Article February 7, 1920 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Averill

[Baltimore (Md.) American]

Who that has to do with public questions, who that has to do with the country's business, fails to come under the influence of the malignancy of the temper of the times? The world atmosphere is full of the miasma of the war. Suspicion in their acts and deeds is found in the case of the members of the Senate, it is found in the case of the members of the British Government, it is found in the case of the members of the French Government, this nation and all others. Suspicion of the good faith, suspicion of the good intent, suspicion of the good disposition of others—this is everywhere spread abroad. It is a malignant atmosphere for the world to breathe. The words that feature to-day are the great crime words of conspiracy and profiteering and terrorism. Some one has offered an explanation of the prevailing temper of the world that there is some power or force operative that is driving the world of human beings out from the charnel house of the war into the wide expanses of a finer brotherhood; but in the transition all that is ignoble and mean and ungenerous is coming to the front and will be sloughed off very largely. This is fine optimism.

This wave of malignancy is passing over, it must pass over. But the one need above all others is for men and women to keep cool. If this were done there would be less likelihood of acts of meanness being perpetrated. The spirit of suspicion is abroad and the kindred spirit of recklessness and carelessness. Hence all kinds of services are being poorly performed, from that at Washington on down the line. A sense of real accountability save to one's own interests or opinions does not appear to prevail. ...

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