362 Civilization and Decay 



Through the cold impartiality with which he strives 

 to work merely as a recorder of facts, there break 

 now and then flashes of pent-up wrath and vehement 

 scorn for all that is mean and petty in a purely ma- 

 terialistic, purely capitalistic, civilization. With his 

 scorn of what is ignoble and base in our develop- 

 ment, his impatient contempt of the deification of 

 the stock-market, the trading-counter, and the fac- 

 tory, all generous souls must agree. When we see 

 prominent men deprecating the assertion of national 

 honor because it "has a bad effect upon business," 

 or because it "impairs the value of securities" ; when 

 we see men seriously accepting Mr. Edward Atkin- 

 son's pleasant theory that patriotism is of no conse- 

 quence when compared with the price of cotton 

 sheeting or the capacity to undersell our competi- 

 tors in foreign markets, it is no wonder that a man 

 who has in him the stuff of ancestors who helped 

 to found our Government, and helped to bring it 

 safely through the Civil War, should think blackly 

 of the future. But Mr. Adams should remember 

 that there always have been men of this merely 

 huckstering type, or of other types not much higher. 

 It is not a nice thing that Mr. Eliot, the president 

 of one of the greatest educational institutions of the 

 land, should reflect discredit upon the educated men 

 of the country by his attitude on the Venezuela af- 

 fair, carrying his desertion of American principles 

 so far as to find himself left in the lurch by the very 

 English statesmen whose cause he was champion- 

 ing; but Mr. Adams by turning to the "History" of 



