Since 1919 this nation has deliberately blinded itself to reality and lived on its hopes. The one inescapable conclusion of the War that was to conclude so many things for America and the world was that America could not hope to remain aloof from the world in any capacity, political or economic. Faced with recognition of this fact and its logical conclusion: the League of Nations, America let herself be led away from reality by the Republican party and by Henry Cabot Lodge, now presumably in the bosom of the God with whom his family conversed to the exclusion of even the Lowells, to whom it only listened. Senator Lodge's heavenly discourse let us in for a decade of hypocrisy and broke Wilson's heart.

Having turned her back on the political inferences of the War, America was not slow to blink at the economic conclusions. Having served as quartermaster of the world throughout four years of tremendous drain and demand, America had developed her industry far beyond any normal need, and had so increased her fixed charges that she was dependent for her profits on the marginal percentage of goods which went abroad. The logical fact to be derived from this would seem to be that since America could not be economically independent of Europe, America should not try to make herself independent by raising the tariff barriers higher and higher, and thus cutting off all practical means of repayment from abroad. But a short-minded administration, choosing to keep up immediate economic health at the expense of future administrations, refused to let itself be prejudiced by the truth.

Industry balked at the chill fact that industry was over-expanded. Humanity's material desires, industry argued, are susceptible of indefinite expansion. Hence, production may be indefinitely expanded. High pressure salesmanship (for which Hemingway has popularized an eloquent word), distorted advertising, and installment-plan buying were industry's biggest bricks in its primrose path to expansion. Good intentions, all.

For a while things went well. There was Europe to be reconstructed. Housing was an industry that was definitely behind normal requirements. It was not behind long. The exploitation of the motor car, the radio, and various laborsaving conveniences were other temporary pegs. But only temporary. The eventual end of the World War, the first World War, was the first World Depression. That has been going on and growing worse since 1929.

And still the prophets are talking of getting back to "normalcy": that homely, expressive word invented by Harding for Big Business and the Republican party. When will America bring its face to the truth! We are getting back to normalcy; it is a long road and a hard road, and it leads still lower down. The conditions of '26, '27, '28, '29 were not normalcy. They were the symptoms of an industrial apoplexy for which even the doctors of industry did not dare prescribe.

Slowly, slowly our blood pressure is approaching a sane and healthy mean, as deflation progresses. There is still a long way to go. But the biggest part of that way will be covered when people,--the ordinary workers and business people of our blind nation stir in their philosophy of economic complacency which the bitterest physical discomfort does not seem to shake, and realize that the prosperity, so-called, of the past decade was a mushroom growing out of a rotten stump. And only when they realize that the stump must be brought level with the earth can the lasting work of reconstruction proceed. --The Dartmouth.