AN ILL WIND

When the time comes to consider the effect of the present depression on American life, it will be found that not all the entries are in red ink. The times that try men's souls tend to extend their mental horizon as well. Though there has never been a lack of outspoken criticism in American, this criticism was never taken more seriously than today.

The value of a business civilization is being reconsidered by business-men themselves; for convictions as well as fortunes were shattered by the crash of the market. The extraordinary success of such a book as "Mexico," by Stuart Chase, which sets out deliberately to compare two civilizations, to the disparagement of our won, is an illustration of a new liberality of outlook.

The success of "Mexico" is symbolic of another important change, the development of a more international point of view among the rank and file. The significance of the Hoover-Laval and Hoover-Grandi conversations, which would not have occurred but for the depression, has sunk deeply into the American mind. The posibility that Canada may desert the gold standard, brings home as nothing else could the interdependence of nations.

This changing outlook takes a tangible form in a willingness to consider suggestions which in 1929 would have been dismissed as visionary. Recently Walter Lippmann, writing in the Herald-Tribune, suggested that the government might meet the financial obligations to Europe, which the Confederate States repudiated in 1865, by reducing the present debts. Whether this plan is actually advisable is beside the point; what is significant is that the suggestion was seriously advanced and seriously considered.

With contemporary life in its present state of flux, provincial thought and bad government are up for trial. It is not impossible that a forthcoming readjustment will bring a greater competence and honesty to government and a new foresight to business.