters, Leaguers and World Courters, and advocates of rostrum righteousness generally wherever the chance offers.

Presents letters to the editor. Appreciation of the journal "The Nation"; Discussion on whether morality is related to the kind of clothes one wears; Reason behind arresting a two-year-old boy by the police in Berkeley, California.

The article focuses on the changes in patterns of habit and attraction which govern the emergence of leaders, the nomination and election of candidates, and the discussion of issues in the United States. This political change is totally urban. The traditional municipal machine was a patty organization, dominated by one or more bosses, which controlled the entire political process by means of physical force, economic sanctions, social pressures, and political favoritism. The first thing the New York City reformers did to curtail the power of the machine was to raise the standard of public morality. Conclusions from the study of New York City's political experience during the past twenty years is also outlined.

The article presents information on the book "History of the Great Civil War, 1642-1649," vol. III, by Samuel R. Gardiner. The author has completed his annals of the Great Civil War; he has reached the third stage in his monumental history of the age of the Stuarts. The moment is opportune for forming an estimate of his position among investigators of the past. It is the more natural to do so because Gardiner, in his last volume, pronounces a verdict on the character of Cromwell; and the extent to which one accepts Gardiner's conclusions on a most intricate question of fact and of ethics must depend on one's opinion of one's author's capacity for the discharge of an historian's judicial functions.

This article presents information on the book "One World," by Wendell Willkie. Willkie has been engaged in two great pilgrimages The one took him around the world. The other carried him from the presidency of a public-utility corporation through a Presidential campaign to the position of an honored tribune in the U.S. The fact that he has gained in moral stature since his defeat in the election has made thinking Americans look forward particularly to this report of his trip around the world. They had reason to expect that it would be a report of the two odysseys, though it would ostensibly be a record of only the more obvious one. It is possible to report gratefully that these expectations have not been disappointed. The more spiritual pilgrimage is fairly well indicated in the process of recording the trip around the globe.

The article presents information on the strategy taken during the second world war by the countries involved. In the interest of effective strategy now and effective post-war organization one should face the ethical questions even if one do not entirely answer them. Recall the facts which have enabled the enemy at almost no military cost whatever to establish themselves in vitally important strategic positions from which one can now be dislodged only at immense sacrifice of life. If one stand upon the political principles one have proclaimed one cannot act promptly.

This article provides information about several books. Twenty-three years ago in "Philosophy and the Physicists," L. Susan Stebbing attacked the idealistic tendencies of Sir Arthur Eddington and Sir James Jeans. Her questions and ideas are still stimulating and useful, but newer theoretical and technological developments which have brought nuclear warfare within the domain of what philosopher Bertrand Russell calls "feasible lunacy" have now shifted attention to the bearing of physics on politics and ethics. Lord Russell's "Common Sense and Nuclear War" eloquently and lucidly argues that victory in the traditional sense is not possible in nuclear war, that a universal danger requires international cooperation and that such an international authority as he considers necessary can be established despite the gravest difficulties.

This article focuses on writer George Eliot. Born on November 22, 1819 and bred in a farmhouse of the Midlands, Eliot passed her youth among the mixed commonalty, roughing it with them under difficulties. George Eliot's essays, letters, note books and those discursive chapters in her novels that are laden with green-room confidences all reveal the assured belief that sympathy not only with the historical life of man but with the monotonous existences of commonplace men, is the key to our knowledge of others. The chief element of drama in George Eliot's stories is moral struggle. Large experience had taught her that there is no human being, however humble or insignificant, whose life is not a battle-ground of good and evil, of joy and misery.

This article briefly discusses the dramatic works of Gerhart Hauptmann. In 1907, Hauptmann made a long deferred visit to Greece, a religious Pilgerfahrt remotely suggestive of Goethe's journey to Italy. The book is suggestive, for the utter inability of a certain type of German mind to appreciate the meaning of Greek culture. It is a madness-inspired sacrament of man's blankness before the great riddle of existence, and a confession of his impotence in the face of the dark forces of nature. The world of Hauptmann's tragedies is childishly irrational at heart. Things go right or go wrong, not because of any apparent law or of any effort on the part of the characters, but because of sheer caprice.

This article appraises the book "Genetics and Education," by Arthur R. Jensen. In his preface Jensen claims that the protests and criticisms his article published in the journal "Harvard Education Review," drew were in large part politically and ideologically motivated, rather than being objective scientific statements. The author portrays himself as a sober, rational and diligent scientist who has always been fully committed to the canons of free scientific inquiry. According to Jensen, not only have students and the press treated him in a grossly unfair way, but his professional colleagues and the professional establishment have also reacted toward him in an unethical and narrow-minded fashion.

The article presents information about various books. "Education and Ethics," by Emile Boutroux, translated by Fred Rothwell, consists of four lectures on the principal types of ethics and four on educational subjects, given at various times before the pupils of the Fontenay Training School for Teachers. The second volume of "Cicero's Letters to Atticus" in the Loeb Classical Library maintains the character of the first. The subject of the monograph "The Life of Robert Toombs," by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, was an able and picturesque Georgian.

Presents several letters to the editor. Discussion on moral progress of one hundred years in the U.S.; Need to teach Bible in schools of the U.S.; Comments on the article "A Force for the Revival of the Reading Habit."

So persistently has T. E. Lawrence, "The uncrowned King of Arabia," kept in the public eye that some have found his professed desire for obscurity suspiciously paradoxical. It seems that in 1918 Lawrence, whose genius had played a large part in uniting the Arabian tribes in behalf of the Allies, discovered that the British Foreign Office had made him the unconscious instrument of a betrayal. It had promised independence to Arabia but at the same time it had repudiated this promise in a secret treaty with the other Allies in which a division of the country as part of the spoils of war was agreed upon. When Lawrence discovered that he would be unable to fulfil the promise with which he had won the confidence of the people he was leading "a longing for death to end his shame" came upon him, and though he survived the war he refused the thanks of the Government he had served because he did not care to receive honors for having succeeded in a fraud.

The article discusses the book "Social Credit," by C.H. Douglas. This is the latest volume by Douglas on a theme which has occupied his attention since the close of the World War. Like his other volumes on the same subject, this one is not devoted simply to an exposition of monetary and credit theories but is marked by excursions into many fields of human thought—education, philosophy, ethics, politics, international peace, and sociology. The author flits from one to the other with such celerity that it becomes difficult to follow the thread of his ideas through these byways of extraneous thought.

This article focuses on the book "The Moral Judgment of the Child," by Jean Piaget. In undertaking this study Piaget did not set out to prove a point. For the first part he selected the simple game of marbles, because he saw here, ready at hand, a complete ethical system accepted and practiced by all children. He mingled in their games as if he were doing it for the sake of the game only. Thus he skillfully drew out from them their actual practice of the rules. As he played, he questioned them to find out their consciousness of rule as differentiated from practice.

The article presents an overview of the book "A Story Teller's Story," by Sherwood Anderson. This autobiography has the singular merit of presenting in a most engaging manner a key to all sides of its author's literary character. Parts of it must have been written desultorily, and other parts rapidly; some of it is humorous, rippling with gaiety and boyishness; some of it is introspective, brooding, testamentary. Except for occasional asides on morality and aesthetics there is little in this story of boyhood to foreshadow the author that was to come.

The article presents information about the book "Ethics and Some Modern World Problems," by William McDougall. It is all very simple. There are two systems of ethics, the universal and the national. The first is exemplified in such world religions as Christianity, Buddhism and Islam, the second, in modern times par excellence by pre war Germany. Out of the conflict between the two has come much of progress and culture, but more of social danger. Moslem civilization deteriorated because it was too universal, European civilization has so far escaped that fate because it was imperfectly Christian.

The author says that there are many explanations for the recent, spectacular decline in the stock of vers libre. To some of its most ardent supporters it seems a "volte face" that smacks of betrayal, a retrograde movement for which there is no excuse but the age of the turn-coats who have reached the senility of the thirties. So remote are these phenomena that, in the light of the new radicalism, they seem like musty fragments from the files of an antiquarian. The list of deserters grows with every announcement of a publisher's spring list or a prize contest.

From Moscow came the thundering charge of betrayal of the Italian revolution, and after it the bomb of the twenty-one conditions. In the ensuing national congress those conditions were rejected, the door was shut upon affiliation, and the weapon of armed revolution cast aside. The Communists bolted. This spirit of internal dissension infected the Confederazione Generale del Lavoro, the Socialists and Communists fighting for control at the recent Leghorn Congress. Moscow has just recognized the Communist Party as the only revolutionary organization in Italy.

The article focuses on the views of judge John Worth Edmonds on spiritualism. It is astonishing to find a man like Judge Edmonds resorting, in defense of what he claims to be supernatural manifestations, to the baldest Paleyan materialism. He refused to believe until all his senses were appealed to successfully. Edmonds bases his spiritual belief, upon an assumption of his own perfect acquaintance with every natural law, and does not see that two or three discoveries, no greater, no more unexpected, than many which may occurred within the memory of the living, might explain to the satisfaction and comprehension of the simplest a perfect conformity between the most startling wonders of the circle and the law which regulate the material universe.

This article presents information on the book "France My Country, Through the Disaster," by Jacques Maritain. The author of this article reports that Maritain is a French Christian poet, whose spiritual vision and his temporal hope are sharply modulated to the experience of France. In this book, the psychology of the dazing defeat is explained; and of the people under the Nazi asphyxiation. The mind here at work has quite as much information as the journalists and modish novelists, but moves within dimensions which the shallow gentlemen ignore. Maritain traces Machiavellianism to its final flowering in the false religion of political separatism which Liberal, Communist, Socialist, Nazi, and Vichy Catholic all share.

This article focuses on tragic jokes by Jack Paar. Morality, somebody has said, is a subject that lends itself to exaggeration and that is what makes tragedy. The easiest, safest and most comfortable thing any human being does is to disapprove of another. If one tries a little de-exaggeration, Paar's joke looks allright, especially at midnight. If one thinks that a comedian is not fit for tragic heroism, just look at comedians. They are especially high-strung. From being continually the life of the party, they are naturally hated by their friends. They look for jealousy and always find it.

This article discusses the book "Martin Buber. The Life of Dialogue," by Maurice S. Friedman. Professor Friedman's book is a comprehensive exposition of Buber's outlook. An apt use of quotation lets the magic of Buber's phrase shine in. This book traces background, analyzes special issues such as the problem of evil, summarizes central works bringing out fundamental ideas clearly and in considerable detail and outlines applications in theory of knowledge, education, psychology, ethics and social philosophy.

This article discusses the book "The Parkman Reader," selected and edited by Samuel Eliot Morison. Morison speaks of Parkman as a literary stylist worthy of respect. As a matter of fact, only when he was caught up in the circumstantial rush of his narrative did Parkman write well. His passages on the beauties of the forest primeval, the savagery of an Indian war dance or the vices of the little provincial court at Montreal are rather comic reading today. It is the spiritual conflict in Morison, as well as his reading of history as a war between two basic types of personality, which gives Parkman's work its power.

This article discusses the book "Ethical Judgment: The Use of Science in Ethics," by Abraham Edel. The author outlines the modern controversy concerning the foundations of ethical beliefs and judgments. With great erudition he points out the extent to which judgments of good and bad are in fact influenced by the sciences relevant to human life. It is not his intention to maintain that the diversity of ethical judgments does not exist and will not continue to exist. Professor Edel observes on the one hand the classical contention that ethical judgments are completely determined by either moral precept or appeal to "reason."

This article deliberates on the acceptance of ill-gotten wealth. It has been opined that accepting an ill-gotten wealth will make one an accomplice of the evil. It is opined that a college president who accepts an endowment from an ill-doer is technically no more "particeps criminis" than the clerk who draws his pay for him. But, actually, the college president has the added responsibility that comes with greater influence. He is unquestionably bound to reject a gift for any reason incompatible with the ideals of the institution under his charge.

Presents several letters to the editor. Discusses ethics of wilderness, "Law of the forest."; comments on regiments of Ellsworth's Zouves as "Fire Zouves; comments on Pausen's misrepresentation on Immanuel Kant; discusses Hamlet soliloquy.

The article focuses on a book "The Time Is Noon," by Hiram Haydn. The book is set in 1929 and put forward as the documentation of an era, however, aside from a few topical references, the dating of the story is irrelevant. There is remarkable balance Haydn achieves between sensationalism and the appeal to morality: despite the fact that the period is 1929, when the problems of left. wing and liberal politics touched but a tiny minority of the U.S. population. Haydn gives these concerns the proportion and emphasis demanded by our own day, placing his discussions of racial tolerance, Communist tactics, and so on in saving alternation to the sexual chapters, whose appeal is perhaps less high-minded.

Presents several letters to the editor on various issues. Comments on the concept of morality; Report on a bill passed in the U.S. Parliament for the creation of a permanent Federal Publicity Bureau; Report on socio-economic and political conditions of Mexico.

The article discusses the role of press in dealing with the international situation. For the press to abdicate its function of guiding the formation of public judgment upon the basis of principles and facts is to serve the public ill. In war time a popular theory is that there must be complete abatement of independent thinking on the part of editors. The question before the press is how to bring about moral responsibility in the moulders of our public opinion, and how to keep them free from governmental domination-nothing more and nothing less. In order that the newspapers may exercise the corrective and critical influence which those wise statesmen considered essential, the gathering and presentation of news must be absolutely independent of politicians, officeholders, and censorships.

From America, an echo reaches us of a circular which seems to have been spread there on the part of the French section of the Women's League for Permanent Peace. It is our duty to inform Americans that this League has found no echo in France. It has gathered some fifty signatures which have no representative value. The Appeal, of which extracts have been published in America, has become known to the French public only by indignant protests, and such an appeal, drawn up and issued by a little group, meets amongst us with nought but stupefaction mingled with anger and indignation.