POLITICAL SATIRE, DECEASED

The death of political satire presents an occasion for truly national mourning. The decease is not recent; one hardly knows when to record the unhappy end of the art of Dean Swift. That it is dead, however, and that it has left the political arena in this country a sterile waste land compared to what it was in its prime, is hardly to be denied.

No floral wreath could better have announced the death than the message which Mr. Coolidge gave to the citizens of this country on New Year's Day. A request to the press that adverse opinion should not be openly expressed, lest observers from other nations should form the erroneous opinion that sentiment was at times divided on major issues in our national politics, would have been a succulent morsel to the political bear-baiters of yesteryear. But they are dead, and in this day and age a pronunciamento from the White House Spokesman becomes imbued with that same mystic sanctity which enshrouds its author.

Even politics, however, has its White Hope. In Mayor Rogers, the American public has the sole survivor of a great tradition. There are others on the borderland. T. R. B. in the New Republic, Walter Lippmann in the New York World, an occasional editorial in the Nation, these form a gallant and a pitiful band. And even these are not always unencumbered with such impedimenta as missions, ideals, or factional propaganda, all of which are spurious to the true satirist.

The calamity becomes oriented in a larger conception only through recognition of the profound changes being undergone in this country by our theory of democracy. The complete absence of a party of opposition, increasing apathy in the ranks of stolid citizenry, the imminent danger of a permanent one-party rule are symptoms of the same sickness as that of which political invective died. Mayor Rogers may rally other joyous wits and fearless spirits to his cause. The future may have an Ariemus Ward, a Josh Billings, a Mr. Dooley yet unborn. It is certainly to be hoped that this is true. For not only is the cool, sour edge of satire a keen tool to political progress, but without it, this business of government would become a dreary thing indeed.