Judge — May 1934 — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

wonder if the hothe: utterers of the crack “F speech is guaranteed by the Consti- tution and must be safeguarded” realize bsurdity of their statement. Why t freedom of speech be guarded? How many people would be deprived of the right of its use if it were nly taken away? Off- hand I would say a few hun- dred in the entire country. You shake your head and smile a litde. All right let’s look over the facts. many opinions are there in the country that really mat- ter? I should say, roughly, four. TI would be: Republican, Democrat, R cal and Intelligent. The great bulk of the people not having any opinion to express, naturally don’t count. All right then, so far so bad. Who expresses most of these opinions? Well, the editors of the various papers repre- senting the major parties, the represen- tatives of the parties themselves and certain liberal periodicals, Those who express intelligent ideas do so in books, churches, and a handful of magazines and newspapers. But why, you ask, should that be nar- rowed down to a few hundred? Well, for this reason. Most editors and party representatives have no opinions except those that have been handed them thru successive generation of party or thru readymade rote. Naturally these are all the same opinion: just so many yards of sausage, varying only according to literary style of the editor. Of course f these editors have no right to their own opinion. They are paid only to echo the editor’s borrowed cliches. As for the violently radical opinion, this I hold to be as cliche and dogeared as that of the conservative. As for the truly Intelligent opinion where can it be aired? On street cor- ners? No, there is too much danger from the police. When they hear a word of three syllables they are trained How to swing their clubs. In the magazines Well, yes. Here and there is a ma zine that is so inculcated in the spirit of liberalism 1 intelligence, they will print anything. In the pulpits? Yes. 3ut who goes to church, and how often? What I am getting at is this. People do not want to hear the Truth. Freedom of speech therefore becomes, in the majority of cases, license for spreading propaganda, carefully prepared by press nt: Were real freedom ech practised it would ‘an automatic seli-censor- In other words, there should be less freedom of speech. There hould be money charged everyti Iker opens his mouth to blat. uld be fined if he has little to say; and if he has not! but insists on saying it he should be thrown into the cooler to think of something inte to say before he’s released. A reaction- ary newspaper should be treated just ne Way it advocates treating subversive, radical periodicals. As much danger can lurk in conservatism as in Left- wingism. As for the Letters from the People Dep'ts. these ought to be in- cluded in the comic section. The opinions they express are usually so pa- thetic, so ludicrous and so half-witted, one must laugh at them or go crazy try- ing to imagine what would happen if everyone in the world had the right to put his two cents worth into everything. Only the wise should be allowed to . And since it takes training, dis- cipline, unselfishness and all the intel- ligence in the world to be able to have anything worth listening to, there wouldn't be many talking. I also won- der how many would be listening. ng to sa Pippsissewa T THIS season of the year oldish dames set 1934 hats on top of 1909 streamline hairparts, and, trowel in hand, putter around the garden in fierce 8 suns. Later they gather in excited little knots with other old dames and swap long yarns about their pippstssewa. For atime I used to think pippsissewa was a yardening disease which struck only in the D. A. R. Then one day [ found out that pippsisscwa was simply a_ little flower with a name larger than itself. What I'm driving at is that gardening is being snatched from the hands of the When I was a boy a daisy was a daisy. Now it’s become a bellis inter- grifolia, As for the ranuncilus you'd never guess from that name that it was a buttercup. Or that the tararacin officinale is the good old dandelion. In other words, let’s call a rose a rose and not a Mrs. Pilkington Wrig or an dlicanthus arongolatus. Let's give the flower back to the people, men! Lhave a friend, a Lyon Mearson, who has rebelled against the Old Lady Dom- ination of our Little Petaled Pals, quite unconsciously. He has a beautiful gar- den around his house in Connecticut People insist on being shown around it, and he cannot tell one flower from the other. But he is obliging and this is the way he tours his gardens :— there is the Right behind it is the nabiscus. That purple patch over there is the malaria; the yellow stuff is whi ‘a; the blue, senilia; while on the trellis is the Japanese porch climber.” He gets quite a play on it, the old w masses, ow over oria. Man vs. Machine I think of nothing more fasci- nating than playing the slot machines. It combines health with recreation with money making. Well maybe not so much of the latter but you cannot deny the former. If the machine is situated in an open air beer garden you can get as good a workout at it as you would get at the average sport. (Page 32, Maybe you please) comicbooks.com