New-York tribune., 1919-05-12
The Benign Cootie

There is fashionable authority for the
rehabilitation Of the cootie which Mr.
Samuel Crowther has attempted. This
bane of the soldier and civilian, this
purveyor of typhus, has at least done
one noble deed, he asserts. The cootie is
death on fleas, and railway carriage in
Germany, of whatever class-and all
classes apparently are much alike now
adays-is no longer a menagerie of the
long-leaping scourge of Innocents
Abroad. The cootie may have his bad
points, it is conceded. But at least he
has his important utility. So runs the
defence.
The only trouble with this sort of
whitewashing is it's upsettng effect
upon life. Our historians have been at
it for a generation. Give historian a
doctors degree and he will prove in
thesis much too solid to bite into, let
alone read, that George Washington was
a neaY-sighted bigot who fought the
Revolutionary War to keep his acres
from the Bolshevki. Wide Professor
Beard, passin,.) Or, for precise paral-
lei, he will prove that Benedict Arnold
was a courteous and considerate friend
with only the best interests of the nation
at heart. Nero, Catherine 70 Medici
Mephistopheles, hardly a fame villain
but has been rebuilt in the past genera
tion into a pious, suburban father or
mother Of family, misunderstood and
grossly maligned by posterity. Our
whole history and mythology have to be
revised annually to keep pace with the
rehabilitators.
The little animals have had their de-
tenders, too. The scientist Of Provence,
]. H. Fabre, has taken his microscope
and pen in hand to revise utterly not
only popular belief, but classic literature
as we'll, in respect of the grasshopper.
The cigale Of La Fontaine Is one Of his
chief pets. AS we learned it in our
youth, it was the grasshopper and the
ant, and the grasshopper sang diotically
all summer while the ant stored grain
thriftily. Then, when winter threat
ered, the grasshopper went to the ant
for a bit of food, and the ant virtuously
and sternly, as if delivering the judg-
ment of God said no. Those who will
not work must starve, etc
Now, Fabre proceeded to demolish all
this pretty morality by demonstrating,
first, that the cigale is never hungry in
cold weather, for there are no cfgales in
winter; second, that the diet of wheat
which she was supposed to have begged
is absolutely incompatible with her deli
cate capillary tongue" and, third, that
she does not hunt for flies and grubs, as
per La Fontaine, since, in fact, she never
eats. AS final touch Fabre demolishes
the moral standing of the ant by pictur-
ing him as a mean-spirited, narrow
minded sponge. The cigale has one very
ingenious ability, that of boring into a
juicy twig in hot weather and sucking
out sap as beverage Very we'll. A
crowd of brigands surrounds the cigale
upon such occasions, and among the
most aggressive are the ants. Thus we
see that the shameless beggar is really
the ant and the industrious worker.
willingly sharing her goods with the
suffering, lis the cigale. Finally, when
the cigale dies after five or six weeks
of gayety and tumbles a shrivelled
corpse to the ground, it is the ant which
pounces upon her body and dissects her
to cart away. A dying cigale, wings
still trembling in the dust, will be drawn
and quartered by these choice cannibals,
held up for centuries as the noble heroes
and exemplars of childhood.