United States Senate and Kipling's Tomlinson

By Jack Dionne

I wish we could get the United States Senate, with the present investigating committees in the front row, to give up just one short thirty minutes of their valuable time, and devote that time to a slow, careful, and thoughtful reading of one of Kipling's most reinarkable poems-"feq1linsen."

There are in that poem so many direct comparisons, so many remarkable similes, so many things so very, very much like what the Senate is doing today withits wholesale investigations, that I believe it would come closer than anything else that I know of to stemming this tide of "investigation" via the gossip route.

This character of Kipling's whose name was Tomlinson, died and went to Heaven's gate, and there St. Peter met him, to give him his examination, and asked him to stand and tell what he had actually DONE while on earth.

And Tomlinson's answer came:

"This I have read in a book," he said, "and that was told to me, and this I have thought that another man thought of a Prince in Muscovy."

"Oh, this I have felt, and this I have guessed, and this I have heard men say, and this they wrote that another man wrote ofa Carl in Norroway."

"And this I have heard" quoth Tomlinson, "and this was noised abroad, and this I ha' got from a Belgion bock, on the word of a dead French lord."

And so on, went Tomlinson's story of the things he had DONE.

See the point?

Repeated, re-hashed, hearsay gossip that has gone from lip to lip and back again; things that dead men who can't rise and speak for themselves are alleged to have told; with all the innumerable opportunities and possibilities for derangement by reason of human memory, human frailty, human tendencies to forget, to exaggerate, to transpose' to substitute, to lie-all these things are being permitted to find listeners in official position, and to go into the public press, blackening the names of men, and casting shadows over reputations, that can never be erased. And all this is happening in ofEcial Washington, at the capitol seat of the greatest nation the world has known; one that since the day of its inception has guaranteed to every man equal rights, trial byjury, the privilege of facing his accusers, and the recourse of the courts in defending himself against defamation of character.

I am not interested in the guilt or innocence of any particular man who has been drawn into this controversy. I AM interested in a square deal forEVERYMAN who claims this fag as his foundation of freedom. And the "evidence" that has gone before the committees at Washington, and into the public print, destroying man after man without trial by jury, compares most favorably with the evidence that Kipling's "Tomlinson" gave before ffeaven's gate. bringing about a favorable decision. SHOW HIM THE ENCLOSED CARTOON IN A TACTFUL WAY AND ASK IF IT'S FAIR FOR HIM TO PAY FOR HIS RIDE! TALK ABOUT THE ASSOCIATION ACTIVITIES TO YOUR NEIGHBOR AND URGE HIM TO JOIN ANDHELPMAKE IT BIGGER AND BETTER!

I know not what the law of immunity is covering those testifying before governnlental committees, but I trust it is possible to make every human who testifies before those committees PROVEthe things they have said, or else learn in some unforgettable manner, that men's reputations are still things of value in this country, and no,t to be destroyed wantonly and with impunity.

Said John Henry Kirby to the Southern Pine convention recently: "When we were boys, we used to blacken our hands on the bottom of a kettle, and rub the smut on the faces of other children. We called that game 'smut.' The United States Senate is playing the game of 'smut' now. The difference is that our game was childish and harmless. THEIR game is childish, but NOT harmless."

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Answers to recent questionnair,es sent out in connection rvith standardization program have been responded to splendidly by California yards and will be a valuable contribution to the next conference."