further regulation of business for the hand of the government is the touch of death. On the contrary, curtail the government’s own activities—not merely the Federal but also the state, county and municipal managements—and thus reduce taxes, which are being abated but little, if any at all, and ipso facto are opposing deflation. We may need many public improvements, but ought to forego them if we can not afford them. We must help Europe and must buy goods from her in order to sell to her.
These are some of the truths that real leaders would preach, but above everything else they would proclaim that the war did not do anything to raise permanently our scale of living, that the entrance of some people upon the enjoyment of such luxuries as never before was paid for by the patriotic by mortgaging their principal, and that the present is a time that calls for hard work in production, economy in living, and thrift in saving. It is leadership along these lines, and these only, that will remove the present discontent and promote the general welfare. If anybody should not like it—and the labor unions will not—the sooner they be brushed away, without any further catering to them, the better it will be.
Collapse of the principle of authority and absence of leadership spell chaos. Self-seeking politicians, wilfully acting in groups, are unable to accomplish anything for the welfare of their people. The whole system of popular government breaks down and eventually the people in their despair welcome the advent of a dictatorship, which can at least do something. Thus we see in Continental Europe five years after the end of the war that was represented as being fought to make
