"IF THIS BE TREASON, MAKE THE MOST OF IT"

Just one hundred and fifty years ago a new nation was born within the shadow of Harvard College which proclaimed to the world a new era of freedom--freedom of conscience, freedom of speech and press, freedom from petty governmental aggression. On the eve of the celebration of that event the bureaucracies of Boston and Cambridge swoop down upon the newsstands and with a grand gesture of patriotic and ethical zeal, carry off every available copy of the Lampoon, as if it were a carrier of pestilence and destruction. Nothing could be more ludicrous, more utterly absurd if it were not so crass and insolent a demonstration of petty tyranny.

The ardent patriots who executed this grand stroke were particularly offended by Lampy's version of Washington crossing the Delaware as it appeared on the front cover. Yet so little did it impress them when they went about the work of confiscation that many inoffensive copies of the authentic Digest were carted to the police station. The other picture which the blue coats couldn't brook, they branded obscene. Of course it would be too much to expect honest and upright police commissioners to recognize the famous picture by Manet that has long hung in the Luxembourg. There may be some criticism of the Lampoon's taste in running these particular pictures. But everybody except the police will recognize that this issue was a satire, and a very clever satire.

Many magazines of truly doubtful character have insulted the finer sensibilities of the public for years without any year of suppression. Art magazines that no artist reads, glorifications of American womanhood that no lady buys. French indencies printed especially for exportation have openly proclaimed their attractions from every corner newsstand. Still the liberal and inoffensive satire of the Lampoon meets with stern suppression. The whole affair is an unwarranted abuse of the police power based upon a fine technicality of the law.