Page:Mahatma Gandhi, his life, writings and speeches.djvu/259

Economic vs. Moral Progress the country has rapidly advanced in riches it has gone down in morality. He shows this by dealing with insanitation, life destroying trades, adulteration, bribery, and gambling. He shows how with the advance of wealth justice has become immoral, deaths from alcoholism and suicide have increased, the average of premature births and congenital defects has increased and prostitution has become an institution. He concludes his examination by these pregnant remarks:

"The proceedings of the divorce courts show other aspects of the result of wealth and leisure while a friend who had been a good deal in London society assured me that both in country houses and in London various kinds of orgies were occasionally to be met with which would hardly have been surpassed in the period of the most dissolute Emperors. O War, too, I need say nothing. It has always been more or less chronic since the rise of the Roman Empire; but there is now undoubtedly a disinclination for war among all civilized peoples. Yet the vast burden of armaments taken together with the most pious declarations in favour of peace, must be held to show an almost total absence of morality as a 139