Angell's Warning

Among the many voices raised in Memorial Day oratory last week was that of James Rowland Angell, A.B., A.M., Litt.D., LL.D., President of Yale University. Like many another orator of the day, he decried U. S. chauvinism, legal instability, corruption. But chiefly he indicted U. S. citizens, not their laws or leaders. Excerpt: "It is not primarily faithlessness to public trust, nor corruption in its more overt forms, with which we are menaced. . . . It is rather the sordid and vulgar spirit which at times apparently engulfs the masses of our people, magnifying money and the power which it conveys as the dominating forces in our national life. . . . Nor is it a negligible circumstance that public opinion is at times insensitive to the insidious threat of moral turpitude in high places, so that even a grave offender may be retained in public office.

"A nation which has become cynical or tolerant or complacent in its attitude toward injustice or corruption, whether in public or in private life, which has for any reason become morally torpid, is in grave danger, no matter what its wealth or what its power."

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