Right & Wrong

Louis B. Seltzer, editor of the Cleveland Press, probably knows his readers better and talks to them with more immediacy than any other leading U.S. newspaperman. Noting that the U.S. air of 1951 was saturated with moral scandal, moral doubt and moral confusion, Editor

Seltzer sat at his typewriter and, in 15 minutes, banged out an editorial that raised uncomfortable questions about the state of the U.S. at a moment of world responsibility. His piece touched a nerve: in the following week, 1,000 people had tried to reach him by phone or written him letters or stopped him on the street to talk about it. Forty publications have reprinted it. Seltzer's piece, titled Can't We Tell Right From Wrong?:

Some people think it dates back to the First World War . . .

There are those who think science and the assembly line started it as we turned into the 20th Century . . .

Some blame the philosophy of Sufficient Unto the Day Is the Evil Thereof, induced by ... depressions and wars . . .

The analysts whose job it is to examine our national behavior ... do not agree among themselves.

About this, though, they do agree.

Something has happened to us as a people--something serious.

We have gained much in the last half-century.

We have lost something, also ...

Has what we gained been more important than what we lost?

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What is wrong with us ? ...

It is in the air we breathe. The things we do. The things we say. Our books. Our papers. Our theater. Our movies. Our radio and television. The way we behave. The interests we have. The values we fix.

We have everything. We abound with all of the things that make us comfortable. We are, on the average, rich beyond the dreams of the kings of old ...

We lead in everything--almost.

Yet . . . something is not there that should be--something we once had .. .

Stalin, like Hitler, thinks we're soft, preoccupied with material things.

Are we our own worst enemies?

Should we fear what is happening among us more than what is happening elsewhere? . . .

Why has a moral deterioration set in among us that brings corruption, loose behavior, dulled principles, subverted morals, easy expediencies, sharp practices? . . .

What corrupts our top people?

What has taken away the capacity for indignation that used to rise like a mighty wave and engulf the corruptors--the corruptors of public office, of business, of youth, of sports?

What is it? No one seems to know. But everybody seems to believe it is upon us. No one seems to know what to do to meet it. But everybody worries, as the father of a ten-year-old son, who this morning said:

"What do I do? I am concerned about my son. We try to teach him right from wrong. But the air is filled with today's easy interpretations of what is right and wrong". . .

Maybe the farmer of years ago, looking with troubled eye at the skies upon which he depended so much for providential kindliness, had a greater faith than we who rise vertically many miles into the air to find out what really goes on Up There . . .

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