Baltimore Evening Sun (17 December 1913): 6.

Whatever its effect upon the personal fortunes of the Hon. Charles L. Dietz, the continued row over the Pease-Dietz case will not be in vain if it makes clear to the people of Baltimore the sharp difference between the Puritan morality and that of ordinary men. We sinners are so often charged by the Puritans with having no morals at all that we are sometimes half comvinced that the accusation is true, but as a matter of fact we are just as moral as the Puritans themselves, though in a wholly different way. It is one of the fundamental principles of our morality, for example, that the spy who denounces his staining brother for a reward is an obnoxious creature--that his own offense, nine times out of ten, is more discreditable and more destructive of good order then the one he denounces. In other words, we are unalterably opposed to snouters, informers and tattle-tales. When we hear of the Lord’s Day Alliance collecting informers’ fees for harassing the poor folk who break the archaic blue laws at Back River, our sympathies are all with the poor folk. And in the same way, we hold that the “moral squad” of the Pentz Society commits worse crimes against the public weal than any of the sinners it snouts and snares.

But the Puritan takes an exactly contrary view. He believes that the pursuit and punishment of sinners is the highest and most pressing of human duties, and that any device which furthers it, however dubious in itself, is justifiable and honorable. The Hon. Morris A. Soper, himself a Puritan of the loftiest type, has clearly stated this principle in his public comments upon the Pease-Dietz case. The work that Pease was ordered to do was very disagreeable to him, as it would have been to any other man of elemental self-respect, but its moral necessity outweighed its personal disagreeableness. In brief, it was more important that the Hon. Mr. Dietz should be flayed and ruined for taking a drink than that the Hon. Mr. Pease should retain his standing among his fellows as a good comrade and a fair man. It was more important that the Police Board should snare one petty offender than that it should retain the confidence and respect of all the rest of the police.

Once this Puritan point of view is clearly understood, the proceedings of such organizations as the Pentz Society, the Lord’s Day Alliance and the present Police Board becomes measurably more understandable. The majority of Baltimoreans, of course, are not Puritans, and so there is more or less indignation whenever some fresh example of the Puritan morality is action is uncovered. But though we may not approve such relentless snoutery, our laws are so drawn that they enable the Puritans to perform it under their protection, and therefore we must put up with it. If we want to make an end of it, once and for all time, the obvious thing to do is to amend our laws. This has been done in New York and elsewhere, and I have hitherto proposed doing it here--even going so far as to draw up a bill expressly forbidding spying and sinner-hunting by such Puritan sporting clubs as the Pentz Society. But my bill, I needn’t say, has not been made into a law, nor is it likely that it will enjoy that metamorphosis in the near future.

Meanwhile, the grand jury, a body reflecting public opinion very accurately, stands as a permanent obstacle to the thorough working out of the Puritan morality. The Police Board, of course, is free to maintain a system of spies over its own men, for the grand jury has nothing to do with the internal management of the police department, though it is free to express opinions, and has hitherto done so. But when it comes to dealing with sinners in general, the jury has a direct voice in the matter, and that voice has always been raised against snouting. That is to say, all, or nearly all, of the cases brought before it on the evidence of snouters, whether professional or lay, have been dismissed forthwith. It has refused to indict persons snared by the sneaks of the Pentz Society, and it has refused to indict persons tempted into lawbreaking by spying cops and policewomen.

Public opinion has wholly approved this policy. Whether rightly or wrongly, it is the firm belief of nine Baltimoreans out of ten that it is better to let an occasional sinner go unpunished than to put a premium upon trickery and espionage. But the Puritans themselves have protested very bitterly against being robbed of their quarry by any such summary process, and some of them, such as the Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, LL.D., the Hon. Alfred S. Niles and the Hon. John L. Cornell, have gone to the length of denouncing the grand jurymen as persons with a sinister fellow-feeling for sinners--though always, it is to be noted, after the adjournment of the offending jury has taken away all risk of punishment for contempt. This protest, thus voiced by a few leaders of the sinner-hunt, has been generally approved by the body of Puritans. I hear it stated, indeed, every time I commune with a member of that pious brotherhood.

This much, at least, must be allowed to the Puritans: That the laws of Maryland are clearly on their side, Many of those laws deliberately offer rewards to men who will sacrifice their self-respect to the sinner-hunt, and in none of them is there any penalty for sneaking, tempting and espionage. What is more, such bands of undisguised Puritans and snouters as the Pentz Society and the Lord’s Day Alliance are chartered under those laws, amd my barristers inform me that it is perfectly legal for the Police Board to lend them the use of the city police, paid by the taxpayers, for their private sport and recreation. Yet again, it must be plain that the Puritans are quite right when they argue that the constant flouting of the laws by disgusted grand juries tends to encourage crime and to take away all disgrace from minor lawbreaking.

The one remedy, unless I err, is so to amend our laws that they will reflect and represent public sentiment. So long as our statute books are burdened with enactments which not one man in a hundred regards with anything save contempt–for instance, the Blue Laws of 1723--the way will be open for Puritans to persecute and harass the people for their own amusement, and the way will be equally open for grand juries to make a mock of the whole process of enforcement. But is any such reform probable, or even possible? I am not optimist enough to believe it. The American people seem to love hypocrisy for its own sake. It is so thoroughly ingrained in their character that they can scarcely imagine laws which tell the truth.

Boil your drinking water! Wait for the big show at Annapolis! Watch the ex-sheriffs wriggle out of it!