New-York tribune., 1918-03-16
The Unconscious
Censor
From, The ViUager

H%HE current "Metropolitan Magazine
contains an article, as America
e. Honest?" by the Washington cor
respondent, William Hard, which caused
the Postoffice Department to issue an order
against it. The precise purpose of the or
der was not clear but the intention was un-
doubtedly to convey admoniton and a
warning. Mr. Hards paper was in the form
of satirical conversation between Mr.. Will
sen, the Kaiser, Venizelos and Santo Do
mingo bandit, and discussed Americas pres
ent military occupation of Santo Domingo,
its action in Hayt and it's attitude in re-
gard to an absolutely independent Cuba,
contrasting all these with Mr.. Wilson's pro-
testatons about revolutions and selfdeter-
Minaton. The sui stantial facts of this
article were published in contribution by
J. Moortield Storey to the January issue of
"The Yale Review" and found no difficulty
in passing through the United States mails,
but the point of the matter is that Mr.
Storcy's pape- written in stralghtfor-
ward and unsensatonal manner. Mr. Hard,
on the other hand, took the facts and stud
icdly dressed them in cheap and offensive
form, obviously intending that they should
BE twisted into "meanngs that were never
meant" The incident is already out of the
news, but before it is entirely forgotten we
should like to it text for pointing
the case of criticism in republic. 1t illus
tratcs very we'll what is permissible and
what is not what is desirable and what is
to be deprecated and proves the existence
of a censorship in the character of the ma
ton which, in so far as concerns criticism,
is more effective than could be any statute,
for in the decps Of the American group con-
science there resides critical censorship
sufficient for democratic uses beyond any in
ventions of Creel bureaus any judgments
of middle class postoffices. Woven into the
very fabric Of the nations social culture is
a quality which determines more surely
than mechanical dcvising how much OF
freedom of speech freedom of printing is
good right among US for any particular
time. 1t is one of those unwritten and in
cvitablc laws of public conduct which we
may call the habit of good taste, if we read
good taste in sort of Johnsonian defni-
ton. The Teutons, ironically enough, have
an explicit word for it, as Lord Haldane
pointed out to some years since. Sittlich-
ket, according to Fchte, means "those prin-
cples of conduct which regulate people in
their relation to each other, and which have
become matter Of habit and second nature
at the stage of culture reached, and Of
which, therefore, not explicitly con-
scious.' 1t mot explicitly conscious"
impulse which urged our officials to lift
their hand against "Thc Metropolitan" ar
ticle, and we thoroughly sympathize with
the feeling that would have such infringe
mcnts of taste blacked out from our peri
odicals But If dissertations Of the sort
Mr.. Hard has furnished are not blacked out,
if the statute falls short of the higher law.
the result is nothing to worry about The
Bureau of Public Information and the State
Department can we'll leave "The Metropol-
itan's" essay to its readers, confident that
the unconscious censorship residing in the
public body will automatically repel what
ever has overstepped the bounds The DEM
ocratic American culture has evolved for
itself an adequate self fprotection which will
keep whatever is malicious and unsnorts
lnanlke in criticism from getting by. It is
our opinion that the article in "The Metro
politan' did none any harm excepting the
publishers themselves. The only rood it
may have accomplished lies in the moral we
have drawn from it, which is that the critics
spirit sometimes makes q great deal more
difference than the critics facts. and that
censorship pretty we'll takes care Of itself