The Pulaskian., 1921-08-11

and its strivings after better things, but challenges its accuser to prove to an unprejudiced mind that any section or any country or any people differs therein. The South, despite the aspersions of the Kuttured Mencken, rests secure in the tradition of its Washingtons and Jeffersons, it's Poes and its Pikes, its Laniers and its Gradys, its Craddoeks and it's Ga bles. He does not know that Amer ican literature was cradled south of the Potomac, that the South possesses body of literature comparable to that of any other section though less extensively exploited; and it prob ably means nothing to him that our immortal Magma Charta, the Decla- ration of Independence, was born of the travail of Southern patriotism. It would enlighten him to read the story of a drama in which his ances- tral Hessians played the cravens' role at Trenton, and more careful study of the events of the last five years would provide different per spectiye for some things he seems to have so soon forgotten.
 The South accepts his challenge to combat, which, with characteristic German candor, he admits must be without regard to tender feelings. Its people, the artists and writers whom he condemns so venomously, the clergy whom he indecently islanders, the Southern patriots whom he vi ciously slurs, Southern manhood whom he would drag in the mire of his Hunnish philosophy and crit icism,-all these accept the gage of battle he has thrown down. In the words of Scott's immortal hero, Come one, come all! This rock shall
 fly
 From its firm base as soon as - or, in the words of another hero,
 ''Lay on, Macduff,
 And damn'd be he that first cries,
 Hold, enough!
 The issue is joined. The people of the South are as loyal and true to the flag as any people on Gods footstool, and for that reason if no other, they condemn in the most wig orous language they can command the pusillanimous attitude of this inn ported pervert who besmirches all that is best and truest and purest in this great Southland of ours. Amer ica has no place for such intellectual Houyhnhums as this, where honest men and true may enjoy freedom be- heath the flag our brave soldiers fought to uphold at Chateau Thierry and on many other ensanguined fields of France, where they met and van quished armies composed of just such traducers of mankind as the au- thor of this contemptible screed, who has so soon forgotten the humiliating experiences of Versailles. Even Sing Sing and Matteawan would be con- taminated by such as he. Our only regret is that in the campaign the South proposes to launch against this clustering egoist, it will advertise more extensively the prurient publi- cation for which he is sponsor and which has become a steneh in the nos trils of respectable people and shall be made hiss and byword among all decent Americans, North and South. He admits the war will be hot,-aye, and no verbal thermostat has been devised that will measure the degree of heat to be engendered before the South has finished with Herr Mencken.
 It is my purpose to bring these islanders to the attention of every prominent newspaper and civic or ganization throughout the South, and further to see if there is not some recourse in law to banish him as a presidential nuisance from the coun- try he has so contumaciously insult ed, and whose soil his presence con taminates.
 There are still in the South hun dreds of thousands of valiant men who can teach him as effective a lesson of decency as was admins tered his confreres at St. Mihiel and Argonne Forest. The South is aroused, not as a section or in any