SHAKSPEARE THE TRADUCER.
The members of the League of Scottish Veterans of the World War met recently in New York, and after "due deliberation" (Query, Can Scotchmen deliberate "duly" in New York now?) passed a resolution demanding that Shakspeare's tragedy, Macbeth, be removed from the curriculum of English literature studies in American schools.
Apparently this was an example of "dry" Scotch humour. A neighbouring city had previously banned The Merchant of Venice from its schools on the ground that the character of Shylock was a libel on the Jewish race. If Jewish children no longer had to pay for school editions of The Merchant of Venice should Scottish infants still have to squander their bawbees on a play that insulted their forbears? Perish the thought! "We consider," they declared, "that if a Jewish gabardine is to be cleaned by American Boards of Education the stain should likewise be removed from the Scottish kilt." And if there are no reliable cleaners in the U.S.A. it should be sent to Perth.
The example thus nobly set is being widely followed. The members of the Southern Jazz-band Union met yesterday way down in Tennessee, and passed a resolution demanding the elimination of Othello from the educational curriculum. The proposer declared with some heat that "no coloured gentleman would spifflicate his missus wid a bolster on de word of a mean white thief like dat Iago." The mere suggestion was dam foolishness and an insult to the most prominent section of the freeborn citizens of the U.S.A. "If dey gwine whitewash de Scotchman, why not de man ob colour too?"