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.