Life — July 16, 1914 — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

94 Doctor Shaw, the Specialist ere] HE report that Dr. Anna Shaw, being interviewed, had pronounced the marriage service “a poll-parrot affair” ae and had said that “the s marriage ceremony has 4 outlived its usefulness”, has now reached the third stage of publica- tion. It has been printed, remarked upon, and now the defendant denies the interview. But she ad- mits that she considers that the word “obey” in the marriage service is “essentially immoral”. Tut, tut! Anybody who is not pleased with the marriage services of the churches can avoid them without scandal, The Episcopal service is the best-known, It has “obey” in it. “Obey” is a suitable word in the serv- ice, but possibly it should be in the man’s vows as well as in the woman's, Each will have to obey the other con- siderably if the association is to prosper. . People who have been used to listen- ing reverently to Dr. Shaw's views on the ground that she was a minister, are respectfully advised that she resigned from the pulpit in 1885, since which time she has been employed as an agitator for woman suffrage. She is English born, and a graduate both of the theological and medical schools of Boston University. As late as 1902 Kansas City University gave her the degree of Doctor of Divinity; never- theless, it seems apparent that she practices nowadays not as the Rev. Dr. Shaw, but as Old-Doctor Shaw, the lecturing specialist. Her specialty, of course, is woman suffrage. She may be as good at it as another, but let us get rid of the idea that she is a minister who does suffrage agitation on the side. She has not been a practicing minister for nearly thirty years. Suffrage agita- tion is her business, and has been, apparently, the only business she has followed since 1885. When she speaks, she speaks not as a min- ister, but as a professional suffrage agitator, “AGE EAB * Discredited and a Common Butt The United States has been dis- credited and is become the common —The Sun, June 15. ISCREDITED no doubt with some persons, but that is no great matter unless they are the persons who really see and know. To be discred- ited with the crowd, whether it is the crowd that backs things-as-they-are or the other, is a mere temporary condi- tion that may shift any moment. And yet the London Daily Afail finds in the tolls repeal “one more proof” that the American people “have the good fortune to be governed by a great man”, As to our being the common butt of the civilized world, maybe we are, in a way. In these days the civilized world is full of new wine, and sore put to it to make its old bottles hold it, and the countries pour what they can of it into these States, which are, in that sense, their common butt, and then they watch to see what we do with it and what it does to us. Very obstrep- crous stuff it is, and the bottling of it is no joke, as witness Michigan, Colo- rado, Wyoming and the I. W. W. al- ways and between times, The really long heads of the world are not making game of the Wilson administration, Their lay is watchful waiting. They know too much about the disease to scoff at the doctor. Flaunting the Flag HAT President Wilson said on Flag Day” (June 15th) about ‘flaunting the flag” will bear quoting: “TI sometimes wonder why men ever now take this flag and flaunt it. If I am respected I do not have to demand respect. If I am feared I do not have to ask for fear. If my power is known I do not ‘have to proclaim it. I do not understand the temper, neither does this great nation understand the temper of men who use this flag boastfully.” There are a good many such people; a good many that feel that a proper regard for the flag necessitates rub- bing it in on all occasions, and exact- ing from everybody certain formal demonstrations of respect for it. The formal demonstrations can easily be overdone. So long as they are volun- tary they are harmless, and customs that prescribe them may doubtless be cultivated to some advantage. But all attempts to compel them are apt to do mischief and put a means of tyr- anny in the hands of the incon- siderate. The flag does not need to be rubbed in. It stands for too much, and stands for it too significantly for that to be necessary. Getting Out of the World “THERE may be a fuller line than usual of dissatisfaction with life, but the facilities for getting out of it were never more various or actively operative. Ons is impressed with it in reading a Monday morning paper. Motor-cars continue to be the steadiest agency of homicide, but drowning has made a strong showing lately, as it usually does when summer weather attracts pleasure parties to the water. Accidents in mines, destroying life by wholesale, are no novelty, sad to say, but the recent proceeding by which nine Austrians lost their lives in a too-real sham-battle between air ve- hicles is painfully modern, A man was killed by lions in Chicago, which is unusual in Chicago. The means of killing people by ma- chinery were never so prevalent as tow and never so active. Neverthe- less, the average of life still lengthens, so the presumption is that machinery pays back to life more than it takes TRY IT YOURSELF comicbooks.com