BARBED WIRE

Ten years ago Mr. and Mrs. Smith of Boston and Vicinity went to the movies to cheer news reef pictures of the "boys" off for the trenches and to curse the "Boche" and the "Hun". This week Mr. and Mrs. Smith sat through and obviously enjoyed a moving picture whose here is a German prisoner of war, whose villain is a French officer, whose subject is the mean absurdity of all war and war spirit. "Barbed Wire" is the finest and most complete pictorial indictment of war which has appeared. It must quite frankly be considered "propaganda art." Nevertheless, Mr. and Mrs. Smith applaud.

Are they conscious of inconsistency? Ten hears is a brief period in which to forget emotions so fierce as those which the World War produced. And yet they are forgotten. Mr. and Mrs. Smith would simply not believe you if you repeated to them from memory what they were saying about war ten years ago. Yet if you could somehow reverse the progress of time the Mr. Smith of 1917, should he hear the Mr. Smith of 1927, would pronounce the latter a traitor and a coward.

The explanation is simple Mr. and Mrs. Smith move with the crowd. In normal times the crowd assumes a normal attitude toward war. War is not only wrong, it is absurd. In times of stress the crowd assumes an abnoraml attitude toward war. It ceases to question. It becomes hysterical. It becomes a mob. But a mob, because it is hysterical is temporarily affected with a species of insanity. Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the fire-eaters of 1927, were as insane as the responsible citizens who are parties to a lynching party. As the Black Plague formely swept two out of three into death during the great epidemics of the middle centuries, so this modern Black Plague periodically sweeps two out of three from the ranks of reasonable men and therefore deprives them for the time of the right to al themselves civilized. The doctor has eradicated the old Black Plague, or has driven it into the dark corners of the earth. Never again will it sweep the crowd in cities, striking as it goes. Today the doctors of public opinion, the men who write, who edit, who produce, who talk, have before them a greater opportunity than ever before to eradicate the Twentieth. Century Black Plague. Let the people see more of the barbed wire. Let them hear less of the drums.