The Wilmington morning star., 1946-04-18
Fair Enough
Rx wEsTBRooK PEGLER
Copyright, 1916 BY King Features Syndicate

! Copyright, 1916 BY King Features Syndicate)
Wallace Sherlock the editor OF the Fair
| field, Ia, Daily Ledger, composed poetic
| editorial essay recently to which this Is re-
| ply and sequel.
From some misinformed source, Mr.. Sher-
| lock had heard of a sad occasion in beausi-
full room in a fine hotel in New York at
which number of young Arnei lean soldiers,
| blinded in the war, were entertained by pretty
girls, whose loneliness was lost to them, and
by others, including me.
"Grim-faced," is the way Mr.. Sherlock
| described me, with what accuracy ] do not
know, yet 'look, he is shedding scalding tears
of sympathy
when were teen aged boy" Mr.. Sher-
lock wrote, 1--WE became the owner of saddle
that had belonged to cowboy who had fought
with Sheridan at Fishers Hill and Cedar
Creek. Crudely etched on the pommel were
these words:
"A swords real worth
Is in its hawless steel.
mans true worth
Is in his power to feel
"These lines may be children Of the fertile
brain Of Charley Vertrees, the cowboy or they
may be the lines Of some master They are
true. The man who can-feel-for his fellow has
true worth in his heart. Many are the times
this writer loses patience with Westbrook Peg
Ter. He writes paragraphs a block wide and
sentences mile long. We nave to chop them
up into shorter ones so we, as well as our
readers, can understand them. But any man
who can shed sympathetic tears must have
sacred source tucked away in his inmost soul.
We will try not to become peeved when we
| read his copy for the ledger tomorrow"
| May say that Mr.. sherlocks informant was
| mistaken, that was not present at the gather
| ing described and that those who cry dry are
no less sensitive than those who weep wet?
1 am never suspicious Of persons who weep
openly and mostly when moved by woe but
must recall q period when lawyers in crirni-
nal practise bawled heart-rendingly Cor de-
PENDANT rascals in court and preened them
| selves on their art over corned beef and cab
| bage and rye, straight in the saloon across
| the street during recess or after court On the
other hand have plain memory of Eng
fish fathers and mothers down at Charing
| Cross to see their little, pink-taced, teen-age
subaltern sons off to France with not so much
as a blink but only smiles and a finaD
| ''Cheerio' and an answering "toodle-oo mater
and pater," as the train pulled away. God
knew they were weeping, even bleeding, in
their hearts but they are a stole breed re-
| gardng public tears as indecent or, anyway,
unseernly. whereas the French, certainly no
less brave wept openly when they parted at
the station gates, and the polluS as copiously
as their wives and parents.
Again to the other side OF the coin, we had
few years ago a cynical and mercenary
young politician on the radio who melted in
his scalding tears shed for little tots con-
| demned to squalor in abominable slums, as he
perceived things, because congress had re-
| jected some housing bill but, himself, In the
course Of few years, casually abandoned
| through divorce four children of his own borne
him by two wives
| Discussing a mutual friend one day with
great writer who had done some beautiful
lines of pathos, told him that our friends
wife had died few weeks before.
''Yeah?" he said, well, she was a lot Of
expense, nurses and doctors all the time. And
| there was the anxiety, too"
There is strange clche among US Arneri-
cans which holds that open tears are unmanly
and yet edmires them extravagantly in I'M
couth, rugged types such as Eugene Fields
three fingered Hoover who could brave the
storms and wilds "but any child could rend
apart" The same qurk regards as worthy OF
pointed remark, usually facetious, the fact
| that masculine man should be fond of flowers
and even send himself flowers at his hotel
room when he is on the road to brighten the
standardized dreariness of his cell. We also
think it admirable that a man should SYM
pathize with the under-dog and I once crossed
up my friend Hugh Johnson along Of this.
Coincidence would have it that on day when
he wrote very generous pie:e about me and
said that was ever on The side Of the under
dog wrote one noisily repldiating this fal
lacy and pointing out that it Hitler should
ever be the under-dog I would be roofing for
the top-dog.
Therefore, while tears may be honored as
true expression of deep feeling, their absence
is no more to be regarded as evidence OF
heartessness than, in our courts. the failure
of defendant to take the stand may be
| noted by the prosecution as suggestion 0.
guilt.
| On the same general subject lately heard
| story of a peon whose wife had died and
| whose friend, Pedro said: Juan, your grief
was ma gnificent''
"S gracas. Pedro" Juan said. where did
you saw ne?''
'1 saw you to the church,