her home and started on a road to ruin and despair. The lad, seeking his mate and the fulfilment of his destiny, sees the woman of his dreams turn into a foul harpy, bearer of pestilence and death. Nature, sumptuous, magnificent, loving life, cries: "Give me children!" And the answer comes: "We give you running sores and bursting glands, rotting lips and festering noses, swollen heads and crooked joints, idiot gabblings and maniac shrieks, pistols to blow out your brains and poisons to still your agonies." Such is the prostitution of the body.
But what of the mind? The mind is master of the body, and commands what the body shall do and what it shall become; therefore, always, the prostitution of the mind precedes and causes the prostitution of the body. Youth cries: "Life is beautiful, joyous! Give me light, that I may keep my path!" The answer comes: "Here is darkness, that you may stumble, and beat your face upon the stones!" Youth cries: "Give me Hope." The answer comes: "Here is Cynicism." Youth cries: "Give me understanding, that I may live in harmony with my fellow-men." The answer comes: "Here are lies about your fellow-men, that you may hate them, that you may cheat them, that you may live among them as a wolf among wolves!" Such is the prostitution of the mind.
When I planned this book I had in mind a sub-title: "A Study of the Whore of Journalism." A shocking sub-title; but then, I was quoting the Bible, and the Bible is the inspired word of God. It was surely one of God's prophets who wrote this invitation to the reading of "The Brass Check":
Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great
whore that sitteth upon many waters;
With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.
For eighteen hundred years men have sought to probe the
vision of that aged seer on the lonely isle of Patmos. Listen
to his strange words:
So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I
saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of
blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was
arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious
stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hands full of abominations
and filthiness of her fornication:
