Judge — December 1937 — page 21: what you’re looking at

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

JUDGE ON HANK YOU, MR. PRESIDENT. Your Birthday and that of JupGe both fall within the next month. JuDGE is your senior by one year. The New Year's and Birthday issue of next month, January 1938, will celebrate 57 years of laughing at, and with, the World. Things haven't changed very much, really. The political problems which beset us in 1881 are with us either yet or again. About the same language is used today to criticise and fend, and in the reproductions we will show in that issue, one may recog- nize great similarity with today. The advertisements of that long time ago were offering many of the products famous today, and which have endured the years most successfully. It feels good to have lived, successfully, 57 years, and to have both retained and increased the ability to laugh and complain a little with good humor. The lean times and the good times have both left their marks upon Jupce. It has lived always, though, in the warm friendliness of its readers, and has been able to reach through into the glorious sunshine of laughter. For many years JupGe was a militant defender of the Republican Party, and was so uncom. promising in its stand that it recognized in partisan Democrats, little, if any, virtue. It became more tolerant with the years, but never refused to attack hypoc- risy or defend the weak. Now, in grate- ful humility, it acknowledges its debt for the privilege of living in, and being one of the accepted institutions of this Republic, and asks no greater benefit than to be allowed to continue its citi- zenship. These are glorious times in which to be alive and to celebrate a birthday. TO BELIEVE that Fascism, Commu- nism, and other ills which beset the body politic today, foretell the doom of civilization, is to forget the lessons that history has taught. Fear, hand in hand with egotism and the lust for power, has always been rampant in the world. The words used to forecast disaster, and to attack bigotry in high places, have been expressed and recorded in all the languages used by man throughout the centuries, about similar situations which existed so long ago that even the peoples who used them are almost for- gotten races. We move in a peculiarly interesting cycle of happenings, with a great similarity of events. One has only to read the front page of a ten year old newspaper to realize that the fearful events are only those which we think will happen tomorrow. THE PICTURE of mankind, made by its treatment of the Duke of Windsor and his Duchess, is not too pretty. The Dominies of his Church, from whom he might expect moments of peace and the inspiration of calm pronounce ments, secm to have arbitrarily deleted the Golden Rule and the Ninth Com. mandment from the King James ver- sion of their Bible. The bitterness and the pompousness with which they strut would lead one to the belief that they may also be ignoring the Tenth Com. mandment. For this last, if the picture and the speech of these Dominies is accurately portrayed in the newsreels, even his ox would not be in doubt as to the choice between the Duke and the peevish Clergy. Fortunately the great majority of Clergy and lay membership of this Church do not respond so viciously as do these few, even though they retain their full right of criticism. A SERIOUS ISSUE has been joined in our Government. Tne American THE BENCH Revolution was important of course; the Civil War had its place in history; the World War, the Congressional dis- cussion about the League of Nations, the Depression; these were all momen. tous happenings. Our government, by its duly accredited agent, the National Labor Relations Board, gravely heard testimony to the effect that Mr. James H. Rand thumbed his nose at some strikers. This is very scrious business No matter what the cost to the Tax payer, we should get to the bottom of this awful thing. At least let it be spread upon the record which thumb he used. THE NEWSPAPERS of America are getting a stiff lambasting from some New Deal spokesmen these days Never in Washington has the Press been so physically well treated and ac- knowledged as during the present Ad. ministration, but there is a resentment of criticism of New Deal policies en. tirely unjustified. There will always be partisan bitterness of expression; there will always be unfairness in some re- porting; but neither of these can be cured by bitterness and unfairness. This is a Democracy in which we live, and the American newspaper is per- haps the greatest existing symbol of a true Democracy. Unfair newspapers will destroy themselves, but no outside power can remove from the great body, as a whole, its powerful influence, nor remove it from the National scene. POSTERITY will find, in the volu. minous files of Government reports, two outstanding examples of what re- ports should be, when it uncovers Chairman Kennedy's Maritime Com. mission report, and that of Secretary of Agriculture Wallace. In the 60,000 words of the latter one may find many things with which to disagree, never. theless, it comes close to being a per- fect analysis. —Harry NewMan comicbooks.com