nged the supports of the structure--and never will.

In the matter of interior and exterior decoration periods come and go
during which those who build houses decorate according to schools of
art. It is the only belief that any sane and hopeful human being can
have that these schools of decoration for the old house of
civilization in the main steadily improve. If it is not so, then we
have nothing to live for, nothing to which we may look forward. Also,
however, there are fashions and fads running along by the side of
these great schools which are suggestive, amusing or ludicrous, as the
case may be. The cubists and the followers of the old masters paint at
the same time. One, however, dies shortly and the other lives
on--often to be sure affected in some slight way by the grotesque but
honest fad, but never giving way to it.

In the month of November, 1918, greater changes of this nature took
place in the political world than in all the years which preceded that
month since the beginning of the Christian era. {264} In that month
some scores of crowned heads stepped down from their thrones and made
haste to reach shelter as do the rats in a kitchen when the cook turns
on the electric light. At that time something like three hundred
millions of people gave up their particular forms of government and to
a certain extent have been living on since without any substitute.

Some of these crowned heads have sat on their thrones from five to ten
centuries. Some of the governments have lived as long.

It looks like a general tumble of the house of civilization. And yet
most of these millions of people go on getting up in the morning,
going to bed at night and, impossible as it may seem, conducting
commercial enterprises. The kings have gone; the governments have
gone; yet the people remain and their daily life goes on--not as usual
--but in the main the same.

At such a time amidst such stupendous changes it is natural that an
infinite number of plans for reconstruction come forward. All the
century-old panaceas crop up. All the moss-grown plans for a perfect
world are thrust forward in a new {265} dress and naturally gain
credence. And with the increased ease of intercommunication of
individuals and ideas the opportunity not only for many more but for
widely divergent theories to make themselves heard is immeasurably
increased. Thus it becomes possible for a Lenine and a Trotzky to
leave their tenement flats in the slums