Judge — July 8, 1922 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

old Populi would throw back his head and begin to vox like a wolf! Names, causes, tools, methods count for such a lot in politics, and things and results are so unimportant. sas “Business will revive,” declarcs a wise financial shark, “when European conditions scttle,” and no confidence is tiolated by releasing the news that then European conditions settle business will revire. ae The Last Days of Normalcy HAT politics needs just now is chiefly boots; maybe boots and whiskers; something that will bring the temple Pharisees in the holy of holies where laws are made, interpreted and executed to see as they are seen. The fundamental difference between the two old partics is coming out with startling clearness. It is that the Repub- licans are stealing where the Democrats wasted. The choice is somewhat one between incompetents and scoundrels. And the befuddled taxpayer is getting nervous. Hence the rise of the so-called progressives—Beveridge, Pinchot, Brookhart, the Iowa radical, Frazier, the Non-partisan Leaguer—men who are known to have a low opinion of all “regulars.” Hence, the mad talk of Ford for President. Ford would be both boots and whiskers in the White House. What he doesn’t know, printed in small type, would fill the East Room, and what he thinks he knows would crowd the Congressional Library. But there is rather a large consignment of Fordian philos- ophy in the public mind just now. It’s dangerous. _ It is filled with political dynamite, and given a dozen replicas of La Follette in the Senate, and at least half a dozen are on the way, the dynamic disgust of the folks at American politics might easily blow a hole in the regular organizations of party govern- ments that would leave the agricultural bloc in charge of legislation, sticking up in the situation like a sore toe in a fog! With the Bankers’ Soviet running international affairs and the hell-raisers’ Soviet running the nation, little old nor- malcy would do well to crawl back into the womb of yesterday and pretend never to have been born. Pas A car of whisky billed as “potatocs’® was caught recently in Chicago, “and that was Irish stew.” sas Laughter on a Twelve-hour Day ND yet “laughter, holding both her sides,” has more work than she can do sorting over the fun in the pile of seamy episodes. For one thing, there is a gorgeous roar of laughter at “the best minds” in the mistake they made in getting rid of Senator Kenyon, whom President Harding appointed to a Federal judgeship in order to get a dangerous radical out of the Senate. In Kenyon’s place “the best minds” get Brookhart, whose radicalism makes the Kenyon liberalism seem infants’ food. And then there is Jim Watson, the courte- ous knight of the soft-soap kettle, Tom- watsoning the British and Italian am- bassadors. The trouble with Jim, when he tries to Tomwatson, is that he lacks the immoral courage. He delivers merely a mushy blow where Tom Watson swings a fence rail. Jim has been training himself as a smiler, a handshaker, a statesman of unction, a person of a certain oleaginous punctility. And to set him to the nasty on knees. When can business of blackguarding a representative of a friendly power for political purposes is like spreading fertilizer with a Spad acroplanc! Laughter, viewing the show, would not only have to hold both sides, but get a dish pan for her tears! tae The League of Nations is admitting Germany, and that agitat- ing in the front row is France getting ready to ask for a rain check. Rey Clean Up the Movies LEAN up the movies” is the slogan of Elder Will Hays of the First Presbyterian Church of Sullivan, Ind., who happens for the moment to be dictator of the moving picture business in America. Elder Hays is a grand little man, and his aspiration is beautiful to see; but a bit under-engined. The movies will not clean up—not much. The trouble with the movies is not with the producers or the actors, nor even with the distrib- utors. The movies are wrong because men and women who go to the movies are entertained by them, get mental pabulum from them, genuinely enjoy them, and night after night, month after month, year after year, want nothing better. Given the moron audience and the moron picture, the moron actor and the moron director are inevitable. You can’t clean up the movies without giving them voice, color, character, wisdom and distinction. And the minute intelligence is injected into the movies, the movie audience wanders away bored to a crisp and delicious brown. The movie is dirty because it is a low order of enter- tainment, appealing to one sense only, requiring merely action to carry its message. And action makes an appeal to the mind that reduces reasoning to its lowest terms. The theater may be improved. The saloon might possibly have been saved with wisdom on the part of the brewers. The scarlet lady of Babylon had her better moments. Cain had some justification. But to clean up the movies is like going at the leopard with kalsomine. ‘EM FOR THOSE WHO ROLL Flapper—Is this Mr. Reginald Smythe, the painter? Smythe—Yes, my dear. “Well, I hear that you are now specializing in painting permanent dimples I have a—ah—kneeling? 7