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THE KING’S BUSINESS This is a startling statement, but does it not understate the facts rather than overstate them? We prate about man’s wonderful progress in knowledge and humanity, but this statement shows that man is essentially as great a fool as he ever was; that all his vaunted progress in philosophy and science has not made him essentially a wiser man. Outside of the wisdom given of God, man is always a fool and a failure.
There are many blind optimists who insist in still preaching, even in the face of the collapse of civiliza- tion in connection with the present war, that the world is making rapid progress. The following report of the
Is the World Growing Better ?
morals committee of the convention of the American Confederation of Catholic Societies, presented at Kansas City,/August 27th, may help them to do a little thinking ? ... Society, the report reads, shows a startling decline. Justice no longer rules. The -family Ilfe U A i natl° n ls endangered, virtue, public and private, is decadent. , A largely contributing factor in this paganizing of the nation is divorce,” says the report. It has been recently estim ated th at up to the present more than a million divorces have been ^Jainne/wtin t ls, co^,nV"^ an<^ estim ated number for the current year will be greatly in excess of 100,000. It should be wholly useless to devote any consideration to the viciousness of this evil and what it means morally to the nation.” To combat this the committee hecommends: “Enactm ent of state laws requiring notices of ¿mpending m arriage to be posted several days before issuance of license; abolition ol common law m arriage wherever recognized, and finally, in states where only absolute divorces are granted, provisions for legal separation be made.” Modern pictorial reviews and the movies also come in for their share of condemnation. One of .the most serious assaults upon morality of the country today is manifested in inde cent illustrations in some publications and filthy stories in .debauching magazines,” says the report. t ^1?re Jhe established fact a high percentage of photoplay production deals with crime. There is the fact th at 25,000,000 daily attendance at picture shows from 25 to 50 per cent, of this attendance is composed of children. There is the fact th at juvenile court records show a linking of offenders with screen productions. . “The photoplay is today a corrupter of juvenile morals. Yet the makers of our laws are busy w ith m aterialities and personalities^ th at time can not be found to provide greater moral protection for the young from this morally corroding source of evil.” We are optimists, but our optimism is not of the blind sort that closes our eyes to the clear facts of modern life. We are optimists because we believe what-the Bible teaches about the Coming again to this world of our Lord Jesus, and the darker the night grows the nearer at hand, we feel, that glorious day is.
The Christian people of England are waking up to the ' fact of how completely their government is under the domination of the beer interests. In the July 19th issue of the London Christian the following editorial
Booze Still Triumphant.
appears: , “The Government has quickly shown the kind of stuff it is made of by yielding to the clamour for more beer during the summer months. We are assured that this additional output will not entail any inroad on our food supply or our stocks of sugar. Nor will further sugar be rationed to the brewers. The statement is too thin even for a politician to be able to cover up. Beer will not be brewed without sugar, and the only conclusion to be drawn, there fore, is that the brewers have been allowed to have in advance sufficient sugar to meet the new order. It is nonsense to talk about there bbing no further inroads upon our supply of sugar as the result of the new order. The inroads have been already made, to the public disadvantage. The poor are still unable to get what they need for their infants. The reason given by Mr. Bonar Law
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