Judge — December 26, 1925 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

A Letter to Santa Claus EaR SanTA: You needn’t bring us any presents D this year if you will only do us a few favors. Here’s the list: Abolish Prohibition. Disband the Ku Klux Klan. Make monkeys of the Anti-Evolutionists. Grant “Red” Grange a sense of humor. Settle the coal strike. Padlock both Houses of Congress. Pay the foreign debts, and Give Wayne B. Wheeler hell. Thanking you in advance, Yours as ever, JUDGE P.S.: Thanks for arranging to take Mayor Hylan away. A National Benefactor We SHOULD like to see the University of Illinois without further ado grant “Red” Grange his bachelor’s degree; if that is what he was studying for, or even the honorary degree of LL.D. or its equivalent, for what he is doing for higher education in this country. . A lot of nonsense is going the rounds about his ‘“‘desertion” of college, his ‘sacrifice of a well-rounded education for im- mediate money rewards,” his ‘‘debasement of football” by turning professional. He couldn’t have done his Alma Mater or the cause of college education a better turn than by this self-same “desertion” at the peak of his popularity and advertising value. For “Red” Grange is switching the popular interest in football to the profes- sional game, and this, we are convinced, is the one salva- tion of the intercollegiate game and of academic sanity. College presidents and faculties have been racking their brains for a generation for some means of saving their institutions from complete engulfment in the foot- ball tide. Very recently undergraduate representatives from six colleges met at Middletown, Conn., and made certain wise recommendations regarding intercollegiate football schedules and practices, to the same end. But what chance have the wishes of faculties or even of un- dergraduates against the greater numbers, the greater wealth and the greater vanity of the alumni? It is the alumni who insist on the present concentration on inter- collegiate football to meet the popular demand. And the only thing that can defeat them is a deflection of that demand. This “Red” Grange, more than any other one for the same. person or factor, seems to be bringing about. he doesn’t crack under the strain. In other words, the ex-iceman is apparently solving the problem over which half the savants of the country have been stewing. Isn’t this worth a degree, or must the poor boy be content with his million? Let us hope Something to Celebrate Ts has been approval of the Rhinelander verdict but not enough enthusiasm. This is due, no doubt, to the hypocrisy that has colored every reference to the case and dismissed it as a chapter in smut and little else. It was a dirty case. It deserved every one of those adjectives— filthy, lewd, obscene, disgusting, indecent, etc.—that the Clean Books League loves to roll under the tongue. But we noticed that the papers and their readers who pro- tested most vehemently against it were precisely those who seemed to wallow most shamelessly in the testimony. Bah! Most humans are smut hounds at heart and those who bellow the loudest can usually stand the most. But the verdict has redeemed the trial. It has even redeemed the American public that reveled in it, with long faces. Even-handed justice is always worth what it costs; beside it smut and hypocrisy become incidental and insignificant.’ We predict that long after the odor of the testimony has faded from the nostrils the Rhinelander verdict will be remembered as an example of white man’s justice in a land that hitherto has not been conspicuous et st HH SF I" wouLp have been easy for the twelve good men and true sitting in judgment on Rhinelander and his colored wife to annul that marriage. They were all married white men with the normal sentimentalities and prejudices of their kind. They had to listen to the pleas and exhortation of eminent and venerable counsel ad- dressed directly to these sentimentalities and prejudices, asking an annulment. And such an act of injustice would have had more or less popular support; it would have been perfumed with a lot of Ku Klux guff about their duty to the white race and the American home. Instead, they chose unanimously to disregard all extraneous con- siderations of race and color and to render a decision in strict accord with the facts and the law. They gavea colored girl a square deal. Isn’t that something worth celebrating? Or should we pretend it happens so often that we can take it for granted? W. M. H. comicbooks.com