The Dying World of 1925
Crisis and Dissent
“The dying world of 1925 was without faith, hope, character, understanding of its malady or will to overcome it.” —Whittaker Chambers
Crisis and Dissent
In “Enemies of the Status Quo,” I introduced a 1951 essay by former Communist Granville Hicks, which explores the uneasy alliance between liberals and Communists, tracing its roots back to the 1920s.
In “The Liberals Who Haven’t Learned,” Hicks vividly captures the rebellious spirit of the twenties and the motley crew of “dissenting intellectuals” who waged war on the status quo, comparing the campaign to “one grand, prolonged Chardon Street Chapel Convention.”
“The status quo was dreadfully, excitingly wrong,” Hicks tells us, “[and it] included a lot more than politics and economics. Our quarrel was with the Philistines—the Babbitts, as Sinclair Lewis had taught us to call them—and anyone who would smite them was our ally.”
The Babbitts were no match for the intellectuals, whose eloquence galvanized an assault on the status quo and left flag-waving conservatives floundering. “[We] were winning constant victories,” Hicks tells us, “not merely in art and letters but also in morals.”
The Great Comeuppance
Few people today would look back at the 1920s and say anything about the fractured moral landscape. Ask an American to describe the period, and they’ll probably talk about “roaring” growth, “glamorous” aesthetics, or “decadence.” But most Americans are unaware of the spiritual crisis that fueled the decade’s characteristic excess. That crisis, rooted in moral uncertainty, shaped the era far more than its glittering façade suggests and would have terrible consequences for generations to come.
The period between the Great War and the Great Crash can be charitably described as a grand adjustment or, uncharitably, as a great comeuppance. By the 1920s the war’s patriotic euphoria had worn off, and its high ideals rang hollow. Not only did the “war to end all wars” fail to achieve a lasting peace, but it left Americans wondering if their sacrifices had achieved anything at all. Wartime propaganda and political repression had fundamentally changed the country, and few would say for the better. This collapse of “apocalyptic hopes” was followed by a breakdown of the old social order. By war’s end, family and church—the twin pillars of that order—were under tremendous strain, and the youth were starting to scare their elders.