EVOLUTION IMBROGLIO

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 189, 15 July 1925, Page 4

EVOLUTION IMBROGLIO

“PRISONER AT THE BAR.” VIOLATION OF STATE LAW. A VILLAGE OF CRANKS. SAN FRANCISCO, June 17. The approach of the Tennesse evolution trial has served to whet the appetite of the general public, and the newspapers metaphorically “fell over themselves” in playing up the curious controversy. Professor John T. Scopes, the high school teacher of evolution, who has become the '‘prisoner at the bar,” for teaching the banned subject in Tennessee, has been on a visit to New York, where he was the centre ot a number of informal gatherings to do honour to him. He was feted as a hero of the hour, and was considerably overcome by the lionising accorded him. lie brushed up on the intricacies of the rise of man, and there wae much discussion of the part radicals were playing in arrangements for the defence of Scopes on the charge of violating the State law against teaching evolution. Clarence Harrow, Bainbridge Colby and Dudley Field Malone, all internationally famous lawyers, who are the associate defence counsel, visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and they saw in the hall of the Ago of Man specimens showing the evolution of man, and the evolution of the horse. Thev conferred with Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, noted authority on evolution, and president of the museum, who offered to “line up” scientific witnesses for I lie trial. When Professor Scopes visited the museum, Professor Oborn warned him not to let the Radicals run the case. In this connection, the New York Evening Post says: “Greenwich village is on its way to Rhea County. There shortly will descend on Dayton, Tennessee, the greatest aggregation of assorted cranks, including agnostics, atheists, communists, syndicalists and new-dawners, ever known in a single procession. The Scopes case, teachers, research workers, biologists and other men of science are being smothered in the rush of long-haired men and short-haired women, feminists, neurotics, free-thinkers and freelovcrs, who are determined to shine in reflected glory. The vital issues of the trial in Tennessee are being lost in the stampede of professional martyrs and a swarm of practising egoists.” SPURNS FORTUNE. An earnest young man, to whom the original copy of the Constitution of the United States apparently appealed more than movie and publicity offers of a small fortune, left New York, almost mystified by the attitude of theatrical managers and cinema producers bent on securing his nation-wide services to appear either personally or through the medium of the movie, before the general public. To all these tempting offers Professor Scopes turned a deaf ear, and declared he was intent upon returning to Dayton to pose as the “goat” in the widely noticed Tennessee evolution case.

Scopes left New York after refusing offers aggregating 150,000 dollars, according to a statement published by the New York Times.

Halting at Washington on-his way home after conferences with defence counsel in New York, the defendant evinced the great est interest in the glass-enclosed document of American rights in' the chamber of the Supreme Court, where eventually a. final decision in his case may be banded down.

Refusing all money oilers, which included 50,000 dollars for a motion picture in which he would appear, because, it was said, he felt the trial was a serious matter, besides which nothing elso mattered, Professor Scopes viewed the Supreme Court chamber with a distinctly thoughtful expression, it was noted. Meanwhile, arrangements for the trial continued at Dayton. The influx of newspaper writers was expected to be so great that a telegraph company announced that it had assigned ten operators to move the story of the trial out of the little Tennessee town for world consumption. Tennessee is on trial, and not evolution, said Dr Charles F. Aked, former partner of the Rockefeller Church of New York, and of the First Congregational Church of San Francisco, and now' pastor of the fashionable Wiltshire Congregational Church of Los Angeles, California, in a statement he made in the southern Californian city. “Who will be on trial when Professor Scopes faces charges of teaching the theory of evolution in Tennessee schools?” he asked, adding: “It is thirty-two years since Henry Drummond delivered at Northlield tlie lectures on evolution which make up his volume ‘The Ascent of Man.’ Moody said of Drummond that he was the most Christlike man that he (Moody) had ever known. It is more than forty years since Westminster Abbey, the greatest Christian Church in England opened its doors to bury Charles Darwin amongst her imperial and sainted dead. It is nearly seventy years since Darwin published his ‘Origin of Species.’ Evolution is »ot o:i trial, Tennessee is. And judgment already has been given in the high court of public opinion. The people of Tennessee are the laughing-stock of the world.” “DOWN WITH DARWINISM.” Aroused by what they regard as “monkey business,” anti-evolutionists in fourteen States have risen to the cry of “Down with Darwinism,” and threaten to declare war in some form on the scientists who claim that the Biblical story ot Adam and Eve is a fairy tale. With Dayton, Tennessee, where the new State evolution law is being tested, as storm centre, a tremendous wave of fundamentalism is sweeping the country, according to a nation-wide survey, made from Now York.

Legislatures, school boards, college faculties, prominent Lawyers, free-thought leagues—all these have been drawn into the controversy, with the anti-evolutionists crying: “God or Gorilla?” And the opposition lias been flinging back: “God is an evolutionist,” and “There’s no monkey in the evolutionist’s family tree.” Smouldering fires of indignation among the fundamentalists needed only the impetus of the Scopes case to cause them to flare up in full blast. Tho present anti-evolution movement is centred, largely in the south and south-west. States in which controversies have occurred or are now in progress include, besides Tennessee, North Carolina.- Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky, Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, Arkansas, lowa, West Virginia and North Dakota. ‘ The teaching of evolution lias been prohibited for two years in Oklahoma. In Texas the board of regents has ruled that no “infidel, atheist or agnostic” shall be employed in any capacity in the University of Texas. In that State and in Kentucky, the lower Houses of the Legislatures passed antievolution bills, but the upper Houses in each case failed to approve the measures. AGAINST EVOLUTION. Recently the Baptists of Kentucky voted to contribute no funds to any school where evolution is taught. In Florida the Legislature has passed a resolution requesting school board not to employ instructors who taught Darwinism. In that State a bill has been introduced which would make such an instruction unlawful. In North Carolina, the State Board of Education has refused to tolerate teachers who believe in the theory of evolution, and not so long ago the Georgia Legislature deferred action on an appropriation for a State library on the ground that books on evolution might be found there. And lust year, at Mercer University in Georgia, Dr. Henry Fox, biology professor, resigned as the result of a controversy based on evolution.

Bills on evolution are pending or about to be presented in Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, West Virginia. lowa, North Dakota, Illinois, Arizona, Oregon and Minnesota.

Concerning Scopes himself, while in New York in an address to sympathisers, ho told of his pleasure over being tho “goat” in a fight for freedom of thought, saying i “Being a goat is not so unpleasant, If yon are going to be a goat, you want to take thought as to whether you arc to bo a big goat or a little ono. 1 really and truly think this is a fight for freedom of thought.

This trial is not to judge whether I am a criminal.” “I found New Yorkers tiie most lovable people in this country," he went on, with tho most greedy hotels and restaurants and the most selfish people—those reporters who wanted to monopolise all my time and net evon let me see tho Follies’ show.