ip from New York to England and
then a British Dirigible without making a stop came from England to
Long Island in ninety-six hours. "This is the end and the beginning of
an age" says the author of Mr. Brittling Sees It Through. "This is
something far greater than the French Revolution or the Reformation
and we live in it."

We indeed consider it the age of "big things." Dynasties fall and
republics spring up. When war breaks out it is a World War involving
twenty-four nations and causing 7,781,806 deaths (Nelson's Encyclopedia,
V. iv, p. 519) and costing $200,000,000,000. In the first year in which
we were at war, our country spent more than had been the cost of
conducting the government for 124 years, including the expenses of
the Civil and the Spanish-American Wars. Yes, it is an age of "big
things." The Allies in the Champagne offensive of September, 1915,
threw 50,000,000 shells into the German lines in three days. Was it one
out of sympathy with "big things," one intent on the quiet of the higher
life as contrasted with the din of the day, who said that "modern
civilization is noise and the more civilization progresses, the greater
will be the noise?" In any event the muses who inspired Dante, are
almost dumb. Now the captains of industry are the commanding figures of
the day and the student, the poet, the philosopher, the statesman have
gone into innocuous desuetude. Amy Lowell is preferred to Longfellow:
Charlie Chaplin draws bigger crowds than Shakespeare can interest.
Trainmen get wages higher than are the salaries of some of our
governors. Unskilled labor is paid more than the teachers of our youth
receive. The cost of living was never higher in the history of mankind.

How illuminating to turn from this picture to that of Dante's age. Then
in Florence, a bushel of wheat cost about fifteen cents, a carpenter
could buy a broad ax for five cents, a saw for three cents, a plane
for four cents, a chisel for one cent. The average daily wage of a
woolworker was about thirty-six cents. In view of the high purchasing
power of money in Dante's age, the fact that he borrowed at least seven
hundred and fifty seven and a half golden florins, a debt that was not
paid until after his death, leads one to think that he must have been
regarded by his contemporaries as prodigal in the use of money. His
financial difficulties must have given him an uneasy conscience for he
insists repeatedly on the wickedness of prodigality.