MORALS

Even George Jean Nathan occasionally is correct. For when he suggested the admirable qualities of a play called "Morals", he was delightfully murmuring words of wisdom. "Morals" is an excellent play with an excellent moral--though an old one: judge not that no be not judged. And apt is the reading of, at least, the moral while America persists in presenting day after day in the pages of her newspapers such pseudo-ethicism as she has lately revealed.

No sooner has the gay countess moved the sympathies of some, the antipathies of others--and herself from Ellis Island than that rather noisy and erstwhile citizen of Philadelphia, Smedley Butler, returns to the printed page. His morals are far above those of the countess. She could not brook a lie; he cannot--brook a drink. And when, with courtesy and the savoir faire of the "old school" a gentleman and colonel serves cocktails at a dinner party in his honor, Smedley blushes and rushes to the duty of having him reprimanded by the higher powers. All this, by the way, happens in spite of the fact that the courteous and courtly colonel has an excellent record as a soldier. The point is that being a Devil Dog, he lacks the blue wings of the new apostolic succession.

So with no other turpitudinous soul on hand for the press to play with this colonel must face the inquisition, mother can point to the Marine post. And in some rustic hamlet some fonders and say to her son--"My boy, join the Marines and keep your morale clean." And in the vigor of his hypocrisy some preacher can halo another saint. For America in the glory of legalized morality has forgotten the spiritual depths as well as the heights which must be the experience of man. The rigors of reality cannot exist--they must be diluted by the discretion of Smedley Butlers, good men, indeed but never saints. For as has been recently stated not far from Harvard Yard--to be a saint one must have been a sinner. Yet all of this does not prevent the colonel from suffering the moral malignments of his superiors. The honored rights of host and guest bow to the higher standards of a tatterdemalion morality.