PROFESSIONAL PROFANITY

It should surprise no one to learn from Washington press dispatches that the board of temperance, prohibition and public morals of the Methodist Episcopal church is officially aghast at the wholesale introduction of taxi drivers' vocabulary into the theatre. Although the board of temperance, etc. as given above, quotes no examples to lend point to its protests, one can easily imagine the identity of the plays which have wrung its collective heart; particularly since Mayor Curley has recently taken it upon himself to disinfect the Boston production of "What Price Glory." The Methodist organization further makes a prediction which is gloomy or heartening, according to the hearer's previous prejudice: namely, that the coming New York theatrical season will be the most profane in American history.

A certain amount of sympathy is probably due those people connected with the Methodist church who are distressed in the presence of what they consider wholesale public blasphemy. So long as the great majority of people dislike profanity, even while using it themselves in strained moments, profanity for its own sake has no place on the stage. If, however, there are to be plays about such uncouth but real people as hobos and marines, the puppets on the stage should speak as do their genuine prototypes in freightyards and trenches. People who go to "What Price Glory" and "Outside Looking In" merely to be shocked, will probably not be harmed by hearing what should long since have been distastefully familiar.

Perhaps the sole result of this ecclesiastical protest will be advertising for Mr. Maxwell Anderson and other writers who prefer their profanity straight. To some people it may be cheering to encounter such positive evidence of the fact that the ancient aristocracy of "cusswords" is at last emerging from dark corners and being received publicly. Time was when all the stage knew was the use of the least harmful of all emphatic monosyllables solely for comic purposes. Writers like Mr. George Moore who perpetually deplore how foreign words and phrases are emasculating the English language, should be pleased to witness this reestablishment of words the lineage of which is as purely Anglo Saxon as that of any in the language.