introduced into thousands of minds hitherto untroubled by such thoughts profound doubts regarding the tendencies and the quality and the satisfactions of our modern civilization—pointed questions regarding the amount of happiness that modern civilization pays to the private life. Skepticism, cynicism, and satire are the prevailing moods of contemporary enquiry. Here in America, since the war, our current literature has been filled with a kind of Tolstoyan unrest of which the most obvious symptom is a series of derisive pictures of objects to which we used formerly to "point with pride"; derisive pictures of our politicians; derisive pictures of the church; derisive pictures of the universities; derisive pictures of our great bulwark, the middle class; derisive pictures of the American business man; derisive pictures of the average American man and the average American woman.
I firmly believe that this satirical and soulsearching mood through which the country is passing at present is tremendously good for it, is going to be a step towards its "salvation"; but its effects, like those of certain powerful medicines, are rather distressing while they last. Not long ago I spent several hours talking with three interesting men of wide experience and great energy of mind—an editor, a politician, and a man connected with one of our great educational foundations. They were all avowedly out hunting, hunting from New York to San Francisco. There were brains and money
