Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/23

 don't accept the code of the society of gentlemen. We don't know what it is. We haven't the means to keep it up; we work with our hands; we pay our way; we struggle for existence; men and women together in a hard fight, where courtesy and chivalry are impediments to survival, and the behavior of a lady is regarded as an affectation and the honor of a gentleman as an old-fashioned piece of snobbishness. We have broken the old molds. We have found no effective new ones; and the only truly, typical products of our educational chaos are the flapper, the roughneck, the materialist and the ignoramus."

I thought that my colleague was painting our scene pretty black; but from one end of the country to the other you hear nowadays very much the same, story, namely, that our democracy is not justifying itself, that the molds which make character are broken or out of commission, that our society is beginning to show signs of essential disintegration in lawlessness, immorality, and anarchy. One doesn't need to dwell on the symptoms. I will remind you of a recent editorial in a western metropolitan paper, apparently written for the purpose of encouraging every man to do as he pleases about obeying a constitutional law of the United States. I will remind you of an article in an eastern metropolitan paper, professing to present the present state of sexual morality, and apparently written for the purpose of urging every man to do as he pleases in this field. In a certain university community of my