Until a few years ago the Army and the Navy escaped this general degradation. Their officers stood apart from the main body of public job-holders. They held office for life, and they were assumed to be innocent of politics. Having no need to curry favor with the mob, they could afford to disdain the common hypocrisies. Inheriting an austere and exact tradition of professional honor, they were what is called gentlemen. They did not blab upon one another. They had the fine tolerance of civilized men. They had dignity. It was as impossible to imagine a naval officer or an army officer playing the spy for the Anti-Saloon League as it was to imagine him using a table-napkin as a handkerchief or getting converted at a Methodist revival. But I fear those days are past. The pressure from outside, exerted through such mountebanks as Mr. Secretary Wilbur, becomes too heavy to be borne. Worse, there is disintegration within, due in part, perhaps, to the packing of the two Services with civilians from the gutter, but in part also to changes in the method of selecting candidates for Annapolis and West Point. Whatever the cause, the effects are already plain. In a few short years, perhaps, we shall see a major-general in the Army preaching Fundamentalism in Tennessee, and an admiral in the Navy going to work for the Anti-Saloon League. XV. GOLDEN AGE The rest of us, struggling onward painfully, must wait in patience for the boons and usufructs of Heaven; Judge Elbert Henry Gary, LL.D., chairman of the United States Steel Corporation, has them here and now. To few men in history, I believe, has it been given to live in a universe so nearly to their hearts’ desire. Let the learned ex-jurist look East or West, he will find only scenes to content him. Let him look North or South, and his eye will be caressed and frankincense will spray his gills. The emperor and pope of all the Babbitts, he sits at the center of a Babbitts’ paradise. For him and his like there dawns a Golden Age, and its hero is good Cal.