The Washington times. [volume], November 26, 1924, Image 20

About The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
. EDITORIAL PAGE
OP THE (
f Learn Something from Tad~|
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This is a picture es himself by Ted, the well-known artistie
genius. He is the man sitting in the chair working wkile the
barber cuts his hair and the editor gives him advice.
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Everybody knows Tad, the comic and sporting genins of
The Washington Times.
This is part of a picture that Tad contributes to that wonder
ful publication “CIRCULATION.” It is supposed to show
what a hard time the comic artist has.
Tad says he works so hard he hasn’t time to eat, so he
takes his food in chemical pills. The barber cuts his hair, and
the nearly bald editor pumps “bromide advice” into Mm,
while he is working.'
Thousands of young men that admire Tad will look at this
picture and we invite them especially to pay attention for
their OWN sake to the advice that the bald old editor is
giving Tad while he works.
“DON'T GET INTO A RUT WHATEVER YOU DO.”
Tad pretends to make fun of that advice, but he knows it’s
the best advice any man could get. It is because he didn’t
let himself get into a rut that Tad worked up from office boy
in San Francisco to his present salary that would make
Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci turn green with envy.
In this picture Tad chooses to show himself overworked,
worn and weary, struggling in a newspaper office. As a
matter of fact he hasn’t been, in his office for two years.
He lives and works in his beautiful house, his servants always
within call. There the barber and manicure call upon him
regularly, and checks are sent by the cashier and by him
deposited in the bank.
If he happens to need “loose change,” a weekly check is
cashed for him and the money sent to him in a Mack truck.
And this is all because, Tad, captured young by the editor,
has taken that advice, “Don’t get into a rut.”
I .1... H
Take that advice to yourself, young man, if you want to
succeed as Tad has done, or better.
Rubens, Titian, Raphael, Botticelli, Van Dyke, Claude Lor
raine, Turner, AND TAD, owe their fame to the fact that they
wouldn’t 1 let themselves get into a rut. Don’t YOU do it.
wmmmmuma^mammmtmmuummmmumuummmmumm^mmmmmmmuuuumummuumuammummmmmummuummumm
The Red Flag |
In London and in Paris the Russian Bolshevik government
has regained possession of the magnificent embassies estab
lished by the Czar.
The Russian embassy has given its first great reception,
‘ with Russia’s red flag on the roof, and draped in all the
rooms.
Many diplomats of other countries attended the reception,
hut not Baldwin, the British Prime Minister, who had been
Invited. Perhaps the red flag was too much for a good Tory,
hut they will get used to it.
There was a day when the trioolor of the French republic
Was hated by England, and for that matter the Stars and
Stripes of the United States also, were hated as bitterly as
Russia’s red flag is hated now.
It is hard for one nation to realize that another has a right
to govern itself as it chooses. But we’ll get around to it.
We Begin to Fly
The Government is arranging to supply the Shenandoah,
Los Angeles and future dirigibles with fuel in midocean.
Admiral Moffett plans a sort of a bridle to hold the air boat
while she drops a pipe to the deck of the ship and sucks up a
gasoline supply.
That will seem strange in future, when airships will be five
times as big as any vessel ever launched and will easily go
twice around the world under their own power, or more prob
ably by “wireless power” taken up from power stations on
the earth.
Air travel is only just beginning. Boon there will be no
other travel except for short distances.
No Poverty Complex
Believers in the Freudian School of Psychoanalysis wanted
to establish a free clinic for the poor in Vienna, Doctor
Freud’s home town. The oity government forbids it, saying,
quite sensibly, that there are few “completes” among the
poor. A woman with five children to look after and the
washing to do has few complexes about the inability of her
hasband to appreciate her sensitive nature. Many dollars
go with many complexes.
WASHINGTON TIMES
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New York City yfe By T.E. Powers
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LISTEN, WORLD! rrsr By ELSIE ROBINSON
MR. E. W. NELSON says that he gets
nothing out of this department. He
is quite peevish about it.
“I read your section with ever-growing
amazement,” he frets. “They must be crazy
to hire you. I have never found a really
interesting or helpful thing in your depart
ment. It is just .scandal and. bad ideas to
upset the young and ridicule the old. If
people did as you say I wonder what would
happen to the world. Why can’t you write
instructive and pleasant things instead of
all that trash?”
What do you bring to this department
when you start to read it? Do you bring
faith, humor, interest, intelligence, humility,
tolerance, friendliness, the keen appetite for
adventure, the thirst for wisdoms and broad
ening experience? Or do you bring a view
point all gnarled and calloused by rancor and
conceit, prejudice, intolerance, fear, stubbornness, ignorance.
What do you put into the reading of this space?
You will take out just what you put in. You will get
just what you give. And that goes for all the rest of life
as well as the reading of this column.
This section of mine is a peculiar service—and a very
penetrating test' of the chap who reads it. It is not given
over to news. Nor advertisements. Nor editorial com
ments. Nor stunts by Elsie. *lt is given over to Life. It
IS life, in a cross section. If you have eyes to see and
heart to understand you’ll find it all here—all the be
wilderment and rebellion, hope and fury, faith and frenzy,
foolishness and waste and splendid courage of this amazing
century. This section doesn’t belong to the world of a
Polyanna’s youth, nor to the world of Polyanna’s theories.
It belongs to the actual world of NOW. It has all the ugli
ness of NOW in it—and all the beauty. It has the mis
takes and the confusion and the pretense, but it also has
the harmony and order and the truth. BUT IT
ONLY HAS HARMONY AND ORDER AND TRUTH
if you Save the wit and willingness to
FIND THEM.
Here are young girls working for a living. Their place
in the old order has been swept away by industrial changes
and war wreckage. They can’t sit at home and do fancy
work, even if they would. They are out in the midst of
the liavpc and riot. They are made hard by competition.
They are harried by temptation. Here are the young girls of
1 What Do You Get 1
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today, talking about themselves in this
column. They are talking with a terrible
wisdom, an appalling ignorance, a touching
hanger. Here they are, talking in their own
vernacular, voicing their own viewpoint—
young, fearless Joan of Arcs riding forth on
their uncertain crusades.
AND MR. E. W. NELSON SERB NOTH
ING BUT TRASH IN THAT AMAZING
SPECTACLE!
Here are the young married women, some
of them still holding their jobs, some of
them trying to satisfy themselves within
the sterile boundaries of one-room-wall-bed
bath and kitchenette. The young married
women who could be earning more than their
husbands if they were free. The young
married women who “can’t afford babies,”
who no longer know the crafts their grand
mothers knew or could find a place to pur-
sue them if they did —the young married women who rise
at 11 and window shop and go to matinees, who drift,
from sheer boredom into —“affairs.” Here they are,
blurting out their resentment, baring the comedy and
tragedy of it all, AND MR. E. W. NELSON SEES NOTH
ING BUT SCANDAL IN THIS SIGNIFICANT AND PITI
FUL REVELATION 1
Here they all are, old men and women “beached” by the
passing of the tide—the timid who are left behind, the re
bellious who will not submit, the stupid who. cannot under
stand, the wise who see a little ray of light. Here they all
come to speak, day after day, telling'the Story of Now.
And Friend Nelson gets nothing from it all!
WHAT DO YOU GET FROM IT, PAL?
What do you get from life as you pass through it each
day? > What does it all mean to you? ■ Do the flappers and
sheiks merely shock you and give you a chance to say
what a model you were in your youth? Or do they make
you pause and think—-do you see something significant under
their rebellion and something admirable in their frankness
and hardness? What db those young married women mean
to you, and the old, stranded ones who cannot make the
grade? Is it all a stupid muddle to you? Do you do your
eight hours and eat your three squares and grumble at
your wage and call it a day? Or do you throw yourself
into the pageant and thrill to the tumult and peer ahead
through the dust?
What do you get out of life? WHAT DO YOU GIVE?
DR. FRANK CRANE’S
DAILY EDITORIAL
The Thankful Attitude .
By DB. FRANK CRANE.
AFTER all, thankfulness is not a matter of fact; It Is
a matter of discipline. It is an attitude toward
, life.
There is no good going over a list of things to eonnt
those that we should be thankful for; it is easy enough for
those who are not thankful to make a list of those things
they are disappointed in.
When you tell a man he should be thankful and then enu
merate the reasons why, you are competing with his imagina
tion and you are sure to be beaten.
If one goes through life with a feeling that he deserves
nothing, whatever he gets will be a beautiful surprise to him.
That is why so many people are continually happy. They'
do not think they should have anything and, consequently,
whatever they get is that much extra.
When you find, on the contrary, a selfish egotist who
thinks that he should have everything, whatever he gets is a
disappointment. ,
If you think you should be hung by a halter, says Carlyle,
to be hung in hemp is a privilege.
After all, what we call happiness is not a thing in itself.
It is a relation between two things. It is what we have,
divided by what we think we ought to have.
Those who have a thankful disposition, that is those who
think they continually get more than they deserve, are apt
to be cheerful. They are pleasant people to know and to do
business with. Those, on the contrary, who think they
never get their deserts, and who always find the actual fall
ing below the ideal, are disgruntled and unhappy.
It all depends, therefore upon ourselves, and our opinion
of our deserts. There are those to whom the world is a
continual delight and surprise. Every day is a new dis
covery of new blessings. They are in a continual state of
happiness. (
This is not because they are any better off than other
people, but because the value of the common fraction is
greater. That is, the denominator of what they think they
ought to have, is continually greater than what they do have.
Blessed, says the proverb, are they who want nothing, for
they shall be satisfied.
(Copyright, ISH. by The McClure Newepeper Syndicate.)
GARRETT P. SERVISS ON MIXING
SCIENCE AND FICTION
Writers Color Characters in Books With Own
Personalities; Their "Psychology” Unsound
I PRICKED up my ears, meta- *
phorically, when I saw in
L<e Temps, of Paris, under
the general head: “Medical Chat,”
(Caunerie Medicals), an article
“Apropos of Psycbpnalysis,” signed
by addoctor„r — r „ J. Logre. It
was not any devouring Interest
in Freud’s. speculations that
moved me, but a sentence in Doc
tor Logre’s opening, which seemed
to promise something trust
worthy, at last, on that dream
entangled subject. The sentence,
translated, read:
“In order to enable the culti
vated public to seize the relative
justness and the interest of this
doctrine (Freud’s ‘libido*), it seems
to us best to choose a precise
example, a clinical ‘case,’ well
known to all, and giving oppor
tunity for a somewhat detailed
demonstration."
Good, I said to myself, now we
are going to get something solid
and truly scientific. But imagine
my revulsion when, eager to see
this promised “precise example”
and “clinical case,” I read on to
the following effect:
“Now, there is in French liter
ature a hero whose singular
egarements (errors, wanderings
of the spirit), are, without doubt,
dependent on the psychological
mechanism invoked by Freud. It
is Paphnuce, the monk uncon
sciously amorous of Thais, and
who, in converting, perverts herr
Ws propose,” continues Doctor
Logre, “to show that the essential
of Freud’s' doctrine was foreseen
and even clearly Indicated, before
Freud, by Anatole France.”
Fiction’s Claims.
So I found myself plumped into
the middle of a characteristic
French romance instead of being
introduced Into the presence of a
scientifically investigated case of
the nature of a “demonstration,”
with precise details, of the “just
ness” of the Freudian speculation.
I read the rest of the article —
having begun It—but it had no
longer any hold upon my interest.
Life is too short and too seri
ous to be wasted in conaldering
the kind of “psychology” present
ed In love stories, even when the
writer of the story happens to
have been a great “stylist,” such
as was Anatole France.
There has been much progress
In recent years in truly experi
mental study of the operations of
the mind, and it is to destroy the
value of such genuine investiga
tions to mi* up their results with
dreams, fancies and unveriflable
speculations based on the imag
ined doings of imagined men and
women. Science Is even less suit
able than history for presentation
In the dress of fiction.
This is not to say that all
stories called “psychological” are
worthless, considered as stories.
Borne of them are very powerful
and fascinating, but it is both ab
surd and harmful to take them
seriously as substitutes for genu
ine psychology, as a great num
ber of readers are encouraged to
do, even by reviewers, who ought
to know better.
Freud’s Fancy.
Soma of the great fiction
writers possess a penetrating
“knowledge of the human heart,”
and wonderful sHUI in inventing
interesting complications of con
duct, but—confessedly, they do
not deal with real, or unaltered,
personalities. That would be con
trary to their method Itself. There
Is nothing more flatly unscientific,
or piorc unlike real evolution,
than the “evolution of churm-ter”
in a novel. The most celebrated
WASHINGTON, D. O,
NOVEMBER 26,1924.
characters drawn in fiction,
though often very plausible, no
more truly resemble the charac- -
tens of real life than the fasci
nating, though sometimes false,
reasonings and achievements of
“Sherlock Holmes” resembles the
proceedings and methods of suc
cessful living detectives.
In the very best fiction the
characters presented are, by the
nature of the case, forced prod
ucts, like plants sprouted and de
veloped under artificial. Invented,
and exaggerated conditions. Even
If the writer of a fiction allows
himself to float unresisting on the
current of his ideas as to what
a given character would do, or
become, in given circumstances,
the result cannot be a true repre
sentation of nature; it is oolored
by all his unconscious prejudices
and all his Ignorance.
On the other hand, if he de
liberately shapes the course of de
velopment in accord with acts,
situations, and motives supplied
out ot his own invention, he must
possess groat effrontery to claim
that he has “held the mirror up
to nature.”
However, as far as I am con
cerned, I am quite ready to have
someone prove that Anatole
France preceded Freud in speculat
ing on the “libido,” for one Is
as fanciful and unscientific as
the other.
License Plates
Editor, The Waehlngton Time*.
rview of your editorial rela
tive to “Traffic Murders”
there is one point in my mind
that seems to have been over
looked by Major Sullivan. “Why
is it necessary to have a license
plate showing both front and rear
in the day, but only one and that
one in the rear at night?”
Don’t you think the license num
ber would be more readable If be
sides enlarging them the numbers
were cut completely out of the
tags with a white frosted glass
behind them and a light placed In
an enclosure behind them, both
front and rear? Have these lights
on a direct wire from the battery
and not under any circumstances
operated from the instrument
board, so that in case of an ac
cident the operator could not turn
them off without getting out of
the automobile. The white frost
ed glass would make them read
able in day without the light be
hind them.—G. W. D., Motorist.
Singular
Editor, Time*:
THAT is interesting news about
Elsie Hill, who refused to
take the name of Levitt, her hus
band. having a baby girl. The
question arises; Will the daugh
ter, like the mother, have the
right to refuse to take the name
Levitt, or will she have the name
Levitt wished on her? Is Levitt
good enough for the daughter,
but not good enough for the
mother?
The singular thing Is that
“Miss” Hill freely exploits the
fact that she Is the daughter of
ex-Congressman Hill of Connecti
cut, but unlike her mother, is
unwilling to take the name of
the father of her child. Why do
these feminists marry anyway,
when they apparently ars unwill
ing to acknowledge their hus
bands? S. T.