Judge — July 5, 1924 — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

“Wuo’s Dorn all this swearing and cursing around here? If it doesn’t stop at once I'll clear the courtroom. Officer... ! Oh, Gen- eral Dawes, forgive me. I didn’t see that it was you. And pray don’t restrain your profanity. Now that your réle as national blasphemer has been officially recognized, and honored with a nomina tion to the second highest office in the land, the country expects it of you.” “On all occasions, Your Honor?” ’m afraid so, General.” “Do you mean to tell me that as candi- date for Vice-president I shall have to curse my way from one end of this Continent to the other?” “Approximately that. There's no help for it. Your reputation has preceded you into every city and hamlet. The people will flock to hear you in droves with the one hope and expectation that you will cut loose, just as they used to go to see Teddy show his teeth. You yourself ought to realize that to have a public speaker, a general, a bank president, a candidate for the Vice-presidency of the United States, jerk out a real cuss word on the platform gives us voters the same delight we used to have as boys when father hammered his thumb and swore out loud. Don’t disappoint us, General, or the Republican ticket will suffer.” “But suppose I get elected, what then?” “You'll have to keep right on with it.” “What! As Vice-president of the United States?” “Why, What else will you have to occupy you?” “Well, I'll be py JUST as soon as the parents of the country wake to the full import of General Dawes’s candidacy, JupcE expects to begin receiving letters reading something like this “Your Honor: “Can't something be done to curb the language of the most prominent of our Vice-presidential candidates? I was shocked and mortified this morning to hear my son, a boy of thirteen, curse his older sister with an oath that I would hesitate to use myself. But imagine my consternation when, before I could inter- vene, she gave him back as good as she got. ‘Why, children,’ I expostulated. ‘How dare you use such language! Where on earth could you have picked it up?’ ‘Huh, that’: y.’ replied Ted (my son). ‘We hear it on the radio when General Dawes is talking. And I guess if it’s good enough for him it’s good enough for this family.’ “The puppy! I forbade either of them to use the radio for a week (the loud- speaker is now locked in my clothes closet). But I don’t dare do it for longer than that. They simply have to have their bedtime stories even if they are punctuated with our candidate's Really, candidates ought to be censored just like movies, or these cam- paigns will end in the corruption of the nation. curses. “Yours, ete., “A PerturBep FaTHer.” To all such parents a word of advic in advance of their protests: Begin at once by explaining to your children that General Dawes has been appointed offi- cial safet ve for the nation and that they may expect to hear from him lan- guage that is considered unbecoming except in a Vice-presidential candidate who ran our Quartermaster’s Department in Paris during the war, put over the Budget and_ settled Europe's affairs. Such an explanation ought to accomplish two results—forestall imitation and give th» children an interest in the campaign. WHAT a to-do there was in Cleveland over the selection of a Vice-presidential candidate! One would suppose from the rivalry for the place and the bitterness engendered that here was an office whose incumbent played a decisive part in government, instead of being condenmed to sit day after day watching the Senate make an ass of itself without the authority to raise a finger in protest. One would suppose also that after the time and trouble consumed in arriving at a choice the delegates might have hit upon a candidate other than the one man in all the world most likely to blow up or go insane under the strain of such an ordeal. It looks a bit if the Best Minds had got together and re soned thus: “Hellen Maria Dawes put the Budget over on us. So we'll just feed him a little refined torture.” But there are considerations this year that somewhat weaken this explanation and make a nomination for the Vice- presidency a good sporting proposition. In the first place there is the chance that Senator La Follette will succeed in throw- ing the election of a President into 14 Congress. In which case the job may fall to the lot of one of the Vice-presiden- tial candidates. In the second place there is the chance that the Republican ticket will meet defeat, and, after all the fun of stumping the country and shooting it full of damns and hells, there will be no period of expiation presiding over the Senate. What a joke that would be on the Best Minds! Two Items of news received simultaneously from our sartorial scouts fill us with joy. The arbiters of women’s styles in Paris have finally banished the corset to the limbo of quaint curiosities like the hoop skirt and the bustle. And King George is wearing a light gray derby. The news about the corset, while eminently satisfactory, was not exactly unexpected. There are plenty of women past their first bloom to-day whose un- tamed stomachs have never felt the grip of the whalebone. It was a foregone conclusion that the rest of a sex that has been bobbing its hair would not much longer endure such imprisonment. But the king in a gray bowler—how utterly gay and charming! Casting the corset aside merely releases the physical person. -Putting on a gray derby releases the spirit. It is the first positive note of insouciance that we have detected in such a high place since the war. It is notice to the world to . «+ fill the cup and in the fire of spring Your winter garment of repentance fling... . A nation whose king wears a gray derby need fear neither fundamentalism prohibition. nor WHAT we need in this country is some one at the same time august and debonair to fill the réle of such a_ king. Not some executive weighted with the cares of state, nor a saber rattler, nor a moral mentor, but some traditional figurehead who could take a detached interest in the kaleido- scope of politics and devote himself to encouragement of the amenities; in other words, some one capable of wearing a gray derby like a crown. Why wouldn't the Vice-president be just the person? Introducing poison gas into the Rhode Island or any other legislature is the strictly modern version of carry- ing coals to Newcastle. W. M. H. comicbooks.com