It will surprise numbers of well-meaning Americans to learn that a constantly increasing body of cultured, artistic people are beginning to regard the young English buffoon, Charles Chaplin, as an extraordinary artist, as well as a comic genius. To these Americans one may dare only to whisper that it is dangerous to condemn a great national figure thoughtlessly. First, let us realize that at the age of twenty-six Charles Chaplin … has made the whole world laugh. This proves that his work possesses a quality more vital than mere clowning…. To the writer Charles Chaplin appears as a great comic artist, possessing inspirational powers and a technique as unfaltering as Rejane's. If it be treason to Art to say this, then let those exalted persons who allow culture to be defined only upon their own terms make the most of it.

Apart from the qualified critics, many thoughtful persons are beginning to analyze the Chaplin performances with a serious desire to discover his secret for making irresistible entertainment out of more or less worthless material. They seek the elusive quality that leavens the lump of the usually pointless burlesques in which he takes part. The critic knows his secret. It is the old, familiar secret of inexhaustible imagination, governed by the unfailing precision of a perfect technique.

Chaplin is vulgar. At the present stage of his career he is frankly a buffoon, and buffoonery is and always has been tinctured with the vulgar…. When a great buffoon like Chaplin is engaged in making people laugh at the broad and obvious facts of life, he is continually so near the line that separates good taste from bad taste that it is too much to expect him never to stray for a moment on the wrong side of the line. If, in the name of so-called refinement, we are going to obliterate Chaplin and set him down as not worth considering, we must wipe all buffoonery off the slate and lay down the absolute rule that it is not a legitimate part of public entertainment.

Further, we must remember that the medium of Charles Chaplin's expression is entirely new. He has had only two years to develop his particular phase of the moving picture art….

Anyone who has seen the primitive and meaningless comic scenes in which Chaplin began his career will see the difficulties under which his art was at first forced to express itself. Undoubtedly he will fare better in the future. It is said that his newest travesty … shows that with a really intelligent scenario to aid him he can be supremely comic and at the same time free from vulgarity. Those of us who believe that Charles Chaplin is essentially a great comic artist look forward to fine achievements. We think that we know, perhaps better that he knows himself, what he is capable of accomplishing, and we are confident that he will attain the artistic stature to which it seems he is entitled.