To the efficiency expert and to his multitude of followers, the immediate increase of productivity is so absorbing an object that if it has been attained by a particular course of action, the question whether its attainment has involved a sacrifice of liberty seems to his mind absolutely trivial. Of course this would not be so if the sacrifice were of a startling nature; but short of something palpably galling, something grossly offensive to the primary instincts of freemen, he simply doesn't understand how any person of sense can pretend to be concerned about it, in the face of demonstrated success from the efficiency standpoint. What is true of the apostle of efficiency, and his followers, is even more emphatically true of the humanitarian. And, difficult as many people find it to stand out against the position of the efficiency advocate, it is far more difficult to dissent from that of the devotee of humanitarianism. In the case of the first, one has to brace up one's intellect to resist a plausible and enticing doctrine; in the case of the second, one must, in a sense, harden one's heart as well as stiffen one's mind. For here one has to deal not with a mere calculation of a general increase of prosperity or comfort, but with the direct extirpation of vice and misery which no decent person can contemplate without keen distress. If the humanitarian finds the principle of liberty thrust in the way of his task of healing and rescue, he will repel with scorn the idea that any such abstraction should be permitted to impede his work of salvation; and especially if the idea of liberty has, through other causes, suffered a decline from its once high authority he will find multitudes ready to share his indignation. And he will find still greater multitudes who do not share his indignation, and in their hearts feel much misgiving over the invasion of liberty, but who are without the firmness of conviction, or without the moral courage, necessary to the assertion of principle when such assertion brings with it the danger of social opprobrium. The leaders in humanitarian reforms, and their most active followers, are, as a rule, men and women of high moral nature, and whether wise or unwise, broad-minded or narrow and fanatical, are justly credited with being actuated by a good motive; unfortunately, however, these attributes rarely prevent them from making reckless statements as to the facts of the matter with which they are dealing, nor from indulging in calumnious abuse of those who oppose them. Hence thousands of persons really averse to their programme give tacit or lukewarm assent to it rather than incur the odium which outspoken opposition would invite; and accordingly, true though it is that the idea of liberty is not cherished so ardently or so universally as in a former day, the decline into which it has fallen in men's hearts and minds is by no means so great as surface indications make it seem. On the one hand, the