The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-05-24
QUESTION OF CASTE.

The manager Of the Olympic Theater of Brooklyn was fined $25O for refusing admittance to soldiers and sailors in uniform. The men discriminated against were privatee and the press hailed the punish ment as in apt penalty for insulting the uniform of the United States government
 In point of fact the manager ig not to blame at all. The uniform as uniform is not discriminated against at all The men as soldiers and sailors are not prohibited from entering and associating with the other patrons of the theater because soldiers and sailors at all. Nor was the manager guilty in the least bit.
 The fact is that there exists a snobbish dislike of the comn,on soldier. He is considered, as such, hardly fit company for those who like to be thought a gooc deal better than they are socially. And the manager caters to caste.
 No one has yet ever heard of an officer Of the army and the navy be- ing discriminated against a; such places, and hence it is just to arg gle that it is not the army aud navy that is beng barred from such places.
 Just as objection would te raised to admitting a man il orer-alis in some of the Broadway cafes, just as there is rule in alany of them that only those in evening dress are served, so the management of rue theaters observe shrewly enough that the patrons of their establish ments think the tone of the place is lowered if it is graced by the rre- sence of the common soldier or the common sailor. The men and women folk who would break their necks to be seen talking and asso- ciatibg with an officer. will cast the bad eye in the direction of the com mon soldier. They krov the officer $ ihe one who gives orders; they know the soldier is the man who takes them and obeys them. They place the o.tcer on Q higher socia. plane and the common soldier is of a lower caste. Really that is all good men who ought to be able to use their brains more, have wurr ied the matter into a national agitation as an insult to the iiag, the nation, and the army and the navy.
 A private in the United States army who had shared in all the trials of the Boxer Campaign in China was one of the detachment that rescued some missionary folk from the Boxers. On river boat travelling through the country, one of the mission ladies' children be- gan to play with the private. The missionary lady ran towards the child and scolded it in shameful manner for daring to play with a common soldier-after that com mon soldier had dared to venture his life to save the good lady.
 It was all right to play and smile, and even at pinch fiirt, l with an officer but with private soldier neveri
 At public dances where officers and priYates have been known to freely intermix with the community, | there are good many ladies often times who would border on a hy> | sterical fit if some private dared to ask them for dance, and they would talk for a month about the [ dance with captain this or major that or colonel the other thing.
 Theatrical managers who have barred soldiers do so because they have observed this quite common failing upon the part of the public that patronizes them. Some have an idea that it is due to the miscon- duct of the common soldier or sailor and the general failure to act with ] decorum suitable to public enter But that idea, which by he way was also Kipling's, is en- -irely wrong:
 Its Tommy this and it's Tommy
 That
 And it's chuck i'm out the brute." For Kipling, with the caste-bound l lsture of so many Englishman, al