Local Edicts

There is no tyrant so absolute as an editor within the confines of his paper. His slaves tremble at his glance. One word from him makes or un-makes a nobly formed article. If he's so inclined, there is no end to the whims which become solemn law by his decree. If he is so inclined, and has wisdom, he may make far-reaching innovations. There are thousands of these petty tyrants throughout the country. Readers sojourning in the principality of one, are often totally unaware of what is a capital offence in another--or what, by royal decree, is daily food in a third.

One of the forms which editorial decrees sometimes take is a platform or an idea for the community. Recently The New York World undertook to boost Manhattan as the city for the next Democratic Convention. If the Democratic Convention goes to Manhattan, it will be a feather in the World's cap and its editor will remind the residents of his principality that he surveys all and is monarch of all he surveys. But the World's project is insignificant compared with the attempt of the editorial monarch of The Christian Science Monitor.

He has decreed that all the nations of the globe should secure themselves against future war by legislating that in case of war not only soldiers, but capital and labor should be conscripted for the nation's need. To be sure, the idea is not new. It was suggested by the late President Harding last Summer. But the Monitor monarch proposes that a Constitutional Amendment shall be passed making this triple conscription obligatory-- and thereby in the future scare all classes of society out of jingoism. In pursuance of his editorial decree, the front page of the Monitor has been placarded heavily with notices of the decree, giving the opinions of people --from the "spokesman at the White House" to Jane Addams--and the rear (editorial) page been liberally posted with explications of the plan.

If the plan should ever be enacted, it would be a great feather in the Monitor's cap. Meanwhile it is the daily pabulum of residents in the Monitor's domain, and an unknown dish to those who live beneath the swaying of other King Editors' quills.