The talking parlor-liberal New York minister, John Haynes Holmes, has again stood on a platform; this time he tells us that civilization is doomed; and evidently he expects people to believe that civilization is doomed. But Mr. Holmes does not prove conclusively why one should believe it nor does he prove that be should know whereof be speaks. Perhaps he really does not know anything about the matter. But proof or no proof, Mr. Holmes is saying something, which, even if it lacks the backing of proof or fact certainly has the support that a new idea never has; for it is not a new idea. In his later years Goethe lamented the coming doom of civilization in the nineteenth century and was glad that he was born early enough to be able to avoid witnessing this doom. And in the same way, every decade, before and after Goethe--and before Mr. John Haynes Holmes--has had its prophets of decay. But none of the prophecies appear to have worked out. Civilization has had its ups and downs but it has never become an unrevivable corpse.

Some philosophers would follow Martian and his "anti-Moderne" or Paul Doolin in his admiration of the Middle Ages and Thomas Aquinas; or they would follow other paths. But none but one of the perennial, age-old doom predictors would try to continue talking of the impending and, we are told, inevitable, Death o Civilization.

Mr. Holmes selection of the four "immortals" of the present decaying age, whom he considers to be Einstein, Freud, Lenin, and Gandhi, only make one change from a smile to bursting laughter. Mr. Holmes' parlor-pseudo liberalism seems to amount to mere naivete with the added assumption that his audiences are credulous enough to be swayed by his effusions. Mr. Holmes is well qualified to compete with Will Durant in this respect.