Los Angeles herald., 1910-12-30
LUKE NORTH'S SECOND
EPISTLE TO THE REV.
DIR. BROUGHER

play at the Auditorium last Weeh'
want to thank you for kindly onerlhs
me the loophole of curiosity throush
which / might escape your char1c'ei
ization of the rest of the big croWu'
but | hesitate to avail myself OF SO
small a hole, and would rather stahu
or fall with the crowd. None Oh us
think, can get very far from the crowd
or his head very high above H. anu
recall that Jesus did not try to. Look
ing down from a flying machlhe llielt
on earth appear about alike, anu AioiiA
Gods height--I wonder. -.
AS before, / have no defense lor .h9
play. 1t appeared to me as cheap anu
tawdry. Its suggestiveness was direct
and inartistic-from my STANDPOINT II
bored me, and many others 1t was
overadvertised-the blame for when
you lay on the press, for when hoiu
no brief.
like your strong words about auto
mobiles and Wheelbarrows.' IL is u
fine thing for the pastor of rlch ana
powerful church to make no dlscflm-
ination on the side of automopiles.
Everywhere else in life wealth rlde9
with free hand and poverty Is inc
only actual sin. Your lnsistence that
even the rich who attended that per
tOfnanCe were DuHLdiuS lpOnih6 ApA
carrion shows yourself and your church
in a favorable light. In such impartial
way would Jesus have Spoken-I III
his time there were no greater eVlIs 10
denounce than an inartistlc play Tor
the uncultured.
But of your judgment that any Oh
these three thousand men and women
were buzZards l am not so sure IL
can read the life and words of Jesus
rightly he was swift 10 dcnounce, not
the pleasures of the uncuttured, but the
great determining evils of the world,
while of men and women his invariable
word was, Judge not"
THE Queen of the Moulin Rouge
/ would make the last vowel an "a
if the printer would let me-deserves
nor needs defense from me. 1t is q
financial success, and for that reason
alone could it have been produced in
our faireSt theater and church, and for
that reason it may proudly walk the
length and breadth of Christian civill-
Zation, even though its degrading ten
denotes were as great and as undis
puted as the system that sends boys
to the coal breakers, infants to the
fabric mills and leaves millions of girls
and women but one way OF escaping
want or poverty.
And though this play bored me. and
1 am sure it would have bored you
iidu you seen II, UOCloI, yet QutSllOIl
whether it were wise or just for either
of us broadly to denounce it as in
decent or sinful. Suppose we merely
said that from our standpoint of edu-
cation and esthetic and religious de-
velopment the play is cheap and not
worth while? / think II appears so to
me because from an early age l have
enjoyed certain adVantages-say of
reading and writing sermons, and the
things that urge thereto. And these
advantages have given me dlstaste
for that which we who are educated
in certain lines designate as the coarse,
crude and inartislic. But ii our edu-
cation had been along other lines than
sermons-say burglary, stealing fran
chises, tending bar. sweeping streets,
selling girls into white slavery" dig
ging coal, promoting stock jobs, hunt
ing down the weak and locking them
in steel cells, or any of the varied ac-
tivties that lead those who of neces-
sity follow them far from the influences
of books and sermons and art, perhaps
our ideas about this play would be diff
ferent. In no fundamental way does
it differ from all other plays. Its CEN
tral theme is the lure of the negative
for the postive-I mean of the FEM
mime for the masculine-and vice versa.
| can imagine myself as one of u
very large class who from infancy are
ueIlltQ llOSt dNlNditdSCS NillSIl
cultivated my tastes beyond the crude,
direct and obvious in humor, art and
the mating instinct, in which case this
play might have pleased me. L can
imagine myself as the child of a woman
who had to scrub floors up to the day
of my birth. in which case my brain
development, my views of art, and
even my religious instincts would prob
ably have been very different. There
are millions of such mothers. I might
have been born in the slums or the
redlight district. Why l was not l do
not know, but I hardly dare think it
was due to any merit on my part, nor
can l think that those who were born
under such circumstances are there
fore more sinful or indecent or more
of turkey buzzards than l am. And L
recall that Jesus consorted with just
such people, passed his time among
them, gave all his life to them and
even died between two thieves for them.
I am bound to admit that many in
the great crowd were not bored by
the play. Some applauded. | think 1
can understand why. The Russian
dancers, for example, who appeared on
the same stage a few weeks previous,
did not bore me, nor any of. the large
and cultured audiences of the best
people" who witnessed their beautiful
performances. And yet they appealed
cultured as did the Queen in the un-
cultured. And I submit that the only
possible difference was that we who
enjoyed the dancers had also enjoyed
certain educational advantages which
We're denied by this Christian society
to those who must find their enjoyment
in such plays as the Queen. For this
denial | am blaming no persons, not
even the rich and powerful nor the
church. Yet [ do regret that the power
of the church should be exhausted in
denouncing the uncultured and their
amusements instead of being used to
destroy those conditions of which the
unculture is the inevitable fruit
Now these Russian dancers Ghough
with consummate and delightful art)
more frankly revealed the human
female figure and more insistently ap-
pealed to the mating instincts than did
the queen of the Moulin Rouge" Yet
you did not characterize their play of
oriental VoluptuousnesS as indecent
doctor-nor did Mr.. Eddie order pa
jamas on the beautiful but scantily
clad siren who openly and daringly
lured a man to her embraces on the
couch. l am not complaining OF the
Russian play, doctor. In execution it
was artistic. In motive it was no diff
ferent from any other play. It's theme
was the lure of sex, and that is the
theme of all art and of life itself. Once
that ure-if the olden records be true
was the religious expression of man
kind. 1t was not coined into dollars
then as now. AS one who would re-
store this world creative impulse to
it's olden purity, doctor your work is
good and true according to your light,