"Merciless Modern Criticism of Idols"

“Present Age Like Children Who Dissect Dolls That Make Them Happy.”

[Former Senator Chauncey Depew speaking at the Montauk Club in Brooklyn on his 90th birthday. Born in 1834, Depew was unhappy with the critical spirit of 1924]

“Steam is followed by electricity, by radio and radium, and discovery reveals the secrets of nature and overcomes the handicaps on health and longevity until the brain becomes fatigued to understand it all, but the soul starves. The foundations of faith are shaken, and readers of the creed who deny its teachings, and preachers who want their independence and weaken reverence by denying the divinity of Christ, fill the newspapers and empty the churches. The numbness caused by the appalling tragedies of the great war and of political revolutions among historic peoples do not require assaults on faith to wake up and interest people, but a revival of the simpler life and comforting belief of normal times.

Criticism Goes Too Far.

We carry criticism too far, and the analytic spirit is rampant. We are like children who dissect that with which they are happy until the sawdust pours out of the doll, or it fails to work when the machinery is wrecked. The age is merciless with its idols and with the revered notables of the past. I was far happier with the authors of the eighteenth century biographies who idealized their heroes. We were very well satisfied and felt an elevation, unusual now, in the lives and achievements of the great characters of our revolution and the framers of our Constitution. Our blood circulated with delightful rapidity as we read of Washington at the battle of Monmouth, raging at Lee for his treason and cowardice, or at Valley Forge, keeping alive the spirit of his suffering army.”

[“Merciless Modern Criticism of Idols Depresses Depew,” Washington Post, March 27, 1924, p.10.]