AMERICAN MUNICIPAL PROBLEMS 377 



to take their place. The feeling extended to every sphere of life, and 

 notably to municipal affairs. Attention was everywhere directed to 

 the war, its progress and probable results. In the words of one com- 

 mentator on the situation: 



Already now civilization stops — stops dead. Religion, philosophy, litera- 

 ture, painting, and, chief of all perhaps, science, with its torch at the head of 

 our human hosts, are suddenly flung backward; they become of no moment. 

 Who wants to know about Immanence? Who cares to hear what Bergson and 

 Eucken think? Who bothers about books and pictures? Who is ready to endow 

 a laboratory or listen to the chemist and the biologist? 



And who, a Unitarian clergyman (John Haynes Holmes) asks, in 

 quoting the above, " cares a fig about the social movements " ? 

 Jane Addams, usually so calm and sane, declared 



that all is out of joint, out of character. Human sensibilities were more acute 

 when this war began than ever before. The comradeship, the friendliness be- 

 tween nations had been brought upon a basis of mutual understanding further 

 than ever before. By mechanical means we had been brought closer together 

 in communication and in sympathy. Either we ought not to have equipped 

 ourselves with these fine sensibilities, or we ought not to have to face the 

 horrors now confronting us. It is a too terrible inconsistency against which we 

 should protest. All organized social welfare activities are put back for years. 

 We have to work up public opinion anew. 



When a million men are suffering in trenches wet and cold and wounded, 

 what are a few children suffering under hard conditions in the factories? Take 

 old-age pensions, upon which England, France and Germany have been working. 

 With widows and fatherless children numbered by the thousands in each of 

 these countries, what are a few old people more or less? It wiU be years before 

 these things are taken up again. The whole social fabric is tortured and twisted. 



Infant mortality is one of the things which we are just beginning to deal 

 with. 



But what are half a million new-born children in comparison with such a 

 slaughter — the hideous, wholesale slaughter of thousands of men a day? 



Social and civic workers in large numbers shared this lament and 

 the feeling and conviction back of it. It really did seem in those first 

 days as if all that had been gained through years of toil and painful 

 effort had been lost ; that the foundations, as well as the superstructure, 

 of modem society, which is so largely urban in its character, had been 

 undermined — but first a few, and then many more students began to 

 ask questions, and make inquiries. What effect is the European war 

 having' and likely to have upon the municipal situation, and especially 

 in this country? Has it diverted interest? And if so, in what way? 

 Has it interfered with the orderly functioning of the city? Has it 

 stopped public improvements? Has it hurt municipal credit, and the 

 development of sound municipal sentiment? Has the war diverted 

 interest in city affairs? 



From a Los Angeles editor (and I may say in passing that the great 

 bulk of the testimony I shall offer will be from well-known editors of 



VOL. LXXXV. — 26. 



