three: civic education in the home and the school; the application of the regulations and laws with no deference and no favoritism toward anyone save by right; and the fighting of idleness.

The first — education — con-stitutes the foundation element in halting the current of this decline; but it is slow in its working, since it rests on the element of encour-agement, persuasion, and logic, and its effect does not appear until after a school generation — and this on the assumption that home and school possess all the ingredients of sound upbringing: a good mother, a good father, and a good teacher. But, alas, I do not see, in our present day, that the two environ-ments, of home and of school, are equal to raising the moral level until it reaches the station that a refined society wants and hopes for. For the school to perform its noble service and give the young a sound moral upbringing, the character of commerce must be stripped from it and it must be turned into a nursery of men — not left as shops for exploiters, stuffing heads with defective learning and leaving a moral void that will be an ill omen for our future.

As for the second — the application of the regulations and laws without dallying or favoritism — it is in my view the swiftest and the most comprehensive of the ways, even though it rests on the element of fear, force, and punishment; but this element is necessary to deter the aggressors and those who make light of order and of human values — that is, the causers of this decline. This work is among the functions of the state. If the state acts resolutely in it, and makes all people feel the necessity of a real and effective respect for the law, and strikes with hands of iron at every violator, without a glance at the rung to which he belongs, and prevents the classes of the high rungs from intervening to spoil the working of the regulations — so that the weak man and the poor man feel that they obtain their right without the mediation

of any intermediary, and that they are in fact equal before the courts with the strong and the rich — then confidence will take command of souls, and people's inclination toward good example and the love of virtue will grow strong.

As for the third — the fighting of idleness — it rests on securing work for all who are capable of it and providing the means of livelihood and of security for everyone. This too, today, falls as a charge upon the state, and it must be dealt with in partnership

with the wealthy, as is the case in the other advanced countries.

And when all this has been made ready, you will see the wheel of moral decline stop, then shatter against the rock of the principles I have mentioned, and you will behold our society as the best and the most advanced that societies can be — because it dwells in a soil in which, however many its thorns and however its strange weeds grow, its fragrant herbs and its good plants, if faithful hands tend them, will remain the uppermost and the prevailing.