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While the ear of the nation was attuned to Nudism, Dr. Boone tried to fill it with rebuttal against Mr. Smith and with arguments for Nudism. Cried he: "There is more social danger to our young folks in a quart of gin than in three miles of State-censored movie film. There is a striking inconsistency between the removal of prohibition from liquor [for which Mr. Smith fought] and the placing of prohibition upon a movement which by actual results, has everywhere been hailed as a blessing and in no instances has been cited as the source of immorality or illicit relations, or disruptive of conjugal happiness."
In what amounted to a notably bold editorial in the lay press, the New York Herald Tribune declared:
"In this controversy it is much easier to go part way with Dr. Boone than it is to go anywhere at all with the League of Decency. . . . The exhibitionists among these folk who would go through the world as they came into it are a trifling minority. ... All testimony goes to show that the great majority of these latter-day Edenites take their antics in the altogether solemnly, if not sadly. ... All nonnudist reporters on the life at a nudist camp find it insufferably dull. They are diverted by nothing about it so much as the quiet but firm sway of the proprieties over groups that affect to live like nymphs and fauns. The truth of the matter seems to be that the average nudist is a puritan. . . . He notes with triumph that he experiences no wicked reactions to visions that are allegedly wicked. This indulgence may seem thoroughly absurd; but when the League of Decency sets out to have it pronounced immoral, is it not simply compounding an absurdity?"
*Circulation, 50,000. Last week buyers of Dr. Boone's The Nudist from Manhattan newsstands were obliged to secure the February issue clandestinely. Charged with obscenity, the publishers had to limit circulation until New York courts decide whether The Nudist's modestly retouched pictures of naked men, women and children violate the law. Complained Dr. Boone last week: "We might tone down the illustrations. We do not desire to break the law. But we feel we should have the right and the privilege to publish unless it can be proved that Nudism is provocative of immorality."