“Geneva, Oct. 31.

“The English schoolboy Allen, who was arrested at Lausanne railway station on Saturday, for having painted red the statue of General Jomini of Payerne, was liberated yesterday, after paying a fine of L24.  Allen has proceeded to Germany, where he will continue his studies.  The people of Payerne are indignant, and clamoured for his detention in prison.”

Now I have no doubt that ethics and social necessity require a contrary attitude, but I will freely confess that my first emotions on reading of this exploit were those of profound and elemental pleasure.  There is something so large and simple about the operation of painting a whole stone General a bright red.  Of course I can understand that the people of Payerne were indignant.  They had passed to their homes at twilight through the streets of that beautiful city (or is it a province?), and they had seen against the silver ending of the sunset the grand grey figure of the hero of that land remaining to guard the town under the stars.  It certainly must have been a shock to come out in the broad white morning and find a large vermilion General staring under the staring sun.  I do not blame them at all for clamouring for the schoolboy’s detention in prison; I dare say a little detention in prison would do him no harm.  Still, I think the immense act has something about it human and excusable; and when I endeavour to analyse the reason of this feeling I find it to lie, not in the fact that the thing was big or bold or successful, but in the fact that the thing was perfectly useless to everybody, including the person who did it.  The raid ends in itself; and so Master Allen is sucked back again, having accomplished nothing but an epic.

There is one thing which, in the presence of average modern journalism, is perhaps worth saying in connection with such an idle matter as this.  The morals of a matter like this are exactly like the morals of anything else; they are concerned with mutual contract, or with the rights of independent human lives.  But the whole modern world, or at any rate the whole modern Press, has a perpetual and consuming terror of plain morals.  Men always attempt to avoid condemning a thing upon merely moral grounds.  If I beat my grandmother to death to-morrow in the middle of Battersea Park, you may be perfectly certain that people will say everything about it except the simple and fairly obvious fact that it is wrong.  Some will call it insane; that is, will accuse it of a deficiency of intelligence.  This is not necessarily true at all.  You could not tell whether the act was unintelligent or not unless you knew my grandmother.  Some will call it vulgar, disgusting, and the rest of it; that is, they will accuse it of a lack of manners.  Perhaps it does show a lack of manners; but this is scarcely its most serious disadvantage.  Others will talk about the loathsome spectacle and the revolting scene; that is, they will accuse it of a deficiency