I would like to borrow Heine’s ocean, but for a purpose and a simile of my own. When we were children it was fun to drop pebbles into a pond. They made a nice splash and then the pretty little ripples caused a series of ever widening circles and that was very nice. If bricks were handy (which sometimes was the case) one could make an Armada of nutshells and matches and submit this flimsy fleet to a nice artificial storm, provided the heavy projectile did not create that fatal loss of equilibrium which sometimes overtakes small children who play too near the water’s edge and sends them to bed without their supper. In that special universe reserved for grown-ups, the same pastime is not entirely unknown, but the results are apt to be far more disastrous. Everything is placid and the sun is shining and the water-wigglers are skating merrily, and then suddenly a bold, bad boy comes along with a piece of mill-stone (Heaven only knows where he found it!) and before any one can stop him he has heaved it right into the middle of the old duck pond and then there is a great ado about who did it and how he ought to be spanked and some say, “Oh, let him go,” and others, out of sheer envy of the kid who is attracting all the attention, pick up any old thing that happens to lie around and they dump it into the water and everybody gets splashed and one thing leading to another, the usual result is a free-for-all fight and a few million broken heads. Alexander was such a bold, bad boy. And Helen of Troy, in her own charming way, was such a bad, bold girl, and history is just full of them. But by far the worst offenders are those wicked citizens who play this game with ideas and use the stagnant pool of man’s spiritual indifference as their playground. And I for one don’t wonder that they are hated by all right-thinking citizens and are punished with great severity if ever they are unfortunate enough to let themselves be caught. Think of the damage they have done these last four hundred years. There were the leaders of the rebirth of the ancient world. The stately moats of the Middle Ages reflected the image of a society that was harmonious in both color and texture. It was not perfect. But people liked it. They loved to see the blending of the brick-red walls of their little homes with the somber gray of those high cathedral towers that watched over their souls. Came the terrible splash of the Renaissance and overnight everything was changed. But it was only a beginning. For just when the poor burghers had almost recovered from the shock, that dreadful German monk appeared with a whole cartload of specially prepared bricks and dumped them right into the heart of the pontifical lagoon. Really, that was too much. And no wonder that it took the world three centuries to recover from the shock.