Judge — May 27, 1922 — page 21: what you’re looking at

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

poor heads full of perfectly useless facts and theories about things that are as unrelated to the safety of the Republic as the moon dogs. Until our people get tired of groaning under taxes that bring them only a perpetuation of bad government under changing parties the school as a reliance in the conservation of democracy will be a huge and tragic joke. ALSO “THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL” HE preachers are after the New York World, because T tee World opposes prohibition. The New York World is one of the freest of the large American newspapers, and expresses the courageous, intelligent views of an organization of wise, free, high-visioned men. No financial group has a slimy tenacle around it; no in- herited prejudices hamper it. It is bound by no yester- days, and is afraid of no possible to-morrow. The men who control the World honestly believe that Prohibition is a social, political and economical mistake. They are kicking against the pricks. What harm are they doing? The New York World has the same right to complain about the iniquities of the Eighteenth Amendment that the Bull Moosers ten years ago had to rail against the interpretation .of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that the Socialists have to-day to bewail the phases of the Constitution which fasten capitalism upon the country. Nothing is settled in this world but change and rising taxes. The preachers should let up in their fight on the World and go after “the flesh and the devil.” Having said these things of the New York World we drop a silent tear over a headline in that palladium of our liberties where we read “Rev. Holman Pays a Fine.” Why carry malice for the clergy to the point of impaling a preacher on a solecism! GOVERNMENT BY CONFERENCE IRST VERSAILLES—a failure. And it failed be- F cause it tried to do too much. Then came Washing- ton, and it succeeded because it tried, if anything, too little. Then Cannes, and it was a dog fall; and then Genoa, and it set the conference habit. We now know that we “cannot take it or let it alone.” The world is conference addict! And from now on for a decade we must have international government on THE SPHINX HHROUGH all this bonus wrangle President Harding Tis played the part of Uncle Remus’s Tar Baby. “Brer Rabbit he lay low; Tar Baby, he say nothin’.” Up would come Mr. Mondell or Mr. Fordney, or Mr. Gillett, speaker of the house, and down would go the port- cullis of the Presidential candor. Language would be exchanged, it is true; but mostly dry chips and whetsomes. President Harding, coming after the insistence of Wilson, and the gorgeous frankness of Roosevelt, seems to play a queer and sphinx-like part in the White House. It is twenty years now since we have seen a President hold Congress as a co-ordinate branch of the Government; for even Taft had to take the congressional leaders into his confidence in self-defense against the people with whom he was quarreling during his entire administration. But here and now we have the Presidential office functioning as an independent branch of the Government—quite like the Supreme Court or Congress. And the President who has yanked us back to the Con- stitution is not a lawyer, but an editor—in fact, the editor who runs the best newspaper in all Marion County, Ohio! Whatever his wisdom or unwisdom in relation to the bonus legislation, his attitude as President of the United States in relation to the bonus squabble has been dignified—and different. This is not to say that he has been wiser than those who would have chosen the other course in his stead; but it is a change, and, as such, rather refreshing. THE SPREAD OF KNOWLEDGE O sooner do our schoolboys and girls get to install- N ing radio sets than science announces that the lowly tumble bug uses radio for communication, and the evanescent lightning bug uses a radio set for household illumination. In a few more years the mosquito will be using a drilling rig for his typhoid injections, and the rattlesnake will put in a self-winding coil. All animate creatures are soaking their hides full of the new knowledge —all except Father. He, poor devil, still buys oil stock, runs for office, grumbles about the bills and wonders why the rising generation has no sense about the value of a dollar. Father learns nothing, and forgets nothing. He and Adam start from the same taw, and get no further as the generations pass. the planet largely by conference. The written constitution of the world which was attemped by Wilson and the British pacifists at Versailles must be laid aside. But the spirit of that constitu- tion, the invisible League of Nations, is now ruling civilization. We are parts of a world state. It is a state builded upon conference. Ambassadors, ministers plenipotentiary, and the whole school of limber-knee liars that we call diplomats, must give way in the conduct of foreign affairs to the direct representatives of the peoples sitting around a table discussing many things, trading, compromising, grab- bing and giving as time and circumstances dictate. It is the parliament of the world. . The great World War did make the world safe for democracy; but it will be decades, perhaps centuries, before we shall know the vast changes that must come before the hopes of the race in that great conflict will be realized. In the meantime, we have delegated un- dreamed of powers to mere interna- tional committees clothed with nothing but “the power to act.” The sover- eignty that once belonged to kings, and later to the people, now has gone to conference. The destiny of mankind is in the hands of this chang- ing and irresponsible “committee of Drawn by CHARLES BASKERVILLE. the whole.” The orchestra conductor carves. 19 comicbooks.com