At the same time the family remains the same; the marriage law is unchanged; the right of private property is what it was in the days of ancient Rome. The Constitution of the United States is what it was a hundred and thirty years ago. Justice is the same as it was in the time of Alexander. The Golden Rule has not been altered since the time of Christ. Love, hate, fear and courage stand as they were originally some time prior to the stone age. To revert, then, to the simile of the construction of the house, it seems true that while the plaster and the wall paper--the decorations of its interior and exterior--change from time to nevertheless on the whole, as a rule, in the main {263} the passage of the great ages has not materially changed the supports of the structure--and never will. In the matter of interior and exterior decoration periods come and go during which those who build houses decorate according to schools of art. It is the only belief that any sane and hopeful human being can have that these schools of decoration for the old house of civilization in the main steadily improve. If it is not so, then we have nothing to live for, nothing to which we may look forward. Also, however, there are fashions and fads running along by the side of these great schools which are suggestive, amusing or ludicrous, as the case may be. The cubists and the followers of the old masters paint at the same time. One, however, dies shortly and the other lives on--often to be sure affected in some slight way by the grotesque but honest fad, but never giving way to it. In the month of November, 1918, greater changes of this nature took place in the political world than in all the years which preceded that month since the beginning of the Christian era. {264} In that month some scores of crowned heads stepped down from their thrones and made haste to reach shelter as do the rats in a kitchen when the cook turns on the electric light. At that time something like three hundred millions of people gave up their particular forms of government and to a certain extent have been living on since without any substitute. Some of these crowned heads have sat on their thrones from five to ten centuries. Some of the governments have lived as long. It looks like a general tumble of the house of civilization. And yet most of these millions of people go on getting up in the morning, going to bed at night and, impossible as it may seem, conducting commercial enterprises. The kings have gone; the governments have gone; yet the people remain and their daily life goes on--not as usual --but in the main the same.