The great evil of the world to-day is this aversion to work.  As the mechanical era diminished the element of physical exertion in work, we would have supposed that man would have sought expression for his physical faculties in other ways.  On the contrary, the whole history of the mechanical era is a persistent struggle for more pay and less work, and to-day it has culminated in world-wide ruin; for there is not a nation in civilization which is not now in the throes of economic distress, and many of them are on the verge of ruin.  In my judgment, the economic catastrophe of 1921 is far greater than the politico-military catastrophe of 1914.

The results of these two tendencies, measured in the statistics of productive industry, are literally appalling.

Thus, in 1920, Italy, according to statistics of her Minister of Labour, lost 55,000,000 days of work because of strikes alone.  From July to September, many great factories were in the hands of revolutionary communists.  A full third of these strikes had for their end political and not economic purposes.

In Germany, the progressive revolt of labour against work is thus measured by competent authority:  There were lost in strikes in 1917, 900,000 working days; in 1918, 4,900,000, and, in 1919, 46,600,000.

Even in our own favoured land, the same phenomena are observable.  In the State of New York alone for 1920, there was a loss due to strikes of over 10,000,000 working days.

In all countries the losses by such cessations from labour are little as compared with those due to the spirit which in England is called “ca’-canny” or the shirking of performance of work, and of sabotage, which means the deliberate destruction of machinery in operation.  Everywhere the phenomenon has been observed that, with the highest wages known in the history of modern times, there has been an unmistakable lessening of efficiency, and that with an increase in the number of workers, there has been a decrease in output.  Thus, the transportation companies in the United States have seriously made a claim against the United States Government for damages to their roads, amounting to $750,000,000, claimed to be due to the inefficiency of labour during the period of governmental operation.

Accompanying this indisposition to work efficiently has been a mad desire for pleasure, such as, if it existed in like measure in preceding ages, has not been seen within the memory of living man.  Man has danced upon the verge of a social abyss, and, as previously suggested, the dancing has, both in form and in accompanying music, lost its former grace and reverted to the primitive forms of crude vulgarity.

which gives the spectators the maximum of emotional expression with the minimum of mental effort, had not been eclipsed by the splendour of a Dempsey or a Carpentier.

Of the last count in Pope Benedict’s indictment, I shall say but little.  It is more appropriate for the members of that great and noble profession which is more intimately concerned with the spiritual advance of mankind.  It is enough to say that, while the Church as an institution continues to exist, the belief in the supernatural and even in the spiritual has been supplanted in the souls of millions of men by a gross and debasing materialism.