Judge — July 8, 1922 — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

— “If the bankers’ conference was called a Soviet solution of world troubles, old Populi would throw back his head and begin to vox like a wolf” EDITORIAL The White Topper O COL. GEORGE HARVEY wore a white plug hat to a dinner the other night. And the news of the ad- venture cluttered the cables. Grand news it was, too. Of all the millions of drab and tiseless words that have crossed the sea these ten months, telling of nothing in particular, ex- cepting, perhaps, the freedom of Ireland, no words have been so cheering as these that brought this thrilling story of the corking adventure of the white topper. That it was our particular ambassador under the white topper was of course comforting to a nation suffering from con- fusion, ennui and a deadly dose of Congress. For the white topper upon our representative to the court of St. James proves that we still are a young and virile people. The white topper is the sign of the berries; even as Yankee Doodle entering the metropolis “riding on his pony, stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni.” When a man gets himself canvassed into a white topper mood he has pranced out of this mauve twentieth century and is in the land “beyond the twilight’s purple rim.” He is living a hard and dangerous life. No matter how circumspect may be his outward manner, he is at heart stepping high, wide and handsome, and ladies approach him at their own risk. Colonel Harvey, pacing proudly up to the Canadian ban- quet hall in a white topper, symbolizes “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean” bedecked in the red, white and blue, frizzling her bobbed hair, plucking her fair eyebrows, dabbing up her pretty lips, and giving a lick and a promise to her peachy cheeks be- BY WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE fore sailing out to vamp the world. The white topper upon our ambassador advertises us as a dweller in the land of true romance, Ae Harding incited a lot of steel and railroad men to dine in the White House the other day. Can it be that Harding also isa practical man"? The Banking Soviet HE Sovict, as nearly as it may be expressed in American terms, is a trade organization—say the bricklayers’ union or the local Bar Association, or the Brotherhood of Rail- y Trainmen, or the county Medical Society—assuming the powers usually delegated to representative government. In- stead of electing representatives geographically, Soviet repre- sentatives seemed to be elected from organizations of trades and professions. Which is a tremendously dangerous thing, as men know their fellow-workers better than they know their fellow-citizens in the block or the ward or the township. So politicians naturally fight shy of Soviets in theory and let them govern the world in practice. The Bankers’ Soviet, which has been settling international affairs in Europe, is a beautiful case in point. Here is a group of highly skilled, highly intelligent men from all over Christendom sitting in judgment upon the financial affairs of a sick world. Their diagnosis is intelligent. The prescription has sense in it. And if ever there was a Sovict, it is the International Bankers’ Conference. Yet, if it was called a Sovict solution of the world’s troubles, 16 comicbooks.com