At first glimpse, this majority-ruled civilization appears a terribly strong, ruthless machine. Conform or be damned! Is it not akin to the stern puritanism of the early New England colonies? So a number of writers deem it, and therefore hate it, and cry out desperately against it. I am not so sure. Its results are, indeed, thin and cruel, but I am unable to see it as that fearful Juggernaut; the legend of its harsh strength leaves me unconvinced. For what is this majority opinion to which all must bow? If a hundred million people really thought alike, it would be possible, even probable, that they were right. Not right, of course, on specialized subjects such as the doctrine of Relativity, the achievement and failures of Cubist painting, or the merits and defects of the Federal Reserve banking system, since these are matters which only a comparative few have the ability and training to understand, but tolerably right on the universal problems common to all men. But have we in America (which I take only as a symbol) a hundred million people who really think alike? We have not. We have not got a hundred million people who think at all. When you overhear pert snappy retorts hurled by waitresses or shop-girls at impudent young men, or quick lines got off by flappers at country-club dances, do you imagine that such crackling wit spatters spontaneously from these young ladies’ alert brains? Then you must indeed be out of touch with our civilization. Gleaned from the comic strips, echoed from the dialogues of vaudeville, its aim not to be original but the very latent thing. ‘You poor fish’--or ‘prune’ would be a hopelessly bad retort, being yesterday’s slang; ‘Wet smack’ (at the moment I write) a good one, being to-day’s. Rising to higher matters, do you fancy that a hundred million Americans calling in chorus for the Americanization of immigrants, the conservation of the Nordic Race, and the election of Calvin Coolidge, signifies that the hundred million have reached their belief in the desirability of these things through processes of thought? Nonsense! A few individuals have patiently, cleverly, and with deadly repetition told them dramatically about these things in words of one syllable; and they have taken up the cry immensely, much as an insensate mountain hurls back tumultuous echoes of a single slender voice.