Page:Under Dispute (1924).pdf/54

 that will work? Henry Adams, commenting upon the disastrous failure of Grant's administration, says just this thing. "The world" (the American world) "cared little for decency. What it wanted, it did not know. Probably a system that would work, and men who could work it. But it found neither."

And still the search goes on. A system of taxation that will work. A system of wage-adjustment that will work. A system of prohibition that will work. A system of public education that will work. These are the bright phantoms we pursue; and now a Paris editor casually adds a system for a working league of nations. "If France is in the right, let America give us her moral support. If France is in the wrong, let America show us the road to follow."

To presume agreement where none exists is the most dangerous form of self-deception. When newspapers and