Baltimore Evening Sun (1 April 1915): 6.

Ah, the patriotism of the English! And their courage! Boozing and going on strikes while the Belgians freeze and die in the trenches!

Don’t forget the First Branch City Councilmen who yielded their limber necks to the Rev. Dr. W. W. Davis, the Hon. Eugene Levering and the other pious bosses of the Lord’s Day Alliance, and so voted against the Sunday baseball ordinance on June 10 last. Here is a complete list of them:

Jung, of the Second ward. Spencer, of the Fourth ward. Rapp, of the Sixth ward. Gettemuller, of the Seventh ward. Heatwole, of the Twelfth ward. West, of the Thirteenth ward. Kilmer, of the Fifteenth ward. Tolson, of the Sixteenth ward. Cummings, of the Seventeenth ward. O’Meara, of the Nineteenth ward. Hildebrand, of the Twentieth ward.

Of these Pecksniffs the following are candidates for re-election in May:

Spencer, of the Fourth ward. Geteemuller, of the Seventh ward. Heatwole, of the Twelfth ward. West, of the Thirteenth ward. Tolson, of the Sixteenth ward. Cummings, of the Seventeenth ward. O’Meara, of the Nineteenth ward. Hildebrand, of the Twentieth ward.

In addition, Rapp, of the Sixth ward, is a candidate for the Second Branch of the Council in the First district. Kilmer, of the Fifteenth ward, has been given a State job by Dr. Goldsborough, and has thus retired from the Councill–let us hope permanently. Of the eight standing for re-election, Geteemuller, Cummings, O’Meara and Hildebrand have primary fights on their hands. Gettmuller and O’Meara are Democrats; Cummings and Hildebrand are Republicans, the one black and the other white. Let all registered Democrats of the Seventh and Nineteenth wards vote against Gettemuller and O’Meara at the primary on April 6. Let all registered Republicans of the Seventeenth and Twentieth wards vote against Cummings and Hildebrand on the same day. Not one of the four has been a useful Councilman. The Council would be the better for their departure.

The remaining four–Spencer, of the Fourth ward; Heatwole, of the Twelfth; West, of the Thirteenth, and Tolson, of the Sixteenth–are unopposed in the primaries. All four are Democrats. The one way to get at them is to vote for their Republican opponents in the May election. With the exception of Tolson, all of them are fifth-raters. West has been such a failure as a Councilman that organized bipartisan opposition to him has developed in his ward. His opponent, the Hon. George W. CAmeron, is a man of clean record and good promise. So are the opponents of Spencer and Tolson. Heatwole has no opposition.

Of the whole bunch of Lord’s Day Alliance gladiators, O’Meara, of the Nineteenth ward, is probably the worst. As chairman of the Committee on Police and Jail he has done more to block good legislation in the Council than any other man. He is now full of protestations of virtue, but at the City Hall he has actually played the part of a petty tyrant and Dogberry: his coarse insults to the doctors who advocated the anti-noise ordinance will be remembered. O’Meara’s opponent, Dr. Joseph E. Muse, is pledged to a reasonable Sunday baseball ordinance–which measure, by the way, has just been indorsed by the Hon. Daniel C. Ammidon, president of the Police Board, and certainly no immoralist. Every vote against O’Meara in next Tuesday’s primary will be a vote against hypocrisy, ring rule and bad government. The issue in the Nineteenth ward is not between Frank Kelly and Home Rule, as the Hon. Dan Loden is seeking to make the curious believe. It is a clear issue between a thoroughly bad City Councilman and a candidate who promises to pay some heed to the desires and demands of his constituents.

The discovery that England’s failure to make any progress in the war is sdue to the deviltries of the Rum Demon at home will give the judicious another excuse for lifting the ironic eyebrow. Any excuse when the facts grow bitter! Let it be noted that the Germans, though still laboring under the immoral license system, are yet able to produce all the munitions of war that they need, even without the moral help of the Hon. William Jennings Bryan and the American arms factories. What is more, they are able to get all the men necessary to project those munitions at the English screen of Belgians, Canadians, Frenchmen, Russians, Turkos, Gurkas and Sikhs. Poor old England! What a country, indeed! What a pitiable spectacle before the world! Who would have thought, a year ago, that the English would be so soon and so cruelly found out!

The estimble Evening Sunpaper on the Figaro-pogrom in the Fifth Regiment:

Messina, considered the greatest of Napoleon’s marshals, could never in his youth have qualified as a lieutenant in the Fifth. * * * He was the son of a saloonkeeper * * *

With the utmost imaginable respect, Bosh! The Messina case is in no sense parallel to the Barber Jones case. The Duke of Messina retired from the saloon business the moment he took a commission in the French Army; there is no record that he maintained a barroom in connection with his headquarters and served his soldiers behind the bar. The objection to Sergeant Jones is not that he was a barber “in his youth,” but that he is a barber now. It is one thing for a military officer to exercise command and discipline over his men tonight, and to shave them at 15 cents a head tomorrow morning.

Sergeant Jones will do well to consider this fact before he allows his unwise friends to go on with their effort to maek a martyr of him. The democratic platitudes that those friends are now discharging into the public ear are having the sole effect of reducing the whole of democracy to an absurdity. I hold no brief against barbers. Very few of them, true enough, actually know how to shave a customer, but they undoubtedly do their darndest, and so they deserve to be ranked as honest and worthy men. But when a barber takes off his white coat and puts on gold lace he must inevitably tickle the risibilities of all who have diaphragms to laugh with, and so he cannot complain when he is laughed at. Out of just such figures, indeed, all farces have been made since the days of Aristophanes.

Don’t miss reading “The Crime Against Europe,” by Sir Roger Casement. If your bookseller hasn’t got it, send 25 cents to the Celtic Press, 15 South Ninth street, Philadelphia.

Partial list of eminent patriots who have lately gone on the water-wagon:

H. M. King George of England. H. M. the Czar of Russia. The Right Hon. D. Lloyd-George.

Partial list of gentlemen who have not gone on the water-wagon:

Field Marshal H. M. the Kaiser. Field Marshal Marshal v. Hindenburg. Generaloherst v. Kluck. General v. Beseler v. Antwerpen. General v. Mackensen. General v. Emmich v. Lüttich.

Pay your money, gents–and take your choice!