THE TIDE RECEDES

Meeting in Washington for their "Continental Congress," the D. A. R. have given the country encouraging signs that after all America is going to be saved. As the bulbous defenders of our liberties meet to take stock of the state of their organization, all considerations of the twin menace of Russia and pacifism are overshadowed by a genuine American tragedy: the membership of the D. A. R. has slid downhill like a 1929 ticker tape, with 25,000 fewer on the rolls than eight years ago.

Cortez and all his men could never have looked at each other with wilder surprise than these deserted children of Bunker Hill and Saratoga. In hearing from their own lips of their waning strength, one is reminded of nothing so much as that autumn day in 1918 when Kaiser Wilhelm threw up the sponge and took the next train for Holland. The rules of our country are-abdicating their thrones with distressingly little thought of what anarchy is to stalk abroad when the firm hand that has been our guide for so long has vanished.

The decline of the D. A. R. is as inevitable as it is inspiring. Whatever else may be said about the organization, it must of necessity cull from the more educated ranks of American society. As a result, for years it has been only a question of time before twentieth century ideas would make the activities of the D. A. R. appear so loath-some that no clear-thinking modern woman would venture to have her name on its rolls. In a few years more the sight of a beribbonned clipper-ship sailing through the Mayflower lobby in Washington will rank as a rarity with the Folger Library and the piano in the East Room. The task of upholding patriotism will then fall to the lower elements in the population. There is always the Massachusetts legislature.