And note well that our domesticated socialists and intelligentzia, though far more inclined to consider the human factor than the Bolsheviki, have the same advantage of clarity of aim, and the same tendency to confuse ideas with facts. Common sense--not the highest virtue, not the virtue which will save our souls, or even our bodies, in a crisis like war or a turmoil of the spirit--is often lacking in the socialist. Good humor--again not a quality that wins heaven’s gates, but a saving grace, nevertheless--is noticeably absent from the columns of our radical weeklies. An admirable service they are rendering in clarifying the American mind, in forcing it, or some of it, to face issues, to think things through, to be intelligent as well as sensible; but the logical rigidity of their program inhibits that sense of proportion which recognizes the _Falstaffs_ and the _Micawbers_ of this world, smiles sometimes over miscarriages of idealism, sympathizes with feeble, humorous man, does not always scold. And yet the American who dislikes scolding should beware of superciliousness. It is much easier for genial folks to chide the critics with programs than to be critical of themselves. The normal American is a product of American education, with its insistence upon liberal progress, upon acceleration toward the vaguest of goals. It has not taught him to be critical of others in any thorough-going fashion, it has not taught him to be critical of himself. The confidence that has carried our business to a maximum, that has flung our schools broadcast, and swept our philanthropies over the world, spelled differently is self-assurance. Nothing disturbs us so much as to be told to stop and think. Nothing angers the business world so much as legislation that “halts business.” Nothing infuriates an educational organizer more than to question the quality, not the quantity, of his product. We have seen clearly what we wished to do with iron and coal and food. We have felt, in education and philanthropy, sure of our moral bases. Our energy has been concentrated on going ahead. To be radical intellectually, to think it all out in terms of a possible relation of labor and capital, of a possible education, of a possible society for the future--that has not appealed to us. We have shunned philosophical programs by instinct, and wilfully built for to-day instead of tomorrow. The American radical has done too little thinking; the European, perhaps too much.