Judge — July 31, 1926 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

JUDGE Editor, Norman Anthony. Flag Incidents : WOULD direct your attention to an interesting ixtaposition of newspaper items not so long ago. One concerned a Mrs. Fowler, owner of a loft building in New York City, who objected to an American flag which one of her tenants had draped over the front of her building. It was dirty and faded, she said, and marred the appearance of her property. She ordered it taken down. The tenant refused. Whereupon she obtained a pair of scissors, ascended to a second-story window and cut the flag down herself. She was urt with an her heels and hotly denounced by Magistrate Jean Norris, a woman, who held her in $1,000 bail. a 1 the Are you a citizen of arrested, marched to the polic angry mot I don’t see how you dared do such a thin magistrate. “This makes me boil. the United States?” It happens—perhaps it more than happens—that Mrs. Fowler comes of an old and fashionable family which has probably contributed its sons to the defense of the country for gencrations. She explained that she meant no insult to the flag, that in fact this interpretation of her act never entered her mind, which is entirely plausible. A person of her antecedents is likely to be wholly unself-conscious in her loyalty and therefore to have little understanding of the exaggerated homage to the flag insisted upon by parvenus in patriotism. The other news item referred to had to do with a search conducted by Clarence J. Owens, Secretary- Treasurer of the New York State Sesquicentennial Com- mission, for a State flag to fly at the Sesqui dedication. “With others of the commission,” Mr. Owens said, “I plodded all over New York City trying to get a State flag. Many stores had the flags of Czecho-Slovakia, China, Sumatra, and even Colonial flags, but not one salesman could produce the flag of his own State. I finally secured one from a friend.” Contrast the froth and foam expended over a fancied slight to the Stars and Stripes with the complete efface: ment of the State flag. No doubt Mr. Owens’s search could he duplicated with a like result in almost. every State in the Union. The thing is symptomatic, of cour of the tendency that has robbed us even of our local pri¢ nothing of our local government; that has trar formed our Federal system into the centralized bureaucracy which President Coolidge himself has recently deplored. to say Associate Editors, William Morris Houghton, William Edgar Fisher, Phil Rosa. Dramatic Editor, Gee an Nathan. We'll bet Magistrate Norris couldn't tell offhand what her State flag looks like. We couldn't. Yet patriotism, like charity, should begin at home, shouldn't it? Fair and Unfair Is RECENT comment on the Sesquicentennial we said: “We shall be quite as happy to see the Sesqui pick up as the hungriest merchant in Philadelphia.” As a matter of fact we shall be happier, now that certain religious sects have declared a boycott against it for failing to close on Sundays. This demand that the Sesquicentennial be closed on Sundays is quite the coolest attempt at eccles dictation to date. stical Apparently, it makes no difference to the authors of the boycott that Presbyterians, Lutherans and Methodists, numerous as they are, make up a very small proportion of the population; or that they can re- main away from the fair on Sundays if attendance then hurts their consciences; or that - is the only in the week when the vast majority of Americans can attend a fair; or that this fair is supposed to celebrate 150 years of American independence. No, they must seek to coerce the rest of their countrymen into abiding by their standards, or failing that to wreck the fair. Among them, of course, are some of those who shout the loudest about their Americanism. indi Sweetness and Light IME ONE has said that he knows now stands for preceding the names of S gressmen; what “Hon.” vators and Con- This is a little rough perhaps on the small minority of self-respecting men in both Houses, who have never taken money nor dictation from the Anti-s League, but they can hardly expect a nice discrimination in popular jests on this subject while the Upshaws, Willises and Fesses remain members in relatively good standing of tional Legislature. it stands for “honorarium. Joon our Na- Mellifluous word, “honorarium.” How much _ politer it sounds than such synonyms as “fee,” “tip,” “bribe.” These are all open to the objection usually associated with Anglo-Saxon monosyllables—they are too direct and rude, fit only for lips that touch liquor. But “honorarium” thes the f: in silk, dresses it for the ear, fits it for pious company. Sensitive gentlemen like Wayne B. Wheeler never spit, they expectorate; they never lie, they prevari ; they never tip their se honorariums. ants, they give them W. MH. comicbooks.com