davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1920-07-19
The Nerve Of Some People!

Announcement that the former Grown
Prince is eager to emerge from his vol
untary exile in Holland and move to
the United Statea no doubt caused a
rustic of pleased expectancy among
those who crinoe in fawning servility
at mention of the name of Hohenzol-
Tern. True Americans and decent citi-
zens of German descent, who, thank
God, constitute 5000 per cent of the
population Of the United States, see
red at the suggestion of such thing.
Their anger is only equaled by amaze
ment at the monumental gall of the I'M
clean cockatrice whose presence on the
Atlantic seaboard would contaminate
the air beyond the endurance Of Amer
leans as far away as California. The
United States is too small for the for
mer Crown Prince and even one clean.
honest American. We want neither his
presence nor his memory here. The
bootlicking worship and snivelling hon.
age which our pro- russian malcontents
paid the Hohenzollerns during the war
was sickening enough. American stom-
achs could not stand the sight of such
abashed alteration at close range.
New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1920-07-19
Nominating Presidents
Doubt Expressed Whether II Can
Eyer Be Put Undcr Popular Control

Doubt Expressed Whether II Can
Eyer BE Put Under Popular Control
TO the Editor Of The Tribune.
Sir: Tho comments of MIR. William
the convention campaign expendi-
lures are decidedly timely. His sug-
gestion that these campaign expendi-
lures be met from the National Treas
ury involves, however, number of i'm
portant considerations. II, for in.
stance, the people Of the United States
arc to be called upon to finance a pre-
convention campaign such as was waged
by General Wood during tho last
spring they would have some assurance
that when, as & result of the campaign,
the candidate has shown that he was
the choice Of the party he would re-
ccive without question the nomination.
1t is probable that most of the ex-
penditures Of the several candidates
were altogether legitimate and neces-
sary. If the public were to pay them,
however, the action OF the Repu blican
convention in refusing to nominate the
popular choice would mean that the
Treasury had been cheated out of over
million dollars. Moreover, while it
is of course necessary that steps be
taken to make it possible for men of
moderate means and modest financial
backing to present their qualifications
g.. Drae ia ;o1 h.,
equally necessary, should the public be
charged with. the expenses Of the cam
paign, to prevent mere publicity seek
ers from taking advantage of the OPP
portunty to get the public to pay
round sum for national advertising.
There is certainly nothing to indi-
cate from our experience with the re-
cent political conventions that our pres
ent method of selecting Presidential
candidates is one to assure the choice
of the ablest or most acceptable man.
Our experience with the direct primary,
however, as it has been applied in state
and local elections, does not hold out
hope that the substitution of the direct
primary for the nominating convention
would in any essential respect improve
the situation. The President of the
United States is necessarily political
officer, either controlling or controlled
by his party organization. So long as
this is true there would seem to be no
escape from the domination of the
nominating machinery by the political
organization.
The process does not seem to be sub
ject to popular control, in the sense
that the whole people Of the United
States can effectively participate in the
selection Of candidates. 1t is bust
ness which is and apparently will re-
main in the hands Of the Organization
of the party and the function of the
public is and probably will continue to
be to indicate confidence in one organi-
zation or the other by ratifying that
organization S choice.
MILTON f. LOOMS,
Assistant Professor of Government,
New York University.
New York, July 16, 1920
New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1920-07-19
"Marxian Obstiracy"

Hermann Fernau, a German who
during the war earned an interna-
tional reputation by his courageous
attacks on German imperialism, de-
nounces, in the "Neue Zurcher
Zeitung," the Independent Socialists
as "the grave-diggers of German
democracy" BY their refusal to CO.
operate with the two moderate par
ties of the Left, the Democrats and
the Majority Socialists, the indie
pendent Socialists surrendered the
country to the combination of anti
democratic, anti-republican parties
of the Right.
With the III seats of the Major
ity Social Democrats, the eighty In
dependents and the forty-fve bourge-
OILS Democrats, supported by at
least thirty progressive Centrists,
working majority of 265 to 27O
votes out of a total of 461 could be
formed. This majority would not
only insure the safety and CONSOLE
dation of the republican form of
government; it could also put into
effect most of the reforms advocated
by the Independent platform.
Experimentation of the Reichs-
wehr, disarmament and disband-
ment of the counter revolutionary
units, punishment of the instigators
of Kappism, equitable food distribu-
ton, suppression of profteering,
characterization of education, COM
pulsory health insurance, full legal
enfranchisement of women-all of
these items of the Independent pro-
gram would be gladly supported by
the bourgeois Democrats. But the
Independents refuse to cooperate.
Why? Because neither the Demo
Gratis nor the Majority Socialists
will subscribe to the distinctive fea-
ture of the Independent creed, the
immediate specialization of indus
tries. Karl Kautsky, the leading
authority on Socialist theory, op-
poses immediate Specialization on the
ground that, while Germany's most
vital need is increased production.
experiments in specialization would
be dangerous. The Majority Social
Democrats adhere to this view. But
the Independents maintain that no
bread is better than 80 per cent of
the loaf, and let the reactionaries Of
the Peoples party rule Germany.
Indeed, the Independents rejoice
IN the fact that their refusal to CO.
operate with the Moderates helps
INTO ascendancy government mimi
cal to democracy and to the inter-
ests of the working class. They
glory in the MARKHAM theory Of
New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1920-07-19
might as we'll fall in line behind the
President in working for the -ratif-
cation of the covenant as the latter
signed it and as it stands.
A Cry From the Dead

Drifting up the Delaware River
with the incoming tide, a dark OBJ
Ject that looked at a little distance
like human body floated to a
pier along the Philadelphia water
front and was picked up there. 1t
was life belt that had travelled
many thousand miles for more than
five years; on it was the fatal name
Lusitania. The imagination darkly
follows that journey. The Hydro
graphic Office explains that the belt,
thrown overheard on that 7th of
May, 1915, to some sinking victim,
was probably carried by the ocean
currents past Spain and Gibraltar,
down the African coast, westward
by the Bahamas into the northward-
flowing Gulf Stream. Unnoted so
long by the eye of man, this mute
witness of an objectionable crime
gives its evidence at last.
There is certain fitness in it's
appearance now, when the memory
of that crime has grown dim in too
many hearts, when all the pacifst
mob is demanding oblivion for of
lenses that smell to heaven. 1t is
a just sentiment which makes the
sinking of the Lusitania pre-
eminent symbol of the German idea
to make war with no regard for
humanity, to strike down the help
less, to fight women and children.
The outburst of noble rage which
greeted the deed was creditable to
human nature. That a President of
the United States should suggest
that the nation was ''too proud to
fight" in such cause is a blot
upon our honor we would fain wipe
out
Yet it is a candidate for the
Presidency whose newspaper sought
to justify and defend Germany al
most up to the very moment of our
long delayed entrance into the war.
1t is the so-called 'liberal-minded
men" who are still pleading the
German cause and endeavoring to
avert the punishment which Ger
many so richly merits. That life
belt floating into an American port
is cry from the dead not to for
get; it pleads like angels trumpet
tongued against the deep damna-
ton of their taking off.
New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1920-07-19

women should ever emulate them!
English women still retain the charm
of voice, manner and bearing that
marks the womanly woman. New
York women, as rule, with the usual
exceptions, have little or none of this
charm. Your writings are often in
teresting and clever, but your review
of Merrick's book is simply silly. That
provincial, slangy New York manner
Of expression would make you a
laughing stock in any of the great
cities of the world outside America,
as you well know, probably having
travelled Why write down to the
level of a class of readers whose knowl-
edge is bounded by the North ana
East rivers? Not until you Americans
get away from that cheap sort of wit
and narrow viewpoint will you take
your place among civilized people.
Now, don't get up on your hind legs
and reel off that old stuff about the
English having no sense of humor.
They really have more Of it by far
than the average American. American
slang is sometimes very clever and I
know it from A to 2, but it's worked
to death"
Seemingly, we made a botch of what
we set out to say No defense of
slang was intended. We merely meant
to suggest that virtue need not be q
timid and a covering thing 1t can
be and it ought to be just as robust
and rampageous as vice. AS for wom-
anly women, we hate them. We don't
feel obliged to Ger any answer to our
correspondents opinion of what the
New York woman is like. In the first
place, there isn't any such thing. In
the second place, all the women who
are worth defending do it very we'll
on their own account. The only fat
denial we feel impelled to offer is
that we make any attempt to write
down to anybody. 1t may sound like
that. but, bless your heart, it would
sound much worse if We tried to write
up to our correspondent.
New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1920-07-19
Hotels Dry but damned

To the Editor of The Tribune.
Sir: 1t has been said that prohibi-
ton would ruin the hotel trade, make
deserts of our popular resorts and
kill every joy in life. Strange, is it
not, that after one year of dryness the
report comes from Atlantic City that
$2,750,000 was deposited in ten local
banks and trust companies after the
most prosperous Fourth Of July that
has ever been known in that resort ?
The comments of bankers were to
the effect that the people spent
literally and that they were amazed
at the amount of gold which was de-
posted, indicating the unusual pros
perity of the patrons.
The hotels not only did the largest
business in their history, but the
theaters and movies were damned the
restaurants could scarcely supply
their patrons with food and the
Boardwalk stores had more patronage
than they have ever enjoyed.
VI course, no one is prepared to
say exactly what proportion of the
$2,750,o0o expenditure was made pos
sible by prohibition, but one thing is
certain, nobody can say that Atlantic
City has been ruined by dry times.
A. D. BACHELOR,
Brooklyn, July Is, 1920
New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1920-07-19
Park Rows Safety Zone

The new safety zone in Park Row
lessons the peril in what has been
one of the most dangerous traffic
centers in the city. 1t has long been
one of the Understandable things
that although the Brooklyn Bridge
crush was numbered among the most
sensational of all the horrors of this
our great and wicked city, and al
though the designers of subway and
elevated structures have made elabo-
rate devices for handling the crowds
once they reached the car levels,
the problem of getting the crowds
to the bridge has been almost en-
tirely neglected.
Here is wide open space caused
by the conveyance of Park Row and
Nassau Street, traversed by four
trolley tracks, by hysterical Burle-
son mail trucks and all the trucking
industry of lower New York and
Brooklyn. Across this open space,
until now entirely uncharted, sped
the thousands of office workers who
patronize Brooklyn Bridge, the East
Side subway lines and the Second
and Third Avenue elevated roads.
Over it all presided only one traffic
officer save at rush hours, when he
had an assistant at the bridge en-
trance.
Compare this melee with the ele-
giant precision which reigns at the
city's show corner at Forty-second
Street and Fifth Avenue. There
we have four, or sometimes eight,
gallant cops" who do nothing all day
long but shake their heads reprov-
ingly at impetuous shoppers who try
to cross the street before the rajah
in the green tower signifies his
pleasure. Occasionally it is neces-
sary to raise a warning hand to
some limousine that forgets the
rules of polite traffic. No long lines
of Gathering trucks threaten the
lives of pedestrians. The traffic
lines are straight and at right
angles. The street crossings are
definitely marked and guarded by
policemen. Yet the actual number
of people crossing Fifth Avenue
cannot compare with the Brooklyn
Bridge crush.
That is why it is helpful to have
at least a safety zone in Printing
House Square, where citizens in
peril can pause half way in their
journey.
If the time ever comes when a
safety crossing is also provided, one
definite place where g traffic officer
will stand and guarantee a cessation
of speeding automobiles while the
people cross, it will be doubly well
come. And when that is done there
may be enough of US left to insist
that there be a subway entrance
south of the bridge which shall not
always be on the opposite side of the
road from all the homegoing Brook
Ign trucks.
New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1920-07-19
Ro1p, By
&SO0No Heywood Broun

Aldous Huxley, who wrote Limbo"
A(Doran), is the English F. Scott Fitz-
gerald Perhaps it might better be
stated the other way round. Both
young men are using chalk on blank
brick walls, but Huxley is less given
to nero smudging. He keeps sharper
point. Oxford goes in for life little
more heavily than Princeton. Huxley is
just as faded and sophisticated as Fitz-
gerald tries to be. He is one of those
young men who has done more than
there is to do and knows more than
there is to know. Only his own
existence serves to protect him from
being bored to death
Some Of the wit with which he re-
gales himself is too broad for our
taste. Some is too deep. There are
at least three essays in the book of
which we can make neither head nor
tail. There Is also foolery more in
our line, as the joke of the doddering
old gentleman, who asks: ."Now, can
you tell me this? The name Of what
famous piece of religious music do
utter when I order an old carpenter,
once a Liberal, but now renegade to
Conservatism, to make a hive for
bees?"
"Guy gave it up" the author con-
tinues; "his guardian beamed de-
lightedly.
'Hoary, Tory, oh, Judas! Make
beehouse,' he said. DO you see? Ora
torio Judas Maccabeus.'"
There is also an excellent account
of dinner party of the intelligentsia:
care you interested in the modern
theater?' asked Mr.. Something in his
mellow voice. Too mellow-oh, much
too mellow
Passa5ly,' said Dick.
SO am l. said Mr.. Thingummy. 4
am president Of the Craftsmen's
League of Joy, which, perhaps, you
may have heard Of
"Dick shook his head; this was 60
ing to be terrible.
The objects Of the Craftsmen's
League of JOY Mr.. Thingummy con-
tinued, 'or, rather, one of the objects
for it has many-is to establish little
theaters in every town and village in
England, where simple, uplifting, beau
tiful plays might be acted. The people
have no joy"
Then after little badinage on the
part of Dick, somewhat too broad for
our purposes, he begins to muse, as
follows:
Glow was it, he wondered, that the
right opinions in the mouths of these
people sounded so horribly cheap and
wrong? They degraded what was
noble; beauty became fyblown at their
touch. Their intellectual tradition
was all wrong. Lower classes-it al
ways came back to that When they
talked about the war and the Interna-
tional Dick felt a hot geyser of chau-
vinism .bubbling up in his breast. In
order to say nothing stupid he re-
Trained from speaking at ALL"
Commenting on a recent review in
this column of Merrick's when Love
Flies Out o the Window" reader
writes:
Very funny from the slangy half
baked New York point of view, which
means that it is funny to New Workers
Ga breed by themselves and to no one
else on earth. Ydd must remember.
my dear, clever Mr.. Broun, that Eng
lish girls are able to convey what thew
mean without lapsing into the jargon
and slang affected by the half dressed
painted, loud mouthed New York wom-
en-. Heaven forbid that English
New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1920-07-19
uo Senators
The Citizens Union Defends Its
Praise of Burlingan1e and Collin

idi1c OJ 6WUTBuHIc ana K OfItO
To the Editor of The Tribune.
Sir: Your editorial in Mondays
issue, in which you criticize what the
Citizens Union has to say of the rec
ords OF certain legislators, requires
some comment. You refer in particular
to Senators Burlingame and Gothic,
and to specific bills introduced by
them.
In the first place, the summaries
alone do not tell the whole story. The
comment on bills is contained in the
body of the report, which, naturally,
cannot be included in the brief sum-
maries. There the person who de-
sires to examine the individual records
in detail will find an emphatic state
ment of our attitude on both the Bur
lingame rent bill and his attempt to
gerrymander the New York City judi
cial districts. The rent bill. however.
bad as it was, was never seriously
considered, and never had q ghost of
show of passing 1t was never
lcSliy dangerous.
The bill of Senator Gothic, to which
you refer, dealing with the admission
of children to motion picture theatres
was very likely vicious proposal
from the point of view of those inter
ested in juvenile delinquency, but it
was not bill dealing with city mat
tcrs either directly or indirectly, and
was not acted upon by the Citizens
Union. 1t, therefore, could not be
considered by US in calculating Sena-
tor Cotilos record, as our estimate of
the value Of legislators services is
based on classification of bills af-
fecting the government or affairs of
the city.
Senator Burlingame is criticized by
uS for allowing his position as a COM
mittee chairman to affect his indie
pendence of action. He was formerly
one of the citys most useful members,
but since becoming part of the Sen
ate machine his record has suffered
Senator Gothic has shown steady
Improvement since he entered the
Legislature as an Assemblyman. This
year he was one Of the most cour-
ageous opponents of the anti-Socialist
brainstorm bills. He still introduces
many bad bills, however, and this
year was responsible for several which
we considered more obnoxious than
the one you refer to. Senator Bur
lingame, on the other hand, was one
Of the few members of either house
who introduced more good bills than
bad. We believed he deserved credit
for that
1t is not a simple matter to fix the
value Of the average legislators serv-
ices. The very good and the very
bad are easier. There is always room
for difference Of opinion, but we try
to be impartial and fair.
WALTER T. ARNDT, Secretary.
New York, July 16, 1920.
New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1920-07-19
Modem Magic
Supcrstitions of To-day Held To Be
Poor Stuff


To the Editor of The Tribune.
Sir: 1t seems to me that We in
this advanced age ought to get away
from the influence of superstition,
spiritualism with it's table tipping and
ouija seances, supernatural phenomena
and extraneous influences OF all sorts
The credulity--yes, it is even stronger
than that, it is fanaticism-into which
people have permitted themselves to
be drawn is most amazing. The power
they have put into these various be-
liefs almost amounts to hypnotism 1t
is most dangerous sign, for the time
will come when some one or some
thing will explode the current
fallacious superstitions and prove to
gullible individuals that they were
laboring under self delusion What
then? There will be no foundation for
work, or will power, or whatever 1t
is one sees fit to make dependent on
the control of outside elements.
If being an iconoclast means the as
sailing of beliefs and institutions that
are being accepted on all sides, then
| want to be one. 1t is an insult to
normal intelligence to have to listen
to the blind, bigoted theories | hear
expounded and see in the daily prints
and periodicals. People might just as
we'll believe the moon is made of
green cheese, or 90 back to the days
when amulets were worn in the nose
and ears and lode stones carried in
the pocket. The modern superstitions
include spiritualism, fortune telling
and prognosticating of all sorts, even
to the point of frenzy!
The more learned will argue
fallaciously from what they call
psychological standpoint. Psychology
has nothing whatever to do with the
unnatural or supernatural. 1t is often
mistakenly interpreted so because it
IS the intangible Science of the
human soul" Anything not easily ex-
planned to the inactive, inert mind can
easily be distorted to fit any argument.
The antics of the ouija board and
automatic writings are in a class with
the man who carries preserved
clcada fly, or is afraid to walk under a
projecting loggia or even an ordinary
painters ladder.
The modern believer is retrograding
instead of progressing. Years ago we
had the world-famed Grecian and
Roman oracles, the forerunners Of the
modern fortune or character teller.
They were supposed TO prognosticate
the about-to-be's, but those recorded
sayings were as general and meaning
less as those Of 1920 They uttered
generalities easily interpreted and
adopted by the willing, credulous lis
tener. 1t seems to me that all the
apparent supernatural phenomena now
extant can easily be explained and in
very few words.
The average individual believes the
so-calied revelations and communities
tons from another world, because he
is ignorant of the unconscious activi-
ties of his own mind His imagina-
tion is fixed into belief when the
ouija board or its equivalent Cause
latent thoughts or, more often, I'M
fulfilled wishes, to emerge into more
definite. tangible form. They are
merely paraphrasing the old axiom,
1.-THE wish is father to the thought"
DICIE HOWELL
Tarboro, N. c., July Ia, 1920.