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Show has a nobility and often a sublimity that does not' accord with cheap songs and painted and bespangled nudity. How should wo feel if the vaude-villians vaude-villians sought to interpret our religious relig-ious sentiments with a few comic kicks and a rasping song that bore about as much relatiou to a hymn as the aver-ago aver-ago patriotic song of the stage bears to the national antheml Perhaps the noblest, the most thrilling, thrill-ing, of patriotic songs is the "Marseillaise." "Marseil-laise." It voices the spirit of a people whose love of country seems too sacred for even the touch of desecration. The American cherishes the same love of country, and yet ho endures, sometimes with disgust, perhaps, but usually without with-out protest, the utter bad taste of stage patriotism. We can imagine our sons and brothers marching to their death to the immortal strains of the "Marseillaise" "Marseil-laise" or of our own national anthem, but can we imagine them going into battle to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country and their national ideals to the strains and words of a song born in the soul of someone less worthy even than a tango lizard f Perhaps it is not too late to place the ban of public disapproval upon such songs and representations. At least in war time we should insist that the divine di-vine spirit of patriotism be not travestied trav-estied and degraded by the trivial sentimentalities sen-timentalities and grotesqueries of the stage. RAGTIME PATRIOTISM. "Over there, over there," carols or cackles the vaudeville lady, wrapped in the red, white and blue, reducing the nobilities of human nature to tho absurd. ab-surd. Or, perhaps, the flag of our country coun-try has been turned into iridescent pantaloons pan-taloons in Ae name of patriotism and refined vaudeville. Devotees, or perhaps it were better to call them debauchees, of vaudeville, are willing to condono many crudities and vulgarities, but there comes a time when even the soul of the confirmed and decadent patron of vaudeville revolts re-volts at the expression of patriotism in these terms. Sometimes we wonder what those thin, faded old men in blue, the men of the army of the Potomac or of the Tennessee, think of the George Cohan style of voicing and visualizing patriotism. patriot-ism. In peace times, perhaps, they laughed with the rest of us, admitting the bad taste, but seeing the extenuations extenua-tions of vaudeville or musical comedy. But in war time the gaudy and the tawdry use of the national flag and of tho sentiment of patriotism by the men and women of the stage, saddens and repels. Love of country, next to religion, appeals ap-peals to the Americans as a sacred sentiment sen-timent deserving universal respect. It |