Baltimore Evening Sun (10 January 1912): 6.

The daily thought from “Also sprach Zarathustra”:

Full of noisy clowns is the market place * * * and they boast of their “great” men. Such, in their sight, are their masters of the hour.

Contributions toward a code of baltimorality, that joyful science:

1. The man who reads novels on Sunday is a sinner and will go to Hell.

2. The man who plays pothouse politics is a pattern of virtue and will go to Heaven.

Now comes the League for Medical “Freedom” with the news that sewer gas does not cause typhoid fever. A picture postcard for the name and address of any ass who has ever stated, in 10 years past, that it does. Members of the League for Medical “Freedom” barred.

Those Baltimore clubwomen who now propose to agitate for the appointment of a theatrical censor in Baltimore have virtue on their side, but when that has been said for them all that is honestly sayable has been said. The demand, as everyone knows, is not new. It is raised every year or so by militant moralists--usually by militant moralists who openly confess that they themselves never go to the theatre. It is but a single symptom of that unquenchable thirst for chemical purity which racks this town. On the one hand, imaginary evils are combated furiously and with a suffocating effusion of platitudes. On the other hand, real evils are neglected.

The fact is, of course, that the appointment of a theatrical censor, whatever good it might accomplish, would undoubtedly accomplish a great deal more harm. It would put an arbitrary and despotic power into the hands of one man or of a small body of men; it would keep public attention constantly concentrated upon indecencles; it would work a hardship upon the authors, managers and performers of many truly meritorious plays; it would tend to corrupt a serious art with the prejudices and stupidities of parochial virtue.

If the censors showed toleration--if, for example, they approved such a play as Ibsen’s “Ghosts”--they would lay themselves open to bitter assaults by moralists. And if, on the contrary, they permitted moralists to lead them by the nose, they would do irreparable damage to the local theatres and make Baltimore a laughing-stock from end to end of the country. It would be next to impossible to steer a middle course. The frenzy of moralists would be a constant stumbling-block, a constant obfuscation, a constant irritation.

What is more, the very existence of such censors would be supererogatory and ridiculous. We have today an ample remedy against all plays and other spectacles which actually offend the decencies. It is to be found in Article 25, Section 101, of the Baltimore City Code, as follows:

Every person who shall, within the city of Baltimore, act, exhibit. show or perform in, or cause to be acted. exhibited, shown or performed, or be in any manner concerned in the acting, exhibition, showing or performance of any indecent or blasphemous play, farce, opera, public exhibition, show, entertainment or performance whatsoever, or of any indecent or blasphemous part of any play, farce, opera, public exhibition, show, entertainment or performance whatever, shall forfeit and pay for every such offense the sum of twenty dollars.

Why should the purists ask for more than this ordinance? Doesn’t it, in point of fact, open the way for the prompt prosecution and punishment of every person, whether actor or manager, engaged in the performance of an offensive play? Why don’t the foes of the theatre, if they are really outraged by occasional salinity, institute prosecutions under it? Why didn’t they take out a warrant for Mr. Ford when “The Follies of 1910" was played at his theatre? Why didn’t they send a copper for the late Lehmayer when “The Girl From Rector’s” was at the Academy of Music? Here was, and is, an easy road to purity--a road charted since 1879--and yet no moralist has ever ventured to fare along it.

The reason therefor is not far to seek. The trouble with this ordinance, in the eyes of crusaders, is that it gives the accused manager a fair chance to defend himself. It is not sufficient merely to charge him with indecency: the thing must be proved. He may, if he desires, demand a jury trial; he may call witnesses in his behalf; he may employ counsel to cross-examine and flabbergast his accusers; in brief, he may have a white man’s chance to meet and controvert a most serious occultation against his professional honor and his manhood. Do moralists think it fair to give him that chance? They do not. The essential characteristic of a moralist–the thing which sets him off sharply from all other men–is his firm belief that his own unsupported fiat should be sufficient to disgrace and ruin a fellow-man.

Failing the opportunity to exercise such a despotic power personally, the fanatical purist wants it given to some person of his own nomination, to some censor under his thumb. The demand for a censor, in other words, is also a demand for an alert and uncompromising censor-for one who will attack, not only all undoubted indecencies, but also all merely questionable things. And there is where the whole plan runs aground. In theory, a censorship is no more than a safeguard against gross indecency. In practise, it is invariably a conspiracy against free speech in the theatre. The English censor, theoretically unfettered, is really the slave of fanatics. He made the whole English nation ridiculous back in the nineties by prohibiting “Ghosts.” He made it thrice ridiculous, a few years ago, by prohibiting “The Mikado.”

These considerations--stated, perhaps, with some heat, for the art of the theatre has my highest respect--should be borne in mind by the ladies who now propose to resuscitate and renovate a pernicious and mischievous scheme. That their motives are good I haven’t the slightest doubt. Some of them, perhaps, have been outraged to the past by vulgar plays. But let them bear well in mind that, if their ire is real, an easy way of getting redress is always open to them--that they have a clear right, as citizens, to enter complaints against offending managers, and to summon the whole of the State’s Attorney’s force to the prosecution of those managers. And let them not forget, again, that when it comes to indecency, there is often room for an honest difference of opinion, and that the persons who happen to differ from them are not thereby convicted of immorality.

Seven cheap but sanitary cigaroots to the Hon. Henry A. McMains, D. O., etc., etc., etc.

Only 1,224 days morel But it’s a darn long walk from Schenectady to Troy!