Judge — February 25, 1922 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

Drawn by Clive WreD. The American Narcissus sees his reflection in “An Inquiry by Thirty Americans.” EDITORIAL By Witi1am ALLEN WHITE THE PUNISHMENT AND THE CRIME NE of the minor evidences of the moral government of the universe may be found in the fact that, as progressive change produces new, weird and un- thought of crimes for man, following closely comes the Nemesis, equally grotesque, unique and unholy. Last year we had the publication of the findings of the Lusk Com- mittee on the Propaganda of the Red Willies, or something of the sort; an awful book of thousands of ponderous, solemn and deadly pages, indicating that every man who ever had an idea in his life beyond money-grubbing and flag-waving, should be jailed as a Red. The book made it plain that true patriotism was attained by keeping both feet in the trough steadily and squealing “three cheers for the red, white and blue.” It was the formula of chiropractic patriotism. It was a strange and awful thing to descend upon a simple and fun-loving people, was this Lusk Committee report, and it looked for a time as though Providence had made one of those absent-minded slips which indicate that this is 2 busy world for the angels. But no—here comes the antidote, “Civilization in the United States, An Inquiry by Thirty Americans.” It is a perfect cure for the report of the Lusk Committee. And the two books, growing in beauty side by side, mark not merely the high tide of un- conscious American humor, but set the meets and bounds far out on the twilight’s purple rim of the world’s worst + books. As posterity is even now beginning to make kindling and curl papers out of the Lusk report, we may turn to the “Inquiry by Thirty Americans,” just dripping from the press, for a moment's refreshment. The “Inquiry by Thirty Americans” proves beyond cavil that “Civilization in the United States” is in one hell of a fix; nothing less. It is not that our civilization is bad, though it is some- what that. It isn’t that our civilization is doomed, though that also follows. But the miserable thing just never was. S-h-s-h-ush, shut the door, stuff the keyhole, and hear the truth. We're—sh-sh-sh-sh—a lot of blinking savages, and nothing is worth while. We've got to junk the planet and begin over with the original protoplasm. Scrapping battleships will avail nothing; nor governments, nor constitutions, nor systems of philosophy upon which civilizations depend, nor human motives. The machinery of the universe is wound up wrong end to, and with a faulty mainspring. We must go back of time and space and scrap God. THE COUNSEL OF IMPERFECTION T’S no laughing matter if these Thirty Americans who are inquiring into “Civilization in the United States” are right, and they are practically the only Thirty Americans who agree about anything. So the thing just naturally must bedone. Theirrecently published book covers every possible subject from Sex to the Small Town, and on every possible subject hope is carefully examined and discarded. We are all wrong. “Our intellectual life,” Mr. Harold Stearns, the compiler of the “inquiry,” tells us, “when we judge it objectively on the side of vigor and diversity, too often seems like a democracy of mounte- banks.” Pretty rough that, one would say—but that's nothing. Here comes another stumper. John Macey waves a hopeless hand and declares “The American press is an accurate gauge of the American minds,” and so