Judge, 1918-03-30 · page 16 of 36
Judge — March 30, 1918 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page presents a philosophical essay by H. Varley arguing that being truly "bad" is actually *harder* than being good, because genuinely wicked acts require either immense effort or entail worse consequences than their perpetrator can endure. The accompanying cartoon by Walter De Maris satirizes this idea through a street scene where a young ruffian asks his friend to "hold my coat while I make the world safe for Democracy!" The humor lies in the contrast: the boy adopts grandiose, patriotic rhetoric ("make the world safe for Democracy"—likely referencing WWI-era propaganda) while preparing for what appears to be petty street violence. It mocks how people dress up minor misbehavior in lofty language, and suggests that even would-be troublemakers can't escape invoking noble ideals—supporting the essay's point that true, unvarnished badness is practically impossible.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
On Being Bad By H. Varrey ‘T is a popular fallacy that it is much easier to be bad than good. So firmly rooted is this error that it is universally accepted. Yet it is very to demonstrate the absurdity of it. Imagine yourself, for a moment, having decided to be as bad as possible. Throw off all thought of conven- tion, of law, of caring for the opinions of others and of heeding the still, small voice within you. Here you are then, ready to be bad. Not just ordinarily, prettily bad—but bad to the nth degree. What shall you do? Murder? That’s silly, for there is none you hate enough and if there was, the fear of eventually sitting in a chair not upholstered for com- fort but for speedy demise would deter you from murder. Rob a bank? However delightful the prospect, you can’t tear open iron bars with your bare hands nor dig through granite with your fingernails. Draven by Wacter De Marais “Here Mickey! Elope with your neighbor’s wife? That is the most ridiculous of all, for you know your neighbor and that removes any wish to endure, even for a moment, what he suffers indefinitely. So you stand, and mentally go through the whole category of badness without finding a single thing you can do without much more trouble than you could perform some good deed. The worst you can picture yourself doing (that is feasible) is such a common peccadillo that you must despise it for its very littleness. : So you see the difficulty of being just a little bad—the utter impossibility of being really bad. Then the biblical injunction comes to you with an entirely new meaning:—“The way of the transgressor is hard.” Macren de fjanis «4 Hold me coat while I make the world safe for Democracy!” comicbooks.com