George Panichas, The Courage of Judgment, And Modern Age‪.‬

When Russell Kirk and Henry Regnery first floated the idea of The Conservative Review, "a magazine of controversy," in the Southern Observer in August 1955, they were cautiously optimistic that it might exert a genuine if indirect influence over the intellectual life of the nation. They proposed a bimonthly magazine with "two principal purposes": "to stimulate private taste and judgment, and to give some degree of coherence to our society." The occasion for such a publication was "a marked decline of the reflective review" over the preceding two decades. While Kirk and Regnery conceded that the decline of thoughtful reading was caused in some measure by "new diversions"--they mention "the automobile, the radio, the motion picture"--as well as the defectiveness of American education, they were nonetheless convinced that the serious journal was mainly a victim of the economic dislocation of the Great Depression. Hence it seemed there was reason to anticipate that a serious bimonthly magazine could find a sufficient audience: "We do not have so low an opinion of American minds and hearts as to believe that only six or seven thousand people in the nation think, or need to think, the rest being sufficiently cared for by the ephemeral press." The extent of Kirk's and Regnery's optimism may be gauged by what was offered as a modest goal: "We do not expect our subscription list ever to exceed fifty thousand, and we can do our work with fewer than that."(1) When the "new review," Modern Age, actually appeared two years later, its scope was somewhat more restrained. "Conservative review" was relegated to the subtitle, and it had become a quarterly review rather than a bimonthly magazine. In an opening "Apology for a New Review," which is largely a revision of the original Southern Observer piece, Russell Kirk mentions no subscription numbers and praise of "American minds and hearts" is muted. Nevertheless, the tone is still comparatively optimistic. "For the time being," Kirk writes, "our numbers will appear quarterly; later, if your interest appears to justify more frequent publications, we may make the review monthly."(2)