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T h e K i n g ’ s B u s i n e s s
October 1932
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religious faith. Only with these high standards can we hold society together, and only from them can govern ment survive or business prosper. They are the sole in surance to the safety o f our children and the continuity o f the nation. If it shall appear that, while. I have had the honor o f the presidency, I have contributed the part re quired from this high office to bringing the Republic through this dark night, and if, in my administration, we shall see the break o f dawn to a better day, I shall have done my part in the world. But now note a great President’s despairing cry, stifle it hard as he may try: Across the path o f the nation’s consideration o f these vast problems o f social and economic order, there has arisen a bitter controversy over the control of the liquor traffic. I have always sympathized with the high purpose o f the Eighteenth Amendment, and I have used every power at my command to make it effective over the en tire country. I have hoped it was the final solution o f the evils o f the liquor traffic against which our people have striven for generations. It has succeeded in great measure in those many communities where the majority of sentiment is favorable to it. But in, other and increasing number o f communities there is a majority sentiment un favorable to it. Laws opposed by majority sentiment create resentment which undermines enforcement and in the end produces degeneration and crime. . . . An increas ing number o f States and municipalities are proving them selves unwilling to engage in such enforcement. Due to these forces, there is in large sections an increasing illegal traffic in liquor. But worse than this, there has been in those areas a spread of disrespect not only for this law but for all laws, grave dangers of practical nullification of the Constitution, a degeneration o f municipal govern ment and an increase in subsidized crime and violence. .Then, evidently forgetting or ignoring the fact that Abraham Lincoln faced a similar, yet worse situation, in the matter of the slave traffic that once cursed America, our President makes a great surrender, and bows the knee to the greatest slave-driver the world has ever known— rum! It is true that he says he will “ refuse to accept the return of the old saloon with its political and social corrup tion” ; but that only brings a shake of the head from those who remember the old days when we tried so hard to keep the liquor traffic as a taxpayer, and yet tried to avoid its “ social and political corruption.” How the President of the United States is going to solve the great “ problems of the next few years” which he declares to be “moral and spir itual,” and begin his great task by entering into a coven ant with death and making a league with hell is beyond even our powers of imagination. If he is in possession of some magical wand that he can wave over a den of rattlesnakes and make it safe for the entrance of the hand of a little child, if he knows of some mysterious method by which he can separate deviltry from the devil, then we shall believe that he, who confesses that he cannot enforce the sovereign law of the land, can enforce a decent regulation of the hitherto uncontrollable liquor traffic. In the mean time, we shall continue to believe that the President of the United States still “ sympathizes with the high purpose of the Eighteenth Amendment,” but that despair fills his heart as he thinks upon what his high office has taught him as to the passions and innate lawlessness of the natural man
The Sign of the Despairing World “ What sign will there be when these things shall come to pass?” (Lk. 2 1 :7). ' IP his was the pertinent question the disciples of Christ put to Him when He spake unto them of the coming day when “ the times of the Gentiles” should “ be fulfilled.” Clearly, unhesitatingly, came the reply: “ Upon the earth roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for look ing after those things which are coming on the earth . . . Then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory” (Lk. 2 1 :25-27)—all of which can only mean that the closing hours of the age will witness the face of the whole world of men covered over with the dark, foreboding clouds of human pessimism and despair. Indeed, it is through these dark clouds that “ the Sun of righteousness” will burst forth “ with healing in his wings” (Mai. 4 :2 ) and bring the dawn of that glorious age from which “ sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Isa. 35:10). That the shadows of perplexity and gloom of which the Master spoke are now surely settling down over the world, what believer of the Word of inspiration can for a moment doubt ? There are no more hopeful peoples alive today than those who dwell within these United States. Yet, everywhere among us, men not usually given to looking upon the darker side of things are uttering dire prophecies o f the morrow. The Despair of the Editor Colonel Robert R. McCormick compares our own na tional condition to the condition that presaged the fall of Rome, whereupon an editor of one of America’s greatest dailies remarks: He might have gone further. There are analogies that make you shiver. When Rome _was beginning to top ple, they were discussing the following problems: reckless lawlessness o f the criminal classes; the loose conduct of gilded youth; the free-and-easy divorces; what to do about people leaving the farms and crowding into the cities; how to feed the starving unemployed. Conditions are far too similar for comfort. There are scientists who see signs o f our whole white civilization going down to smash. The Despair of the President Only a few days ago, the President of this great Re public delivered an address that was really pathetic—pa thetic in its admission of human failure and hopelessness. He was delivering his speech accepting renomination for the highest political office in the world. And how the hearts of all true Christian men and women must have thrilled to hear the President of this great nation say; The problems of the next few years are not only eco nomic. They are also moral and spiritual. The present check to our material success must deeply stir our national conscience upon the purposes o f life itself. It must cause us to revalue and reshape our drift from materialism to a higher note o f individual and national ideals. Underlying every purpose is the spiritual application o f moral ideals which are the fundamental basis o f happiness in a people. This is a land o f homes, churches, schoolhouses, dedi cated to the sober and enduring, satisfactions o f family life and the rearing o f children in an atmosphere of ideals and
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