destruction, and total ruin. But in America, it seemed to me, it was not mortal, not incurable—not yet. It was desperate, and would become more desperate still if in America, as in Germany, men became afraid to look into the face of fear itself, to probe behind it, to see what caused it, and then to speak the truth about it. America was young, America was still the New World of mankind’s hope, America was not like this old and worn-out Europe which seethed and festered with a thousand deep and uncorrected
