The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-03-14
CURRENT EVENTS
By T. J. o'FLAHERTY.

CINCLAIR LEWIS has written him
~ another book and has set the
whole country babbitting about his
emil Gantry," which is the name of
the preacher who is set up in the
pillory to receive the sneers and jeers
that Lewis pours out on his Offend
ing head. Some say there is little OF
art in the book but tho we have not
read it we are willing to stag the
praises of anything that is anathema
10 the eyes of DIR. (Cock) Roach
Stratton and Billy Sunday not to
rdention the sluggishly moral edi-
torializers of the New York Times.
T EWIS is a good propagandist, so
l. far ahead of Upton Sinclair that
few people think Lewis is doing any
thing except telling story in
rigorous language. 1t is good to see
the capitalist press and the clergy
and the higher strata of capitalist
functionaries shudder over the pros
meet of impending doom that looms
ND before them as a consequence of
the moral deterioration that follows
in the wake of debunking literature.
AS a matter of fact this debunking
literature is an effect rather than a
cause, tho the kind of an effect that
spurs deterioration along.
DELICIOUS fundamentalists claim
N that emil Gantry" is vulgar and
obscene. Another reason why in
telligent people should read it, be-
cause there is as much difference be-
tween the conception of decency en-
tertained by fundamentalist and a
civilized person as there is between
the favorite smells of a prima donna
and hog. Disappointed critics may
say it is not art, but art is not neces- !
sarily something that cannot be en-
loved, something that cannot be I'M
derstood except with pain and sorrow
and cerebral strain. In our humble
opinion if Sinclair Lewis made as
good job of lampooning the clergy
as we hope he did, it is the kind of
art we like and the kind of art that
will live.
FRESHMEN are disgruntled with
L Henry Ford because he has failed
to acknowledge the offer of an LID.
from Dublin University. Irishmen
are supposed to be realists and to be
Blessed with that sense of the ride
ulous without which people are bores
and pompous asses.
And yet, if we are correctly in
formed, they blame Ford for not |
taking his pen in hand and inditing a
letter of thanks for the proffered |
Al'onor when they might have excused
f. him on the ground that his favorite |
steno who writes his. English was alb
sent. Comforting an L.L.Dship on the
nan who said history is bunk, is on
a par with giving the Nobel peace
prize to Austen Chamberlain. Per-
haps the owners of the Dublin Uni
versity want another flivver factory |
in Ireland!
Turing a lull in the Illinois civil
~ war, Gov. Len Small invited Cal
win Coolidge to visit the state, which |
was described by the governor as the
heart of America. Evidently the |
president thought it came closer to
being Americas chief burial ground
as he put hastily to sea in the May |
flower. Hardly had the gubernator-
ial invitation been put on the wires
than two rival Chicago gangs called
off a two-day truce and again the
streets were running red with the
blood of the dead and wounded |
Things have not improved there since
The DAILY WORKER moved to
New York tho large number of
perfectly good citizens blame the |
Communists for every social mis-
fortune from suicide epidemics to rum
seizures.
THE local socialist weekly adj
1 vertised meeting to be held here
in honor of Alexander Kerensky,
short-lived premier of Russia that
was, before the Communists turned
IL into the heart Of the Soviet Union.
The editor of the Jewish Daily For
ward is one of the prime movers in
The meeting. The socialists pretend
that their hatred for the Soviet
Union is due to the Imprisonment and
alleged persecution of political dis
senters and the execution of alleged
socialists who took active part in
the Vaccinations of foreign countries
V against the Workers Republic. It is
a historical fact, however, during the
short period Kerensky was in power
he sent more workers and peasants
10 certain slaughter in an offensive
against the Germans at the behest
# the allies than the sum total of all
renegades that were killed and i'm
,nrisoned by the October revolution
from its inception until today.
TINE moist democrat, Mr.. James A.
Gallivan Of Massachusetts, de-
livered a typ'sally frothy oratorical
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