Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1928-10-10
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

i even in a hard-boiled community. And
all the women are not growing selfish
| and materialistic.
! If all the women of the Nation were
to grow selfish and materialistic there
might be nothing to hold the country
| together, but the truth Is, We believe,
! that no such possibility Is to be feared.
It only seems probable because the
| slant Of the times. as it were, Is toward
sophistication. with all its glare, its
searchlights. its crude publicity stunts.
! In the background remain millions
| of persons who do not believe In nor
| indulge in the flip doings and carry
| ing on" of those who feel in their
ignorance that their ways of living and
! thinking are somehow possessed of
| fiendish cleverness.
! These two classes of persons are
| hopelessly at loggerheads and will re-
main so because they have nothing in
| common. The moralists, as we might
! call them, believe the members OF the
other faction are utterly mistaken in
| their appraisal OF life.
The sophisticates, as we may term
what seems to us to be the noisy
minority. feel a sneering pity for those
of us who not only will not join them
| in their revels, but say that We can
see nothing at all clever in their ac-
tions.
AS a matter of cold fact, sophisti-
cation is not at all modern, as
its devotees think, but is as old as
the hills.
There is nothing at all clever about
getting drunk. Any one can do 1t,
even under prohibition! Yet 1t is
AoI, SNf NtN pr
clever! young people fondly preen them
selves on doing something ultra-mod-
ern. when all the time they are in
dulging in practices which were really
new and clever only in the pristine
days of the human race, when men
were really men and women were rough
babies, indeed.
What this country needs, If anybody
asks us (and our correspondent has,
is a little more determination on the
part of the moraliStS to make them
selves heard. Life is real and life is
earnest, Longfellow said. There is a
need for people everywhere to enlist
under the banner of decency, and not
only TO enlist under it. but to speak
out for its precepts, and to fight for
them, II necessary.
One never finds a group Of sophisti-
Gates at all CnaTy hDOuC speaking up
for themselves. Every party has an
aftermath that is more fun than the
party was itself They will tell the
same details over and over to every
one who will listen, until the careful
observer is forced to believe that the
talkfest after the affair is of more
Importance to the participants than the
party itself.
Those who believe in the refined
feelings" of life owe it to themselves,
and to those things for which they
stand, to speak up, to put themselves
on record.
Why should a man who believes In
morality, as taught and preached by
some of the greatest plen and women
who ever lived, be ashamed to speak
out, when the fellow who has nothing
better than party" to praise hest
tates not second in letting every
one within hearing know that he made
a consummate ass out of himself the
evening before?
Yet so loud and boastful Is this idle
talker that he has almost silenced every
tongue against him, and has made it
appear to many that the country is
going to the dogs, that sentiment no
longer exists, that all the women have
grown selfish and materialistic.