Baltimore Evening Sun (3 March 1913): 6.

That anonymous gladiator who lately came to the defense of “The Star-Spangled Banner” gives me a wallop in today’s Letter Column for likening the popularity of that singularly preposterous anthem to the popularity of free silver, Peruna, Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound and the theory that Friday is an unlucky day. In this comparison he sees a fallacious putting together of unlike things. Well, let him have his way. But certainly he will not deny that songs themselves are like things, that it is fair to compare one song to another.

Does he agree? Then let him put “The Star-Spangled Banner” beside “Dixie.” The one is known, I should say, to one American in 50; the other is known to every man, woman and child in the land. If the one “excites the imagination of the people,” the other lifts them to positive frenzies. If the one resounds with clarion tone, the other resounds lilke in army corps of sharp cornets. And here is a sample strophe from that noble anthem, that super-“Star-Spangled Banner,” that first favorite of the American people:

’Way down South where the corn grows bigger,
White-wash nigger, white-wash nigger!
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Look away!

Does the hon. gent. now maintain that such hollow balderdash is suitable for singing by a civilized race? Does he maintain that such childish banality is a fit expression of the patriotism of a Christian people? If he does not, then he must admit that the æsthetic sense of Americans is underdeveloped, and once he has admttted so much, he has cut the ground from under his defense of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” If its popularity doesn’t prove its merit, then nothing will ever prove its merit. Not one of the “competent students” mentioned by the hon. gent. the other day has any actual existence. No educated man, at home or abroad, has ever maintained that “The Star-Spangled Banner” is poetry. Not even Key himself ever made such a claim for it.

The Germans, of course, also have their lewd and vulgar songs. For example, “Kommt ein Bierfisch gellogen” and “Du bist wie ein Blutwurst” and “Herr Wirt, adieu, Scheiden tut Weh!” Let a crowd of students get their legs beneath a table, and such lamentably coarse lyrics will be heard, alas!—and mayhap the sound will be that of “a wheezy phonograph choked with a quart of needles.” I do not deny the fact, nor even defend it. But I do deny that the German people would tolerate such songs in their theatres, or arise and cheer at the singing thereof, or maintain that there was genuine poetry therein. They have a sense of fitness. They know what to sing when they are in liquor—but they also know what to sing at the trooping of the colors. And they never mix the two brands of singing.

Let this anonymous critic hold his hollow sneers. If he has any evidence or argument going to show that “The Star-Spangled Banner” is a dignified and beautiful composition, I shall be very glad, indeed, to hear it. If he knows of any genuine critics who think so, then let him name them. Meanwhile, I beseech him to have done with his slander of the Germans, a highly intelligent and self-respecting race, with no taste for the booming braggadocio of schoolboys. There are German victuals, I grant freely, which may strike harshly upon his untutored nose, just as caviare would strike harshly upon it, or haggis, or bird’s nest soup. But he has no monopoly of olfactory neuralgia. Consider how a German must snort and gag when he catches his first scent of an American politician! Or of an American barbershop! Or of a professional veteran of the wars! Or of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

THE WOMAN HUNT.

No respectable, God-fearing man or woman encourages by words or deeds the carrying on of * * * houses of ill repute, but if we must have them, then let us keep them in such a place that they will not annoy our respectable people. * * * It does seem as though some * * * misguided and misinformed people * * * who wish to bring themselves to the attention of the public * * * should look into these matters more carefully before they make such broad statements. They have no practical experience and very little knowledge of the subject.—Henry D. Cowles, Chief of Police of New Haven.

The esteemed Democratic Telegram in its current issue flays Woodrow for inflaming the sinister ambitions of the Hon. W, Luke Marbury, announces the safe return of the Hon. Paving Bob Padgett from California, analyzes the Mexican situation in all its phases, heaves a.hatchet at Dry Isaac, sneers at woman’s suffrage and devotes a column to a eulogy and woodcut of the Hon. Henry D. Harlan, LL. B., C. J. An unusually interesting issue of a discreet and well- informed gazette.—Adv.

The setting up of a Hoe sextuple goose-grease machine in the basement of the Munsey Building has caused consternation in the Towel Building. But a single goose-grease machine is not apt to butter many parsnips, though it may occasionally give the super-Mahon a coat of flattering unction. Heavier artillery will be needed for the serious work of the coming campaign–to wit, the huge battery of vaseline mortars on the roof of the Towel Building. These mortars fire shells as large as chicken coops and in every shell there is enough of vaseline to grease a traim of 100 cars. They are supported by 100 rapid-fire guns, each discharging 800 globules of tallow a minute, and by two Long Toms, each firing 60 carboys of cocoa butter an hour. The mechanism of all this artillery is controlled by a single push button in the cashier’s office on the ground floor.

A can of marshmallows for any evidence, not palpably insane, that the extension of the suffrage would make the suffragettes more dangerous to life and limb than they are at present.—Adv.

The Hon. Robert J. McCuen is going to the Concord Club’s bal masque as Brigham Young. The Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough will appear as Walter Pater.—Adv.

Col. Jacobus Hook has just received a shipment of 8,000 bales of Vuelta Abajo from Havana and hereafter his cigars will be all tobacco.—Adv.

John Walter and Harry Martyr: Pierrot and Harlequin.

Boil your drinking water! Sign the Harry petition! Whoop ’er up for the Vice Crusade!