Weary of the moral shackles imposed by a long tradition of Puritanism and the incisive probings of the Watch and Ward Society, the population of Greater Boston today consumes what may well be a larger portion of spice with its reading than any other group of people in the country. Bostonians bow gracefully to the rebust vigilantes in matters of what plays to see, what songs to listen to, and what books to read, as long as they are left free to romp unfettered among the ax murders and attacks willingly dispensed by their morning papers.

Hampered only slightly by the translucent blinders applied by the Watch and Ward Society, Boston now gets its mayhem straight with its cornflakes and cares little about the quality of the news. An uncommonly happy hunting ground for carpet-bagger journalism, the city is now vamped by no less than five newspapers devoting their space to scandals, with the practical exclusion of any other type of news. These papers have a total circulation of 1,900,000 in a city of 2,300,000, leaving little room for news coverage of national and international events. The result of this topic monopoly is that each day Bostonians can quote a blow-by-blow description of any one of six different front page crimes, but can tell you little else except that Lake Success is in New York State and that Moscow is cold and bad.

For a city that prides itself justifiably on its educational facilities, industry, and world trade to be so journalistically warped and barren seems paradoxical. What accurate and adequate coverage manages to penetrate the formidable perimeter must come from the New York papers and the Christian Science Monitor, a sectarian newspaper with a minute 15,900 copies distributed locally.

The continued reign of diluted pornography is even more incongruous in the light of the supposed power of the Watch and Ward in its fight against the spread of obscenity. Happy to take up the scent and go bugling off after a book like "Strange Fruit," or inflexible in their command that a singer stand ramrod stiff during a rendition of "A Huggin' an' A Chalkin'," they remain helpless while the newspapers go into a detailed analysis of the intricacies of an assault. However loud the moral societies complain about the quality of the Boston newspapers, they find that the city editors are too powerful for them, quoting freedom of the press as their license to circulate cheesecake instead of news.

Paralyzed but undaunted, the Watch and Ward is planning to plug up the loophole in Boston's moral strait-jacket by introducing legislation restraining the newspapers. The Hearst syndicate counters neatly by a campaign against obscene literature to prove that it is on the right side. For this sop they are told to "clean their own house" and the battle goes merrily on while the newspapers' circulation climbs. Whatever the reason for the inability of sober-minded Boston to cope with the greatest lack in its society, the opposing factions seem to have split the pie. Bostonians now get murder with their coffee and morals with their tea, all the while remaining blissfully ignorant of what goes on outside the city limits.