Martinsburg statesman. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1869-1906, 1906-02-23
Is our highest society in this couatry


That is the reflection that arises on
considering all the aspects Of the now
celebrated Deuel. VS. Hapgood case in
New York. A sitting justice, Joseph
Deuel., bordght suit of criminal libel
against Norman Hapgood for an edi-
toral in Golfers Weekly linking the
judges name with Town Topics which
it called an ''unclean Sheet" whose
"function is to distribute news and
scandal about society"
But events proved that this suit was
bro ught in the very essence OF audaci-
ty. And ii was like the suit of Oscar
Wilde i'm its result. That brilliant but
depraved young man had the hardi-
hood to bring suit for criminal libel in
pure spirit of bluff and to kill a re-
port that he INDUCED in unnatural
practices The defendent in the case,
instead of merely defending him self
took the offensive. He produced
mass of such evidenceagainst Wilde as
to cause not only the loss of his suit,
but his own conviction of things charg-
ed in the report. a sentence to state
prison followed, from the shame and
horror of which Wilde died.
And similarly the suit for criminal
libel brought by Justice Deul, while it
has not gone the lengths of the Wilde
case, has nevertheless resulted in a
loss of the suit to the prosecution, and
if not legal, certainly, a moral con-
viction in the minds of the people at
large that the weekly paper with which
he was connected, has b ,en engaged II =
practices.
incidentally the trial has developed
the startling fact that a large proper
ton of the most prominent men and
women of high social standing-those
sometimes called our princes of priv
iIege-are Venerable to such stacks
The have skeletons in the closet which
they are so anxious to keep hidden
from the world that they are willing
to pay and often pay heavily for Sc
crecy. The testimony in the Deuel.
Hapgood case gave indications of ex-
traordinarily extensive libidinous re-
lations between the sexes in high life.
This is not to say that the whole up
per social world is rotten. But it is to
say that social cancer has made deep
and wide growth into the body social
indeed, it is thought by some compe-
tent to Judge that in such aspects our
times bear close resemblance to those
of the "merrie monarch of England,
Charles | and to the contemporary
time of the regency in France, when
at nightfall the palace doors were lock-
ed and Righteousness took on an Adam
and Eve simplicity.
The rule in those days was 50 in
dulge in aiy dissipation fancy might
suggest, with the single limitation that
outward proprleties be observed. The
unwritten social edict was not that a
M IN and wife be for each other, but
that they be for society.
OF course, this was not a healthy
condition of society. 1t was unhealthy.
1t did not proceed IRON natural, but
from an unnatural order. The masses
of the nations were robbed into power
ty that the few might riot in super
abundance. The privileged class WIS
corrupted by the fruits of its privileges
Dissipation, physical, mental and me r.
al, inevitably followed,
The same seeds will produce the
same fruits in tins country. The class
possessing privilege to appropriate
enormous riches out of the harvest of
the toll of the masses must certainly
be lifted above ordinary social restraints
and fall into the arms of every form of
dissipation.
The Duel-Hapgood suit indicates
to what pass our privileged class has
already come. And that state of affairs
is rendered all the more remarkable
when it is recalled that it occurs in a
country in at least one of the states of
which during the colonial days, adul-
terry was punished AZ capital crime.
Privilege destroyed republican
Greece and republican Rome. Isit to
be allowed to destroy republican AM
erica?