, 1921-08-16
WHY PROTEST.

Why all this row about a dollar sign above the door,
where the brides of New York enter St Thomas's
church on their way to the altar TO surrender their
family name and bestow their family fortunes upon
some scion of European nobility who will later re-
pudiate and scorn all but the dollar sign.
The architects have perpetrated no joke. They have
written into the carvings no whimscalties. They
have expressed in stone the symbolism of the times.
1t is history past and contemporaneous.
As the people make history, so should it be faith
fully recorded by the writers, the artists and the
architects of the period.
II the brides make the dollar sign the basis of mar
riage why. should it not be craven upon the portal of
the sacred place where they plight their commercial
troth?
The sinking of the Lusitania was a moving cause
of our entering war. Should it not be pictured in the
church decorations? A window which artistically de-
picts the American bird of freedom snatching a hand
full of feathers from the German imperial eagle is an
event we have boosted and is an altogether proper
memorial to gaze upon on a drowsy Sabbath morning
upon the sermon but wanders to the golf course or
the far stretches of sunlit road and quiet sylvan high
way windings where preference lies.
The initials of ]. P. Morgan, the dollar sign and the
money bag aresa appropriate in New York church
decorations as would be an oil derrick, a flock of
lambs or a valiant cowboy bulldogging a steer as or.
nanentation in Casper churches.
History is honest. 1t tells of the times. 1T tells
the truth as it occurs. If we are ashamed of our his
tory, we should make better history. The generations
are known best by the monuments they erect and pass
on to posterity.
Don't pull a lot OF hypocritical stuff about shocked
sensibilities with reference to the architects the ar
fists and the writer's faithful record of the age in
which we live! 1t is the rawest, the coarsest and the
frankest since the stone age.
1t is eminently proper that humor and satire should
enter into the designs of church decoration, so long
as they are instructive and not profane. The Fifth
avenue types should have n place, the worldly man,
the man of dissolute habits, the man devoted to bust
ness. 1t brings to the attention of the present as well
as the future the modern human being as he is in
actually.
If the medieval artists and builders used the flora
and fauna of the local neighborhood for their decora-
tions, it is therefore proper for the modern Fifth ave-
rue builders and artists to use the flora and fauna of
pirate?
1t is the shock of the modern face with eyeglasses,
in the places we are wont to associate the cowled head
of the monk in the carvings, that startles US.
The decorations of all of the historic buildings of
the world carry their little pleasantries of the times
of their construction. They have not detracted from
the general splendor. Only the narrow-minded can
object to this symbolism.
Webster and his dictionary are treated in a decora-
tive way over an entrance of one of the halls at Yale.
In the cathedrals of Rouen and of Rheims there are
many references to the period in grotesque figures.
The recent opening of the Canadian parliament
building at Ottawa aroused a storm of protest. because
the gargoyles ridiculed living statesmen. Sir Robert
Borden could be seen sitting with his feet around the
neck of the structure.
Our ancestors have handed down TO US a faithful
record in pictures and carvings of the outstanding fea-
lures of their time and so far as we are able to judge
we might not be exactly proud of some of that pic
tured history had we performed it. Since we enact the
present day history that is written into the buildings
and monuments of our time, we must strive to equal
the ancients in honesty; and in time our crudeness
NAV become sacred.