Judge — February 26, 1927 — 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. Judge Lindsay ur Supreme Court of Colorado has ordered that | Ben B, Lindsay be ousted as Judge of the Denver Juvenile Court. It has done this on the strength of an irregularity in the returns for the election of 1924, one planted apparently by his enemies. Thus the forces of the Ku Klux Klan who fought him locally, and the much greater forces of the self-righteous who have been denouncing him nationally, are triumphant, temporarily at least. The man who, more closely and understandingly than any other of his generation, has been able to watch the disintegration of the traditional moral standards among the young and to tell us about it, is out of office. Hurrah, ery the unco guid, we’ve stopped that leak! Well, of course they haven’t stopped anything of the kind. The business of apprehending and study- ing and broadcasting the present moral revolution has only just begun, and no doubt, since most of Judge Linds. services to the youth of Denver were performed out of court, ex-officio, he will be enabled to continue them, at least to a limited extent, and to publish his findings as heretofore. His ouster will not hurt him so much as it will hurt Denver, of which he and his court together were by long odds the most distinguished feature. Nor will it hurt the cause of truth and sanity, Martyrs have never been a source of weakness to any cause. 28 2 es T charges, other than legal, brought against Judge Lindsay have been of various kinds, but chiefly that he endangered the institution of matrimony by, (1) his sympathetic and helpful way of handling the erring boys and girls who have come to him in their trouble; (2) his attacks upon the rigid hypocrisy and “conspiracy of silence” on the part of parents and the unforgiving vindictiveness of teachers and min- isters, and (3) his suggestion of “companionate marriage” (derisively called “free love” by his de- tractors) as a possible solution of the present chaos. In view of the appalling situation that every sane observer knows to exist in this country respecting the ancient institution of matrimony, such charges seem trivial to the point of absurdi And as a mat- ter of fact they are not entirely sincere. The good people who make them may think they honestly explain their opposition to Judge Lindsay, but we Associate Editors, William Morris 1 Houghton, William Edgar Fisher, Phil Rosa, Jack Shuttleworth, Dramatic Editor, George Jean Nathan have a shrewd notion they’re wrong, that what has really outraged them has been not the Judge’s views, but the Judge’s willingness and ability to save a few sinners from the social consequences of their sins. & ff Ss S 1GHTEOus people are -naturally sadistic. In- hibited themselves in the direction of the pleas- ures they condemn they jealously resent their indulgence by others and secretly gloat over the sufferings that overtake the transgressor. No more striking confirmation of this could be had than in the present poison liquor controversy. Observe Wayne B. Wheeler revelling in the statement that the person who drinks today deliberately commits suicide. Watch his frantic opposition to every suggestion that the Government, in treating alcohol, use non- poisonous denaturants. In New York State every Assemblyman who voted to petition Congress to stop poisoning alcohol has received notice from the Anti- Saloon League that in doing so he had “betrayed his dry constituents.” They want to see them die, these good people, and similarly in the case of boys and girls who violate the so-called moral code, they want to see them suffer; they want to see them hounded and disgraced, ruined socially, psychically and physically. What's hell for, if not to satisfy the sadistic impulses of the self-righteous? And better a hell on earth you're sure of now than some shadowy kingdom that exists in the hereafter. & ff fs Joe Linpsay has stood between the youthful, often the totally innocent or ignorant, sinner and the legions of the righteous thirsting for his blood. He has thwarted them in their favorite sport of reveng- ing themselves on others for their own inhibitions. Instead of bringing into open court and disgracing before the community the boys and girls who had been playing with fire and got burnt, he has made discreet arrangements by which they might escape ruin, keep their self respect and rehabilitate them- selves. In his twenty-seven years on the bench he has by such methods saved countless useful citizens to the service of the State. And it is for this that he has been hounded out of office and denounced from the pulpits of the nation. It doesn’t do to disappoint the Christians. W.M.H. comicbooks.com