o preference, no kinship, no sympathy
counts here. Alas! it is not thus that men understand it. It is for
this reason that they degrade truth and that it becomes without power
in their hands. Instead of winging its way heavenward in vigorous
flight, it crawls along the earth, like an eagle whose wings have been
broken. Nothing is sadder than to see how those who ought to lend
their voice to truth, turn it to their own uses and play with it. The
voice, human speech, that sacred organ, whose whole worth lies in
sincerity, has in all ages been the victim of odious profanations. But
in this age it is more than ever attainted. The evil from which it
suffers is defilement.

At certain epochs a word was as good as a man. It was an act total,
supreme, guaranteed by the whole of life. There was no need to sign,
to stamp, to legalize. Speech was held between friends and enemies
alike, more sacred than any sanctuary, and man maintained it, with the
obscure but just sentiment that it is at the base of society, and that
if words lose their value, there is no longer any society possible.
Later the written word was considered sacred. And coming nearer to
our own day, we have been able to see the masses, guided ever by
that quite legitimate sentiment of the holiness of speech, regard
everything printed as gospel truth. Those times are no more. We have
lied too much, by the living word, the pen, and the press. We have
said and printed too much that is light, false, wittingly disfigured.
Armed with an instrumentality that multiplies thought and spreads it
broadcast to the four corners of the earth with a rapidity unknown
to our fathers, we have made use of it, for the most part, to extend
slander more widely and to cause a greater amount of doubtful
intelligence to swarm upon the earth. So well have we spun speech out
in all our mouths, so thoroughly have we deprived it of its proper
nature and caused it to become sophisticated, that it is no longer of
the least value. The confidence of the masses in authority, which is
one of the slowest and most difficult conquests of humanity, we have
lost like a thing of no worth. They no longer say to any one who now
lifts up his voice: Who are you? But: What end have you in view? What
party do you serve? By what interest are you led? By whom have you
been bought? That there may be a sacred truth, loved, respected,
adored; a truth that is worth more than life, to which one may give
himself wholly a