Judge — March 17, 1923 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

Editors Douglas H. Cooke Btiot Keen J. A, Waldron William Morris Houghton William Edgar Fisher EDITORIAL The Question M r. Harpina’s proposal that the United States become a member of the Permanent Court of International Justice reminds us of “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” which begins, you remember: Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, Nevertheless it is a sensible proposal as far as it goes, though, thanks to his delay in submitting it, the Senate been able to postpone for the better part of a year its decision regarding it. Meanwhile we would join with those who are reminding Mr. Lodge, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Senate, of his speech of notification to Mr. Harding, in the campaign of 1920, in which he said: “We have been, and are, quite ready to join in agreement with other nations for the extension of the Hague conventions; for the upbuilding and codification of international law and the establishment of a world court of justice. . The country will expect him and his Republican associates to be turning over in their minds during the recess the question whether they will fulfill this campaign pledge and embrace the President’s proposal with glad cries of “Hague and Hague!” or dismiss it with a contemptuous “Wilson, that’s all!” Pat Vobiscum T IS WRONG to assume that if St. Patrick should return to Ireland to-day he would be surprised and shocked, though For Ireland to-day is in y her in the fifth The main he might well be disappointed. very much the same state in which he kne century A.p., that is to say, in the free-for-all state. point of difference lies in the weapons used. But though the Christian religion has brought no tran- quillity to Ireland after a fair trial of fourteen hundred years, that is not St. Patrick’s fault. Since he spread the faith among her pagans there has grown up in Ireland an entirely new dis- case, a phobia, against which religion is powerless. Hers is a case not for the saint but for the psychoanalyst, who cures phobias by bringing their true causes into the light of day. Mr. Arthur Clutton-Brock, writing on “Evil and the Psychology,” in the March Atlantic, points to the futility of employing argument against error, which he classes psychologic- ally with resentments and phobias, since such things are not based on reason and are therefore not amenable to it. nd this is true,” he goes on, “not only of particular errors, such as in each other when we do not share them, but also of collective beliefs held by great masses of people, such as nations. . . . The way to destroy these al: not to argue with them, but to discover their cause and state it clearly. Only so can their prestige be destroyed.” Well, what is the cause of Ireland's phobia? We venture this, in the hope that it will get the boys out of the ambushes by Christmas: The Irish are jealous, as all poetic, improvident peasants are jealous, of their provident, prosaic neighbors, who accumulate capital, and hence power, by geometrical The traditional Irish feeling both toward the we can detec S. progression. 17 Briton and toward the Protestant of the North is not unlike that of the Russian peasant toward the Jew, of the Turkish peasant toward the Greek, fortified in each case by a national and religious cleavage. Its roots are neither patriotic nor religious but purely economic. And yet in its extreme form, as in the case of the Republicans, it demands the blood of countrymen because they would even appear to compron with the enemy. Come, boys; for the love of Saint Pat, snap out of it! E Three Fingers Across the Sea pitors are finding it a little difficult to explain the rapid advance of sterling exchange. The theory of a “depre- ciating dollar” doesn’t satisfy them, nor do the figures for imports and exports. But possibly they will find a germ of enlightenment in the following news item which strangely enough bore a Washington date line (query: what can they know about such things there?) : “Since the United States went dry the outflow of liquor from the British Isles has been so great Englishmen now com- plain they can no longer buy decent whisky. The best they can get, according to latest reports, is ‘green’ whisky, aged six months or less... . The rank and file of drinkers are becoming peeved. The volume of liquor leaving the Isles is declared three times as great as before the war, when American distilleries were going full blast.” As long ago as last fall Canadian exchange reached par and even went to a slight premium. The same mystification was expressed over this phenomenon. JupGEe asked at the time who had boosted it. And echo answered, “booze.” Eggravation PHILADELPHIA man was sentenced recently to six months in prison for spanking his wife. He had pleaded guilty but had suggested these extenuating circumstance “Your honor, my wife threw a cup of coffee in my face. That was all right. Then she threw a soft boiled egg at me and it landed in my eye. The latter, Judge, aggravated We don’t know who started this row, but husbands have no standing in court. If the wife had not been soft boiled herself she would have used a gun in place of an egg. Then, instead of a spanking, she would have received the homage of the sob sisterhood and a tearful verdict of “not guilty” from the jury, not to mention a lucrative contract or two. What a shame to waste such marksmanship! y, shared by the Founder of our Religion and the Father of our Country, when he preached his sermon recently on “George Washington, the Christian.” We agree with Dr. Burrell that George Washington was a Christian, but not Dr. Burrell’s kind of a Christian, not, as one might say, by a jugful. In a collection of the First Presi- dent’s original papers reposing in a vault of the New York State Education Building, at Albany, is a slip on which he had penned his household expenses for the three months between May 24 and August 24, 1789. These included the following items: Beer, $170; claret, $105; porter, $45; cordials, $1.25. And not only did George believe in the consumption of beer and wine for pleasure but he was famous for the exquisite care with which he accounted for every penny of public money he expended. We don’t remember that it was ever necessary to summon him before a grand jury to explain a single item. In this respect, too, he was not Dr. Burrell’s kind of a Christian, nor Mr. William H. Anderson’s either. He was probably just a real good Christian. Christians HE FAcT that Jesus Christ and George Washington both countenanced the drinking of wine is probably the greatest of all thorns in the sides of the prohibitionists. But of