Not as an advocate shall we present these causes, nor again in protest; but in the fair, free, unbiased spirit of investigation. Facts must precede opinions. It is poor rowing against the rapids between the lakes. Let us study these manifestations fairly and sympathetically before we draw conclusions. It will be ~The Century’s~ pleasure and public duty to enlist the services of able authorities in every cause, and to present each justly from its own point of view. Such a program will, we feel sure, help materially the cause of human progress, because it will help men and women to comprehend life as it passes. As for the rest, we shall conserve the best that ~The Century~ has stood for in the past. We shall offer a larger proportion of fiction than formerly, and shall bring it as near to truth, and make it as interpretative of life, as conditions allow. We shall maintain illustration at the highest point modern method will permit. We shall cultivate history and poetry and the essay. We shall explore conditions at home and abroad. We shall make this magazine, fearlessly and in the white light of to-day, as nearly the magazine of the century as courage and devotion and eyes that see and minds that shrink not can do. [Illustration] In Lighter Vein WORLD REFORMERS--AND DUSTERS [Illustration] Though often entranced by that brilliant group of cosmic problem-solvers--Mr. H. G. Wells, Mr. Shaw, Mr. Chesterton, and others--I insist on my personal irresponsibility for the state of Mankind as a whole. These men are always nursing civilization. They regard it as a sort of potted plant which they fear to find frost-bitten of a morning. This is especially clear in the latest writings of Mr. H. G. Wells, who would tidy up the whole world at once. At one swoop he would remove the shirts from our clothes-lines and the errors from our minds. The world is too large for his feather duster; he had thought to find it a smaller planet that he might have kept at least half-way clean. Now see what he has on his hands--everything in a mess, Africa backward, China careless, the sex relation by no means straightened out, socialism, imperialism, industrialism, planless progressivism littering up things, and nobody caring a rap--at times it seems to the good housewifely soul almost too much for one person to manage. And then that infernal human diversity--slow minds, stupid minds, minds made up too soon, or not at all, closed minds, tough minds, tender minds--what’s to be done with them? He burns to do _something_. At least he says he does.