PERFECTLY KILLING

In these days when the limitation of everything from petticoats to armaments is all the rage, the earnest reformer must soon be looking about him for new fields of endeavor. There is, in the estimation of many, too much of most everything in this world; how to eliminate some of it is consequently a pertinent question. Unfortunately, authorities will disagree as to what should be thus disposed of. Some would eliminate all government, others, all taxes; down in New Jersey they are trying to limit the limitations imposed by the nineteenth amendment. Still others confine their efforts to the suppression of lumps in mashed potato and the "relentless elimination of cores from baked apples."

Some of the wiser minds, however, have hit upon the idea of the limitation of propaganda as the best thing to tackle next. During the War, we heard much about German propaganda; now the Germans themselves are complaining about the unfair use of this "weapon". German spiritualists (and Germany is a very "spiritual" country) have alleged that the French and English mediums broke every provision of the Hague Treaty by their flagrant misuse of psychic forces during the "late unpleasantness". "Mass prayers", they charge, more often and often employed at given hours to send great currents of malignant thought--energy over the German lines. The frequent downhearted condition of the German soldiery, erroneously attributed to the incomplete assimilation of too much sauerkraut, is now found to have resulted from these cowardly assaults. "How", the Germans ask, "can our stolid folk be expected to equal in thought-production the more active minds of our enemies?" If one of our brave boys thinks that his toe hurts him, how can he know that it is only the "wish" of someone far away, perhaps across the channel. The use of propaganda is denounced as immoral and inhuman.

It does indeed look as if the Germans had get held of a very grave danger. Suppose this psychic sense should be developed by its rise, until everyone is at once psychically powerful and similarly receptive. The concentrated "will" of fifty students would seen drive the boldest professor from the platform, no one would receive less than "A" in any of his courses. The night watchman has only to be "wished" somewhere else, to make burglary mere child's play And so it goes. The fate of the world is easy to see. Let us therefore nip the evil in the bud; let it be unlawful to wish, will, think, agitate, or otherwise employ the human mind. Then, and only then, will this fearful disruption of civilization be averted.