As one might expect, the throne-room of the New England Watch and Ward Society is a cold, bare cell in the far-reaches of the Christian Endeavor Building, just across from the Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Children and nigh unto the stronghold of the Anti-vivisection League. In the midst of two city blocks of good-doings, this traditionally New England watchdog of morality slowly undergoes a transition that may transform a 20th Century Inquisition into a same, if overexcited, organ of public conscience. From out of this holy-of-holies stop Beacon Hill have come some of the most astonishing misconceptions of the public stood since the scholastics counted angles on pinpoints, and from this same stern eyric now comes a new concept of what Sin, traditional antagonist of all that was holy in Boston, will mean to New Englanders in these unsettling times.

Up until 1920 there was never any question about Sinfulness. The Watch and Ward Society was set up in 1876 to combat gambling, prostitution, obscenity and pornography, which, to the fertile minds of the Brahmins of the time, covered the field fairly well. With enthusiasm that would be suspected in other endeavors, Bostonians of excellent name and irreproachable connections condoned, even abetted book-burning, Carrie-Nation antics, even the use of Harvard undergraduates to test the carnal tendencies of certain girlies of hesitant virtue in the Back Bay.

The Society became synonymous with its executive secretaries, two of whom, J. Frank Chase and the Reverend Bodwell, now rank with the witch burners in local repute. Of impeccable upbringing, both men were of the cloth, and had not the slightest idea of the whys and wheres of Sin--merely reiterating with regularity to the courts and to available Sunday afternoon societies that it was wrong and was to be rooted out of Boston. Bodwell was an intellectual pugilist who was ready to go anywhere to supervise personally the humiliation of those who strayed, and was also ready to take to the sawdust trail of oratory in any argument over Evil in Boston.

Chase, unwittingly, was the greatest press-agent bookies, procures, and pornographists ever had. Hardly a month would go by in the 20's without a detailed blast in the pages of Boston paper, great bonfires of indignation over the police department, the commissioners, the district attorneys, even the courts. As a result, Chase was twice publicly made quite the fool, once by the dyspeptic H. L. Mencken (who, incidentally, got valuable publicity for the infant Mercury) and once by the Society's own board of directors, who retreated in horror as Chase inveigled, almost hounded a book seller into trafficking in dubious literature so that Chase might have his test case. At this point Professor Julian Coolidge led a group of prominent Bostonians out of the Society that had once claimed President Eliot as a vice-president.

Late in the 20's the need for change became apparent. While great numbers of the Society's directors predicted a Gomorrah-like conflagration, the new secretary, Louis Croteau, embarked on a policy that conceded to Evil on short-run objectives, but went down the line when it came to the greater dangers. These were, and are, according to Croteau, commercialized gambling, professional and simon-pure prostitution, the narcotics trade, and obscenity.

Croteau is not the sort of man you'd expect in the wispy levels of morality. He stands with his feet firmly in the muck, in full knowledge of what goes on in Boston, and why, and whom to go to see to have it stopped. His great lament is the overplay given the Society's censorship activities, which take only ten percent of its efforts and even less of its $2,500,000 endowment. Outside the field of censorship, Watch and Ward is just another Legion of Decency, an unofficial vice squad that has the support of most communities. But this controversial obscenity in print and on the stage, according to the Society itself, "is a matter for the individual to judge." The great difficulty with that stand being, of course, that the Society often takes it upon itself to judge the issue for all of New England. In its most controversial cases, Watch and Ward had been guilty of attempting to substitute the judgment of a committee of six for the considered opinions of all readers everywhere concerning the literature in doubt. When it comes to the fine difference between fifth for filth's sake, and reality for the sake of good literature, the Watch and Ward Society of 1946 once more lights its torch of emotionalism and proceeds down the glory road.

Many will question the need for a watchdog of morality, especially in Boston. But Croteau cities Scollay and the "tenderloin" area (in and around lower Washington Street) as examples of what a surface-strict city will allow under the facade. Whether Watch and Ward can help has been a matter for frequent public debate. Certainly the Society's streamlined and neo-sociological methods in the field of vice-suppression cannot hurt. But along with the new methods has come expansion--Watch and Ward will move from its retreat to occupy the entire Christian Endeavor Building. Its new facilities will be oppressed into the good flight, especially into the campaign to enforce, in all seriousness, the Massachusetts law against fornication. Even with its new liberal outlook, this last outpost of holier-than-then may well find mass distrust among those who take their Sin along with death and taxes.