Baltimore Evening Sun (26 May 1913): 6.

Revised list of martyrs to the mendacity of the immoral Sunpaper:

The Hon. Archangel Harry. The Hon. Sunday-School Field. The Hon Isaac Lobe Straus. The Hon. Paving Bob Padgett. The Hon. McCay McCoy.

To which may be added a list of refugees in the blubber and goose grease warerooms of the Hot Towel:

The Hon. the Archangel Harry. The Hon. Sunday-School Field. The Hon. Isaac Lobe Straus. The Hon. Paving Bob Padgett. The Hon. McCay McCoy.

Pious note in this place on January 30 last:

I can’t help saying that a sermon by the Rev. Dr. [John Roach] Straton on affairs in the City Hall would please me well. * * * When it comes to Vice, he must depend upon hearsay, for his congregation is made up entirely of men who hate it and flee it. But when he comes to the old-fashioned theory of government, he has an accomplished professor right under his nose. I allude, of course, to the zealous superintendent of his Sunday-school, the Right Hon. Samuel Summers Field, K. T., LL. D.

Virtuous but somewhat vague reply of the Rev. Dr. Straton in the Letter Column of February 3:

Neither fear nor favor has ever silenced my pulpit on the infamies of the spoils system in politics or the wrongs which that system still entails upon us under the present regime.

More specific advance notice in a half-page religious advertisement in Saturday’s Evening News:

With dismay and shame the Church has to own up to numbering even in her organization certain shams and hypocrites * * * When a gentleman, acting in his private capacity as a SundaySchool Superintendent, at the same time in his public legal work becomes so involved with the machinations of a corrupt city ring that even the children of his neighborhood find in the inconsistent cause for levity, the Gospel is brought into reproach. * * * There are men in the ministry of the churches who have the virility and courage of their convictions to deal with such sources of reproach to the Gospel without gloves. * * * Such an one is the Rev. John Roach Straton, who (by strange coincidence) has selected for the subject of his Sunday evening’s address a topic which promises to be a development of the subject of this advertisement. * * *

And that promise, if the Sunpaper of this morning is to be believed, was duly carried out. The Rev. Dr. Straton, casting all discretion to the winds, chose a definite and prominent politician as the subject of his excoriation, naming that politican by name and denouncing him in unmeasured terms for his “public legal work.” There was no attempt at evasion, no anointing of the club with honey. The specific wrongdoings of the man were recited seriatim and he was put to the torture without mercy. No more gallant exhibition of sacerdotal valor has been witnessed in Christendom since the day of the martyrs.

It is therefore my duty and my pleasure to apologize to the Rev. Dr. Straton for the doubt implied in my note of January 30. If I then and there gave anyone the impression that prudence corrupted his pastoral fervor, if I left the suspicion that he was too discreet, or even too humane, to call a definite and eminent sinner to book, publicly and by name–if I did him any such injustice, I am sorry for it and promise to atone for it. He has set an example to all the other clergymen of our fair city, and particularly to those whose lay advice and assistance is obtained from job-brokers, contract-splitters and political barristers. Let them all follow him bravely, at whatever cost!

But who was the subject of the learned doctor’s philippic? What particular politician was flayed and salted at his hands? He chose, you may be sure, not cautiously, but well. He picked out a shining and conspicuous mark, a man of the first fame and dignity, a holder of high office, a distinguished amateur of theology and epistemology, a magnifico whose power it was hazardous to flout and whose rage it was more hazardous to evoke--in brief, a notorious sinner, a typical politician, a Prominent Citizen of the very first water. He chose, to make an end, the Hon. Pontius Pilate, LL. D., head of the legal department of the city of Jerusalem in the second and third decades of the present or Christian era--1,883 years ago!

Despite the unfavorable views of Dr. Donald R. Hooker and of various fair press agents of the uplift, the Hon. Eugene O’Dunne need make no apology for his able defense of Dr. Claude. A. Stoncipher. Whatever the offenses of Stoncipher, he is at least entitled to a fair trial upon every charge against him, and that fair trial Mr. O’Dunne seems determined to get for him. Those matadors of virtue who planned to rush him to the penitentiary with an affecting flourish of moral bugles have seen their plan go to pot, and its going to pot is a tribute to the intelligence and courage of our juries and to the professional skill of the Hon. Mr. O’Dunne.

We are oppressed in Baltimore by a plague of emotional ladies. Their aim, it would seem, is to run things. Let them understand clearly that one of the things they are not to run, whatever the degree of their virtue, is the Criminal Court. That court is perfectly competent to punish criminals. It has duly punished Stoncipher. And in that business it can get along without the hysterical help of a lot of women who assume that all persons accused of sexual crimes are guilty and that all evidence brought against such persons is honest. It would be far better for Baltimore for Stoncipher to go free than for any such sentimental balderdash to prevail in the courts.

How prohibition works in Savannah, Ga.:

On page 14 of the Savannah Press of May 23 there is a three-column advertisement of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. The advertisement announces that the bibuli may get unlimited supplies from the John Sullivan, Jr., Co., Hull and Farm streets; telephone, 703.

The Democratic Telegram gives distinction to its current issue by presenting a large daguerreotypeof the Hon. Isaac Frank, a member of the Board of Fire Commissioners and ardent laborer in the cause of government. The Hon. Mr. Frank has devoted the best years of his life to the public service, and when his time comes to die it will be a great comfort to him to reflect that he has ever placed the public good above his personal advantage. The literary contents of the Telegram includes an article advocating a “federal union” between the United States and Great Britain, a spirited defense of Dr. George Wells, a long argument in favor of the Dashiell segregation ordinance, and a poem entitled “The Mocking Bird,” by J. W. H. A varied and valuable number of an always instructive gazette.–Adv.

Boil your drinking water! Watch Bob come back! Swat the fly! Don’t let Anderson go!