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.