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diff --git a/6678-8.txt b/6678-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e2c0e87 --- /dev/null +++ b/6678-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4740 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nonsenseorship, by G. G. Putnam and Others + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Nonsenseorship + +Author: G. G. Putnam and Others + +Editor: G. G. Putnam + + +Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6678] +This file was first posted on January 12, 2003 +Last Updated: July 2, 2013 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NONSENSEORSHIP *** + + + + +Produced by Steve Schulze, Charles Franks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. This file was produced from +images generously made available by the CWRU Preservation +Department Digital Library + + + + + + + + + +NONSENSEORSHIP + +SUNDRY OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING PROHIBITIONS INHIBITIONS AND ILLEGALITIES + +By G. G. Putnam and Others + + +CONTRIBUTORS: + + HEYWOOD BROWN + GEORGE S. CHAPPELL + RUTH HALE + BEN HECHT + WALLACE IRWIN + ROBERT KEABLE + HELEN BULLITT LOWRY + FREDERICK O'BRIEN + DOROTHY PARKER + FRANK SWINNERTON + H. M. TOMLINSON + CHARLES HANSON TOWNE + JOHN V. A. WEAVER + ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT + and the AUTHOR of "THE MIRRORS of WASHINGTON" + Edited by G. P. P. + + +Illustrated By Ralph Barton + + + + + +WE HAVE WITH US TODAY + +At current bootliquor quotations, Haig & Haig costs twelve dollars a +quart, while any dependable booklegger can unearth a copy of "Jurgen" +for about fifteen dollars. Which indicates, at least, an economic +application of Nonsenseorship. + +Its literary, social, and ethical reactions are rather more involved. To +define them somewhat we invited a group of not-too-serious thinkers to +set down their views regarding nonsenseorships in general and any pet +prohibitions in particular. + +In introducing those whose gems of protest are to be found in the +setting of this volume, it is but sportsmanlike to state at the start +that admission was offered to none of notable puritanical proclivity. +The prohibitionists and censors are not represented. They require, in a +levititious literary escapade like this, no spokesman. Their viewpoint +already is amply set forth. Moreover, likely they would not be +amusing.... Also, the exponents of Nonsenseorship are victorious; and +at least the agonized cries of the vanquished, their cynical comment or +outraged protest, should be given opportunity for expression! + +Not that we consider HEYWOOD BROUN agonized, cynical, or outraged. +Indeed, masquerading as a stalwart foe of inhibitions, he starts +right out, at the very head of the parade, with a vehement advocacy +of prohibition. His plea (surely, in this setting, traitorous) is to +prohibit liquor to all who are over thirty years of age! He declares +that "rum was designed for youthful days and is the animating influence +which made oats wild." After thirty, presumably, Quaker Oats.... + +And at that we have quite brushed by GEORGE S. CHAPPELL. who serves +a tasty appetizer at the very threshold, a bubbling cocktail of verse +defining the authentic story of censorious gloom. + +Censorship seems a species of spiritual flagellation to BEN HECHT, who, +as he says, "ten years ago prided himself upon being as indigestible a +type of the incoherent young as the land afforded." And nonsenseorship +in general he regards as a war-born Frankenstein, a frenzied virtue +grown hugely luminous; "a snowball rolling uphill toward God and +gathering furious dimensions, it has escaped the shrewd janitors of +orthodoxy who from age to age were able to keep it within bounds." + +Then RUTH HALE, who visualizes glowing opportunities for feminine +achievement in the functionings of inhibited society. "If the world +outside the home is to become as circumscribed and paternalized as the +world inside it, obviously all the advantage lies with those who have +been living under nonsenseorship long enough to have learned to manage +it." + +WALLACE IRWIN is irrepressibly jocose (perhaps because he sailed for +unprohibited England the day his manuscript was delivered), breaking +into quite undisciplined verse anent the rosiness of life since the red +light laws went blue. + +"I am not sure, as I write, that this article ever will be printed," +says ROBERT KEABLE, the English author of "Simon Called Peter." (It is). +Mr. Keable, a minister from Africa, wrote of the war as he saw it in +France, and in a way which offended people with mental blinders. He +declares that the war quite completely knocked humbug on the head and +bashed shams irreparably. "Rebels," says he, meaning those who speak +their mind and write of things as they see them, "must be drowned in a +babble of words." + +And then HELEN BULLITT LOWRY, the exponent of the cocktailored young +lady of today, averring that to the pocket-flask, that milepost between +the time that was and the time that is, we owe the single standard of +drinking. She maintains that the debutantalizing flapper, now driven +right out in the open by the reformers, is the real salvation of our +mid-victrolian society. + +No palpitating defense of censorship would be expected from FREDERICK +O'BRIEN of the South Seas, who contributes (and deliciously defines) +a precious new word to the vocabulary of Nonsenseorship, "Wowzer." The +nature of a wowzer is hinted in a ditty sung by certain uninhibited +individuals as they lolled and imbibed among the mystic atolls and white +shadows: + + "Whack the cymbal! Bang the drum! + Votaries of Bacchus! + Let the popping corks resound, + Pass the flowing goblet round! + May no mournful voice be found, + Though wowzers do attack us!" + +DOROTHY PARKER gives vent to a poignant Hymn of Hate, anent reformers, +who "think everything but the Passion Play was written by Avery +Hopwood," and whose dominant desire is to purge the sin from Cinema even +though they die in the effort. "I hope to God they do," adds the author +devoutly. + +From England, through the eyes of FRANK SWINNERTON, we glimpse ourselves +as others see us, and rather pathetically. In days gone by, lured by +reports of America's lawless free-and-easiness, Swinnerton says he +craved to visit us. But no more. The wish is dead. We have become +hopelessly moral and uninviting. "I see that I shall after all have to +live quietly in England with my pipe and my abstemious bottle of beer. +And yet I should like to visit America, for it has suddenly become in my +imagining an enormous country of 'Don't!' and I want to know what it is +like to have 'Don't' said by somebody who is not a woman." + +Also is raised the British voice of H. M. TOMLINSON, singed with satire. +He writes as from a palely pure tomorrow when mankind shall have reached +such a state of complete uniformity of soul, mind and body, that "only a +particular inquiry will determine a man from a woman, though it may +fail to determine a fool from a man." Tomlinson's imagined nation of the +future is "as loyal and homogeneous, as contented, as stable, as a reef +of actinozoal plasm." And over each hearth hangs the sacred Symbol--a +portrait of a sheep. + +Next is the usually jovial face of CHARLES HANSON TOWNE (that face which +has launched a thousand quips) now all stern in his unbattled struggle +with Prohibition, dourly surveying this "land of the spree and home of +the grave."... "My children," says Towne, "as they sip their light wine +and beer..." He is, at least, an optimist! But then, we are reminded he +is also a bachelor. + +In his own American language JOHN WEAVER pictures the feelings of an +old-time saloon habitué when his former friend the barkeep, now rich +from bootlegging, with a home "on the Drive" and all that, declares +his socially-climbing daughter quite too good for this particular "Old +Soak's" son. Weaver's retrospect of "Bill's Place" will bring damp eyes +to the unregenerate: + + "So neat! And over at the free-lunch counter, + Charlie the coon with a apron white like chalk, + Dishin' out hot-dogs, and them Boston Beans, + And Sad'dy night a great big hot roast ham, + Or roast beef simply yellin' to be et, + And washed down with a seidel of Old Schlitz!" + +"The Puritans disliked the theatre because it was jolly. It was a place +where people went in deliberate quest of enjoyment." So says ALEXANDER +WOOLLCOTT, who emerges as a sort of economic champion of stage morality, +though no friend at all of censorship. Despite the _mot_ "nothing risqué +nothing gained," Woollcott emphatically declares the bed-ridden play is +not, as a general thing, successful. "A blush is not, of course, a bad +sign in the box-office," says he, developing his theme, "but the chuckle +of recognition is better. So is the glow of sentiment, so is the tear +of sympathy. The smutty and the scandalous are less valuable than homely +humor, melodramatic excitement or pretty sentiment." + +And last in this variegated and alphabeted company the anonymous +AUTHOR OF "THE MIRRORS OF WASHINGTON" who views the applications of +nonsenseorship from the standpoint of national politics. + +G. P. P. + + + + +CONTENTS + +We Have With Us Today. G. P. P. + + +Evolution-Another of Those Outlines. GEORGE S. CHAPPELL + + +Nonsenseorship. HEYWOOD BROUN + + +Literature and the Bastinado. BEN HECHT + + +The Woman's Place. RUTH HALE + + +Owed to Volstead. WALLACE IRWIN + + +The Censorship of Thought. ROBERT KEABLE + + +The Uninhibited Flapper. HELEN BULLITT LOWRY + + +The Wowzer in the South Seas. FREDERICK O'BRIEN + + +Reformers: A Hymn of Hate. DOROTHY PARKER + + +Prohibition. FRANK SWINNERTON + + +A Guess at Unwritten History. H. M. TOMLINSON + + +In Vino Demi-Tasse. CHARLES HANSON TOWNE + + +Bootleg. JOHN V. A. WEAVER + + +And the Playwright. ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT + + +The Oracle That Always Says "No". THE AUTHOR OF "THE MIRRORS OF WASHINGTON" + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +George S. Chappell demonstrating his Outline of Censorship. + +Heywood Broun finds America suffering from a dearth of Folly. + +Ben Hecht chopping away at the ever-forgiving and all-condoning Bugaboo +of Puritanism. + +Ruth Hale as a XXth Century woman guarding the Home Brew. + +Wallace Irwin composing under the influence of synthetic gin and Andrew +Volstead. + +Robert Keable urging the Automaton called Citizen to turn on his +oppressor. + +Helen Bullitt Lowry watching Puritanism set the Flapper free. + +Frederick O'Brien finds the South Seas purified and beautified by the +Missionaries. + +Dorothy Parker hating Reformers. + +Frank Swinnerton contemplating, from the Tight Little Isle, the two +classes of prigs developed by Prohibition; those who accept it and those +who rebel. + +H. M. Tomlinson regarding, with not too great enthusiasm, the Perfect +State of the Future. + +Charles Hanson Towne and the Law. + +John V. A. Weaver noticing the bartender who has been thrown out of work +by Prohibition. + +Alexander Woollcott rescuing the Playwright from the awful shears of the +Censor. + +The Periscope of the Author of the Mirrors of Washington is turned +toward the Great Negative Oracle. + + + + +NONSENSEORSHIP + + + + +EVOLUTION + +_Another of Those Outlines_ + + +[Illustration: George S. Chappell demonstrating his Outline of +Censorship.] + +BY GEORGE S. CHAPPELL + + I + +[Sidenote: _Time. The Beginning_.] + + When Adam sat with lovely Eve + And, pressed his Primal suit, + There was a ban, if we believe + Our Genesis, on fruit. + But did it give old Adam pause, + This One and only law there was? + + X + +[Sidenote: _Nine verses are supposed to elapse_.] + + And then great Moses, on the crest + Of Sinai, did devise + His tablets, acting for the best, + (Though some thought otherwise). + At least he showed restraint, for then + Man's sins were limited to _Ten_, + + C + +[Sidenote: _Ninety-nine verses elapse_.] + + In later days the Romans proud + Their famous Code began. + And lots of things were not allowed + By just Justinian. + He wrote a list, stupendous long; + _"One Hundred_ Ways of Going Wrong." + + M + +[Sidenote: _Nine hundred and ninety-nine verses elapse_.] + + Napoleon, (see Wells's book) + Improved the Roman plan + By spotting a potential crook + In every fellow-man. + And by the _Thousand_ off they went + To jail, until proved innocent. + + MDCCCCXXII + +[Sidenote: _Nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine verses elapse_.] + + Now in the change-about complete + Since Adam Passed from View. + For apples we are urged to eat + And all else is taboo. + A _Million_ laws hold us in thrall, + And we serenely break them all! + + + + +NONSENSEORSHIP + + +[Illustration: Heywood Broun finds America suffering from a dearth of +Folly.] + +HEYWOOD BROUN + +A censor is a man who has read about Joshua and forgotten Canute. He +believes that he can hold back the mighty traffic of life with a tin +whistle and a raised right hand. For after all it is life with which he +quarrels. Censorship is seldom greatly concerned with truth. Propriety +is its worry and obviously impropriety was allowed to creep into the +fundamental scheme of creation. It is perhaps a little unfortunate that +no right-minded censor was present during the first week in which +the world was made. The plan of sex, for instance, could have been +suppressed effectively then and Mr. Sumner might have been spared the +dreadful and dangerous ordeal of reading "Jurgen" so many centuries +later. + +Indeed, if there had only been right-minded supervision over the +modelling of Adam and Eve the world could worry along nicely without +the aid of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. Suppression of those +biological facts which the Society includes in its definition of Vice +is now impossible. Concealment is really what the good men are after. +Somewhat after the manner of the Babes in the Woods they would cover us +over with leaves. For men and women they have figs and for babies they +have cabbages. + +It must have been a censor who first hit upon the notion that what you +don't know won't hurt you. We doubt whether it is a rule which applies +to sex. Eve left Eden and took upon herself a curse for the sake of +knowledge. It seems a little heedless of this heroism to advocate +that we keep the curse and forget the knowledge. The battle against +censorship should have ended at the moment of the eating of the apple. +At that moment Man committed himself to the decision that he would know +all about life even though he died for it. Unfortunately, under the +terms of the existence of mortals one decision is not enough. We must +keep reaffirming decisions if they are to hold. Even in Eden there was +the germ of a new threat to degrade Adam and Eve back to innocence. When +they ate the apple an amoeba in a distant corner of the Garden shuddered +and began the long and difficult process of evolution. To all practical +purposes John S. Sumner was already born. + +To us the whole theory of censorship is immoral. If its functions were +administered by the wisest man in the world it would still be wrong. But +of course the wisest man in the world would have too much sense to be +a censor. We are not dealing with him. His substitutes are distinctly +lesser folk. They are not even trained for their work except in the +most haphazard manner. Obviously a censor should be the most profound +of psychologists. Instead the important posts in the agencies of +suppression go to the boy who can capture the largest number of smutty +post cards. After he has confiscated a few gross he is promoted to the +task of watching over art. By that time he has been pretty thoroughly +blasted for the sins of the people. An extraordinary number of things +admit of shameful interpretations in his mind. + +For instance, the sight of a woman making baby clothes is not generally +considered a vicious spectacle in many communities, but it may not +be shown on the screen in Pennsylvania by order of the state board of +censors. In New York Kipling's Anne of Austria was not allowed to "take +the wage of infamy and eat the bread of shame" in a screen version of +"The Ballad of Fisher's Boarding House." Thereby a most immoral effect +was created. Anne was shown wandering about quite casually and drinking +and conversing with sailors who were perfect strangers to her, but the +censors would not allow any stigma to be placed upon her conduct. Indeed +this decision seems to support the rather strange theory that deeds +don't matter so long as nothing is said about them. + +The New York picture board is peculiarly sensitive to words. Upon one +occasion a picture was submitted with the caption, "The air of the South +Seas breathes an erotic perfume." "Cut out 'erotic,'" came back the +command of the censors. + +In Illinois, Charlie Chaplin was not allowed to have a scene in "The +Kid" in which upon being asked the name of the child he shook his head +and rushed into the house, returning a moment later to answer, "Bill." +That particular board of censors seemed intent upon keeping secret the +fact that there are two sexes. + +Of course, it may be argued that motion pictures are not an art and that +it makes little difference what happens to them. We cannot share that +indifference. Enough has been done in pictures to convince us that very +beautiful things might be achieved if only the censors could be put out +of the way. Not all the silliness of the modern American picture is the +fault of the producers. Much of the blame must rest with the various +boards of censorship. It is difficult to think up many stories in which +there is no passion, crime, or birth. As a matter of fact, we are of the +opinion that the entire theory of motion picture censorship is mistaken. +The guardians of morals hold that if the spectator sees a picture of +a man robbing a safe he will thereby be moved to want to rob a safe +himself. In rebuttal we offer the testimony of a gentleman much wiser +in the knowledge of human conduct than any censor. Writing in "The +New Republic," George Bernard Shaw advocated that hereafter public +reading-rooms supply their patrons only with books about evil +characters. For, he argued, after reading about evil deeds our longings +for wickedness are satisfied vicariously. On the other hand there is the +danger that the public may read about saints and heroes and drain off +its aspirations in such directions without actions. + +We believe this is true. We once saw a picture about a highwayman (that +was in the days before censorship was as strict as it is now) and it +convinced us that the profession would not suit us. We had not realized +the amount of compulsory riding entailed. The particular highwayman whom +we saw dined hurriedly, slept infrequently, and invariably had his boots +on. Mostly he was being pursued and hurdling over hedges. It left us +sore in every muscle to watch him. At the end of the eighth reel every +bit of longing in our soul to be a swashbuckler had abated. The man +in the picture had done the adventuring for us and we could return in +comfort to a peaceful existence. + +Florid literature is the compensation for humdrummery. If we are +ever completely shut off from a chance to see or read about a little +evil-doing we shall probably be moved to go out and cut loose on our +own. So far we have not felt the necessity. We have been willing to let +D'Artagnan do it. + +Even so arduous an abstinence as prohibition may be made endurable +through fictional substitutes. After listening to a drinking chorus in a +comic opera and watching the amusing antics of the chief comedian who is +ever so inebriated we are almost persuaded to stay dry. Prohibition is +perhaps the climax of censorship. It has the advantage over other forms +of suppression in that at least it represents a sensible point of +view. Yet, we are not converted. There are things in the world far more +important than hard sense. + +One of the officials of the Anti-Saloon League gave out a statement the +other day in which he endeavored to show all the benefits provided by +prohibition. But he did it with figures. There was a column showing +the increase of accounts in savings banks and another devoted to +the decrease of inmates in hospitals, jails and almshouses. From a +utilitarian point of view the figures, if correct, could hardly fail +to be impressive, but little has been said by either side about the +spiritual aspects of rum. Unfortunately there are no statistics on that, +and yet it is the one phase of the question which interests us. Some +weeks ago we happened to observe a letter from a man who wrote to one of +the newspapers protesting against the proposed settlement in Ireland on +the ground that, "It's so damned sensible." We have somewhat the same +feeling about prohibition. It is a movement to take the folly out of our +national life and there is no quality which America needs so sorely. + +If enforcement ever becomes perfect this will be a nation composed +entirely of men who wear rubbers, put money in the bank, and go to bed +at ten. That fine old ringing phrase, "This is on me," will be gone +from the language. Conversation will be wholly instructive, for in +fifty years the last generation capable of saying, "Do you remember that +night--?" will have been gathered to its fathers. + +Of course, there is no denying the shortsightedness of the forces of +rum. They cannot escape their responsibility for having aided in the +advent of Prohibition. They were slow to see the necessity of some form +of curtailment and limitation of the traffic. Such moves as they +did make were entirely wrong-headed. For instance, we had ordinances +providing for the early closing of cafés. Instead of that we should have +had laws forbidding anybody to sell liquor except between the hours of +8 P.M. and 5 A.M. Daytime drinking was always sodden, but something is +necessary to make night worth while. Man is more than the beasts, and he +should not be driven into dull slumber just because the sun has set. + +The invention of electricity, liquor, cut glass mirrors, and cards made +man the master of his environment rather than its slave. Now that liquor +is gone all the other factors are mockery. Card playing has become +merely an extension of the cruel and logical process of the survival of +the fittest. The fellow with the best hand wins, instead of the one with +the best head. Nobody draws four cards any more or stands for a raise +on an inside straight. The thing is just cut-throat and scientific and +wholly mercenary. + +The kitty is gone. Nobody cares to come in to a common fund for the +purchase of mineral water and cheese sandwiches. And with the passing of +the kitty the most promising development of co-operation and communism +in America has gone. It was prophetic of a more perfectly organized +society. In the days of the kitty the fine Socialistic ideal of, "From +each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs," was +made specific and workable. And the inspiring romantic tradition of +Robin Hood was also carried over into modern life. The kitty robbed only +the rich and left the poor alone. + +But now none of us will contribute unquestionably to the material +comfort of others. Each must keep his money for the savings bank. + +Perhaps, something of the old friendly rivalry may be revived. In a +hundred years it may be that men will meet around a table and that one +will say to the other, "What have you got?" + +"I've got $9,876.32 in first mortgages and gilt-edged securities." + +"That's good. You win." + +But somehow or other we doubt it. + +Another mistake which was made in the policy of compromising with the +drys was the agreement that liquor should not be served to minors. On +the contrary, the provision should have been that drink ought not to +be permitted to any man more than thirty years of age. Liquor was never +meant to be a steady companion. It was the animating influence which +made oats wild. Work and responsibility are the portion of the mature +man. Rum was designed for youthful days when the reckless avidity for +experience is so great that reality must be blurred a little lest it +blind us. + +We happened to pick up a copy of "The Harvard Crimson" the other day +and read: "The first freshman smoker will be held at 7.45 o'clock this +evening in the living room of the Union. P. H. Theopold, '25, Chairman +of the Smoker Committee, will act as Chairman, introducing Clark +Hodder, '25, and J. H. Child, '25, the Class President and Secretary +respectively. After the speeches there will be a motion picture, and +some vaudeville by a magician from Keith's. Ginger ale, crackers, and +cigarettes will be served. All freshmen are invited to attend." + +They used to be called Freshmen Beer Nights and in those days the +possibility of friendship at first sight was not fantastic. We feel sure +that it cannot be done on ginger ale. The urge for democracy does not +dwell in any soft drink. The speeches will be terrible, for there will +be no pleasant interruptions of "Aw, sit down," from the man in the back +of the room. If somebody begins to sing, "P. H. Theopold is a good old +soul," it is not likely to carry conviction. Not once during the evening +will any speaker confine himself to saying, "To Hell with Yale!" and +falling off the table. Probably the magician will not be able to find +anything in the high hat except white rabbits. + +Although we have seen no first hand report of that freshman smoker, +we feel sure that it was only a crowded self-conscious gathering of a +number of young men who said little and went home early. + +Even from the standpoint of the strictest of abstainers there must be +some regret for the passing of rum. What man who lived through the bad +old days does not remember the thrill of rectitude which came to him the +first time he said, "Make mine a cigar." + +Though they have taken away our rum from us we have our memories. Not +all the days have been dull gray. Back in the early pages of our diary +is the entry about the trip which we made to Boston with William F----in +the hard winter of 1907. It was agreed that neither of us should +drink the same sort of drink twice. Staunch William achieved nineteen +varieties, but we topped him with twenty-four. Upon examination we +observe that the entry in the memory book was made several days later. +The handwriting is a little shaky. But for that adventure we might have +lived and died entirely ignorant of the nature of an Angel Float. + +In those days human sympathy was wider. F. M. W. seemed in many respects +a matter-of-fact man, but it was he who chanced upon the 59th street +Circle just before dawn and paused to call the attention of all +bystanders to the statue of Columbus. + +"Look at him," he said. "Christopher Columbus! He discovered America and +then they sent him back to Spain in chains." + +He wept, and we realized for the first time that under a rough exterior +there beat a heart of gold. + + + + +LITERATURE AND THE BASTINADO + + +[Illustration: Ben Hecht chopping away at the ever-forgiving and +all-condoning Bugaboo of Puritanism.] + +BEN HECHT + +Surveying the trend of modern literature one must, unless one's mental +processes be complicated with opaque prejudices, wonder at the provoking +laxity of the national censorship. I write from the viewpoint of an +aggrieved iconoclast. + +It becomes yearly more obvious that the duly elected, commissioned and +delegated high priests of the nation's morale are growing blind to +the dangers which assail them. If not, then how does it come that +such enemies of the public weal as H. L. Mencken, Floyd Dell, Sherwood +Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, Dos Passos, Mr. Cabell, Mr. Rascoe, Mr. +Sandburg, Mr. Sinclair Lewis are not in jail? How does it come Professor +Frinck of Cornell is not in jail? Bodenheim, Margaret Anderson, Mr. John +Weaver are not in jail. + +Were I the President of the United States sworn to uphold the dignity +of its psychopathic repressions, pledged on a stack of Bibles to promote +the relentless pursuit and annihilation of other people's happiness, +I would have begun my reign by clapping H. L. Mencken into irons +forthwith. Mr. Cabell, I would have sent to Russia. Sherwood Anderson I +would have boiled in oil. + +But what is the situation? Observe these gentlemen and their kin +enjoying not only their bodily liberty but allowed to prosper on the +royalties derived from the sale of incendiary volumes designed to +destroy the principles upon which the integrity of the commonwealth +depends. The spectacle is one aggravating to an iconoclast. There is no +affront as distressing as the tolerance of one's enemies. + +Mr. H. L. Mencken is, perhaps, the outstanding victim of this depravity +of indifference which more and more characterizes the enemy. Mr. +Mencken, hurling himself for ten years against the Bugaboo of +Puritanism--a fearless and wonderfully caparisoned Knight of Alarums, +Prince of Darkness, Evangel of Chaos--Mr. Mencken pauses for a moment +out of breath casting about slyly for fresher and deadlier weapons and +lo! the Bugaboo with a gentle smile reaches out and embraces him and +plants the kiss of love on both his cheeks, strokes his hair wistfully, +and invites him to sit on the front porch. Alas, poor Mencken! It is the +fate that awaits us all. Zarathustra in the market-place feeding ground +glass to the populace is gathered to the bosom of the City Fathers and +gleefully enrolled as a member of the Guild. + +This is no idle rhetoric. Dissent in the Republic has come upon hard +ways. Ten years ago the name of Mencken would have stood against the +world. Today no college freshman, no lowly professor, no charity worker, +or local alderman too puritanical to do him homage. + +Whereupon the argument is that an era of enlightenment has set in, that +this same Mencken and his contemporary throat-cutters have vanquished +the Bugaboo, and that, as a result, a spirit of high intellectual life +prevails through the land. The proletaire have risen and are thumbing +their nose at the gods. Brander Matthews has sent in a five years' +subscription to the Little Review. The Comstocks overcome with the +vision of their ghastly complexes are appealing to Sigmund Freud for +advice and relief. But the argument is superficial. "Victory!" cry the +iconoclasts grinding their teeth at the absence of a foe. + +But it is a victory that rankles in the soul. The foe is not vanquished +but, seemingly, bored to death has fallen asleep. It is, in any event, a +phenomenon. Many generalizations offer themselves as solace. + +The first paradox of this phenomenon is that Puritanism, beaten to a +pulp by an ever-increasing herd of first, second, third, and fourth +rate iconoclasts, has triumphed completely in the legislatures of the +country. With every new volume exposing the gruesome mainsprings of the +national virtue, further taboos and restrictions crowd themselves into +the statute books. + +In a sense it would seem as if the _bete populaire_, becoming +increasingly drunk with the consciousness of its own power, is elatedly +preoccupied in cutting off its own nose, tying itself up into knots, and +kicking itself in the rear, proclaiming simultaneously and in triumphant +tones, "Observe how powerful I am. I can pass laws making ipecac a +compulsory diet." + +Whereupon the laws are passed and the noble masses with heroic grimaces +fall to devouring ipecac, to the confusion of all free-born stomachs. +In fact this species of ballot flagellatism, this diverting pastime of +hitting itself on the head with a stuffed club has gradually elevated +the body politic to the enviable position occupied by the all-powerful +king of Fernando Po. This mysterious being lives in the lowest depths of +the crater of Riabba. His power is in direct ratio to the taboos which +hem him in. Convinced that bathing is a crime against his dignity, that +sunlight is incompatible with his royal lineage; convinced that his +prestige is dependent upon a weekly three days' fast and a +cautious observation of the taboos against all variants of social +intercourse--piously convinced of these astounding things, the +all-powerful monarch of Fernando Po sits year in and year out motionless +on his throne in the lowest depths of the crater of Riabba, awed by +himself and overcome with the contemplation of his all-powerfulness. We +have here, I trust, an illuminating analogy. + +The Republic, like this King of Fernando Po, imposes daily upon itself +new taboos, new rituals. Yet there is the phenomenon of its tolerance +toward the idol breakers. From the lowest depths of the crater of Riabba +in which he sits enthroned the monarch of the Laongos condemns to death +with a twitch of his brows all who seek to question the sanctity of +the taboos. But this other occupant of the crater of Riabba-our +Republic-raises gentle eyes to the idol wreckers, to the taboo +destroyers. An occasional, "tut tut" escapes him. And nothing more. + +Whereupon the argument is that our monarch of the pit is an impotent +fellow. Again, a superficial deduction. For behold the censorships with +which he belabors himself. + +Censorship, almost extinct in the restriction of the national +literature, thrives in every other field. Censorships abound. Food, +drink, movies, politics, baseball, diversion, dress--all these are under +the jurisdiction of a continually aroused censorship. The pulpits and +editorial pages emit sonorous hymns of taboo. Every caption writer is +an Isaiah, every welfare worker fancies himself the handwriting on the +wall. Unchallenged by the vote of the masses or by any outward evidence +of mass dissent, the platitudes pile up, the nation is filled from +morning to morning with stentorian clamor. Puritanism in a frenetic +finale approaches a climax. + +But, and we tiptoe towards the crux of this phenomenon, the Bacchanal +of Presbyterianism is an artificial climax. Unlike the day of the later +Caesars, the populace does not abandon itself in imitation of its Neros +and Caligulas. Instead, we have the spectacle of a populace apathetic +toward the spirit of its time. + +The Puritan debauch is the logical culmination of the anti-Paganism and +backworldism launched two hundred centuries back. The Christian ethic, +to the bewildered chagrin of its advocates, has triumphed. Not a triumph +this time that offers itself as a cloak for Jesuitism, colonization, +or empire juggling. But an unimpeachable triumph entirely beyond the +control of the most adroit of the choir-Machiavellis. + +In other words the body politic finds itself betrayed by its own +platitudes. A moral frenzy animates its horizon. But it is a frenzy of +idea escaped control, an idea grown too huge and luminous to direct +any longer. The moral frenzy of the war was the moral frenzy of such an +idea--virtue become a Frankenstein. This virtue--the Golden Rule, the +Thou Shalt Nots, the thousand and one unassailable maxims, adages, old +saws invented chiefly for the protection of the weak and the solace +of the inferior--this virtue has taken itself out of the hands of its +hitherto adroit worshippers. A snowball rolling uphill toward God and +gathering furious dimensions, it has escaped the shrewd janitors of +orthodoxy who from age to age were able to keep it within bounds. + +Thus in the war, confronted with the platitude that the world must be +made safe for democracy and with the further platitude that democracy +and equality were the goals of Christianity and with a dozen similar +platitudes none of which had any authentic contact with the life of the +nation, thus confronted, the proletaire was forced to lift itself up by +its boot straps and rise to the defence of a Frankenstein idealism of +which it was the parent-victim. Disillusionment with the causes of the +war has, however, served no high purpose. The Frankenstein God, the +Frankenstein virtue is still enshrined in the Heaven of the Copy Books. +And we find the proletaire still worshipping, albeit with the squirmings +and grimacings, a horrible idealization of itself. + +The Thou Shalt Nots have escaped. They increase and multiply with a +life of their own. Logic is the most irresponsible of the manias which +operate in life. Logic demands that ideas be carried to their climax and +this demand, as inexorable as Mr. Newton's law, has made a Frankenstein +of the unsuspecting Galilean. + +Hypnotized by the demands of logic, bewildered by the contemplation +of this code of backworldism which he himself seems somehow to have +created, the ballot maniac stands riveted at the polls and sacrifices +to his own image by hitting himself on the head with further virtuous +restrictions--a gesture necessary to prevent his own image from giving +him the lie. He must, in other words, prove himself as virtuous, +whenever public demonstration demands, as the Frankenstein platitudes +proclaim him to be. + +The Puritanism of the nation, remorselessly upheld by its laws and its +public factotums is an extraneous and artificial pose into which +the blundering proletaire has tricked itself. There are innumerable +consequences. We have, firstly, the spectacle of the masses disporting +themselves slyly in the undertow of cynicism. + +"Modesty," bellows Sir Frankenstein from pulpit and press, "is a +cardinal virtue." "Right O," echoes the feminine contingent and promptly +bobs its hair, shortens its skirts, and rolls down its socks. + +"Abstinence, sobriety, are an economic and spiritual necessity," bellows +Sir Frankenstein. Whereupon the male contingent votes the land dry and +gets drunk. + +From the foregoing we may derive glimmers of truth concerning the public +tolerance of iconoclasts. "Main Street," a volume fathered by Mencken, +Freud, and the other Chaos-Bringers, leaps into prominence as a best +seller. It is devoured and acclaimed by the ballot maniac who reads +it, smacks his lips over its "truths" and sallies forth to vote further +canonizations of hypocrisy into the legal code. Even I, who ten years +ago prided myself upon being as indigestible a type of the Incoherent +Young as the land afforded, find myself for one month a best seller +[Footnote: "Erik Dorn," Mr. Hecht's first novel.--Ed.] on my native +heath. Woe the prophet who is with honor in his country! He will flee in +disgust in quest of hair shirts and a bastinado. + +Thus, the citizens. With the left hand they greet the iconoclasts and +hand them royalties. With the right hand they pass further laws for the +iconoclasts to denounce. A phenomenon results. With the thought of the +masses becoming more and more neutral in the highty-tighty war between +Good and Evil, the laws created by these same masses grow more and more +rabid. But it must be borne in mind that although the masses, carried +away by flagellant impulses, assist in the creation of these laws, in +the main, they are laws, self-created platitudes which give birth to new +platitudes. Logic is the most pernicious of the Holy Ghosts responsible +for the conception of undesirable Gods. + +I am prepared now to make further revelations. The foregoing, although +bristling with inconsistencies, seems to me, nevertheless, a ground +work. I will begin the apocalyptic finale with a resume of the +choir-leaders, the high priests, the Mahatmas of Sir Frankenstein. + +Item one: It is obvious that the laws of the land being the ghastly +climaxes of artificial logic and not of human desires or biological +necessities, therefore the salaried apostles of these laws must function +similarly outside nature. + +The high priests, it develops indeed upon investigation, diligently +lickspittling to Sir Frankenstein, have no following. The masses are not +going to Heaven in their wake. They, the high priests, are magically out +of touch with their worshippers. And from day to day they grow further +out of touch until they are to be seen high in the clouds tending the +fugitive altars that are soaring toward God on their own power. + +These high priests are the creatures elected, commissioned and delegated +by the proletaire to perpetuate its grandiose and impossible image. And +this they do. They are the custodians of the public morals, meaning +the protectors of the huge trick mirror out of which the complexes, +neurasthenias, and morbid fears of the public stare back at it in the +guise of Virtue, Honor, Decency, and Love. These custodians are also, to +leap into the denouement, the censors here under discussion; censors not +only tolerated but insisted upon by the people to annoy and harass them +and inspire them to further ballot flagellations in order that they, the +people, may be spared the disaster of discovering themselves different +from what two hundred centuries of self-idealization have driven them +into believing themselves to be. + +This, the high priests do. In every village, hamlet and farm they have +their say. They chastise. They make things fit for decent people to see +or wear or drink, and people flattered to death at the idea of being +considered decent submit piously to the distastement infringements and +taboos. + +All-powerful are the censors. But despite this all-powerfulness they +labor under a wretched handicap. They are stupid. Stupidity is the +paradox to be found most often in all-powerful Gods. They are stupid, +the censors. And the Devil is clever. The Seven Arts which are the Seven +Incarnations of Dionysius, the Seven Masks of an unrepentant Lucifer, +elude them in the horrific struggle. Or at least partially elude them. +Occasionally a cloven hoof is spied and sliced to the bone. + + * * * * * + +We return now with proud and tranquil ease to the beginning of this +tale, to the phenomenon of a tolerated literary iconoclasm in a land +alive with caterwaulings of virtue. + +As hinted above not all the Arts escape, nor do any of them escape +all the time. Music, whose sly and terrible vices were for centuries +unperceived by the high priests, has been brought to earth in places. +"Jazz Incites to Sin. Syncopation is Devil's Ally." Discovered! One +reads the morning paper and feels a return of hope. The High Priests are +aroused. They have disembowelled an ally. There is hope then of a bloody +fray. Another Edition and they will be on our own heads, swinging their +snickersnees. Mencken will be arrested and burned in public. Anderson +will be strung up by the heels and his estates confiscated. There +will be war--red war, and we in the army of the iconoclasts growling +impotently at each other will face about and have at them with +hullaballo and manifesto and snickersnee in turn. + +"Nude Painting Banned From Window. Nab Store Keeper." We read on. The +snickersnee swings towards the vitals of Hollywood. "Movie Magnate +Charges Work of Art Cut; Sues Censors. Seeks Redress in Courts." + +Valhalla! They are closing in. Another forced march and they are upon +us. + +Alas, our coffee cools as we wait impatiently for the alarms to sound. +We are intact. Mencken still lives. Anderson still lives. The tide of +battle sweeps us by, passes us up, and there's the end to it. + +Again, our victory rankling, we cast about for reasons. Do not the +censors read our books? Yes, the censors read our books. And scratching +their necks pensively and immediately below their left ears, the censors +fall asleep. Our books were over their heads. Our broadsides aimed +for their vitals whizzed by their ears and lulled them into slumber. A +hideous victory is in our hands. + +Voltaire blew God out of France for a century. But that was because God +was still an emotion in his day and not a Frankenstein of logic. He blew +up the high priests. But that was because the high priests still +had enough intelligence in that time to know what constituted an +epoch-shaking explosion. + +Our enemies the censors, the hallelujah flingers, commissioned, elected, +delegated by the proletaire are not worthy our steel. Having no +longer any contact with the masses, they need no genius to perpetuate +themselves. The masses care not what they are so long as they are. +Figureheads for Frankenstein, they need only shriek themselves blue +and their will, will be done. Shrewdness, intelligence, are qualities +non-essential since virtue, no longer feeding upon shrewdness and +intelligence, fattens upon its own monstrous logic. + +The high priests are vital to the lie which man has created for himself +as a heaven and out of which his own image leers godlike back at him. +They are vital for nothing else. + +Therefore our immunity. Since they need no grey matter, they have +none. And unable to understand us, they ignore us. And if we grow too +insistent, as has Mencken, they put an end to the business by embracing +us and pulling our fangs by disgusting us with their stupidity. + +Given free reign under the conditions herein outlined, the youth of +the land is abandoning itself to a safe and sane orgie of iconoclasm. +Satanic epigrams cloud the air of the very market-place. Poets, +column conductors, hack literary reviewers, hack romancers, lecturers, +realists, imagists, and all are gloatingly engaged in sacking the +Temple, in thumbing their nose at the taboos. + +In fact so widespread is the unlicensed and unrebuked iconoclasm of the +day that a great disgust is being born in the hearts of the pioneers. +Every dog has his paradox, every hack his anti-Christ, they bewail. And +surveying the horizon despairingly they see no enemy rushing upon them +with the wind. + +There are, of course, scattered here and there among the keepers of the +Seal, observant priests. They omit isolated groans. They launch Quixotic +sorties. But they retire and collapse without waiting combat. To their +denunciation of "degenerate, sinful and corrupting cesspools of alleged +art" (I quote from a review of some of my own work appearing in an issue +of the Springfield (Ill.) _Republican_), there is no answering response. +They are left abandoned, the Fiery Cross burning down to their fingers +and flickering out. They cannot be glorified into an enemy. + +On the whole I fear for the result. Ideas favor a bloody battle-ground +for birthplace. And here we stand, drawn up in battle array discharging +broadsides of "Winesburgs, Ohios," "Main Streets," "Cornhuskers" and +the like; flying our colors valiantly--but there is no battle. The enemy +sleeps. Or the enemy wakes up and issues an indifferent invitation that +we stay to tea. + +Comrade Dreiser may demur at all this and, peeling his vest, reveal us +wounds, honorable wounds acquired in honorable battle. And further, he +may regale us with tales of hair shirts and bastinadoes suffered by him +in the Republic. But alas, he is Telemachus, grey-bearded and full of +memories. And the youth of Athens, fallen upon softer ways, listen with +envious incredulity to such tall tales. + + + + +THE WOMAN'S PLACE + + +[Illustration: Ruth Hale as a XXth Century woman guarding the Home +Brew.] + +RUTH HALE + +At last the women of this country are about to perform a great +service--not one of those courtesy services about which so much is +so volubly said and so little is done in repayment--but a good sturdy +performance, that will probably bring these magnificent men folks right +to their knees. + +They are going to teach the unfortunates how to live under prohibitions +and taboos. Of course there has never been any prodigality of freedom in +this country--or any other--but what there was belonged to the men. The +women had to take to the home and stay there. So the two sexes adjusted +themselves to life with this difference, that the women had to do all +the outwitting and circumventing, all the little smart twists and turns, +all the cunning scheming by which people snatch off what they want +without appearing to, whereas men got their much or little by prosily +sticking their hands out for it. + +This developed, naturally, not only somewhat diverse temperaments, hut +also greatly diverse equipments. When men cannot get what they want now +by either asking or paying for it, they have no more resources. +Bless them, they must return into the home, where the secret has been +perfected for centuries on centuries of how to hoard a private stock +and how to find a bootlegger. Under the steadily growing nonsenseorship +regime, they are obliged to come and take lessons from the lately +despised group of creatures to whom nonsenseorship is a well-thumbed +story. If the world outside the home is to become as circumscribed and +paternalized as the world inside it, obviously all the advantage lies +with those who have been living under nonsenseorship long enough to have +learned to manage it. + +Thus woman moves over from her dull post as keeper of the virtues to the +far more important and exciting post as keeper of the vices. It is not +an ideal power which she thus acquires. But then none of this is about +ideals. This is just a little practical 'study in what is going to +happen, and why. Taboos never yet have added a cubit to the stature +of the soul of humanity. They have nearly always been the chattering +children of fear and pure idiocy. They have always tried to throw +the race back on to all fours, and have left the nobility of standing +upright wholly out of account. + +The taboos which have surrounded women time out of mind have been so +puerile and imbecile that one quite non-partisanly wonders why on earth +they have been allowed to continue. A second thought demonstrates, +of course, that fear has had the major part in it, and that skill in +cheating has gone so far as practically to nullify the privations of the +taboo. + +But one must put by this hankering after nobility, and accept the plain +fact that fear is the dominant human motive. What the race would do if +fear were conquered, or at least faced sternly eye to eye, is staggering +to contemplate. Perhaps God looks upon that vision. It may be that which +gives Him patience. But man at best gives it one terrified squint in a +lifetime. All behavior must take fear into account. + +The man who lately brought back from the Amazon Basin news of a +fear-dispelling drug used there by a savage tribe, would have been +carried home from the steamer on the shoulders of his compatriots if for +one moment he had been believed. His drug may do all he claimed for it, +but a country which boasts a Volstead in full stride cannot force itself +to take him seriously. The only likely part of his story was that the +tribes who prepared the drug would put to instant death any woman who +happened either to learn how to prepare it or did actually get some of +it into her. + +We recognize that part as familiar. We have made the same fight here +against the fearless woman as the savages made on the Amazon. The only +thing we were never smart enough to apply was the moral of the Kipling +story about the two greatest armies in the world: the men who believed +that they could not die till their time came, against those who wanted +to die as soon as possible. It was from one or the other of these two +kinds of fearlessness that women have trained themselves in wisdom. This +is the wisdom which moves them to secret laughter when they find their +brothers in the throes of Volstead and Krafts. And it is from this +wisdom that they will teach them all to be happy, though prohibited. + +It is an unfortunate fact that humanity will not behave itself. It +does not really warm to any of the current virtues. When the Eighteenth +Amendment says it must not drink hard liquors, its inner heart's +desire is to drink them, even beyond its normal, and usual capacity. +Prohibition is, it is true, one of the strikingly superimposed virtues. +It has nothing whatever to recommend it in man's true feelings, and this +is not true of many of the civilized traits, though probably not any +of them meets with entire approval. We do think that before anything +approaching a real art of living is perfected among us, the present +ethical system will be wholly outmoded. Meanwhile, pressure brought to +bear on the least welcome of all virtues is merely going to make bad +behavior worse. But that is Volstead's business, not ours. Let him +do battle with that octopus, while we bring up reinforcements to his +enemies. Women know all about how to be bad and comfortable while the +law goes on trying to make them good and otherwise. Just look at a few +of the things on which they have cut their teeth. + +We do not know, unfortunately, just at what point in her history woman +went under the long siege of her taboos. Whether the system of keeping +her publicly helpless and interdicted goes before church and state, +or was the result of them, there is now no history to tell us. But +certainly she always had one supreme power and one supreme weakness, and +somewhere in time, her more neutrally equipped male companion played the +one against her, to save his own skin from being stripped by the other. + +But if the past is foggy, the present is not. We do know what is now, +and has for a long time been, a shocking list of what she must not be +allowed to do. + +She cannot own and control her own property, for instance, except here +and there in the world. Perhaps the theory was that she could not create +property. But one would have said that such of it as she inherited she +had as sound a right to as that that her brother inherited. But no such +common sense notion prevailed. No matter how she came by it, it became +her husband's as soon as she married. The law has always behaved as if +a woman became a half-wit the moment she married. Seeing what she +deliberately lost by it, perhaps the law is right. She lost control of +her possessions, including herself. She lost her citizenship, and she +lost her name, though this by custom and not by law. And finally, she +never could acquire control even over her own children, which certainly +she did create. We do not know how many of these disabilities would have +been excused on the ground that they were for her own good. It seems +likelier that they came under the head of that fine old abstraction, the +general good. No longer back than 1914, H. G. Wells, in "Social Forces +in England and America" observed that they would probably never be +able to give women any real freedom because there were the children +to consider. Mr. Wells did not appear to know that he was bridging a +horrible conflict in terms with a pretty fatuity. Nor did he later give +himself pause when, towards the end of the book, he complained that all +the babies were being had by the low grade women, while the high grade +ones were quite insensible to their duties. + +It was possibly with an unruliness of this kind in contemplation that +the law decided that women should know nothing of birth control. +Now there's a taboo for you. Many of our very best people--the moral +element, so called--will not even speak the words. But that prohibition, +like all the others, has its side door--may one say its small-family +entrance? The women who do not know all there is to know about it are +just those poor, isolated, and ignorant women economically starved who +should be the first to be told. + +Consider the quaintest, we think, of all the proscriptions against +women--that they cannot have citizenship in their own right. What is +citizenship if it is not the assumption, made by the State, that because +you were born within it, and had grown used to it and fond of it, and +were attached to it by all the associations of blood ties, friendships, +and what not, you were therefore entitled to take part in it, and could +be called on to give it service? If citizenship is a mere legal figment, +by what right do States send their citizens to war? Yet women are +theoretically transferred, body and bone, heart, memory, and soul, to +whatever country or nation their husbands happen to give allegiance to. +Isadora Duncan, born in California, of generations of Californians, +and American all her life, has lately married a young Russian poet. +Hereafter she must enter her country as an alien immigrant--if it so +happens that the quota is not closed. Does anybody in his senses imagine +that Isadora Duncan has been changed, or could be changed, for better +or worse? An opera singer who was in danger during the war of losing her +position at the Metropolitan Opera House because she was an enemy alien, +went forth and married an American. By that means she was actually +supposed to have been made over into an American. Can naïveté go +further? + +For our present purposes we merely want to point out that what is done +to one woman in the name of the public good is craftily used by the next +one to serve her own ends. There is a terrifying proportion of women +in America today who can vote, without knowing a word of our language, +without participating in one particle of our common life, because their +husbands have taken on American citizenship. They wouldn't be allowed to +become American citizens if they wanted to, by any other means. + +There are scores and scores of these legal absurdities conscripting +the activities of women. Twenty books could be written about them, and +probably will be. But we must leave them, with such representation as +these few instances afford, and go from, the body of taboos that are +done in the name of the good of the State, to that collection done for +Woman's own personal good. + +Some of these are legal and some are not, but they are all operative. +They are all things she has to go around, or under. She cannot serve on +juries. She is always righteously barred from courtrooms when there +is to be testimony concerning sex. Woman, the mother of children, the +realist of sex compared to whom the most sympathetic of males is at best +an outsider, is to be "protected" from a few scandalous narratives. Of +course all women know that they are barred from juries not because the +happenings in court would shock or even surprise them, but because they +would embarrass their far more sensitive and finicky men. So what they +wish to know of court proceedings, they learn from their good men, in +the pleasant privacy of their homes. If the juries are so much the worse +for this sort of thing, and they are, the matter cannot be helped by the +ladies, dear knows, and the men would die almost any death liefer than +that of ravaged modesty. + +Probably the most ungrateful of the restrictions on females is that +forbidding them to hold office in churches. This has been put on all +sorts of high grounds, chief among them being that women could do so +much abler work in little auxiliaries of their own. This contention was +challenged about two years ago in the House of Commons, by Maud Royden, +the English Lay Evangelist to whom the pulpits of London are forbidden, +with one or two exceptions. Miss Royden, whose preaching was being +bitterly opposed by several members of the House, annoyed them all +considerably by saying that the Church of England had already had two +women as its absolute head. This was denied in a great sputter, to which +Miss Royden replied, "How about Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria?" +Well, this happened to be something that nobody could gainsay, but into +the wrathy silence which followed, one member of the House rose to his +feet and let the cat right out of the bag. If women were given church +authority, he said, they would refuse to accept their husbands' +authority in their homes, and England would go to rack and ruin. This is +one of the few recorded occasions when a taboo-er so far forgot himself, +and American church potentates do not like to be reminded of it. Within +a month, one of the Protestant sects in this country has given women the +right to hold minor offices, but three others, in general convention, +refused even to consider it. + +Again we are going to rest our case on selected instances, and return +to a consideration of how these walled-in women have learned to live +comfortably and with some self-respect behind the garrison wall. It is +this, after all, which they must now teach their men. + +The first thing that happened to the woman who married was that she +became legally non-existent. But though she was scratched off the public +books, she couldn't exactly be scratched out of her husband's scheme of +general well-being. Neither could the race make great strides without +her. After everything in the world had been done to make her as harmless +as possible, she still remained non-ignorable. Two courses were open to +her; and she has always used whichever of the two was necessary at the +time. She could be so sweet and beguiling, so full of blandishments, +that man rushed out to bring her all and more than she had been +prohibited from having. Or she could terrify him, both by her temper and +her biological superiority, into stopping his entire precious machinery +against her, and thanking his stars that he could get off with a whole +skin. + +Of course these things have not always worked out just so. There have +been the tragic mischances. But in the main, an oppressed people learn +how to outsmile or outsnarl the oppressor. The Eighteenth Amendment may +yet live to wish it was dead. Mr. Volstead seems to have believed that +the nonsenseorship game was new and exciting, and could be trusted to +carry itself by storm. Not while the ancient wisdom of long-borne bans +and communicadoes looked out of the female eye. There was a body of +experts in existence of whom, apparently, he had never even heard. + +He never once thought how the twentieth century was to become known +as the Century of The Home, with the home brew, and the subscription +editions, and the sagacities of women. If he should complain that there +is no honor and fine living in all of this, we shall have to agree with +him. But we can answer that by guile we have preserved our joys, and +cleared our way out from the shadows of his big totem pole. If we have +but little magnificence, we have as much as anybody can ever have who +is hounded by the legal virtues. And if we may keep a little gaiety for +life, by that much do we make him bite the dust. It isn't pretty, but +it's art. + + + + +OWED TO VOLSTEAD + + +[Illustration: Wallace Irwin composing under the influence of synthetic +gin and Andrew Volstead.] + +WALLACE IRWIN + +I--_First Round_ + + Prune extract and bright alcohol, so wooden + One kills its flavor in rank fusel oil! + C2-H3-HO--a rather good 'un + To mix with fruity syrups in our toil + To give our social meetings after dark + Their necessary spark! + And you, most heavenly twins, + Born of one mother-- + Although our woe begins + When, through our mortal sins, + We can't tell which from 'tother-- + Ethyl + And Methyl! + Like Ike + And Mike + Strangely you look alike. + Like sisters I have met + You're very hard to tell apart--and yet + The one consoles more gently than a wife; + The other turns and cripples you for life. + + Such spirits as these, and many more I summon + From many a poisoned tin, + Or many a bottle falsely labelled "Gin." + Or many a vial pathetic, + Yclept "Synthetic." + Like Dante on his joy-ride Seeing Hell, + Fain would I take you down + Through sulphurous fires and caverns bilious brown + Into the Land of Mystery and Smell + Where Satan steweth + And home-breweth + While thirsty hooch-hounds yell + Their blackest curse, + Or worse: + "Vol-darn our souls with each Vol-blasted dram + That burns our throats and isn't worth a dam! + We drink, yet how we dread it-- + Vol-stead it!" + They've said it. + +II--_Short Intermission to Change Meter_ + + In Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-three + A. Lincoln set the darkies free; + In Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen + A. Volstead muzzled the canteen + And freed the millions, great and small, + From bondage to King Alcohol. + + + Was it not thoughtful, good and kind + For such a man of such a mind + To show an interest so grand + In his misguided native land? + And don't these statements illustrate + Our Nation's progress up to date? + We're freedom-loving and we're brave + And simply cannot stand a slave. + And when a crisis needs a man + From Mass, or Tex. or Conn, or Kan. + That man steps forward, firm of chin-- + So Andrew Volstead came from Minn. + + He came from Minn, to show the world + That gin is wrong + And rye is strong + And Scotch to limbo should be hurled. + Thus with his spotless flag unfurled + He went against the Demon Rum + Who snarled, "I vum!" + Got sort of numb, + Rolled up his eyes, lay down and curled + While all the saints of heaven above + (Including Mr. Bryan's Dove) + Cried "Rah-rah-rah! + And siss-boom-ah! + Three cheers for Health and Christian Love! + But, Andrew dear-- + Say, now, look here! + You're not including wine and beer!" + + Then Andrew Volstead squared his chin + And answered briefly, "Sin is sin." + No compromise + With the King of Lies! + Both liquor thick and liquor thin + We'll cease to tax + And use the axe + Invented by the Man from Minn. + For right is right and wrong is wrong-- + A spell has cursed the world too long. + + The curse of drink-- + Stop, friends, and think + How, reft of spirits weak or strong, + My Nation will be purified + Of all corruptions vile. + The lamb and lion, side by side, + Will smile and smile and smile. + The workman when his day is o'er + Will hurry to his cottage door + To kiss his loving wife; + He'll lay his wages in her hand + And peace will settle on the land + Without a trace of strife. + The criminals will cease to swarm, + Forgers and burglars will reform + And minor crimes will so abate + That lower courts--now open late-- + Will close and let the magistrate + Go to the zoo + Or read _Who's Who_. + In short I do anticipate + A thinner, cooler human race, + Its system cleansed of every trace + Of inner fire + And hot desire + And passions spurring to disgrace. + "'Tis simple," said the Man from Minn., + "To cure the world of mortal sin-- + Just legislate against it." + Then up spake Congress with a roar, + "We never thought of that before. + Let's go!" + And they commenced it. + + +III--_Tone Picture's Suggesting Conditions in U. S. A. Some Two Years +After Alcoholic Stimulants Had Been Legislated out of Business_ + +1 + + Grandma's sitting in her attic, + Oiling up her automatic. + Mid-Victorian is her style, + Prim yet gentle is her smile + As she fits the cartridges + One by one, and softly says: + + "Grandson is a Dry Enforcer. + Grandpa is a Legger-- + All for one and one for all-- + I'll never die a beggar. + Bill brings booze from Montreal, + Grandpa lets him through-- + Oh, life's been rosy for us folks + Since the red-light laws went blue." + +2 + + Pretty Sadie, aged fourteen, + To a lamp-post clings serene. + "What's the matter?" some may ask. + On her hip she wears a flask + Labelled "Tonic for the Hair"-- + "Hic," says Sadie, "we should care!" + + "Father is a corner druggist-- + Why should I abstain? + Brother is a counterfeiter, + Printing labels plain. + I can buy grain alcohol + As all the neighbors do; + And if you treat me right I'll lend + My formula to you." + +3 + + Sits the plumber, man of metal. + Joining gas-pipes to a kettle. + 'Neath the bed his wife is lying + Rather silent--she is dying + From some gin her husband gave her. + He's too busy now to save her. + + "Things," he sings, "are looking upward; + I am making stills. + Soon we'll cook the stuff by wholesale, + Running twenty 'mills.' + What we make and how we make it + Doesn't cut no ice. + Anything you sell in bottles + Brings the standard price." + +4 + + In the gutter, quite besotted, + Lies the drunkard, sadly spotted. + People pass with unmoved faces-- + Why remark such commonplaces? + Just another Volstead duckling, + Rolling in the gutter chuckling: + + "Over seas of milk and water, + Angels' wings a-flappin', + Now we're purified and holy, + Things like me can't happen. + Liquor's gone and gone forever-- + Even the word is lewd: + Otherwise there's somethin' makes me + Feel like I was stewed." + +IV--_Finale--A Short Interview with the Human Stomach_ + + Last night as I lay on my pillow, + Last night when they'd put me to bed + I spoke to my dear little tummy + And wept at the words that I said: + + "My sensitive, beautiful tummy + That once was so rosy and pure! + My dainty, fastidious tummy-- + O what have you had to endure? + + "You once were inclined to be fussy; + You turned at inferior rye; + You moped at a dubious vintage + And shrieked if the gin wasn't dry. + + "But now you are covered with bunions + And spongy and morbid and blue; + You bite in the night like an adder-- + O say, what has happened to you?" + + Then my sullen and sinister tummy + Rose slowly and spoke to my brain; + "Say, boss, what's the stuff you've been drinking + That fills me with nothing but pain? + + "Today you had 'cocktails' for luncheon-- + They tasted like sulphured cologne. + They--were followed by poisonous highballs + That fell in my depths like a stone. + + "I am dripping with bootlegger brandy, + I ooze with synthetical gin; + And the beer that you make in the kitchen-- + Ah, dire are the wages of sin! + + "The cursed saloon has departed, + And well we are rid of the plague; + But I'm weary of furniture polish + With the counterfeit label of Haig. + + "Yea, gone is the old-fashioned brewery + And the gilded cafe is no more...." + Here my tummy jumped over the pillow + And fell in a fit on the floor, + + + + +THE CENSORSHIP OF THOUGHT + + +[Illustration: Robert Keable urging the Automaton called Citizen to turn +on his oppressor.] + +ROBERT KEABLE + +I knew a man, about a year ago, who published a novel upon which the +critics fell with such fury this side the water at least, that whether +in the body or out of the body, such was ultimately his state +of bewilderment, he could not tell, and if I am asked to discuss +"Prohibitions, Inhibitions and Illegalities" it is natural that +the incident should be foremost in my mind. True, it is becoming +increasingly the fashion for a parson to preach a sermon without +announcing text, but modern preaching, like brief bright brotherly +breezy modern services, does not seem to cut much ice. Therefore we will +hark back to the manner of our forefathers and take the incident for a +text. It affords an admirable example of nonsenseorship. + +As is always done in approved sermons (but humbly entreating your +forbearance, which is less common) let us consider the context, let +us review the circumstances of the case in point. Our author left the +lonely heart of Africa for the theatre of war in France. He left a +solitude, a freedom, a beauty, of which he had become enamoured, for +that assemblage of all sorts of all nations, in a cockpit of din and +fury, known as the Western Front. He expected this, that, and the other; +mainly he found the other, that, and this. Being desirous of serving +the God of things as they are, he pondered, he observed, and, his +heart burning within him, he wrote. He had no opportunity of writing in +France, so he wrote on his return, away up in the Drakensberg mountains, +alone, with the clean veld wind blowing about him and the nearest town +an hour's ride away, and that but three houses when he reached it. He +had seen vivid things and it chanced he was able to write vividly. There +were twenty chapters in his novel and he wrote them in twenty days. + +The novel finished, the MS. of it was despatched to nine publishing +firms in succession, who silently but swiftly refused it. It only went +to the tenth at all because there is luck in a round number, and it +found a home because it found a free man. On the eve of its appearance, +it was hung up for a month because it was felt that whereas the +booksellers might display a book containing a certain passage which +referred to a woman's bosom, they would not do so if it contained a +plural synonym. (I offer abject apologies for these dreadful details.) +And when it finally appeared, the main portion of the English Press +cried to heaven against it, and a smaller section clamoured for +disciplinary action. For a hectic month the author, who had simply and +plainly written of things as they were, honestly without conception that +anyone existed who would doubt their truth or the obvious necessity for +saying them, sat amazed before the storm. + +Now that incident, unimportant to the world at large as it is, does +afford an admirable example of that censorship which is about us at +every turn. True, in this case, the official censor remained silent. +Although prepared to read passages from Holy Scripture in the +witness-box, and challenge a denial of the facts, the author was not +called upon to do so. He had previously given slight hints of the truth +about the racial situation in South Africa in another book and had had +that volume censored out of existence, but perhaps because this present +work merely touched on morals the official censor decided to give him +rope with which to hang himself. + +He was hung, of course, rightly and convincingly, hung by the neck +till he was dead. Thus a clergyman who took the book from a circulating +library because of its Scriptural title, and whose daughters wrapped it +in _The Church Times_ and read it over the week-end, declined to meet +him at dinner. A bishop cut him in the street. Very rightly and properly +too. The book honestly, simply, undisguisedly, told the truth. Since +then America has been good enough to recognise it. + +But this is at least the first consideration of British censorship +today: it must suppress the truth about most of the important things in +life. Take the allied case of the Unknown Warrior. We are told that +he was a crusader, that he was glad to die in a noble cause, that his +valour deserved the Victoria Cross and his religion Westminster Abbey. +In short he was a saint. But, one protests (a bit bewildered because it +sounds so good) that was not the man I knew. The man I knew lived next +door and was a damned good chap. The man I knew chucked up his business +and left his home and risked his life because everybody was doing it, +because it seemed there was a real mess-up, because one had to. + +Also, it was a change. Oddly enough, Adam goes out from a modern office +or a modern factory in order to hoe up weeds in the sweat of his brow +and in danger of his life with barely a regret for the Paradise he has +to leave. Besides Eve went with him. God, there were Eves in France! +Women who knew how to make a man forget, women who didn't count the +cost, women who loved for love's sake. And for this and other causes, +the Unknown Warrior was extraordinarily bored at having to die, except +that he came not to care so much so long as he was sure he was only to +be asked to die. As for his valour--Well, said he, it's no use grousing, +and if it's a question of bayonets, it had better be mine in the other +chap's stomach. Besides we English-speaking peoples don't shout about +our valour. And as for religion--Well, if there's a God why doesn't He +stop this bloody war, or, anyway, where the blazes is He? + +There you are. It's abominable to write like that. Here it is in print; +isn't it disgraceful? You see, it happens to be true. But if men said +that, loud enough and enough of them, there would be no more wars. No +more wars? There would be no more Downing Street either, and an American +army would march, as like as not, on Washington. Disgraceful! It's so +disgraceful that I am not sure, as I write, that this article will ever +be printed. + +Now since the War it is noticeable that the spirit of censorship has +very visibly increased its activities among us. There is little doubt of +that and there is little doubt of the reason for it. The War, by tearing +down shams and by stripping men and women to the essentials, forced many +to see things as they are. The old lies were no use in that hour, nor +the old conventions and beliefs. Men learned to look beyond them, and +they learned not to be afraid to look. Partly it was no use being afraid +in the War and men got out of the habit, and partly, having looked, +they saw something so much better ahead. Or again the trend of modern +civilisation was so unarguably revealed in all the stark horror of its +inhumanity that men saw suddenly that it was better to be brave and +revolt and be killed than be cowardly and submit and live. + +A great many of those who saw did not survive to tell the tale, but some +did. There are more men and women about today who are not to be put off +with humbugs than ever there were before. Such folk make up an element +in Society which the censors know to be something more than dangerous. +They are men who cannot easily be bribed for they have seen through the +worth of the bribe, who cannot be intimidated because they no longer +fear, and who cannot be cheated because they have seen true values. +Hence your new censorship and its methods. Rebels must be drowned in a +babble of words. They must be suppressed by the action of the unthinking +masses rolled up upon them. They must be ground to powder lest they +should turn the world upside down. + +That, then, is the basis of censorship. Fear. You can do most things in +England today except tell the truth, or, at any rate, except tell the +truth in such a way that people will believe you. At the time of the +French Revolution there was a broadsheet in circulation which showed on +one side Louis XVI in his coronation robes. He was a fine figure of a +man. His flowing wig descended majestically to his broad shoulders and +his shapely leg, thrust forth, dominated a world. But on the reverse, a +pimply shrunken figure emerged from the bath. Shortly after publication +they had a revolution in France. + +Now the War circulated such another broadsheet in the world. Here is +the official side of it. Marriage is made in heaven. Politicians are +earnest, devoted men. One's own country always fights for Right +without Fear and without Reproach. Millionaires are nearly always +philanthropists. Capitalism is a just, kindly, and reasonable basis +for Society. The General Confession has become the national prayer of +Englishmen. Modern Civilisation is thoroughly healthy and every day it +gets better and better. It is so. It must be so. _What's that?_ You have +known a politician. . . . Your friend is married and. . . . Brother, it +is impossible. You must not say so anyway: the whole fabric of Society +will be shaken. You must not think so for a moment. + +_You must not think so_. That is the creed of the new censorship. And +very sensible, too. It is an odd thing that the Middle Ages of the +Inquisition were so nonsensical, judged by our standards. Grand +inquisitors cared remarkably little how a man thought provided he did +not say what he thought too publicly. If he went to church once a +year he might be a Jew for all their interference. If he signed the +Thirty-nine Articles he might use a rosary in his own home. If Columbus +thought the world was round, he was welcome to go and see, but if +Galileo said that the Church was wrong for saying the world was flat, +there was nothing for it but to shut him up in prison. It was all rather +stupid, but it was interesting. + +For above all things, the limits of censorship were well defined. +Censorship was based on hypotheses. It was conceived that Almighty God +had established St. Peter as a censor of public faith and morals, but +it was not maintained that he was established as the censor of art and +literature and life. There was thus originality in all these affairs. In +a mediaeval town every house was different, in a mediaeval cathedral +no two pillars were alike, and in the dress of a mediaeval crowd was +captured the colours of the rainbow. With an odd result. Men laughed at +the devil in the freedom of their souls. They tweaked his tail on carven +misericords, and in the mystery play he was invariably cast for the +clown. + +Further, and in close accord with this, a pleasant feature of the old +Inquisition was that it tried and burnt you for the good of your own +soul, and despite all calumnies and mis-representations on the part of +later writers, that remained to the end the main motive of the rack +and of the stake. Personally I find it hard to suppose that some such +consideration in any way lightened the last hours of the victim, but at +least it enlightens our judgment of the inquisitor. Heresy was to him, +quite honestly, a form of lunacy. Public opinion agreed with him. It was +a species of moral and mental hydrophobia, and the mass of men no more +desired to be converted to heresy than we desire to be bitten by mad +dogs. In their simple souls they abhorred and feared the thing. They +attended an auto-da-fé as an act of faith, piety, and rejoicing. They +might have been a Paris crowd watching the last hours of such a social +pest and terror as Landru, except that it probably occurred to few of +the Parisian sightseers to pray for that murderer's soul. + +But the modern Inquisition, the neo-censorship, is out, not to save my +soul, but the souls of my contemporaries. It does not imagine that I am +preaching a hideous thing from which all men will revolt; it imagines +that I am offering them something which they will gladly and readily +accept. It does not judge me and my sayings and doings from the +standpoint of an accredited representative of society, but from the +standpoint of a non-accredited governor of society. It silences me for +fear that I may be followed, not lest I should be damned. It does not +censor me for speaking or acting against an established order in which +everyone believes, but for speaking or acting against an order in +which practically everyone has ceased to believe. "Burn him," cried +Torquemada; "he has spoken what no one thinks." "Bury him," cries your +modern censor; "he has thought what no one speaks." + +Thus, today, the point is that you may not think. All the energies of +the censorship are bent towards the prohibition of thought. For one +penny, every morning, even if you are an Englishman in Paris, a daily +newspaper will tell you what to think and castigate you if you think +otherwise. No, it is three halfpence in Paris. But that is the idea. +That is the great conspiracy. Certain news-items are regaled to me, +certain news-items are suppressed, in order that I may not think amiss. +Certain books are refused me, certain plays must not be produced, +certain fashions are taboo, certain things may not be done, lest, by any +chance, I should form the habit of thinking, lest I should step out +of the throng and be myself. Lest I should make a venture of personal +opinion, and be right. + +The odd thing is that the average man lends himself to the deception and +even plays his part in the great game. Of course he is not altogether to +blame. The psychology of the method is so truly conceived. It is dinned +into him so repeatedly that things are so, that black is white and white +is black, that if you see it in Bottomley's _John Bull_ it is so, that +he honestly comes to believe the bunkum. For he, too, fears at his +heart. He is a conservative animal. Men used to burn a heretic because +they believed in God; now they censor him out of existence because if +they did not believe in the Northcliffe press they would have +nothing whatever in which to believe. Men used to believe in the Ten +Commandments; now they accept Prohibition because if they did not accept +some authority they would have to govern themselves. Men used to believe +the Bible; now they believe the daily papers because if they did not +they would be compelled to lift up their eyes and look on life. + +But Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the whole truth and nothing but the +truth a while ago. "If you teach a man to keep his eyes upon what others +think of him, unthinkingly to lead the life and hold the principles of +the majority of his contemporaries you must discredit in his eyes the +authoritative voice of his own soul. He may be a docile citizen; he +will never be a man." And Bernard Shaw was not far out when, in the +Introduction to _Man and Super-Man_, he pointed out what amiable honest +gentlemen the free-booters who built the Rhine castles were compared +with your modern millionaires, newspaper-owners, and political bosses. +The robber-baron risked his neck. The robber-baron played a game. The +robber-baron mostly warred on his own mates who were also playing the +game. But the robber-baron of today would enslave the souls of men +because he has forgotten how else to enjoy himself. + +The net result then is that we are fast abandoning any attempt to think +for ourselves. Not merely is any attempt at original thought or action +cleverly stifled with pillows much as the princes were smothered in the +Tower, but the censors of our freedom shout so loudly and supply us with +mental goods so cheaply that in the end we have no real mental power +of choice left. A million advertisements tell me that all decent people +shave with Apple-Blossom soap, and with Apple-Blossom soap I shave. A +score of papers tell me Germany is undertaxed and can pay Reparations, +and I sit quiet while France occupies the Ruhr. Or vice-versa, as the +case or another may be. Every child goes to school and every school is +under Government control and every Government teaches that it is good +for you to be governed and for the world that it should govern. A few +years ago we were told that we had to be organised and schooled and +managed because the nation was at war, but the thing is fast becoming a +habit, and we have now to be managed and schooled and organised because +the nation is at peace. + +It is indeed just here that censorship has gone mad. It must have been +horribly unpleasant to burn at the stake, but at least you had the +satisfaction of knowing that the man who lit the faggots had some shadow +of reason behind him. He had at least an hypothesis. He acted reasonably +in its application. He believed something; he believed it with some +horse-sense; and he acted as the saviour of Society. But today our +censors have nothing behind them. No one supposes them to be more moral, +more charitable, more instructed than other men; still less does anyone +suppose them to be more inspired or dowered with divine right. They do +not defend a faith for which they, too, would die; they merely bolster +up a position because in so doing they find bread and butter. They do +not object to innovators because what they innovate is bad; they object +to innovators because they innovate. They do not object to us because +they believe that we tell lies; they object because they know that we +tell the truth. + +This, then, is all very well, but what is the end to be? The theologians +have always said that Almighty God left man free to sin because He +did not want automatons. It is exactly here, however, that your modern +censors improve on the Deity. They do want automatons. Only automatons +will face liquid fire and poison gas. Only automatons will live in a +jerry-built cottage in a modern town and pay heavily for the privilege. +Only automatons will vote correctly at elections and keep the political +business going and allow everything to run on smoothly for the next war. +Only automatons will agree to the lengthening of skirts from the knee +to the ankle. And only automatons will acquiesce in a system of morality +which is not built on divine revelation or even on social necessity, but +on exploded superstitions and sex domination and the conventions of the +propertied classes. + +Thus the devil is coming surely hut steadily into his own. We have +already half-accepted an inverted order, allowing that all the good +tunes are his and attributing to him things which he knows well enough +he has no right to call his own. In a few years we shall neither use +tobacco nor the grape, gifts of the good God, nor dance nor choose our +own clothes nor laugh nor think. We shall scurry hither and thither +before the flick of the devil's tail and be ready for the burning. We +shall have sold our birthright of daring for an insipid mess of pottage: +sold our right to choose and to spare, to slay and to leave alive, to be +glad and to be sorry, to be martyrs if we would be, to explore, to risk, +to win. We shall be docile and respectable, and the standard of our +docility and respectability will have been set by men no better and no +worse than we are. We shall be sober by act of Parliament, and moral--if +it be morality--because we have lost the notion of being anything else. +We shall be of no use whatever to God, and precious small beer for the +devil. + +And is there no way of escape? There truly is, Let any man ask the first +censor that he sees by what authority he is censoring and who gave him +that authority. Let him ask by what standards he is judging and in whose +interests, and let him tell him what he thinks of his standards and +interests. Let him say BOO and see how foolish the goose can look. +Laugh, for Neo-Puritanism cannot stand laughter. Much else it can stand, +but not that. Don't argue; the old enemy is mighty good at words. Don't +hit; there are few of you strong enough. But laugh, laugh honestly, and +go on laughing, for it is the only invincible weapon in the world. There +is no more merry music either, and it is the melody for--Men. + + + + +THE UNINHIBITED FLAPPER + + +[Illustration: Helen Bullitt Lowry watching Puritanism set the Flapper +free.] + +HELEN BULLITT LOWRY + +Two generations ago the girl was "damned." One generation ago she was +"ruined." Now, according to the best authorities and her own valuation, +she has just played out of luck. + +So that for the reformers and prohibitionists, the censors and the +woman's club resolutionists! Their bi-product is Miss Twentieth Century +Unlimited, the one uninhibited creature in a Volsteaded civilisation. +Controls--of liquor and of birth--have given us The Flapper. The +official reformers, reinforcing the sagging inhibitions and corsets of +the nineteenth century, were just the final impetus needed to drive her +out into the open. + +The flapper is released from the strangle hold that is throttling the +rest of us. If somebody makes a law for her, she promptly and blithely +breaks it, the pocket flask for the moment being the outward and visible +sign of the spirit--and spirits--of her wide-flung rebellion. It is the +milepost between the time that was and the time that is, that flask, and +to it we owe the single standard of drinking. + +A half generation ago the sub-debs did not indulge in anything more +relaxing than coca cola. And even first and second year debbies did +their drinking from glasses issued by the hostess, not in triplicate. If +a young man of the period imported a flask from the outside, that young +man was promptly dropped from polite society, no matter how stringent +was the shortage of dancing beaux. They called a flask a "bottle of +whiskey" in those days. + +Wild oats were reserved for the boys at college. If you were of Eve's +sheltered sex, you really had to become a member of the Fast Young +Married Crowd before you could get a look in. That Fast Young Married +Crowd was the first to come out of the biological fastnesses of the +Mid-Victorian era into the cocktails and jazz of our Mid-Victrolian +period. + +Moral: You had to keep yourself the kind of a girl you'd been told a +man wanted to marry, if you ever wanted to join in a cocktail party and +slide down the banisters uninhibited--as rumor had it the Fast Young +Married Crowd was doing on its orgies. Over the border of matrimony lay +the mysteries of the gay wild life. + +In that era before our morals were legislated, being "that kind of a +girl" was a trying responsibility. There was an approved technique that +every wise virgin had to master. It consisted of letting each man, on +whom she conferred her favors, think that she really was in love with +him. She called it "being engaged." And,--if perchance she came to +possess a harem of fiancés,--remember that the young things of the +period were not so well able to conduct their own courtings as our +present-day emancipated flappers. They still had to depend on what the +tide washed in. They still did their picking from those that picked +them--and sorted 'em over at their leisure. + +Then, too, a half generation ago, we had not read our Freud. We did not +know the jargon of sex. Both man and girl were apt to call "in love" the +emotion which our present-day young things frankly call something else. +Thus came it that the petting parties of the period operated under the +left wing of a near-engagement. + +Yet there was a weakness to the system. Each fiance had the lordly +impression that he "possessed" the lady of his choice. And the minute +the male feels that he possesses a woman, he can get all the psychology +of "riding away" and leaving her. Our Freudian flappers are better +strategians. Man simply can't labor under the impression that he +possesses a young person, if her lingo is calling the once sacred kiss +just a "flash of pash." Applied slang is a great leveller of romance. + +For times have changed since it was good form for a maid to avoid the +crass mention of sex. With prohibition has come such an outburst of Get +Moral Quick legislation that the reaction is now being felt throughout +the length and breadth of the flapper. The legislators would lengthen +the skirts to protect the defenceless male from a chance thought of +legs and the like. Whereat the flapper retaliates by conversing pretty +ceaselessly about--well, say associated subjects. + +Last season the writer, being of the genus Successfully Single, woke up +with a start to realize that two desirables had toyed with her hook--and +retreated. One of them had even exited, uttering a fatal accusation +about a "trammelled soul." Such a warning calls for a taking of stock. +And this is what I found: Because of the flappers and the way they run +shop, the whole technique of the man game has changed. My method, alas, +had become as out of style as a pompadour Gibson hat. Where once girls +pretended to know less and to have experienced less than they actually +had, now they pretend to more. Therein lie all the law and the social +profits. Therefore Rule One of these dauntless rebels reads: It is not +an insult but a compliment for an admirer to explain that his intentions +are frankly carnivorous. + +To my ten-year-old technique had still been clinging the cobwebs of +the past, when even Launcelot's intentions were painted as slightly +honorable. But now--the shades of Alfred Lord Tennyson help us!--it has +become the smart procedure to take Man's bold bad intentions right out +into the conversation and pretend to be tempted by them. + +The truth of the matter is that those pseudo-engagements of the fox-trot +decade really were furnishing a charge account psychology. Man could +close his eyes and whisper, "Some day, my own," and still go nicely on a +_Ladies' Home Journal_ cover design of "Under the Mistletoe." But, when +our flapper is not even pretending to him that she is going to marry +him, and when he is not even pretending to himself that he is going to +marry her--well, the whole sex game has then been put on a frank cash +and carry basis. + +Mark well, however, these worldly-wise young things of this the third +year of our Prohibition are not necessarily less virtuous technically +than their own crinolined grandmothers. Only these days they are not +bragging about their virtue. + +"And have all the men afraid of you, for fear they'll be responsible for +teaching you something," explains one practical miss. "Men like to find +you in stock, ready-taught. We know how to take care of ourselves--so +we let them think what they want." In short, the whole new game, as +the earnest disciple from the half generation ago learned it, is not to +reveal the dark secret that you abide by the Ten Commandments. Man must +not suspect that you are unattainable. He must just think that he has +not attained you--yet. If you want to compete with the flappers, you've +got to play by the flapper rules. Check your conversational inhibitions! + +And if by chance there be any inhibitions left over, Prohibition has +obligingly introduced new opportunities for privacy, that will help +you check them too. When a couple strays off now from group formation, +there's a perfectly good alibi available of finding a sheltered spot for +a drink. Where once it really wasn't good form to go to a man's hotel +room, now it is the national custom for the owner of hootch to register +a casket for his jewel--and then invite the young things in, one by one. +A flapper these nights can retire to that hotel bedroom for an hour in +the middle of a dance. The girl is not "talked about," and the place +is not "pulled." Even the house detective knows that she is innocently +drinking a drink. + +Thus has this rebel young generation forced out into the open country +with it all the contented young women in their late twenties and early +thirties, who may not have been feeling rebellious at all. And the wives +of forty-five also, to compete all over again for their own husbands. +For "poaching" on the wifely preserves has become the favorite flapper +sport! + +"Married men," having been forbidden to unmarried young persons for +three chaste generations, our flappers, bi-product of inhibition, are +promptly appropriating the husbands. This one item of the flapper raid +on the married men has done more than the entire twentieth century put +together to change the smug structure of American society, and bring us +back to normalcy. + +Before 1865 no Southern belle considered herself worth her salt unless +all the courtly old married men in the country kissed her hand and +competed with the young blades for her quadrilles. But when black +persons stopped buttoning up the shoes of the Quality, America entered +upon her 1870's, her sombre brown stone fronts, and her cloistered +husbands. The money for doing society had simply passed into the hands +of the descendants of Miles Standish and Priscilla, who carried their +consciences into their sober mansions with them. The Age of Innocence +was upon us, and has clung close ever since. + +From that fatal day on to 1917 each oncoming debutante was taught by her +mother to give unto the genus, married man, her most impersonal manner, +lest she provoke his "undesirable attentions." If poaching was done, it +was from behind a tree. Unmarried girls knew that their place was not +in somebody else's home in those days. The wives could protect their +preserves by the simple expedient of "talking about" any unmarried young +female caught on the married reservations. + +And so it came to pass that the pick of the men were posted, because, +as fast as a callow youth gets worth marrying, somebody promptly marries +him. The Fast Young Married Crowd was a closed corporation and played +exclusively within itself; the female of the species had to compete only +with females of equal tonnage. The only sylph-like temptation that a +husband could encounter was a dissolute person whose reputation had +already been ruined--and she didn't count, because nobody invited her to +parties anyway. A wife could get as fat as she wanted to in those days. + +Even today that same leisurely life might exist for the wives. Even +today the wives might be resting their feet under the bridge tables, +secure in the consciousness that no bobbed haired young poacher was +daring to dance with their husbands, if they had just let prohibitions +enough alone--if they had only not been swept away by the high sport of +gossiping about our Wild Young People, which struck the country in the +summer of 1920. This gossip was an intrinsic phase of the virtue wave +which always immediately precedes a crime wave. + +The wives just at this point, instead of sitting tight, made the +strategic mistake of turning the full force of the ammunition of gossip, +which should have been saved for defending husbands from poachers, into +an offensive attack on the flapper's lip stick, on her cigarettes, +and on her petting parties. Whenever two or three wives were gathered +together, their topic was our Wild Young People. That summer, too, +saw the launching of that now seasoned romance about the checking of +corsets. The resolutions at clubs were being resolved. The preachers +were sermonizing. The up-state legislators were drafting bills against +flappers' smoking cigarettes. + +Human nature can be pushed just so far. Instead of reforming, the +young things apparently decided one might as well lose a reputation for +stealing a husband as for smoking a cigarette. The whole arsenal for +combating poachers blew up. + +To make matters worse, in the excitement of the virtue wave our Wild +Young People had been attacked as a group instead of as individuals. +That was the second mistake. The whole strength of gossip consists in +selecting one member of the clan for calumny, to stand out disgraced +and alone among her exemplary sisters. Because the flappers had been +gossiped about _en masse_, the whole reason for not being gossiped about +had ceased. The poacher of that half generation ago had been the kind of +a girl who stalked her game alone. + +But, when all the girls in town are seeking to steal your husband, what +are you going to do about it, if you are a woman of forty-five with a +heaviness around the hips and a disinclination to learn the camel walk? +Nor can you get the poachers off the scent by crossing the trail with an +eligible bachelor. Logically, the young things should have enough sense +to ignore a preempted husband and attend to the serious business of +getting themselves husbands. But they haven't. They seem to prefer the +husbands of the other women. And curiously, the more they engage in +this exotic sport of poaching, the less keen they become about owning a +property for somebody else to poach on. + +The real interstate joke on Puritanism is that the flapper, who flaps +because Puritanism has driven her to it, will automatically bring about +its cure. The whole vitality of Puritanism rests on the unswerving +principle of letting not thy right hand know what thy left hand doeth, +if thy left hand is doing something it shouldn't. Puritanism could not +last out a week-end without the able assistance of the standardized +double life. + +And that is just what the flappers refuse to respect. They are even +insisting on being taken along on the parties, which, by all the rules +of Rolf and Comstock should be confined to man's double life. Where the +chorus lady was once the only brand that had the proper and improper +equipment to jazz up an evening, now mankind has come to prefer the +flapper, who drinks as much as the Broadwayite, is just as peppy and not +quite so gold-diggish. + +"It is so simple," smiles Barbara nonchalantly blowing her smoke rings. +"You old dears set man an impossible standard. As he had always to be +pretending holy emotions whenever he was around you he just naturally +had to get away half the time, to rest the muscles of his inhibitions. +Why, you funny old things actually drove man into his double life, just +as you made all of his best stories have two editions, one for a nice +girl and one for--well say one not so nice. Our crowd has done more than +all of your silly old social hygiene commissions to bring nearer the +single standard--by going part way to meet him." + +The preachers are wasting their time when they rail that the flappers +are painting their faces like "fallen women." Of course they are +painting them that way--for the very good reason that mankind has +demonstrated too unmistakably that that kind of woman has "a way with +her." + +Not so long ago cosmetics became a moral issue. The curl rag was the +only beautifier that somehow never lost its odor of sanctity--and that +was doubtless because curl rags were a perfectly logical part of the +long-sleeved Canton flannel nightgown civilization. Curls couldn't be so +very wrong when they were so frightfully unbecoming in the making. +And so the "good woman" handed over intact to her weaker sister every +beautifier that the world had been eight thousand years accumulating. + +Slowly, timidly the allurements returned. The talcum powder bought for +baby surreptitiously reached the nose. When the half generation ago was +young, we had adopted a certain lip salve, just one shade darker than +the way lips come, explaining, to save our reputations, that we were +keeping our lips from chapping. Rouge too had come coyly, back--but--and +here's the gist of the whole matter--in polite society paint was put on +to imitate nature. + +We were still doing our make-up as man conducted his double life--with +intent to deceive the general public. We still belonged at heart to +the Puritan era, in spite of our wicked fox-trot. All may have been +artificial below the neck, from our Gossard corsets with their phalanx +of garters on to our hobble skirts. But above the neck, we pretended it +was natural. + +The flapper has changed all that. She has turned the lady up side down, +as well as the world. For the flapper is _au naturale_ below the neck. +Above the neck she is the most artificially and entertainingly painted +creature that has graced society since Queen Elizabeth. With one bold +stroke of a passionately red lip stick, she has painted out Elaine the +Fair and the later-day noble Christie Girl and painted in an exotic +young person, meet to compete alike with a Ziegfield show girl, with a +heaven-born Egyptian princess or even a good Queen Bess, who could not +move her face after it was dressed up for the morning. And Bess was the +Virgin Queen. The American-Victorian is indeed the only era in history +when cosmetics became a moral issue. Even in dour Cromwellian England, +rouge registered the wrong politics but not immorality. We are merely +getting back to normalcy in cosmetics--back behind the dun wall of the +Victorian era. + +And it is the flapper who has done it for us. What's more, she has +done it frankly and purposefully--because the reformer, in his naive +innocence, has explained to her that what she is doing is wicked and +will get that kind of "results." Similarly those of 'em who had not yet +taken off their corsets at dances, promptly did so when shocked elders +began repeating the corset checking story. Dear heart, the only reason +that they had not done so before was because the little dears hadn't +heard that the worst people were using ribs instead of whalebone that +season. + +Vice would die out from disuse, if the reformers did not advertise. + + + + +THE WOWZER IN THE SOUTH SEAS + + +[Illustration: Frederick O'Brien finds the South Seas purified and +beautified by the Missionaries.] + +FREDERICK O'BRIEN + +All over the South Seas the censor has had his day. From New Guinea to +Easter Island, he has made his rules and enforced them. Often he wrote +glowing pages of prose and poetry about his accomplishments, for reading +in Europe and America. He was usually sincere, and determined. He felt +that it was up to him to make over the native races to suit his own +ideas of what pleased God and himself. When he had the lower hand, he +prayed and strove in agony to change the wicked hearts of his flock to +Clapham or Andover standards; he suffered the contumelies of heathen +jibes, and now and again--often enough to make a cartoon popular--he was +hotpotted or baked on hot stones as a "long pig." When he converted the +king or chief, and he always directed his sacred ammunition at the upper +classes, he took advantage of every inch of spiritual and governmental +club put in his hand, and smote the pagan hip and thigh. His sole effort +was to make the South Seas safe for theocracy, and to _strafe_ Satan. + +Of course, he was a missionary. It is doubtful if any other urge than a +religious one could have infused into those canny migrants of the past +century the extraordinary zeal that characterized their singular labors +in the exquisite and benighted isles of the tropics. + +To leave the melancholy and futuristic atmosphere of seminaries and +bethels where the ghosts and penalties of millions of sins cast down +their hearts, where few baths and drab clothes, dark homes and poor +food, made all conscious of dwelling in a vale of tears, and after half +a year or more of hard, ship fare and the rough discipline of a tossing +windjammer, to find themselves in the most magnificent scenes on the +globe, and amid the richest bounty, was trial enough of the unstable +soul of man. That they--most of them--resisted the temptations of the +tropical demon, that they continued to preach fire and brimstone, to +remain flocked and shod, pantaletted and stayed, is proof enough of +their cementation to the rock of ages. + +The men were even subjected to direr spells. They were youths, the rude +boys of farm and hamlet, schooled in simple studies, untried by the +wiles of siren blandishments. If married, their courtships had been +without passion, and their wedded years without competition, and +generally without other incidents than children. + +A typical union of this kind I find in an old diary of the wife of one +of the most famous propagandists of the American God in Polynesia. He +was of Yale and Andover, and she of Bradford, the daughter of a Marlboro +deacon. She was twenty-four and he a little older when her cousin called +upon her at her Marlboro home, to ask if she would "become connected +with a missionary now an entire stranger, attach herself to a little +band of pilgrims, and visit the distant land of Hawaii." + +"What could I say? We thoroughly discussed the subject. Next week is +the anticipated, dreaded interview of final decision. Last night I could +neither eat nor close my eyes in sleep." + +The suitor came. "The early hours of the evening were devoted to +refreshments, to free family sociality, to singing, and to evening +worship. Then one by one the family dispersed, leaving two of similar +aspirations, introduced as strangers, to separate at midnight as +interested friends. + +"In the forenoon, the sun had risen high in the heavens, when it looked +down upon two of the children of earth giving themselves wholly to their +heavenly Father, receiving each other from his hand as his good gift, +pledging themselves to each other as close companions in the race of +life, consecrating themselves and their all to a life-work among the +heathen." + +After six months on the wave, she approaches the "land of darkness +whither I am bound. When I reflect on the degradation and misery of +the inhabitants, follow them into the eternal world, and forward to the +great day of retribution, all my petty sufferings dwindle to a point." + +They anchor, and "soon the islanders of both sexes came paddling out +in their canoes, with their island fruit. The men wore girdles, and +the women a slight piece of cloth wrapped around them, from the hips +downward. To a civilized eye their covering seemed to be revoltingly +scanty. But we learned that it was a full dress for daily occupation." + +The note of nudity this really remarkable woman struck at her first +sight of the welcoming savages, was the keynote of the new domination of +the islands from Hawaii to Australia. The censors were convinced that +it was a state of ungodliness. Their reasoning was based on the fig leaf +tied about them by the first man and woman when they became conscious of +sin, and it proceeded to the logical teaching that the less of the body +exposed the more godly the condition. When they found this nakedness +associated with a relation of the sexes utterly opposed to their own, +and when, especially, the first white wives on the South Sea beaches, +found the joyous, handsome, frolicsome women of the islands, making +ardent love to their husbands, the innate heinousness of bodily bareness +became fixed as a guiding star towards bringing the infidel to the true +worship. + +Clothe them and sanctify them, became the motto. From the wondrous +Marquesas valleys to the American naval station of Samoa, the bonnet, +the bonnet of a half century ago, is the requirement of decency in +the coral or bamboo church, as it is in the temples of New York. The +nightgown or Mother Hubbard of Connecticut became the proper +female attire for natives in the house of God, and thus, by gradual +establishment of a fashion, in their straw homes, and everywhere. +Chiefesses were induced to don calico, and chiefs the woolen or denim +trousers of refinement. The trader came to sell them, and so business +followed the Bible. Tattooing, which, with the Polynesians and +Melenesians, was probably a race memory of clothing in a less tropical +clime, was condemned bitterly by the white censors as causing nudity. A +man or woman whose legs and body were covered with marvellous arabesques +and gaudy pictures of palms and fish was not apt to hide them under +garments. + +And here the censor also had an ally in the trader. The two joined, +unwittingly, to break down both the old morale of the pagan and the +new morality of the converts. The censorious cleric said that the Lord +disliked nakedness, or, at least, that unclothedness was unvirtuous, +while the seller of calico and alcohol advised the purchase of his goods +for the sake of style. He ridiculed tattooing and nudity, but he also +laughed with ribaldry at the religious arguments. The confused indigene, +driven by admonition and shame put on the hot and griming stuffs, and +finally, had them kept on him by statute. The censor in the South Seas +achieved his highest reach of holy effort. He had made into law the +_mores_ his sect or tribe had coined into morals, and was able to punish +by civil tribunal the evildoers who refused to abide by his conception +of the divine wish. + +But here, old Mother Nature revolted. All over the world it would appear +that she is not in touch with the divinity that shapes the ends of the +censors. The clothing donned by the natives of the South Seas killed +them. They sweated and remained foul; they swam, and kept on their +garments; they were rained on, and laid down in calico and wool, +They abandoned the games and exercises which had made them the finest +physical race in the world, and took up hymn books and tools. The +physical plagues of the whites decimated them. They passed away as the +_tiaré_ Tahiti withers indoors. The censored returned to the rich earth +which had bred them, and taught them its secrets and demands. Only a +mournful remnant remains to observe the censorship. + +But the curious spirit of inversion which tries to make the assumed +infinite of a finite nature, which had sacrificed a race to an invented +god, persists even in the South Seas. One of the most distinguished +authors, who has chosen that delectable clime for his researches was +arrested for napping on his own _paepae_ partly clothed. The parson +informed upon him, and the _gendarme_ fined him. In the British South +Seas, where I was recently, prohibition had cast a blight upon the more +poetical whites. I remember one night when my vessel was anchored for a +few hours in the roadstead of a lonely island, a group of civil servants +and a minister of the Church of England had come aboard to buy what +comforts they might from our civilized caravan. They sat on deck +clinking glasses occasionally, talking of cities where a man might +be freed from the "continuous spying of the uncoo good." That was the +phrase they used, being English or Scots, and when the word was passed +that we up-anchored with the turn of the tide at midnight, they sang +in a last burst of lively furor a song of Dionysian regret. One stanza +lingers with me:-- + + Whack the cymbal! Bang the drum! + Votaries of Bacchus! + Let the popping corks resound, + Pass the flowing goblet round! + May no mournful voice be found, + Though wowzers do attack us! + +In the darkness I called to them as they went down the gangway into +their boat, "What is a wowzer?" + +"'E's a bloomin' ---- 'oo wants to do unto others wot 'e's bleedin' +well done to 'imself." + +The wowzers are more active in Hawaii, the most temperate portion of +Polynesia, than in the Maori isles of New Zealand. A law passed at the +last session of the Hawaiian legislature prohibits "any person over +fourteen years of age from appearing upon the streets of Honolulu in +a bathing suit unless covered suitably by an outer garment reaching at +least to the knees." There is a ferment in Honolulu over the arrest and +punishment of offenders against this new censorship. It is the result +of the control by the spiritual, or perhaps, lineal, descendants of the +first South Sea censors, of the great grand-children of those men who +wore the girdles of leaves at the landing of the Marlboro school teacher +a hundred years ago. The girdle-wearers are members of the Hawaiian +legislature--soon to be succeeded by Japanese-native-born--and the +censors, likely, are wives of financiers and sugar factors. Again the +feeble remnant of the Hawaiian race voted against the girdle. + +A friend of mine, grandson of the estimable missionary and his bride of +the New England of a century ago, thus comments upon the law in a paper +sent to me:-- + +The facts which caused the passage of the law were, that certain +residents of Waikiki were donning their bathing suits at home, walking +across and along the public streets to the sea and returning in the same +state of undress. + +If the bathing suits had been of the old-style no objection to this +would have been made. The woman's bathing suit of the olden days were +a cumbrous swaddling garment, high-necked, long-sleeved, full-skirted, +bloomer-breeched and stockinged. + +Simultaneously with the outbreak of the street parade era, above noted, +there came with spontaneous-combustion-like rapidity, a radical change +in the style of female bathing suits "on the street at Waikiki." + +First the sleeves, then the stockings, then the skirts, then the main +portion of the garment covering the legs, successively disappeared, +until the low-necked, sleeveless, legless one-piece suit became "the +thing"; and women clad in garments scantier than the scantiest on the +ballet stage, were parading Kalakaua avenue in the vicinity of the Moana +hotel, to the scandal and disgust of some; the devouring gaze of others; +and the interested inspection of whomsoever chose to inspect! + +It was a startling sight to the uninitiated--probably unduplicated in +any other civilized country. + +The South Pacific or the heart of Africa would probably have to be +visited to find virtuous women so scantily clad, making such exhibition +of their persons in public-more particularly on the public streets. + +This scantiness of dress became the subject of protest, of +justification, of discussion in press, in public and in private +throughout the community. + +The practice was violently attacked as tending to lewdness and scandal; +as vigorously defended as a question of personal taste and liberty, and +as a matter concerning safety and comfort in swimming. + +Those "old-style suits" he refers to, "full-skirted, bloomer-breeched" +were the godly ones brought to Hawaii by the censors, but which +gradually disappeared with the influx of rich tourists from America, +and the importation by Honolulu merchants of the flimsier and less +concealing kind. This new generation of whites that has sought escape +from the "cumbrous, swaddling garment" embraces the flapper, who at +Waikiki is a beautiful and wholesome sight. Browned by years of exposure +to the beach sun, charmingly modelled, and with the grace and freedom of +limb of the surf-board rider and canoeist, she has no consciousness of +guilt in her emergence dripping from the sea, in her lying in the breeze +upon the sand, nor in her walks to and from her bungalow nearby. And she +refuses to be censored. + +The commentator, proprietor of the oldest newspaper in the islands, and +himself a noted diplomat, lawyer and revolutionist--he took up a rifle +against Liliuokalani--says so:-- + +The law has been observed by a few, ignored by a few, and caricatured by +the many. It is not an uncommon thing to see a woman walking the streets +in Waikiki in the scantiest of bathing suits, with drapery of the +flimsiest suspended from her shoulders and floating behind upon the +breeze. + +The police have made a few feeble and spasmodic attempts to persuade +observance of the law, with some ill-advised attempts to enforce +individual ideas of propriety on the beach itself. + +On the whole, the law is either openly and flagrantly violated or +rendered farcical by the contemptuous manner of its semi-observance. + +And, cautiously but firmly, the grandson of the first missionaries to +Hawaii, himself living six decades in Honolulu, a church member and +supporter of all evangelical and commercial progress, gives advice to +the people of his territory. Urging that those opposed to the bathing +suit law try legally to secure its repeal, but that all obey it while it +is on the statute books, he says:-- + +As to the question of attire on the beach, there are modest and immodest +women to be found everywhere, regardless of their clothes. It is +impossible to legislate modesty into a person who is innately immodest, +and it is therefore useless to try and do so. The attire of a woman on +the beach at Waikiki as well as her conduct elsewhere, should therefore +be left to the individual woman herself. + +That is the last word of a very shrewd, wealthy, experienced, religious +son of censors. But wowzerism dies hard in America or in the South Seas. +The Anglo-Saxon American has it in his blood as an inheritance from +the rise of Puritanism four hundred years ago, while with many it is an +idiosyncrasy to be explained by the glands regulating personality. In +fact, I feel that this is the enemy the would-be free must fight. We +must attack and extirpate the wowzerary gland. + + + + +REFORMERS: A HYMN OF HATE + + +[Illustration: Dorothy Parker hating Reformers.] + +DOROTHY PARKER + + I hate Reformers; + They raise my blood pressure. + + There are the Prohibitionists; + The Fathers of Bootlegging. + They made us what we are to-day-- + I hope they're satisfied. + They can prove that the Johnstown flood, + And the blizzard of 1888, + And the destruction of Pompeii + Were all due to alcohol. + They have it figured out + That anyone who would give a gin daisy a friendly look + Is just wasting time out of jail, + And anyone who would stay under the same roof + With a bottle of Scotch + Is right in line for a cozy seat in the electric chair. + They fixed things all up pretty for us; + Now that they have dried up the country, + You can hardly get a drink unless you go in and order one. + They are in a nasty state over this light wines and beer idea; + They say that lips that touch liquor + Shall never touch wine. + They swear that the Eighteenth Amendment + Shall be improved upon + + Over their dead bodies-- + Fair enough! + Then there are the Suppressors of Vice; + The Boys Who Made the Name of Cabell a Household Word. + Their aim is to keep art and letters in their place; + If they see a book + Which does not come right out and say + That the doctor brings babies in his little black bag, + Or find a painting of a young lady + Showing her without her rubbers, + They call out the militia. + They have a mean eye for dirt; + They can find it + In a copy of "What Katy Did at School," + Or a snapshot of Aunt Bessie in bathing at Sandy Creek, + Or a picture postcard of Moonlight in Bryant Park. + They are always running around suppressing things, + Beginning with their desires. + They get a lot of excitement out of life,-- + They are constantly discovering + The New Rabelais + Or the Twentieth Century Hogarth. + Their leader is regarded + As the representative of Comstock here on earth. + How does that song of Tosti's go?-- + "Good-bye, Sumner, good-bye, good-bye." + + There are the Movie Censors, + The motion picture is still in its infancy,-- + They are the boys who keep it there. + If the film shows a party of clubmen tossing off ginger ale, + Or a young bride dreaming over tiny garments, + Or Douglas Fairbanks kissing Mary Pickford's hand, + They cut out the scene + And burn it in the public square. + They fix up all the historical events + So that their own mothers wouldn't know them. + They make Du Barry Mrs. Louis Fifteenth, + And show that Anthony and Cleopatra were like brother and sister, + And announce Salome's engagement to John the Baptist, + So that the audiences won't go and get ideas in their heads. + They insist that Sherlock Holmes is made to say, + "Quick, Watson, the crochet needle!" + And the state pays them for it. + They say they are going to take the sin out of cinema + If they perish in the attempt,-- + I wish to God they would! + + + And then there are the All-American Crabs; + The Brave Little Band that is Against Everything. + They have got up the idea + That things are not what they were when Grandma was a girl. + They say that they don't know what we're coming to, + As if they had just written the line. + They are always running a temperature + Over the modern dances, + Or the new skirts, + Or the goings-on of the younger set. + They can barely hold themselves in + When they think of the menace of the drama; + They seem to be going ahead under the idea + That everything but the Passion Play + Was written by Avery Hopwood. + They will never feel really themselves + Until every theatre in the country is razed. + They are forever signing petitions + Urging that cigarette-smokers should be deported, + And that all places of amusement should be closed on Sunday + And kept closed all week. + They take everything personally; + They go about shaking their heads, + And sighing, "It's all wrong, it's all wrong,"-- + They said it. + + I hate Reformers; + They raise my blood pressure. + + + + +PROHIBITION + + +[Illustration: Frank Swinnerton contemplating, from the Tight Little +Isle, the two classes of prigs developed by Prohibition; those who +accept it and those who rebel.] + +FRANK SWINNERTON + +I shall never forget the shock I received when an American woman, +newly arrived in England, gave me her impressions of London. She was +distinctly pleased with the town, and when I rather foolishly asked if +she had been terrified by our celebrated policemen, she said, "Why, +no. I was in a taxicab yesterday, and the driver went right on past the +policeman's hand, stealing round where he'd no business to go. And the +policeman just said, 'Here, where you going? D'you want the whole of +England?' Why, in New York, if he'd done that, he'd have been in prison +inside of five minutes!" + +I wonder if it will be understood how terrible disillusion on such a +scale can be. I had been thinking of the United States for so long as +the home of the free and the easy that it was hard to bring myself to +the belief that the police there were both peremptory and severe. I had +thought them all Irishmen of the humorous, or "darlint" type. It seems +I was mistaken. The little--I am now afraid misleading--paragraphs which +from time to time appear in the English papers, saying that there has +been a hold-up on Fifth Avenue, or that the Chief of Police in some +great city has been found to be the head of a gang of international +assassins, that things called Tammany and graft and saloons flourish +there without let or hindrance, had attracted me to the United States. +I wanted to live in such a country. Here, I said, is a place where every +man's hand is for himself, where the revolver plays its true part, and +where, with the aid of a humorous Irish policeman, who will find me +stunned by a sandbag and take me to his little home in 244th Street and +reveal the fact that he is descended from Cuchulain, I can be happy. + +At first I thought that my friend must be exaggerating. Not lightly was +I prepared to let my dream go. But I am afraid that my confidence in +America as the home of freedom needs a tonic. She may have been right, +although it seems unbelievable. When I thought the problem out clearly +I came to the conclusion that there was a sinister sound about that +comment upon our policemen. Were they losing control of us? Apparently +not. I had trouble on the road with a policeman over the rear light of +my car. There is no doubt that England is efficiently policed. And so +my mind stole back to America with a new uneasiness. I recollected tales +which I had heard about sumptuary laws regulating the dress of +American women, both in and out of the water. I saw the police invading +restaurants and snatching cigarettes from the mouths of women. I saw +drink being driven underground by Prohibition. I began to question +whether I should really like to live in the United States after all. I +asked those of my friends who had been to America. + +They told me that if I visited America I should be regaled privately +with champagne from the huge reserves of private wine-cellars, but that +as a resident I should be forbidden to drink anything that enlivened me. +It was a great shock. I am not yet recovered from it. I see that I shall +after all have to live quietly in England with my pipe and my abstemious +bottle of beer. And yet I should like to visit America, for it has +suddenly become in my imagining an enormous country of "Don't!" and I +want to know what it is like to have "Don't" said by somebody who is not +a woman. + +I have always hated the word "Don't." I hated it as a child, and I hate +it still. It is a nasty word, a chilling word, associated with feelings +of resentment, of discipline, of prohibition. Yes, that is it, of +course, Prohibition. I find that it is Prohibition which makes my throat +so dry. I thought it was a human characteristic, when anybody said, +"You're not to do that!" to do it at once in case there should be any +misunderstanding. I should be frightened to say "Don't!" to anybody, +because I feel sure it would precipitate unpleasantness. Is America so +different from the rest of the world that it likes having "Don't!" said +to it? I cannot think that. What occurs to me is that America has not +yet worked out of its system the strain that the English Puritan fathers +brought with them. It is a melancholy thought to me that it is really +ancient English repression that is responsible for the present state +of affairs. I feel very guilty, particularly as I have seen an article +about myself in an English newspaper headed "A Modern Puritan." It +is really I, and people like me, who have caused the great drink +restrictions in the United States. I bow my head. + +The truth is, I suppose, that people in the United States take life more +seriously than we do in England. If you read any of the books which +have been written in this country during the ages to show what sort of +community is the ideal--I refer to such works as "Utopia" and "News from +Nowhere"--there is never any difference between them on one point. All +the dwellers in these ideal states appear to be thoroughly idle. They +have practically no work to do at all. All their time is spent in talk +and sylvan wandering, with music and dancing round maypoles. There is no +mistaking the fact that the Englishman's idea of life is confirmed and +justifiable laziness. He wants what he calls leisure. Charles Lamb, a +typically English author, wrote a poem beginning "Who first invented +work?" He came to the conclusion that it must have been the Devil. +The inference is clear. Observation confirms my view. It is not to be +doubted that the average Englishman spends his life in scheming to make +somebody else do the work that lies nearest to his hand. + +Americans must be different. I believe they really like work. And I +will give the Prohibitionists this handsome admission. I also work much +better without stimulants. I mean, much harder. But on the other hand, I +am less happy. Does an American feel happy in his work? Does the act of +work give him a satisfaction which is not felt by an Englishman? I +think that must be the explanation. But on the other hand there is this +question of Puritanism. We tried it in England, and we had a severe +reaction to libertinism. We maintain Puritanism only in our suburban +districts, where there is exceedingly close scrutiny of all matters +pertaining to conduct; and in our theatres. In the suburbs it does not +much matter, although it rather cramps our suburban style; but in the +theatre it drives some of us to distraction. I will explain why. + +Supposing a man wants to write a play, he at once thinks of getting it +produced. An unproduced play is like an unpublished novel: practically +speaking it does not exist. The author can read it, of course, and his +wife can assure him that it is a great deal better than anything she has +seen or read for years; but the author and his wife are both haunted +by the fact that there is a masterpiece which is lying--not fallow, but +unused and sterile. They grow dissatisfied. The savour of life is lost +for them. They develop persecution mania, grow very conceited, and +finally come to believe that only they of all the men and women alive +truly grasp the essentials of life. They say, if this were the silly +muck that most authors write, it would be produced, and then we should +have our car and our servants and diamonds and titles and all the +paraphernalia of happiness. As it is, we are doomed to silence and +poverty, simply because George is too much of an artist to lower himself +by writing what the public wants, and what the censor will pass. For +I have not been outlining the diseased state of mind of the merely +incompetent man who writes something that nobody will look at. I have +been giving details of one of those men who have a moral message, and +who desire greatly to spread it by means of the stage. He has written, +let us say, a play in which the name of God appears, or a play wherein +a young woman has a baby and does not wish to have a husband. The censor +says that there must be no mention of God in plays performed on the +public stage, and that young women who have babies must either have +husbands or come to early graves of their own seeking. Very well, what +happens? I have described the state of mind of a husband and wife who +have a pet child--a play--which is lying heavy on their minds and hearts +and hands. They are ripe for any temptation of the devil. And it comes. +It always comes. + +The devil dresses himself up in the guise of a Sunday play-producing +society. The play is surreptitiously performed in a theatre to which +admission can be obtained only by members banded together for just such +emergencies. It is very badly acted by actors and actresses who have not +been able to spare sufficient time from their daily work to learn their +parts as well as they should have done. The audience comes full of +a smug self-satisfaction at the thought that it is excessively +intellectual and select, and that it alone can appreciate blasphemy +or the vagaries of neurotic young women. It sits intellectually in the +theatre, and watches the play. The author sits intellectually in his +box, and intellectually accepts the plaudits of the audience. He lives +thereafter in a highly intellectual atmosphere. He is driven to become a +member of the secret play-producing society, and to watch other plays +of a character not suited to the requirements of the censorship. He +is morally a ruined man. He will never any more be a decent member +of society, for he has become an intellectual. He has been taught to +despise ordinary human beings, for they do not want to be wicked or +silly, except in the normal humdrum way, and they have not seen his play +and are not members of his play-producing society. He discovers that the +censored is the only good art. He is driven to the reading of all sorts +of Continental drama. He is made into an anti-English propagandist. He +is like the person in the song, who, + +"Praises every century but this, and every country but his own." + +He has been lost for human kind, and is wedded to intellectualism and +a sense of superiority to others for the rest of his miserable life. He +institutes a new system of censorship of his own. It takes the form of +sneering at and condemning anything that does not conform to his +own ideas. He sniffs at all sorts of innocently happy people who are +inoffensively pursuing their noisy course through life. He begins to +hate noise. He makes a virtue of his abstention from ordinary pleasures. +He speaks condescendingly of the "hoi polloi." As I said, he is ruined. +He is no longer a man that one can talk to with any comfort, for his +sense of superiority is intolerable. + +To me there is nothing more terrible than the sense of superiority to +others. It arises, not from merit or the consciousness of merit, but +from sheer tin-like flimsiness of character. It arises from limited +sympathies. The really great man, and the really sagacious man, is +one to whom nothing is contemptible. To him, even the follies of his +fellow-passengers are manifestations of human nature, revelations of the +material from which scholars and politicians no less than drunkards +and inconstants are gradually in course of time developed. Somebody +described "conceit" to me the other day as egotism in which contempt for +others is involved. It was agreed between us that egotism was normal, +since happiness is not to be attained without a sense of personal +utility to the world, and no objection was urged against it. Vanity was +to be tolerated, because it was definitely social--a recognition of the +existence and value of the good opinion of others; but never sense of +superiority. And the sense of rebellion should be added to this other +sense, as equally to be regretted. A young woman whose incredible acts +of folly had spoiled half-a-dozen lives, including her own, recently +encountered a young man whom she had jilted on the eve of her marriage +to another, whom she had also left. The young man, still smarting under +his ill-treatment, reproached her. He said, "What you want, my dear, is +discipline." "Pooh!" she answered. "I'm _above_ discipline!" The poor +young man retired, unequal to the conversation. But the young woman went +on her way, defiant and self-infatuated, believing that she really was +superior to the opinions of others, the common decencies of conduct, the +inevitable give and take of ordinary life. Driven to folly by lack +of balance, she was learning to justify her folly by the argument for +rebellion. Whether she will ever learn to control her actions I do +not know, but rebelliousness from a fueling that one is too good to be +governed by normal standards is not only arrogant and unsocial. It is +silly. It is, to my mind, a criminal form of silliness. But it is +one very widely accepted by the young and the unimaginative. It must +therefore be recognized and combated. + + It springs, perhaps, from disordered shame, which makes children +noisily act in defiance of authority, particularly if there are others +present to overhear. No children are worse-behaved than those who are +over-controlled. The word "don't" at the breakfast-table produces +more acts of violent rebellion than any amount of parental weakness. +Unimaginativeness begets unimaginativeness. Rigidity in one person +creates a counter-rigidity in the other. There is a thwarting upon both +sides, a mutual shackle upon sweetness and understanding. A wildness of +action arises, with loss of affection, respect, self-respect. And the +vicious part of it is that children (we are all children, for we never +grew up in human relations), once they are embarked upon an evil +course, are driven by vanity to continue upon that course until they are +exhausted, going from defiance to defiance; and ultimately building up a +whole sophisticated gospel of axioms whereby rebellion is given warrant +and virtue. The gospel of rebellion we know to be specious and without +justification; but it is essential to us, as human beings, to +maintain self-approval for our acts. If we cannot do this socially, +by comparative standards, we do it unsocially, by subversion of those +standards. Rebels are only prigs turned upside down or inside out. + +The great defect of prohibition is that when it can be enforced by law +it makes rebels who think there is something inconceivably clever in +doing secretly that which the law forbids. They learn to think there is +some subtle merit in evading the law. They encourage others to break the +law, and so develop cliques and finally new and silly conventions. Or, +prohibition has another effect. It makes a whole class who accept its +rulings, and gradually these people, owing to a peculiarity which all +gregarious animals seem to have, begin to believe that unless all are +of their persuasion and of their number the fault lies with the rebels. +First of all they consider themselves superior to the rebels, and +despise them. Then, when they find that the rebels think that _they_ are +the superior class, in defying the law or the convention, a new set of +notions arises, and this set of notions leads to persecution and to +war. You cannot introduce any restrictive or prohibitive measure without +developing fanatical conceit, narrow-mindedness, and intolerance, both +in those who welcome the measure and in those who seek to ignore and +even to defy its rulings. + +The Puritanical attitude is almost wholly repressive, and naturally +invokes force to aid its repressive measures. It did so in England +centuries ago in the matter of the theatre, and we are living among all +the rotten plays which have been written since, and the theatre is +for the most part a place of ignominious diversion. The play-producing +societies have nothing to produce that is worth producing, because +the atmosphere which causes such plays as are written to be produced +privately is not the healthy atmosphere from which masterpieces arise. +It is an atmosphere impregnated with priggishness and a sense of +superiority. It is an atmosphere, if there can be such a thing, of +sterility. The same thing happens in other matters, and I do not feel at +all certain that it may not happen with drink. If you say men are not to +drink you create two new classes. There is of course the existing class +that does not care for drink and is afraid of its effects to the point +of wishing to keep it away from those who do like drink. That class +already flourishes in most communities, and so I do not place it among +any two classes which are created by the prohibition. The two +classes are as follows-the class that submits, and gradually develops +priggishness and self-satisfaction at being in the majority, and +the class that rebels, and gradually develops priggishness and +self-satisfaction at being in the minority. Both classes are +objectionable, and I do not know which is the worse. They are both +inevitable in a world of prohibitions, and if the United States, to +which we are all looking as the real hope for intelligent civilization, +is going to take away our beer and turn us into supporters of +play-producing societies I cannot think what will happen to the world. +Better a wicked world than a virtuous one. Better a world in which we +can hope that there are people worse than ourselves than a world where +we know that there cannot be any better. + + + + +A GUESS AT UNWRITTEN HISTORY + + +[Illustration: H. M. Tomlinson regarding, with not too great enthusiasm, +the Perfect State of the Future.] + +H. M. TOMLINSON + +That fairly violent scuffling during the years 1914-1918, the opening +skirmishes of the war between Organization and Liberty which our +fore-fathers named so strangely the "War to End War," did not appear to +conclude satisfactorily for the victorious nations, especially England. +Actually it was an excellent ground for the founding of that Perfect +State which, in the centuries that followed, arose on the lines laid +largely by chance and the exigencies of that early scramble. Yet it is +possible the victorious statesmen may not have guessed that they had +done really well. The name by which the war of those remote years was +popularly known is enough to show that the difficulties faced by those +men at the end of the war may have obscured the good they had done. +That name is itself clear evidence of the not unpleasing credulity and +ridiculous but innocent desire of the people of that time. + +After all, those peoples were not so long out of the Neolithic Age. +Their memory was still strong of the freedom of their earlier wanderings +when they could go where they liked, work at what suited them, eat and +drink what pleased them, choose who should be their chief, and worship +in any Temple which promised most personal benefits. It was, then, +natural for them to make so amusing a mistake in the naming of their +"Great War." They not only certainly imagined they were ending War, but +they imagined, too, they had a right to end it, thinking that not only +War, but every other act of the State, was for their decision. Their +Governors, therefore, judged it wise to allow them this illusion to play +with, so to distract their attention from the reality, which they would +have resented. This illusion was known as Popular Government. + +We may laugh at it now, but in those days the directing minds of great +nations found that common illusion no laughing matter. Some who laughed +at it openly discovered they had laughed on the wrong side of the +guillotine. It is usual in this era of science, when control by the Holy +State of the national mass-power, both of body and mind, is complete, +and when national emotion is raised by Press and Pulpit whenever it is +required and put wherever it is wanted, to ridicule the laxity of +the statesmen who directed the nations in that early war. A little +reflection, however, shows us that that laxity is but apparent. Those +statesmen went as far as they dared, and dared a little more with +each success they won. They discovered that control may be gained by +announcing control to be necessary for some quite innocent object, +and then using and retaining the power thus acquired for a real but +undivulged purpose. Sheep, we are aware, never understand they are +securely folded till the completing hurdle of the circuit is in its +place, and then they soon forget it, and begin grazing; for all sheep +want is grass, and perhaps a turnip or two to give content in a limited +pasture. + +It would be wrong for us, nevertheless, to blame those early folk for +not understanding, as finely as we do, the true science of government to +be complete and unquestioned mastery. We have learned much since +then. Let us look back to those days for a moment, to get the just +perspective. One of the first significant things we notice is that +those people were free to criticize their politicians--baaing across the +hurdles, as it were. That was why they had to have explained to them +the "Objects of the War." They actually did not want to die. They were +reluctant to go to battle unless they knew why they were going. True, +it was easy enough to find a reason to satisfy them, but it is necessary +for us to remember that they would not submit to mutilation and death +without some reason. Much as their governors may have desired it, +those primitives would not agree willingly to the total surrender of +conscience, individual liberty, and of life, to "politicians," as the +High Priests of the Holy State were then familiarly named. Individual +conscience, therefore, had to be cajoled, had to be bamboozled, had to +be hypnotized; and a man's liberty could not be taken from him unless +he was helpless, or was looking, under clever political finger-pointing, +the other way. + +It was this almost intractable matter of personal conscience and liberty +which was the cause of the angry disappointment following the Versailles +Treaty which, illustrating still further the need for subtle tact in +dealing with our hairy forefathers, was called a Peace Treaty. + +What a light is thrown upon those distant days and peoples when that +ancient document, the fragmentary relic of which is now treasured in the +museum at Tobolsk, is examined with even the little knowledge we possess +of the events immediately following it! For a time, we must believe, +humanity then was deliriously bereft. One could almost believe the moon +had a greater pull in those years. + +"No more secret diplomacy!" historians tell us was one of the cries of +the soldiers as they went to battle. There is considerable ground, too, +for accepting the amusing traditional tale that even at the end of the +war the then President of the American Republic (mainly confined at +the time to the Western Continent), declared the first point for the +guidance of the Peace Conference must be an open discussion of the +covenant. And the first thing to happen when the war ended was the +closing of the door of the council room by the peacemakers, who, +naturally, were the very men with no other interest till that moment but +the full pursuit of war; yet nobody noticed the door was shut, though +nobody could hear what was going on inside the room. The faith in their +politicians held by the natives of the backyard communities into which +Europe was then divided--on the very eve, we see now, of the full +continental control of international man-power by consolidated +finance--was the measure of their annoyance when, too late, naturally, +the fact that the old shackles from which they had been promised freedom +were noticed to be riveted upon them several links tighter. + +But it is not their faith, so happily youthful, which so reveals +their ingenious minds as their resultant annoyance. That resentment +illuminates the essential fact for us in studying their mentality as +social animals. They really did accept without question, with open and +receptive mouths and eyes shut, what was considered pleasing enough to +fortify them in the trials of warfare. They were, difficult though it +is for us to understand it, too vacant and generous to realize that the +"Objects of the War" were but figments nicely calculated to get them +busy. The figments--we must give credit to the leaders of the time-were +indeed not un-imaginatively conjured up. Those inducing visions worked. +They were accepted readily, and even with delight. It was sincerely +believed that the pleasing dreams were substantial, that those chromatic +vapours evoked by gifted statesmen were veritable promises of divine +favor for meritorious endurance. + +From that we can the more easily go with understanding to a study of +the consequences of that attractive faith of undisciplined peoples so +difficult to grasp for modern students, who witness daily the admirable +submission of our own uniform herds to the divine ordinances of the +High Priests of the Sacred Entity the State. Why, we even learn that +the survivors of the not inconsiderable armies returned from the +battlefields of 1918 with the innocent conviction that the gentlemen of +England would keep a bond as faithfully as common soldiers! The hardest +tasks of the statesmen of those days arose out of such extraordinary +expectations, out of the ruinous supposition of the childish-minded +that the honoring of a bond, the fulfilment of a promise in return for +benefits received, is equally incumbent on everybody! + +With that knowledge we begin to realise the difficulties of their +statesmen. A careful computation shows us that in England, where indeed +the lavish promises had been most picturesque, and where the tough idea +of personal liberty took longest to kill, it required just four years +of severe disciplinary measures and dry bread to reduce the masses +generally to a pale, obedient, and constructive spirit. At first they +would not work unless they wanted to, and then only at their own +price. They pointed, when answering their masters, to the fact that the +best-fed people never worked at all, and lived in the best houses. +They refused to cancel the official contracts made with them, even when +ordered to do so by the police. They behaved indeed, those ex-soldiers, +as though it had been _their_ war. Such a state of mind we in these days +really find impossible to elucidate. It is rather like trying to read +the spots on a giraffe. It is as inscrutable as the once general opinion +that the community has a right to decide upon its own affairs. + +Today we have reached that point in the evolution of society when +uniformity is known to be more desirable, because more comfortable than +liberty; and uniformity is impossible without compulsion. A man with a +free and contentious mind is a danger to the community, for he destroys +its ease. He compels his fellows to active thought, if only to refute +him. This is a dissipation of energy, and a local weakening of the +structure of the State. It is historically true that a few men with +ranging and questioning minds have sometimes injected so strong an +original virus of thought that the community has been changed in form +and nature. + +It was the mistake of the earlier nations to give little attention to +these troublesome and subversive fellows, who always thought more of the +truth than they did even of the inviolability of the High Priests of the +State. They preferred to die rather than surrender the out-dated rights +of man. Therefore they had to die. The rights of man cannot be allowed +to stand in the way of a nation's perfect uniformity. It was many +centuries before man realized that the only freedom worth having +is freedom from the necessity for individual thought. Perfectly +unembarrassed freedom, freedom in which the mind may be empty and +sunny, and assured happily of not the slightest interruption from any +unsanctioned unofficial idea, became possible to a community only after +the sanitary measures were devised which sufficed against unexpected +epidemics of speculative thinking. + +This, we are sadly aware, took time; for the brightly-colored hopes sent +skyward so long ago as 1914, and the vistas discovered as a consequence +by young men whose eyes till then had been resting safely on the ground, +and the daring and lively questioning that was aroused by the incessant +nudging of sleeping minds, coincided, as it unluckily happened, with +the beginnings when the "Great War" ended, of mass-production and +international finance, so developing problems of government, the solving +of which could not be reconciled with any admission of individual +liberty and personal right. It was, therefore, the elimination of +the notion of justice and liberty from common opinion which occupied +statesmen from 1918 onwards. + +Gradually the true social morality has been evolved--that one citizen +should be so like all other citizens that his only distinguishing +characteristic is his number; that the right ideal of citizenship, plain +for all to follow, and ensuring the stability of society, is to be +so loyal to the Holy State that an expression of a man's views in a +gathering of his fellows will rouse no more curiosity than a glass of +water. Obviously so desirable a similarity of mind and character, making +disputation impossible, and preventing all dislike of the ordinances of +the Sacred Entity, or Cabal of Inviolable Dispensers, a uniformity in +which war and peace become merely the national output of a vast machine +controlled by the Central Will, has been developed only through ages of +Press Suggestion, popular education with a bias that was designed but +was scarcely noticeable, the seizing and retaining of opportunities by +legislators whenever public opinion was sufficiently diverted, and +a development of chemical science and aeronautics which has been +encouraged by the enlightened directors of the major industries. + +The war which began in 1914 showed quite clearly, for example, the value +of the Censorship. The instituting of this office was never questioned, +for it was based on man's first impulse of obedience to superiors when +faced by a sudden danger, caused by his fear of the unknown. More than +that, the English were in a lucky state of exaltation at the time, and +were ready to sacrifice everything to save from destruction what they +were told was the ancient, exquisite, and priceless civilization of +France. They did save it; but in the prolonged and costly process they +learned more than they had known before of that civilization, as well as +of their own; and so much of their fear of losing either was evaporated. +By that time, anyhow, criticism was useless, because the Censorship +then was empowered to deal even with a derisive cough when Authority +was solemnly giving orders. Once the office of the Censor was set in its +place unnoticed in a time of public nervousness and excitement, the rest +was easy, for it became possible to bring all criticism within a law +which was elastic enough to be extended even to those figments which +merely worked on the timidity of unbalanced minds. + +It became unpatriotic to express a dislike for margarine, when butter +was prohibited. It was unpatriotic for a blind hunchback with heart +disease to protest that he was no soldier, if he were ordered to the +Front. For though the Censor, in the early period of that war, dealt +merely with news and opinions which might aid the enemy, yet, as the +value of adding to a nation's enemies became apparent to Authority, it +became necessary to turn into enemies of the State those who denounced +profiteers for turning blood into money, those who denounced generals +for wasting the lives of boys in purposeless actions, those who +spoke against the spending of the nation's resources to succor needy +contractors, and those who asked whether the war was to go on till all +were dead, or whether it might be stopped profitably at any time by +using a little common sense. Luckily for the welfare of the community, +this need for recognizing as enemies all, at home and abroad, who +differed from the decision of the Central Will, a need which was the +natural flower of that confidence which Authority acquired through +discovering the ease of control, put within the power of the Censor by +the time of the Peace Conference every possible form of protest, every +call for light, every cry of pain, every demand that such a "horrible +nonsense" as war should cease from human affairs, every plea for +compassion and generosity. + +Thus the problem of perfect government was engendered and simplified. +It was at last possible to ensure, at least outwardly, a semblance +of uniformity. The rest was a matter of evolution, till today only a +particular enquiry will determine a man from a woman, though it may fail +to determine a fool from a man. All are alike, all agree with what is +officially announced by the Sacred Entity, and the nation is as loyal +and homogeneous, as contented, as stable and industrious, as a reef of +actinozoal plasm. Thus the Perfect State has been built like a rock. The +City of God has at last arisen; and in each of the uniform homes of +its neuters, or workers, there is to be found the Patriotic Symbol--a +portrait of a Sheep, enjoined by law to hang in a principal place, and +bearing the legend "God Bless this Loyal Face." + +Here, however, we see at once that such a right condition of the +public mind could never have been acquired by a Censorship, by a mere +prohibition, that is, of individual thinking and acting. That +ensures merely a simulacrum of homogeneity. The appearance of general +acquiescence may exist, though not the real thing. It is easy to compel +men to do what they would not do freely if allowed an opportunity for +their reason to work. The problem was to prevent the working of reason. +Today, as we know, an order is issued by The Chosen, and is followed by +a campaign in the Press, and by revivals exhorted from the Pulpit. There +is no chance for the intrusion of reason.--No facts are ever issued for +reason to work upon, no questioning is ever allowed. The suggestions of +the Press and Pulpit prompt loyalty and obedience, and what might, in +early times, have been resented as ridiculous, becomes the mode; and +thus, if any rebels exist, it is but briefly, for they are denounced as +solitary and repugnant independents. A suggestion becomes public opinion +because the majority of people accept it without knowing there is reason +to question the suggestion; and the minority also accept it in the end +through weariness of an unpleasant and even dangerous distinction. + +Yet not, observe, all the minority. It was the experience of our +forefathers that unsuspected centres of infection always remained, and +were not discovered till they had poisoned large areas of the country. +Some bold fellow, here and there, had withstood all efforts at +intimidation, and in time made others as courageous as himself. A means +had to be found to eliminate the possibility of infection by original +minds, or clearly the Holy State could not consider itself safe. Here, +indeed, we see the hardest of the problems statesmen of the past had to +solve. From the mere negation of the Censorship, a positive advance +had to be made to the obliteration of original thought. This at first, +necessarily, was but tentative, and only the confidence gained through +successful experiment enabled governments at last to find where the real +trouble lay. + +It was supposed, at first, that the destruction of subversive political +tracts and the persecution of radical views would be enough. Yet, +of course, it was learned that as fast as these were cropped, growth +elsewhere had become vigorous. The human intelligence is natively prone +to look towards new things. Then it was that, after a long suspicion +of the origin of ideals, great statesmen were led to an examination of +classic literature and a study of the arts. Then they saw, what they +might have known sooner, that in the very institutions supported by the +State, the Public Libraries and Art Galleries, were actually preserved +the potent ideals which demeaned that general opinion which the State +was laboring to establish. + +The famous Day of Release was ordered. This was ordained to free mankind +from its heritage of the spirit. A test was made, and by that test any +book or picture or poem which could not be approved or understood by +native deacons of Solomon Island missions (who were imported for the +purpose) was at once extirpated. This checked a great deal of the +troublesome growth of the mind. Music, however, was strangely forgotten; +and it was proved that the great revolution which burst out in Europe +120 years after the "Great War" began in the emotion occasioned by the +continued playing of the compositions of one Beethoven, whose work is +now fortunately lost, and other music which remained in favor in spite +of the official insistence on the use of the steam saxophone for public +concerts. Men, wherever they dared, insisted on having the best. And +though the records were at length destroyed, the tenacious memories of +a few fanatics and cranks preserved much of the old music, and that +usually of the worst and most disloyal. + +Here we see another step had to be taken by men in control of the State. +The memory of what was classical was kept though in an ever-fading +condition, and now and again some point of memory fructified to almost +its original suggestive beauty in the fortuitously abnormal brain of a +genius, and thus the state work of hygiene had to be done over again; +for curiously enough people everywhere rose like a tide, and moved +spontaneously towards these manifestations of liberty and beauty, and +away from their loyalty to the God-State. A method, therefore, had to be +discovered, first for obliterating what remained in the public memory +of what was magical and rebellious, and then for the elimination of any +possibility of original genius arising; and genius was, it was seen, +first and last, the cause of all the trouble. + +The destruction of all great works of art was followed, fifty years +later, by the Period of Purging. All who were denounced for having +quoted forbidden poetry, or for humming forbidden music, were executed. +Such malefactors, who refused to forget, obviously could not be allowed +to live. This gave a long period of peace, in which the Sacred Entity, +the Unassailable Authority, took concrete form. Even so, the destruction +of the treasures of the past, and of all memory of them, did not prevent +the spontaneous appearance, now and then, of extraordinary men who, by +divination it would seem, perceived a flatness and monotony in society, +a sameness of common thought, and who laughed at the estimable uniform +flocks; often, indeed, stampeding them. + +Now science had its turn. It was more than a century since the works of +Darwin and other philosophers had been burned. Young students who showed +an aptitude for science, and so were potentially dangerous, were taken +early within the Sacred Precincts, initiated into the mysteries of the +Priests, and were given work and safety under the shadow of the Entity. +They rarely went wrong; and when they did they went further or were +heard of no more. + +These men of science were set the problem of finding a method of +sterilizing the unfit, that is, people who showed any decadent tendency +to originality. All the increase of population by that time was +occasioned under the direction of the High Priests, so that the Holy +State had not only the power of dealing death, but of bringing new life. +The new life, it is evident, had to be determined, as far as possible, +by a scientific specification of a perfect citizen; and in the course +of a century or two, through the destruction of intelligence wherever +it inadvertently appeared, through the selection of parents sufficiently +loyal and docile to accept marriage immediately when ordered by +officials, and by certain signs, such as lustiness, by which, at a +birth, the skilled Public Watchers who accompanied midwives were made +suspicious of the new-born as possible enemies of the State, at last +mankind arrived at its present perfection, content, and happiness, with +hardly an intellectual doubt or a sign of suspicious joy to mar the +whole serene horizon of the Holy State's exactitude. + +Yet, we dare ask, had it not been for that little "War to End War" +of 1914-1918, so innocently named by our forefathers who had too much +liberty to know what they were talking about, would the possibility of +our present social tranquility have arisen? It is hardly likely. The +freedom we enjoy from all criticism, from all interruptions of mind and +spirit, an internal peace which is indeed never broken except by the +lethal germs of our modern wars that, in the due course of nature, +obliterate every week or so a few of our cities, was a lucky chance that +was seized upon by public-spirited legislators who had the prescience to +know its value. + + + + +IN VINO DEMI-TASSE + + +[Illustration: Charles Hanson Towne and the Law.] + +CHARLES HANSON TOWNE + +The Young-Old Philosopher and I were sitting in one of the innumerable +restaurants in New York where the sanctity of the law is about as much +considered as a bicycle ride up Mt. Etna. At the next table--indeed, all +around us--rich red wine was being poured into little cups. + +"The new motto of America should be '_In vino demi-tasse_,'" my friend +said, smiling. And I quite agreed with him. For it is being done +everywhere; in the most exalted circles, and in the lowest. Poor old +human nature, which an organized minority are so bent upon changing +overnight, cannot be altered; and, all the emphasis in a supposedly free +country having been placed upon not drinking, the prohibitionists are +wondering why so many of us care for liquid refreshment. + +There is too much _verboten_ in America today. I can remember the time, +not so long ago, when no dinner-party was counted a success unless four +or five cocktails were served before we sat down at the table. But that +era passed. It was soon evident that such foolishness would lead to +grave disaster--if not to the grave; and the young business man who was +seen to consume even one glass of beer at luncheon was frowned upon, +catalogued as unsteady, even in the face of the fact that perhaps the +most efficient people in the world were automatic beer-drinkers. + +As to drinking, in America we had other ideas. Big Business, which has +become such a potent factor among us, and more a part of our national +consciousness than Art and Letters ever will be, of its own volition +placed a ban upon immoderate drinking; and the sane among us--of whom +there were still many--gladly fell in line, and either went periodically +upon the water-wagon or took a nip only occasionally when the cares of +life weighed too heavily and insistently upon us. + +Why, then, the Reformers? Why the Uplift Workers? Why the Extremists? +Not content with a great and wise people working out their own salvation +from within, they must step forth in solemn battalions, and make us pure +and holy--from without. + +We resent them. There is no reason why an entire nation should be +indicted for the sins and failings of a few. It would be quite as +sensible to forbid connubial bliss because there are a handful of +libertines in the world. + +The cry goes up, however, that the next generation will be so much +better because of our enforced good behavior now. I am afraid that I am +not enough of an altruist to care so definitely about the morals of +a race unborn. I feel that my children, looking over the files of our +newspapers, as they sip their light wine and beer, may smile and say, +"Poor grandpa! He had so little self-control that the Government had to +put the screws on him and his friends. Too bad! They must have been +a fast set in his day. And yet--he left us a pretty good heritage of +health and strength. We wonder if he was such an awful devil as history +makes out." + +The truth is that nothing, in moderation, ever hurt anybody. That is why +the wise among us are against Prohibition and strongly for Temperance. +Normal men do not like to be coddled. If coddling is done, however, +they like to pick their coddlers. We don't like a lean and sour-visaged +Prohibitionist making a fuss over us, feeling our pulse, taking our +temperature, smoothing our brow. The whole trouble with the world today, +as a sane man views it, is that there has been altogether too much +coddling of the physically and mentally unfit. + +We have become, through drifting, a nation of hypocrites. We make laws +so fast that the bewildered citizen cannot follow them. We add amendment +after amendment to our Constitution, and then laugh at what we have +done, the while we secretly rebel. We have few convictions, and we +refuse to face issues squarely and honestly. We pretend to be virtuous +before the rest of the world; but we are like the ostrich which hides +its head in the sands. We pretend that, just as the eugenists think of +the physical attributes of the coming generation, we consider the mental +attributes--and we turn around and raise a race of bootleggers. We +permit our enormous foreign population to see us at our legislative +work; and then we go proudly and sanctimoniously to restaurants and +allow Italian, German and French waiters to pour red wine into our +demi-tasses. + +Oh, we are not in our cups--only in our half-cups. It would all be very +amusing were it not so terribly serious. For we are rapidly floating +toward trouble; and, hypocritically enough, we will not admit it. When +it is said, since the tragedy of Prohibition, that the reformers will +next snatch our cigars and cigarettes out of our mouths, we shrug our +shoulders, smile and pass on, saying, "Oh, no! _that_ would be going +_too_ far!"--in the face of what already has been accomplished in this +land of the spree and the home of the grave. + +Yes, we have become grave indeed. For there can be no doubt that there +is a feeling of great unhappiness and unrest in America now. One hears +the most solid citizens saying, "I do not try to save any more; I +merely live from day to day, hoping against hope that things will right +themselves, and that the old order will somehow return." + +Who gets a long-term lease nowadays? Those of us who are old enough to +remember the simplicity and peace of the golden 'Eighties and 'Nineties +are appalled at the nervous tension and complexities of this hour. We +are all catalogued and tagged, just as they are in that Prussia we +so recently and fervently despised; and we are hounded by income-tax +investigators, surrounded by a horde of spies who search our luggage, +pry into our kitchens to see if we are making home brew, raided in +restaurants--and laughed at by king-ridden and shackled Europeans. + +It isn't pleasant to realize that you are burdened with taxes partly to +cover the salaries of Federal Officers whose delicate duty it is to spy +upon you. And then when you walk out and talk to the police-man on your +street, he will whisper in your ear that he knows where he can get you +some delicious ale, and see to it that it is safely delivered at your +door. This is the America, deny it as we will, that we are living in +today. I confess that I hang my head a bit, and am ashamed to look a +Frenchman in the face. + +Not long ago, at a dinner, I asked a certain politician--I refuse to +grace him with the name of statesman, though he has ambitions to +be known as such--why, if he believed in the Volstead Act, he still +consumed whiskey. His answer was intended to be amusing; to me it was +disgraceful. Said he: "I am drinking as much as I can in order to lessen +the supply for the other fellow." + +And just a while back I went to a banquet at a country club near New +York. Two policemen in uniform were sent by the local authorities to +"guard the place" while much liquor was poured. These minions of +the sacred law were openly served with highballs, and laughed at the +Constitution of the United States, the while they drank. Everyone at +that party was loud in denunciation of Prohibition and what has come in +its wake, yet went on dancing with the casual remark that it was of no +consequence that they broke the law, since everyone was doing it--and +everyone always would. + +Uphold the law, no matter what is injected into it, I have heard people +cry. That, it seems to me, is mere Teutonic stupidity, and has no part +in the attitude of thinking men and women in a land like America. I +suppose, arguing thus, that if a law were passed tomorrow prohibiting +the carrying of, say, hand-bags or canes, they would feel it incumbent +upon themselves, as good Americans, to fall into line, bow the knee and +whisper meekly, "All right, O most beloved country! I obey!" + +A good American, as I understand it, is not one who ignorantly stands +for the letter of the law, no matter what that law may be. A good +American is one who tries to set his country right; one who looks beyond +the present ungenerous attitude of the fanatics; one who visualizes the +future and prays that our liberty may not be further jeopardized, for +the good of the generations that are to follow us. + +We fought to rid the world of autocracy, yet we have suddenly become the +most autocratic nation on earth. Prohibition is a symbol of the death +of freedom. The issue at stake is as clear-cut as taxation without +representation; and our legislators should remember a certain well-known +Boston tea-party. There would have been no United States of America +unless a few honest men with sound convictions had rebelled and +protested against tyranny. The right kind of rebel makes the right kind +of citizen. + +I have heard a few people liken one's duty in the matter of the draft to +the Prohibition law. If we obeyed a summons to fight, whether we liked +fighting or not, we should likewise obey the law regarding drinking, +they contend. The two things are as separated as the Poles. In 1914, and +thereafter, civilization itself was at stake; and that man would have +been blind indeed who did not see the stern and clear-cut issues before +us all. We leaped to arms because we wanted to protect humanity, because +the death-knell of democracy was sounding. Prohibition, these same +people would tell us, should be enforced to save poor, weak humanity and +civilization again, and we should fight to that end. Yet as long as the +world has been moving, civilized man has been consuming a certain amount +of alcohol, and has been in no serious danger of going down to disaster. +We have progressed through the ages, despite our cheerful cups of wine; +and though of course a few imbeciles have dropped from the line, +the rest of us have been none the worse--in fact, sometimes a little +better--for our occasional libations. Let anyone deny this who has ever, +for a moment even, been in Arcady! And the dreadful and incontrovertible +fact remains that the sober nations have not proved themselves superior +to those who drink in moderation. + +Who are happy over Prohibition? First, the Prohibitionists themselves, +and, secondly, the bootleggers. The more the lid is clamped on in our +great cities, the more rejoicing goes on in that mysterious inner and +under circle which dispenses liquor, and will continue to dispense it, I +fear, until the end of time. Whenever there is a "drive" on in New York +to "mop up the place," prices soar to the skies, and the illicit trade +waxes brisker than ever. No wonder the bootleggers grow happy--and rich; +and evade the income tax which the rest of us must pay. + +I am not sympathetic toward those who say that they have been driven to +excessive drinking because a certain obnoxious law has been passed. The +only way to fight Prohibition is to fight it soberly; it is the jingled +and jangled arguments of bar-room bores that hurt the cause of the men +and women who are moderate drinkers, and who wish with all their hearts +to see a return to common sense in our country. + +We Americans never do anything piecemeal. Probably at the root of all +our strange fanaticism about drink was the thought that the saloon +had better go; that it was time for such foul places to disappear. The +pendulum had to swing all the way. If it would swing back a little; if +the Government would step in and control the liquor traffic, do away +with spirits, except for medicinal purposes, and give the people light +wine and beer, a truce could be declared over night. Drunkenness should +be made a prison offence. No matter who the offender against public +decency is he should be lodged in jail. Whether one is a so-called +gentleman coming out of his club, or the meanest tramp in the streets, +he should be punished. There would be no visible drunkenness if a law +like this were passed and rigorously enforced. + +I am afraid that so long as grapes grow on vines and apples on trees; so +long as fermentation is one of Nature's processes, there can be no such +thing as Prohibition. And the Biblical justification for drinking is +pleasant reading for those who like, now and then, a little wine at +their dinner tables. Yet there are fanatics who rise up and shout that +the wine Christ caused to appear at the marriage feast of Cana was not +intoxicating. What divination is theirs which makes them so positive? If +water was just as good, why did not water remain in the casks? + +If we would spend more time making laws that worked for good, rather +than for evil--and Graft is a great evil; if we would realize that it +is not so much our concern to make the other fellow good as to make him +happy, as Stevenson so beautifully puts it--then, I say, we would be +better employed than we are today with our foolish, fussy bills and +acts, mandates, precepts and restrictions. + +I believe firmly in local option in all things; but there is no reason +why New York, or any other great city, should live as Kansas and Idaho +live. I prefer New York because a big city gives me a spiritual uplift +that a prairie town does not. It is my privilege to live where I desire. +I like to hear fine music, to come in contact with intellectuals; to +go to plays that are worth while; to read books that satisfy my soul. I +find such a life in New York. I have no quarrel with the man who prefers +the silence and loneliness of forests and plains. He may be far happier +than I. But I do insist that if I let him alone, he also should let +me alone. Throbbing cities thrill me: cities with their glamour, their +wonder, their enchantment, their dreams of agate and stone, their lofty +towers that plunge to the very skies and kiss the clouds. I happen to +like the innocent laughter in a glass of champagne. You may call it +wicked hilarity. But the Continental manner of living appeals to me. I +like the color and warmth and fervor of life; and people who drink red +wine with their meals seem to me to be more cosmopolitan than those +who do not. All this seems part of the pageant of life to me. I am not +provincial, and I do not care to be made provincial by unintelligent and +unimaginative law-makers. + +It may be that I am entirely wrong. I do not know. But I do know that +it seems utterly unreasonable to force me to abstain from wine if I wish +it, just because there are a few heavy imbibers of whiskey in the world. +I think it is a far more serious matter to have practically all of us +law-breakers than to have one-half of one per cent of us drunkards. + +Let us have done with insincere, inelastic laws, and get back to wisdom +and truth and sanity. + + + + +BOOTLEG + + +[Illustration: John V. A. Weaver noticing the bartender who has been +thrown out of work by Prohibition.] + +JOHN V. A. WEAVER + +(With a graceful bow to Don Marquis) + + You heard me! How many times I got to tell you? + Them is my words: you leave that girl alone. + Leave her alone, you hear? Leave her alone! + You think I'll have my son foolin' around + A little snippy rat that's all stuck-up, + And thinks my son's not good enough for her? + "Yeh," that's what Bill says, "Yeh, it's like I say; + Ellen is got swell friends up on the Drive; + I'm sorry she had to break a date with Fred. + But still, you know, the world is changed a lot, + And we changed with it. You're about the same, + But me--well, I been gettin' right along, + And honest, Jack, you see the sense yourself-- + Why should I let my daughter marry a clerk?" + + + Can you believe it? Why, I damn near fainted. + His daughter too good for the likes of us! + Of course I got so mad I couldn't see! + Of course I pasted him square in the eye! + And if I catch him sayin' things about me + I'll knock his stuck-up head off! And I tell you, + If you go near the dirty oilcan's place, + And crawl around that snippy brat of his, + I'll kick you out into the street to stay. + You hear that? Eight out in the street you go! + The nerve! The dirty, lousy, low-down crook! + A Bootleg gettin' stuck-up over money! + The world is crazy, that's all there is to it! + Crazy, I tell you! All turned upside-down! + + Listen. It's fifteen years I know this Bill. + Them good old days, most every afternoon + On the way home from the lumber yards I'd drop in + And get a beer, and gas around a while. + That was my second home, I useta say, + And Bill's Place was a home you could be proud of. + Say. The old woman never kep' a floor + As clean as Bill's was. And the brass spittoons + And rail-you could of shaved lookin' in one. + And all the glasses polished! And the tables + So neat! And over at the free-lunch counter, + Charlie the coon with a apron white like chalk, + Dishin' out hot-dogs, and them Boston Beans, + And Sad'dy nights a great big hot roast ham, + Or roast beef simply yellin' to be et, + And washed down with a seidel of old Schlitz! + + Oh, say, that sure was fun, and don't forget it. + Old Ed, and Tom, and Baldy Frank McGee, + And the two Bentleys, we was all the reg'lars. + It was our meetin'-place. And there we stood, + And Lord! The rows about the government, + And arguin! and all about the country, + How it was goin' to the dogs. And maybe + Somebody'd start a song, and old Pop Dikes + Would have to quit the checker-game in the corner + That him and Fat Connell was always playin', + And never gettin' through. I never seen + + No bums come in and stay for more'n a minute; + Bill didn't like to have no drunks around; + He made 'em hit the air. Well, some of us, + Of course, might get just a wee mite too much + Under the belt, but who did that ever hurt? + At least we knowed the licker wasn't poison. + And when somebody would get very lit + Bill was right there to try and make him stop; + I can't see how it ever hurt us any. + + And Bill! He was some barkeep! One swell guy! + A pleasant word for everybody, always, + Straight as a string, and just the whole world's friend. + I never saw a guy was liked so much. + He hardly took a drink, just a cigar, + And oncet a while a pony, say, of lager. + And my, the way that bird could tell a story! + Why, many a time I laughed until I cried. + And if it happened I was out of dough, + Bill was right there to make a little loan. + Generous, that was Bill, and one good pal. + A great old place it was, that place of Bill's. + Them was the happy days!-them was the days. + + I never will forget that good-bye party + The night that Prohibition was wished on us. + You bet it wasn't any rough-house then. + We all stood 'round the bar, solemn and quiet, + And couldn't hardly think of what to say. + Bill--it was funny what had happened to him. + He didn't crack a smile the whole blame night. + He just would shake his head, and bite his lips, + And gosh, the way his eyes was shootin' fire. + The last thing that he said before I left, + "By God, I'll get back at 'em, you just wait! + I'm closing here. But don't you fret--I'll get 'em-- + The dirty, pussy-footin' lousy skunks!" + + + I had to go home early. And the next day + I seen the wagons comin' to take the bar + And all the furniture. I felt like cryin'. + + Well, you know what this prohibition is. + + + Bill goes away, and stays about three months. + And then one day I meets him on the street. + "Well, Jack," he says, "You want some real good gin?" + "Just what I need," I says. "All right," he says, + "You come down to the house at nine o'clock. + I'll fix you up. I'll give you half a case + Four Bucks a bottle."... "Four a bottle!" I says, + Thinkin' he must be kiddin'. "Sure," he says, + "I got to make my profit. There's the risk. + This is good stuff. I made it by myself. + I guarantee that it won't make you sick." + "I'm sick already, just from hearin' the price. + No thanks. Not now," I says. He says all right, + But when I want some, just remember him. + + And so, of course, later I did want some, + And had to pay that much, and even more; + But hell, what can you do? So long's you're sure + The stuff ain't goin' to burn your insides out, + You got to pay the price. And all the friends + That Bill had useta have is customers, + + And all get stung the same. And dozens more. + Them old days Bill was one fine friend for sure, + Happy and nice and straight and generous. + And now to think he high-brows you and me! + A great big house he's got, and a new Packard, + And di'monds for his wife, that scrubbed the floors + Back in the days when he was only barkeep. + That's what this Prohibition done for him, + And what's it do for me, I'd like to know? + It makes a crook of me, the same as him, + Only I'm losin' money, and he gets it. + Why, say, I catch myself all of the time + Laughin' about this Prohibition law, + And figgerin' new ways how I could break it. + And that's the way it is with everybody. + We get to see that one law is a joke, + And think it's smart to bust it all to pieces. + And pretty soon there's all the other laws, + And how're you goin' to keep from think' likewise + About a thing like stealin', and all that? + No wonder that we got these here now crime waves! + No wonder everybody is a crook! + + + But that ain't what I'm sayin' to you now! + You leave that stuck-up little Jane alone! + They's plenty of girls that's pretty in the world-- + You leave that dirty oilcan's daughter be. + Ten years ago she used to run around + And rush the can for me and other folks. + Now she's a real swell lady! Damn her eyes, + And Bill's, and them there pussy-footin' fish! + The world is, crazy! And I'm goin' nuts! + High-tonin' me! You hear me? If I catch you + Foolin' around that girl, I kick you out, + So fast you won't know what has ever hit you! + + A bootleg's daughter! Hell! + + + + +AND THE PLAYWRIGHT + + +[Illustration: Alexander Woollcott rescuing the Playwright from the +awful shears of the Censor.] + +ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT + +Every American playwright goes about his work these days oppressed by +a foreboding. He suspects that before long a censor is going to +materialize out of thin air to take stern and morose charge of the +American theatre. It is true that no statutory precipitation of such an +agent has been definitely proposed. It is true that the policeman from +the nearest corner has not gone so far as to drop around and warn him +that he'd better be careful. Nevertheless, he has the foreboding. He +perceives dimly that a desire to chasten the stage is in the air. And he +is right. It, is. It has been ever since the war. + +Of course an itch to lay hands on the theatre was begetting restlessness +in the American bosom considerably prior to April 6, 1917. It is part of +this country's Puritan inheritance to believe that playgoing is somehow +bad, that an enjoyment and patronage of the theatre is sinful. This +belief flows as an unconscious undercurrent in the thought even of +those clergymen who try pathetically hard to seem and be liberal and +unpharisaical, the kind who always begin their lectures on Avery Hopwood +by saying that they yield to no one in their admiration and respect for +the many splendid ladies and gentlemen of the stage whom they are proud +to number among their acquaintances. + +Shaw, in his comparatively mild-mannered preface to "The Showing Up of +Blanco Posnet," recognizes the Puritan hostility to the theatre, but, +somewhat perversely, ascribes it to the fact that the _promenoirs_ have +always been used as show-windows by the courtesans of each generation. +I suspect, however, that that hostility was more deeply rooted. The +Puritans disliked the theatre because it was jolly. It was a place where +people went in deliberate quest of enjoyment. And you weren't supposed +to do that on earth. Plenty of time for that later on. + +When I was a knee-breeched schoolboy in Philadelphia, some of the more +dissipated of us used to organize Saturday excursions to Keith's old +Eighth Street Theatre, a vaudeville temple known to the natives as +the Buy-Joe. Fortified with a quarter and some sandwiches, one went +at eleven in the morning and hung on till the edge of midnight. To my +genuine surprise and confusion, I gathered that some of our classmates +not only avoided these orgies, but sincerely believed that we, who +indulged in them were simply courting Hell's fire. They stayed at home +and, I suppose, read "Elsie Dinsmore." + +It so happens that I never encountered that book during my formative +years, but was in my hopelessly corrupted thirties before ever I saw a +copy. Even then, it did not lack interest. And one passage, at least, +richly rewarded a glance through its pages. It seems that Elsie, +arriving from somewhere, reached some city in the late evening. Her +father (a rakish, devil-may-care fellow who thought it was all right for +Elsie to play the piano on Sunday) met her at the station and engaged a +cabriolet to take her across town to whatever shelter had been selected +for the night. As they were bowling along one of the principal streets, +Elsie noticed a building which the author described in shuddering +accents as having, if I remember correctly, "a lighted façade." The +tone, if not the precise words of the description, rather suggested that +here was a gambling hell whose lower circles were dedicated to rites of +nameless infamy. Elsie shrank back into the cloistered shadows of the +cab. "Oh, father," she cried in hurt bewilderment, "what kind of place +was that?" Smitten, apparently, with a certain remorse that he had +suffered her virginal eyes to reflect so scabrous a spot, he put a +sheltering arm around her and said, sadly: "That, little daughter, was a +THEATRE." + +At which limp climax, perhaps, you smile a little. But it is well to +remember that the children who were molded by "Elsie Dinsmore" are now +grown up and can be detected voting warmly at every election. Many of +them kicked over the traces long ago, but there are also many who are +reading Harold Bell Wright today. They admire Henry Ford. They sit +enthralled at the feet of Dr. John Roach Straton. And, not wryly but +with undiscouraged faith, they vote away for the Hylans and the Hardings +of each recurrent crisis. They brought the bootlegger into existence +and, at a rallying cry lifted by anyone against the theatre, they will +come scurrying intently from a thousand unsuspected flats and two-story +houses. + +They are the more responsive to such cries since the war. That might +have been foreseen by any one at all familiar with the psychopathology +of reform. A cigarette addict who, in a spartan moment, swears off +smoking, is familiar enough with the inner gnaw that robs him of his +sleep and roils his dinner for days and days. His body, long habituated +to the tobacco, had dutifully taken on the business of manufacturing its +antidote. When the tobacco is abruptly removed, the body continues for +a while to turn out the antidote as usual and during that while, that +antidote goes roaming angrily through the system, seeking something to +oppose and destroy. + +A somewhat analogous condition has agitated the body politic ever since +the late Fall of 1918. The passage of the Eighteenth Amendment had +robbed the prohibitionists of their chief excitement; then the signing +of the Armistice took away the glamor of public-spiritedness from all +those good people who had had such a splendid time keeping an eye on +their presumably treasonable neighbors. Behold, then, the Busy Body +(which is in every one of us) all dressed up and nowhere to go. The itch +became tremendous. The moving pictures caught it first. No wonder the +American playwright is uneasy. He ought to be. + +He dreads a censorship of the theatre because he suspects (not without +reason) that it will be corrupt, that it will work foolishly, and that, +having taken and relished an inch, it will take an ell. + +He is the more uneasy because he realizes that the theatre presents a +special incitement and a special problem--a problem altogether different +from that presented by the bookstall, for instance. The play, once +produced, is open to all the world. It may have been written with the +thought that it would amuse Franklin P. Adams, but it is attended (in a +body) by the Unintelligentsia. It may have been heavily seasoned in the +hope that it would jounce the rough boy of Baltimore, H. L. Mencken-and +lo, there in the third row on the aisle, is Dr. Frank Crane, being +made visibly ill by it. Your playwright may write a piece to touch the +memories and stir the hearts of elderly sinners, but he has to face the +fact that the girls from Miss Spence's school may come fluttering to it, +row on row. + +On his desk is a seductive two-volume assemblage of "Poetica Erotica," +edited by T. R. Smith, the antiquarian. It is a book which, if flaunted, +would agitate the Postmaster General, stir up the Grand Jury, and make +the Society for the Suppression of Vice call a special mass-meeting. It +is managed as a commercial article by a system of furtive, semi-private +sales which probably enhance its value as a source of revenue and yet +shut the mouth of the heirs of Anthony Comstock. A folder announces that +the juicy Satyr icon of Petronius Arbiter will shortly issue from the +same presses. And so on, endlessly. It is a neat arrangement but one +which cannot be imitated by the playwright. When he wants to be naughty, +he must make up his mind to being naughty right out on the street-corner +where every one can see him. + +And though, in the moments when he is disposed to temporize, he +sometimes thinks that suspect plays might, like saucy novels, be first +inspected in manuscript, he knows full well that no such tactics are +really feasible in the theatre. Your publisher, inwardly hot with +resentment, may nevertheless take the occasional precaution of +showing the script of a thin-ice book to the authorities--even to the +self-constituted ones--thereby forestalling prosecution by agreeing to +delete in advance such phrases and incidents as seem likely to agitate +those authorities unduly. But the flavor and significance of a play +depends too much on the manner of its performance and cannot be clearly +forecast prior to that performance any more than the hue of a goblet can +be guessed before the wine is poured. I can testify to that--I, who in +my time, have seen players make a minx out of Ophelia, a mild-mannered +mouse out of Katherine, an honest woman out of Lady Macbeth and a +benevolent old gentleman out of Shylock. I have seen French players cast +as the servants of Petruchio invade "The Taming of the Shrew" with a +comic pantomime in which they fought for their turns at the keyhole +of Petruchio's bedroom wherein Kate was being subjected to a little +off-stage taming. It would have amused Shakespeare immoderately, I +imagine, and certainly it would have surprised him. Until his piece +is spoken, even the author cannot tell--and thereafter, from night to +night, he cannot be sure. + +That is why there is the quality of an eternal fable in the pathetic +old tale of the stagehand who had always felt that, if chance would ever +give him even the smallest of rôles, he would show these actors where +their shortcomings were. He would not drone out even the least important +and most perfunctory of speeches. Not he. Into every syllable he would +pour real meaning, real conviction. At last, after twenty years of +yearning from the wings, chance did rush him on as an understudy. +Unfortunately, he was assigned to the role of the page in "King John," +who must march into the throne-room and announce the approach of Philip +the Bastard. + +So, it seems apparent that any real supervision of the theatre must +function with relation to produced plays and cannot deal with mere +unembodied and undetermined manuscripts. + +Our playwright's suspicion that such supervision, if managed by a +politically appointed censor, would work foolishly, are justified by all +he has heard of such functionaries as they have worked in other fields +and in other lands. This was true of the gag which the doughty Brieux +finally pried off the mouth of the French playwright. It has certainly +been true of the mild and intermittent discipline to which the remote +and slightly puzzled Lord Chamberlain has subjected the English +dramatists. Indeed, when their mutinous mutterings finally jogged +Parliament into inspecting his activities, the Lord Chamberlain was +somewhat taken aback by the tactics of Shaw, who, instead of hissing +him for forbidding public performances of certain Shaw and Ibsen plays, +derided and denounced him instead for the plays he had _not_ suppressed. +And indeed, for every play which the Lord Chamberlain has suppressed, +the old playgoer of London could point to five which, had he been more +intelligent, he might more reasonably have suppressed in its place. + +But after all those scuffles on the Strand do seem part of the strange +customs of a fusty-dusty never-never land. So our American playwright +turns, instead, to the purifications effected nearer home. He looks +apprehensively into the matter of the movies. As an occasional scenario +writer, he has been instructed by bulletins sent out for his guidance, +little watch-your-step leaflets which list the alterations ordered in +earlier pictures by the august Motion Picture Commission of the State of +New York. Most of them are fussy little disapprovals of language used in +the titles. You mustn't say: "I shall kill Lester Crope." Better say: +"I shall destroy the false Lester Crope" or something like that. You +mustn't say "roué." You mustn't say: "I don't like that rich old roué +hanging around you." Better say: "I don't like that rich old sport." And +when, in a moment of self-indulgence, a title-writer allowed himself +the luxury of writing "In a moment of madness, I wronged a woman," the +Censor seems to have turned scarlet and issued the following order: +"Substitute for 'wronged' the word 'offended' or something similar." + +"Or something similar." Somehow, that seems to recall an old "Spanish +for Beginners" textbook which bade me not bother with the "tutoyer" +business as it would not be needed during my travels in Spain, unless I +married there "or something similar." + +At all events, no playwright can be scoffed at as an alarmist who +ventures to fear that a censorship of the drama will, in practice, be +foolish. At the thought of such frivolous and fatuous blue-pencillings +of his next drama (which is to be his master-piece, by the way) our +playwright becomes profoundly depressed and every time he goes out to +dinner or finds himself with a small, cornered audience at the club, he +winds up the talk on this bugaboo of his. + +Out of the resulting prattle, two widespread impressions always come +to the top, two familiar comments on the subject which, whenever +questionable plays are mentioned, seem to emerge as regularly and as +automatically as does the applause which follows the rendition of Dixie +by any restaurant orchestra in New York. Both comments are absurd. + +One comes from the man who can be counted on to say: "They tell me that +show at the Eltinge--What's it called? 'Tickling Tottie's Tummy?'--well, +they say it's pretty raw. Certainly does beat all how there are some +men who just have to see a show soon's they hear it's smutty. I can't +understand it." + +This might be called the Comment Ingenuous. A man who never fails to +edge into any group whence the bent head and the hoarse chuckle tells +him that a shady story is on, a man who would have to think hard to name +a friend of his to whom he would not rush with the latest scandalous +anecdote brought in by the drummers from Utica--such a man will, +nevertheless, express a pious surprise when the crowds flock to see the +latest Hopwood farce just because it is advertised as indecorous. It is +not known why he is surprised. + +Or, if he is not surprised, then he falls over backward and makes the +Comment Cynical. When he hears that "Under Betty's Bolster" is making +a fortune while "The Grey Iconoclast" is playing to empty benches next +door, he gives a sardonic little laugh (which he reserves for just such +occasions) and says: "Of course. You might have known. Old Channing +Pollock was right when he said: 'Nothing risqué, nothing gained.' +Don't the smutty shows always make money? Doesn't the public invariably +stampede to the most bedridden plays? Isn't the pornographic play the +most valuable of all theatrical properties?" + +To which rhetorical questions, the answer in each case, as it happens, +is "No." The blush is not, of course, a bad sign in the box-office. But +the chuckle of recognition is a better one. So is the glow of sentiment. +So is the tear of sympathy. The smutty and the scandalous have a smaller +and less active market than homely humor, for instance, or melodramatic +excitement or pretty sentiment. When "Aphrodite" was brought here from +Paris, it was, for various reasons, impossible to recapture for the +translated dramatization the flavor of abnormal eroticism which lent the +book a certain phosphorescent glow at home. So its producers relied +on lots and lots of nudity to give it réclame here. At this the Hearst +papers did some rather pointed blushing and the next morning, there +was a grand scrimmage at the box-office and seats were hawked about for +grotesque prices. Whereupon the Comment Cynical could be heard on all +sides. But when at the end of the season or so later, "Aphrodite" was +withdrawn with a shortage of a hundred and ninety thousand dollars or +so on its books, the Cynics were too engrossed with some other play to +mention the fact. To be sure that shortage was more than made up next +season on the road, but it ought to be mentioned that "Aphrodite" knew +the indignity of many and many an empty row in New York. + +The great fortunes, as a matter of fact, are made with plays like "Peg +o' My Heart" and "The First Year," both as pure as the driven snow. It +is true that Avery Hopwood has grown rich on his royalties. But not so +rich as Winchell Smith, who has dealt exclusively with sweetness and +light. Also those who laugh most caustically over the Hopwood estate +usually find it convenient to ignore the fact that the greatest single +contribution to it has been made by "The Bat," at which Dr. Straton +might conceivably faint from excitement but at which he would have to +work pretty hard to do any blushing. + +So much for the familiar catch-words and their validity. A little +discouraged by the fatuity of all lay discussion, our playwright may be +pictured as retreating to the clubrooms of the American Dramatists +and there finding his fellow-craftsmen all busy as bees on scenarios +overflowing with not particularly original sin. They are turning them +out hurriedly with an "After-me-the-deluge" gleam in their haunted eyes. +Some such despairing courtship of disaster may be needed to explain the +jostling procession of harlots which marked the American Drama in the +season of 1921-1922. An unprecedentedly large percentage of the heroines +had either just been ruined (or were just about to be ruined) as the +first curtain rose. Also the plays wallowed in a defiant squalor of +language which, five years before, would have called out the reserves. + +The privilege to indulge in such didos is not, as a matter of fact, +especially dear to them. They do not really prize unduly the right to +use the word "slut" once in every act. They can even bear up whenever a +law forbids disrobing on the stage. They know that most pruriency in the +theatre derives from the old frustrations sealed up and festering in +the mind of the onlooker who detects it. They suspect, from what little +reading they have managed in the psychology of outlets, that the more +mock-raping there is done on the stage of the local opera house, the +less real raping will be done on the greensward of the nearest park. But +they know, too, that the force of modesty is one of the strongest and +most ancient instincts of civilized man, that probably it is a sound +and healthy one, inextricably involved in the race's instinct of +self-preservation and self-perpetuation. Anyway, they feel that the +discussion draws them into matters unarguable. + +They dread a Censor most for fear his appetite will grow by what it +feeds on. They know that the Lord Chamberlain began by exorcising +obscenity from the English theatre and ended by banning so fiercely +Puritanical a play as "Mrs. Warren's Profession" because it admitted +the existence of brothel-keeping as a business and by shutting up such +innocent merriment as "The Mikado" because its jocularity might offend +the (at the moment) dear Japanese. + +Most American playwrights would derive a certain enjoyment from watching +a posse of citizens in wrathful pursuit of one of those theatrical +managers who are big brothers to the trembling crones that totter up to +you on the _Boulevard des Italiens_ and try to sell you a few obscene +postal-cards. But most American playwrights would feel a genuine +apprehension lest such a posse, confused in its values and its mission, +might then turn and lock up Eugene O'Neill because of the rough talk +that lends veracity to "The Hairy Ape" or because of the steady scrutiny +which has the effect of stripping naked the unhappy creatures of his +play called "Diff'rent." + +They would be perfectly willing to co-operate with a State official +appointed to prevent the use of naughty words on the American stage, but +they darkly suspect that he would then require every heroine to bring a +letter from her pastor and would end by interfering with all plays which +suggested, for instance, that government had been known, from time to +time, to prove corrupt, wealth to become oppressive and law, on rare +occasions, to seem just a wee bit unjust. They are minded to resist any +supervision of the theatre's manners for fear it might shackle in time +the theatre's thought. Today or tomorrow they may be seen temporizing +or at least negotiating with the forces of suppression in any community, +but they are really seeking all the time to frustrate those forces. +And will so seek ever and always, law or no law. It was just such +frustration they were seeking when after a season of ruined heroines +(and ruined managers) they all gravely sat down in April, 1922, and drew +up a panel of 300 pure-minded citizens from which a jury could be called +to pass on any play complained of. + +And they have the comfort of knowing that any such supervision, today +or tomorrow, legalized or roundabout, mild or incessant, is bound to be +superficial, spasmodic and largely formal. They know that in the long +run the theatre in each day and community, will manage somehow to +express the taste of that day and community. They know that it is among +the sweet revenges of life that the o'er-leaping censor always defeats +himself. + +They derive a curious comfort from the story of the reviewer for a +Boston journal who once described a musician as remaining seated through +a concert in the pensive attitude of Buddha contemplating his navel. It +is a story within whose implications lies all that has ever been said, +or ever will be said, about censorship. The copy-readers and make-up +men, it seems, could see nothing especially infamous in their reviewer's +little simile. As poor George Sampson said of the outraged Mrs. Wilfer's +under-petticoat: "We know it's there." At all events, the offending word +passed all the sentries and was printed as written, when, too late, it +caught the horrified eye of the proprietor. At the sight of so crassly +physical a term in the chaste columns of his own paper, he rushed to the +telephone at the club and called up the managing editor. That word must +come out. But the paper was already on the presses. Even as they spoke, +these were whirling out copy after copy. Too late to reset? Yes, much +too late. But was there not still some remedy which would keep at +least part of the edition free from that dreadful word? Wasn't it still +possible to rout out the type at that point, to chisel the word away and +leave a blank? Yes, that was possible. So the presses were halted, the +one word was scraped out, the presses whirred again and the review, with +a gape in the line, went up and down Beacon Street. Whereat Boston +that night shook with a mighty laughter--the contented laughter of the +unregenerate. + + + + +THE ORACLE THAT ALWAYS SAYS "NO" + + +[Illustration: The Periscope of the Author of the Mirrors of Washington +is turned toward the Great Negative Oracle.] + +THE AUTHOR OF "THE MIRRORS OF WASHINGTON" + +Has anyone ever stopped to think what the nonsenseorship would do to our +suppressed desires? A little while ago suppressed desires were one's own +affair. One fondled them in the skeleton closet of his consciousness +and was as proud of them as anyone with a haunted house is of his right, +title and interest in a ghost. + +They proved to him that though he went to church on Sunday and was +respectably married to only one woman, he was really beneath his correct +exterior a whale of a fellow, who might have been, had he but let +himself go, a Casanova or at least a Byron. He patted himself on the +back for keeping unruly instincts in subjection. He applauded himself +for what he might be and for what he was. He got it coming and going. It +was a pleasant age. + +But now is he permitted to have his own secret museum of virility? I +speak only of the sex which has my deepest sympathy. + +No. The nonsenseorship regards him with suspicion. He must go and have +even that part of him which lies below the level of his consciousness +dragged forth by experts in the interests of society, and if there +is anything hidden in him which might not be exhibited on the movie +screens, he must have it sublimated. He cannot even have suppressed +desires. He cannot be a devil of a fellow even to himself. He cannot be +his own censor any longer, he must submit himself to outside censoring, +to the nonsenseorship. + +It all came about this way. First to establish divine right somewhere +in modern government, the doctrine was set up that the public mind was +infallible. Thereafter, naturally, attention centered on the public +mind. What was it that it had this wonderful quality of always being +right? Experience showed that it was not a thinking mind. Since it was +not, then the thinking mind was anti-social. + +Then our very best American philosophers, and some French ones, for the +support of mass opinion, developed a system which set forth that reason +always led you into traps and that the only mind to trust was the +irrational, instinctive or intuitional mind. Thus the nonsenseorship, +with excellent philosophic support put the ban upon thinking. Now, I do +not contend that many suffer seriously from this restriction. For, after +all, thinking is hard work and may cheerfully be foregone in the general +interest. + +But does the nonsenseorship rest content with its achievement? If the +instinctive part of us is so important, let us have a look at it, +says society; perhaps something anti-social may be unearthed there. A +Viennese explores this area of the mind. He discovers what society would +forbid, merely hidden away. Civilization has merely pressed it into dark +corners, as the law has crowded the blackjack artist into alleys and +dens of thieves. The psychic police are put on our trail. They must +nab every suppressed desire and send it to the reform school for +re-education into something beautiful and serviceable. We may not +be unhappy, neurotic, mad; our complexes must be inspected. We must +suppress our reason, we may not suppress our desire; the nonsenseorship +says so, and to persuade us, its experts offer us the reward of health +and greater usefulness if we make this further surrender. + +Now, although as I have said we let reason go at the behest of the +nonsenseorship without so much as a word of protest, we do not give up +our suppressed desires so easily and without a fight. + +As a result we see the nonsenseorship in a new light. We feel it more +keenly now than ever before. It is revealed as the Procrustean bed which +cramps us up until we ache inside. If there is anything the matter with +us, if we are introverted, introspective, neurotic, complicated, have +too much ego or too little ego, are dyspeptic, sick, sore, inhibited, +regressive, defeated or too successful, unhappy, cruel or too kind, +if we differ ever so slightly from the enforced average, it is because +censorship presses upon us. And the cure for censorship is more +censorship. Have your psychic insides censored; if you would be a +perfect 36 mentally and morally, with the Hart, Schaffner & Marxed soul +which modern society wills that you shall have, conform not only +without but within, and be "splendidly null"! I think it is the sudden +realization that just a little more of individuality, our hidden +individuality, is threatened, which makes the nonsenseorship irk us now +as it never did before. + +The race has always had it, but in the beginning it was a crude and +simple thing, troubling itself only with externals. A woman whose +official duty it is to look after the virtue of the movies in +Pennsylvania or Ohio, will not permit on the screen any suggestion that +there is a physiological relation between a mother and a child. This +method of protecting the race has its roots back in the primitive mind +of mankind. When men really did not understand how children came about, +births were catastrophic. A woman at a certain moment had to disappear +into the wilderness; she came back having found a baby under a cabbage +leaf. Any contact with her while she was making her discovery might +bring pestilence and death to the tribe. + +We still believe in the pestilence even if we no longer have faith in +the cabbage leaf. The lady censor of Ohio or Pennsylvania is the tribe +driving the pregnant woman into the wilderness. On the whole the tribe +did it better than we do; it only removed the offender and the mental +life of the little community went on just as before. We keep the +offender amongst us and close our minds. Our simple ancestors covered no +more with the fig leaf than they thought it necessary to hide; we wear +the fig leaf over our eyes: that is the nonsenseorship. + +Mr. Griffith recently brought out a cinema spectacle called "Orphans in +the Storm," which presented many scenes from the French Revolution. +Now it was not long ago that we Americans were all rather proud of the +French Revolution. We had had a revolution of our own and we thought +with satisfaction that the French had caught theirs from us. We were +as pleased about it as the little boy is when the neighbor's little boy +catches the mumps from him. He sees an enlargement of his ego in the +swollen neck of his playmate. + +All that is changed now. Mr. Griffith picturing the triumphant mob in +Paris had to fill his screens with preachments against Bolshevism, which +had as much to do with his subject as captions about the rape of the +Sabine woman would have had to do with it. It is as if the little boy +had been taught to believe that by never saying the word mumps, he could +save his playmate from tumefying glands. + +Soon some committee of morons which attends to the keeping of our +intellects on the level with their own will exclude from the schools +all histories which contain the words "the American Revolution." We must +call it the War for American Independence. That is putting the fig leaf +over our eyes. That is the nonsenseorship. + +But before we decide whether or not we shall refuse to yield up our +suppressed desires as we have surrendered our reason to it, with the +approval of our leading philosopher, Mr. William James, let us consider +some of the advantages of the nonsenseorship. Perhaps it will prove +worth while to give up this little internal privilege. + +First there is the simplicity of consulting the so-called public mind. +The favorite aphorism of the politician and his friend and spokesman the +editor is: "The public is always right upon a moral issue." This means +that if the politician or the propagandist can present a question to +the people in such a way that he can win his end by having the public +respond in the negative, he is sure of success. It is as if society +depended for its guidance upon the word of an oracle, a great stone +image, out of which the priests had only succeeded in producing one +response, a sound very much like, "No." The trick would consist of so +framing your question that the word "no" would give you approval for +your designs. That is the art of laying before the public a "moral +issue" upon which it is inevitably right. + +Suppose, in a society ruled by the stone image, you wanted to make war +upon your neighbor. You would frame your question thus: "Shall we stand +by idly and pusillanimously while our neighbor invades our land and +rapes our women?" This is a moral issue of the deepest sanctity. You +would present it. The priests would do their little something somewhere +out of sight. From the great stone image would come a bellow which +resembled "No." You would have won on a moral issue and would then be +licensed to invade your neighbor's territory and rape his women. + +Now you will perceive certain advantages in an oracle which can only say +one word. You know in advance what its answer will be. Suppose the great +stone image could have said either "yes" or "no." Suppose its answer had +been "yes" to your righteous question? It would have been embarrassing. +You could no longer say with such perfect confidence, "It is always +right upon a moral issue." + +Suppose you were capital and you desired to reduce wages. You would not +go to the temple and say, "Shall we reduce wages?" That would not be a +moral issue upon which the answer would be right. You would ask, "Shall +we tamely acquiesce while the labor unions import the Russian revolution +into our very midst?" The great stone voice always to be trusted on +moral issues would thunder, "No." + +Or suppose you were labor; for my oracle is even-handed--and you wished +to extend your organization--you would go to the temple and propound +the inquiry, "Shall we be eaten alive by the war profiteers?" The always +moral voice would at least whisper "No!" + +It will be observed that in consulting the oracle whose answer is known +in advance, the only skill required consists in so framing the question +that you will get a louder roar of "no" than the other side can with its +question. If you can always do this you can say with perfect confidence +that old granite lungs "is always right upon a moral issue." + +That is the art of being a great popular leader. + +Would anyone exchange a voice like that as a ruler for the wisdom of +the world's ten wisest men? We laugh at the Greeks for their practice of +consulting the oracle at Delphi and rightly, for our oracle beats theirs +which used to hedge in its answers and leave them in doubt. Ours never +equivocates; we know its answer beforehand, for the public mind is +compounded of prejudices, fears, herd instincts, youthful hatred of +novelty, all easily calculable. + +It has been my duty for many years to tell what public opinion is on +many subjects. My method, more or less unconscious, has been to say to +myself, "The public is made up largely of the unthinking. Such and such +misinformation has been presented to it. Such and such prejudices and +fears have been aroused. Its answer is invariably negative. The result +is so and so." It is thus that judges of public opinion invariably +proceed. They do not find the popular will reflected in the newspapers. +They know it as a chemist knows a reaction, from familiarity with the +elements combined. At least such a mind is highly convenient. + +And after all who does make the best censor, or nonsenseor or whatever +you choose to call it? Was it not written, "The child is censor to the +man?" Well, if it was not it ought to have been, and it is now. Consider +the child as it arrives in the family. Forthwith there is not merely the +One Subject which may never be mentioned. There are a hundred subjects. +A guard is upon the lips. The little ears must be kept pure. + +Now, when we set up the establishment of democracy we did take a child +into our household. I have discussed elsewhere [Footnote: Chapter V, +_Behind the Mirrors_] the parentage of this infant born of Rousseau and +Thérèse, his moron mistress. The public mind is a child mind because +in the first place the mob mind of men is primitive, youthful and +undeveloped, and again because by the wide diffusion of primary +instruction, we have steadily increased the number of persons with less +than adult mentality who contribute to the forming of public opinion. +In the nature of the case, fifty per cent. of the public must be +sub-normal, that is, youthful mentality. We have reached down to the +level of nonsense for our guide. That is why we call it in this book the +nonsenseorship. + +Every one who has watched the growth of a child's vocabulary has +observed that it learns to say "no," many months, perhaps more than a +year, before it ever says "yes." An infant which took to saying "yes" +before it did "no" would violate all precedents, would scandalize its +parents, and would grow up to be a revolutionist. It would have an +attitude toward life with which men should not be born and which parents +and society would find subversive. On the instinct for saying "no" rests +all our institutions, from the family to the state. It should exhibit +itself early and become a confirmed habit before the dangerous "yes" +emerges. + +Besides, the child needs to say "no" long before it needs to say "yes." +Foolish parents feed it mentally as they feed it physically, out of +a bottle. If it had not its automatic facility of regurgitation, both +mental and physical, it would suffer from excesses. Its "no" is its +mental throwing up. + +The public mind is still in the no-saying, the mental regurgitative +stage. But is not that ideal for the nonsenseorship? Does a censor ever +have need of any other word but "no"? + +I have now established the convenience of an oracle whose answer "no" +can always be foreseen; and the fitness of the child mind for saying +"no," as well as the perfect adaptation of the single word vocabulary to +the purposes of the nonsenseorship. + +One of the important ends which a "no" always serves is maintaining the +_status quo_. We all cling precariously to a whirling planet. We +hate change for fear of somehow being spilled off into space. The +nonsenseorship of the child mind is splendidly conservative. The baby in +the habit of receiving its bottle from its nurse will go hungry rather +than take it from its mother or father. Gilbert was wrong. Every child +is not born a little radical or a little conservative. + +Reaching down for the child mind in society, with some misgivings, we +have been delighted to find it the strongest force making for stability. +An amusing thing happened when Mr. Hearst some years ago sought readers +in a lower level of intelligence than any journalist had till then +explored. To interest the child mind he employed the old device of +pictures, his favorite illustration portraying the Plunderbund. +Now, persons who thought the cartoon of the Plunderbund looked like +themselves, viewed the experiment with alarm. But Mr. Hearst was right. +He proved to be as he said he was, "our greatest conservative force." +The surest guardians of our morals and of our social order are +precisely Mr. Hearst's readers, who learned the alphabet spelling out +P-L-U-N-D-E-R-B-U-N-D. They watch keenly and with reprobation in Mr. +Hearst's press our slightest divagations. + +De Gourmont, writing of education, asks: "Is it necessary to cultivate +at such pains in the minds of the young, hatred of what is new?" And he +says it is done only because the teacher naturally hates everything that +has come into the world since he won his diploma. But no; De Gourmont +is mistaken. It is because we teach the young what it is socially +beneficial that they should learn, having regard also for their aversion +to novelty, to the bottle from any other than the accustomed hands. + +And we find in the child mind--and foster it by education--"the will to +believe," that great American virtue. It requires an immense "will to +believe" to grow up in the family and in society, looking at the elders +and at all that is established, and accepting all the information that +mankind has slowly accumulated and which teachers patiently offer. If +the young once doubted, once thought--but unfortunately they do not! +Anyway, we do find in the child mind, which forms the nonsenseorship, +the "will to believe,"--of immense social utility. + +Now, the "will to believe"--like teeth which decay if not used upon +hard food, or muscles which grow flabby if they have not hard work to +perform--must be given something for its proper exercise. In a chapter +on "The Duty of Lying," in his brilliant book _Disenchantment_, Mr. C. +E. Montague shows what may be done with "the will to believe," developed +as it has at last been. "During the war the art of Propaganda was little +more than born." In the next war, "the whole sky would be darkened +with flights of tactical lies, so dense that the enemy would fight in a +veritable 'fog of war' darker than London's own November brews, and the +world would feel that not only the Angel of Death was abroad, but +the Angel of Delusion too, and would hear the beating of two pairs of +wings." And what may be done with the "will to believe" in time of war +has immense lessons for the days of peace. A British Tommy, quoted by +Mr. Montague, summed the moral advantages up: "They tell me we've pulled +through at last all right because our propergander dished up better lies +than what the Germans did. So I say to myself: 'If tellin' lies is all +that bloody good in war, what bloody good is tellin' truth in peace?'" +What "bloody good" is it, when you have ready to hand the well-trained +"will to believe," which those who censored reason for its social +disutility set up as the most serviceable attribute of the human mind? + +I think I have written enough to prove that the child mind at the bottom +of nonsenseorship is the effective base of stability. But the heart of +man desires also permanency. Is there reasonable assurance that we shall +always be able to keep the guiding principles of our national life, the +nonsenseorship, a child mind? + +It is true that we have reached as far down, through our press and +through our public men, to the levels of the low I. Q. as it is +practicable to go, until we grant actual children and not merely mental +children an even larger share than they now have in the forming of +public opinion; for this is, as you know, "the age of the child." + +And no great further advance is likely to be made in the mechanical +means of uniting the whole 100,000,000 people of this country in a +24-hour a day, 365 days a year, mass meeting. The cheap newspaper, +the moving picture, instant telegraphic bulletin going everywhere, the +broadcasting wireless telephone, and the Ford car, have accomplished +all that can be hoped toward giving the widely-scattered population the +responsiveness of a mob. + +But though perhaps we may never lower the I. Q. of the nonsenseorship, +no further triumphs being possible in that direction, there is no reason +why education, what we call "creating an enlightened public opinion," +should not always maintain for us the child mind as it now is with all +its manifold advantages. + +Somewhere in Bartlett there is, or ought to be, a quotation which reads +like this: "The god who always finds us young and always keeps us so." +That is education; it always finds us young and always keeps us so. + +It catches us when our minds are merely acquisitive, storing up +impressions and information; and it prolongs that period of acquisition +to maturity by always throwing facts in our way. Its purpose is not +to "sow doubts," far from it, for that would have for its ideal mere +intelligence and not social usefulness. It develops instead the "will +to believe," and this serves the needs of the propagandists, who, as Mr. +Will H. Hayes is reported to have said of the movies, "shake the rattle +which keeps the American child amused so that it forgets its aches +and pains." We may safely trust education to keep the American +mind infantile, merely acquisitive and not critical. And thus the +nonsenseorship seems sure to be perpetuated, and we reach the ideal of +all the ages, society in its permanent and final form. Here we are, here +we may rest. + +These considerations persuade me at least that we should make the +utmost sacrifices for so perfect a social means as we now have. Let the +nonsenseorship invade the secret closets of our personality and rummage +out our most cherished suppressed desires. Let us have nothing that +we may call our own. For my part, I shall spend the proceeds of this +article upon one of the new social police, a psycho-analyst. + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Nonsenseorship, by G. G. 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