I thank Mr. Fletcher, '35, for his kind letter to me concerning consistency, "Why", he asks, "when you have avowedly come out on the side of falsehood and injustice, do you continually appeal in your column against them? Have you not averred your absolute, unalterable repugnance to intelligence, decency, honor, and morality, whose emotions alone you have attempted to stir within me?"

"Consistency," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, "is the hobgoblin of little minds." Surely you would not have me wallow in its quicksands, Mr. Fletcher; surely in these days of my ascendancy, you do not adhere to the mutton-chop philosophies of Truth for Truth's sake. Modern souls use ideas as weapons, and judge them according to their effect. What do I care whether the appeal is to honesty, truth, love, brotherhood, or patriotism so long as in their name men will do and act as I have planned.

But one admission must be made: all these appeals to your intelligence and righteousness do exercise those qualities within you, keeping them strong and healthy. No matter how commendable your resulting opinion and action, I have to that extent diluted the poisonous does, adulterated my product. In defense I can only plead the necessity of some good in accomplishing even the most desirable ends.

So with my many servants, who have never come out frankly on the side they supported so well in fact and action. In some cases, they themselves knew not of my mastership. But millions followed them, thinking, to bring peace through war, temperance through legislation, employment through high wages, morality through censorship, and Americanism through oaths, for teachers. In spite of all the kow-towing, buttering, and boot-licking to abhorrent ends, the balance weighed overwhelmingly with Evil, and that, though not all to a perfectionist, mattered most.