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MAD_WORLD

                                             January 15, 2009

Two attitudes toward collective madness:
                                                Both quotations are from
John Reed, writing in _The Masses_  1917:       Allen Churchill's
                                                "The Improper Bohemians" (1959)
  "War means an ugly mob-madness,
  crucifying the truth-tellers, choking            IMPROPER_BOHEMIANS
  the artists, side-tracking reforms,
  revolutions, and the working of social
  forces.  Already in America those
  citizens who oppose the entrance of                       WAR_IN_PATERSON
  their country into the European melee
  are called _traitors_, and those who
  protest against the curtailng of our
  meager rights of free speech are spoken
  of as _dangerous lunatics_."  -- p.137


Lincoln Steffens writing to John Reed
about his opposition to WWI:

  "You do wrong to buck this thing.  In the
  first place the war was inevitable; in the
  second place the consequences of the war,
  its by-products, are normal and typical;
  in the third place, the public mind is
  sick.  I know it is hard.  I think it is
  undemocratic to try to do so much now.
  Write, but don't publish."  -- p.134




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