A Great Menace by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 9, 1912

A Great Menace

By Editor

[From an editorial in the San Jose Mercury, October 26, 1911]

THERE is no tendency in this country to-day which portends greater menace in American institutions than the growing disrespect for authority. President Taft has frequently, on his present tour, referred to it. . . . Among our student bodies, from the lower grades of the grammar schools to the class rooms of the university, the boy or girl chafes under authority. Teachers and principals are openly blamed for imposing discipline, as tho they had no right to do it; and not infrequently a chit of a boy or a girl defies the teacher in the presence of an entire class, and instead of the others disapproving, the guilty one waxes in popularity.

Radical newspapers attack the courts as tho the men on the bench were a set of ignoramuses without authority or responsibility. These press reflections are picked up by cheap demagogs on the rostrum and flourished with abandon almost startling in its baseness. Thus is the security of life and property loosened, if not menaced; for if our courts are not respected, how can their judgments have weight?

Parents no longer control the goings and comings of their children; and as a result, old-fashioned parental respect is almost a lost virtue. No other abuse contributes so largely to the increase of business in our juvenile courts. Little girls and boys rush off alone and unchaperoned to class parties and entertainments, remaining until late in the night, and starting home either alone or in the company, perhaps, of a strange escort.

Superiors, in positions of trust, are treated with familiarity by those under them, destroying all semblance of authority in the conduct of business institutions. All along the line the tendency to disrespect authority is rampant. Frequently the President of the United States is referred to as "Taft," "Judge Taft," or "Billy Taft;" and when Mr. Roosevelt was President, it was "Teddy," "the colonel," or "the strenuous one." Ten or twelve years ago men in high position were not so treated; and if the next ten years show a proportionate semblance of flippancy toward them, the decline will have found a momentum difficult to check. It is a pity that so many misunderstand the true meaning of freedom. They seem to imagine that all are equal in all respects; that Judge Tom Jones, of the Supreme Court, is no better than any one else, and that it is quite as proper to address him as "Tom" as to call him "Judge." Too many forget that the office one holds should be treated with deference for what it represents, rather than because of the one who fills it. We repeat, that the remedy for this change of things lies chiefly in the home, and secondarily in the schoolroom.

Persia yielded to the demands of Russia to dismiss W. Morgan Shuster, but Russia has gone right on with her war on Persia just the same. The despatches say that she is slaughtering men, women, and children in Persia by the thousand. England's agreement with Russia makes it appear that she is a party to the butchery, and there is in consequence great popular indignation over the matter among the English people. Leading Persians have addressed an appeal to the United States for help to stop the Russian depredations. The two most powerful leaders of the Mohammedan faith now residing at Bagdad have issued an appeal to "the faithful" throughout Persia to engage in a holy war against Russia and England.

A despatch dated December 28 says: "Mongolia, which almost equals China in size, will be proclaimed independent to-morrow simultaneously with the cutting off from China of the vast dependency of Turkestan. Both will pass under Russian influence and will practically become Russian protectorates. Russia at any time will be able to annex them." This will permit Russia to come very near to the sphere of Japan's operations in Asia, and will open the way for Russia to move forward with her trans-Mongolian railway. Truly these are days that are big with movements among the nations, and what will be to-morrow only the all-seeing eye can tell.

In his last audience with the pope before leaving Italy, the newly appointed cardinal John M. Farley was granted many requests in behalf of the clergy and laity of New York which he will announce on his return. It is said also that "the pope spoke in appreciative terms of the United States and of its loyal and zealous Catholic population." The Papacy is becoming more and more open in ignoring the Protestant portion of the population of the United States and claiming it for a Catholic country. If ever there was a time when men should study the history of the Papacy and the meaning of these aggressions, that time is now.

A small boy in San Francisco who had witnessed some burnings at the stake of Indians in a moving picture show was talking with excited enthusiasm about it with some of his comrades while at play, when a little four-year-old girl came upon the scene and was seized and thrown into a bonfire that had been started for the purpose of illustrating his story. The incident has given impetus to the movement of some of the good people of the city who are working to suppress the representation of scenes of bloodshed and violence in the moving picture shows.

It is said that England is trembling on the brink of another great labor war. Millions of workers in all lines are expressing their dissatisfaction. The railways, the coal-mines, the spinning mills, and the shipping interests are all involved. The best of England's statesmen had to use all their powers and wisdom to bring to an end the labor war that broke out last summer, and now she is working just as hard to keep the scenes of a few months ago from being repeated.

The United States claims through her naval experts that she is the second naval power of the world, taking into account the ships she has built and in building. While Germany claims to be the second power because she has ten per cent more tonnage than the United States, the experts of this country point out that we have twenty per cent more gun power than the Germans, and that is what counts in war.

Reyes has proclaimed himself president of Mexico, but it looks as if he would have a good chance to lose his life in making his proclamation good. Doubtless there are many Mexicans who are longing for a return of the more tranquil days of Diaz.

Declaring absinth dangerous to health, the Pure Food Board of the Department of Agriculture at Washington has decided that its importation to the United States shall be prohibited after January 1. This is good.