Judge — January 31, 1914 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Censorship HE. Russian press censorship has made public some of the topics that are taboo in the prints of that empire, the announcement be- ing particularly discouraging as to military and naval news. Various other subjects that are inked over by the censor when Russian newspapers ap- pear, or that are blotted out ¥ of interloping publications ~ from other lands by that in- dustrious and finical official, leave little of value to the Russian reading public but ancient history and an occasional imperfal ukase, which may possess a certain dignity of style, but is usually lacking in human interest. Still, there are some things to be said in favor of a press censorship, and if one were possible in this country there are subjects now played upon by the press that might well be spared or at least curtailed. Elopements and divorces, boxing matches and baseball, though of human interest and distinctively national activ- ities, are now so elaborately treated in the press that the public mind is often puzzled as to their realities, Baseball is all right, for it interests the millions; but after a man has seen a game, he loses too much time in reading ten or a dozen different and differing accounts of its details. Some boxing matches may be inspiring to their spec- tators, but the preliminary pronounce- ments of the principals, seized by the press as news, are wearying. And when an elopement or a divorce is chronicled in the newspapers, the stories as to the social standing of the parties and other details are so varying and di- verse that it is difficult to arrive at any- thing like a satisfying notion of the true inwardness of any such affair. There are a thousand other subjects which the newspapers treat with such a gay disregard for facts that’ the public mind is always in a maze, Still, there is acertain element of amusement that the public would have to forego if the press were to adhere to bare facts and deal with truth alone. Naked truth is often very uninteresting. Brief Decisions A FEW words well chosen are better than a great vocabulary. Ff a ree rr nc A picture of limited enjoyment is a pretty girl driving alone in a cutter, with a servant on a cob following after. on o The spirit of the times seems to be teaching everybody speed. A sightly woman in an auto has some influence even on a traffic cop. A Fashion Note (CONGRESS is interesting to the ob- server for some things that are but superficial. That is to say, individual members of Congress attract attention for personal idiosyncrasies of dress or manner. Washington as a city is as mod- ish as most capitals, for it has a varied lot of foreign disciples of fashion to make its landscapes picturesque and stimulate emulation in deportment and _ sartorial distinction. That some of the members of Congress from Wayback do not take to conven- _ tional modes with the grace that long use of them may bring is apparent when any new Congress assembles. The lapse of time—as, for instance, it is emphasized by the long session of the present Con- gress—does not always bring ease in store clothes to many a member as to whose real worth there can be no question and whose standing in his own bailiwick is above reproach. Witness this pleas- antry on the subject from a Washington dispatch in a New York newspaper: A country Congressman in the long, flowing coat and a gallon lid over his perspiring brow, making New Year calls, is a spectacle that provokes a laugh from the most hardened cy- nic. He looks like a geared-up shoat. and no doubt were he to appear in such attire upon the streets of hishome town he would provoke @ demonstration more hilarious than cordial. A good-natured warning may be drawn from this. The country congressman should practice with a flowing coat anda gallon lid in his home town until he in- spires no hilarity there. Then, maybe, he may frequent the thoroughfares of Washington in this accustomed gear with- out being singled out by smart corre- spondents, whose sense of the ludicrous makes their dispatches readable. Ps, EVERYBODY TANGOS comicbooks.com