unconscious seriousness. Flippancy is a flower whose roots are often
underground in the subconsciousness. Many a man talks sense when he
thinks he is talking nonsense; touches on a conflict of ideas as if it
were only a contradiction of language, or really makes a parallel when
he means only to make a pun. Some of the _Punch_ jokes of the best
period are examples of this; and that quoted above is a very strong
example of it. The cabman meant what he said; but he said a great deal
more than he meant. His utterance contained fine philosophical doctrines
and distinctions of which he was not perhaps entirely conscious. The
spirit of the English language, the tragedy and comedy of the condition
of the English people, spoke through him as the god spoke through a
teraph-head or brazen mask of oracle. And the oracle is an omen; and in
some sense an omen of doom.
Observe, to begin with, the sobriety of the cabman. Note his measure,
his moderation; or to use the yet truer term, his temperance. He only
wishes to have half the old gentleman's complaint. The old gentleman is
welcome to the other half, along with all the other pomps and luxuries
of his superior social station. There is nothing Bolshevist or even
Communist about the temperance cabman. He might almost be called
Distributist, in the sense that he wishes to distribute the old
gentleman's complaint more equally between the old gentleman and
himself. And, of course, the social relations there represented are very
much truer to life than it is fashionable to suggest. By the realism of
this picture Mr. Punch made amends for some more snobbish pictures, with
the opposite social moral. It will remain eternally among his real
glories that he exhibited a picture in which the cabman was sober and
the gentleman was drunk. Despite many ideas to the contrary, it was
emphatically a picture of real life. The truth is subject to the
simplest of all possible tests. If the cabman were really and truly
drunk he would not be a cabman, for he could not drive a cab. If he had
the whole of the old gentleman's complaint, he would be sitting happily
on the pavement beside the old gentleman; a symbol of social equality
found at last, and the levelling of all classes of mankind. I do not say
that there has never been such a monster known as a drunken cabman; I do
not say that the driver may not sometimes have approximated imprudently
to three-quarters of the complaint, instead of adhering to his severe
but wise conception of half of it. But I do say that most men of the
world, if they spoke sincerely, could testify to more examples of
helplessly drunken gentlemen put inside cabs than of helplessly drunken
drivers on top of them. Philanthropists and officials, who never look at
people but only at papers, probably have a mass of social statistics to
the contrary; founded on the simple fact that cabmen can be
cross-examined about their habits and gentlemen cannot. Social workers
probably have the whole thing worked out in sections and compartments,
showing how the extreme intoxication of cabmen compares with the
parallel intoxication of costermongers; or measuring the drunkenness of
a dustman against the drunkenness of a crossing-sweeper. But there is
more practical experience embodied in the practical speech of the
English; and in the proverb that says 'as drunk as a lord.'
Now Prohibition, whether as a proposal in England or a pretence in
America, simply means that the man who has drunk less shall have no
drink, and the man who has drunk more shall have all the drink. It means
that the old gentleman shall be carried home in the cab drunker than
ever; but that, in order to make it quite safe for him to drink to
excess, the man who drives him shall be forbidden to drink even in
moderation. That is what it means; that is all it means; that is all it
ever will mean. It tends to that in Moslem countries; where the
luxurious and advanced drink champagne, while the poor and fanatical
drink water. It means that in modern America; where the wealthy are all
at this moment sipping their cocktails, and discussing how much harder
labourers can be made to work if only they can be kept from festivity.
This is what it means and all it means; and men are divided about it
according to whether they believe in a certain transcendental concept
called 'justice,' expressed in a more mystical paradox as the equality
of men. So long as you do not believe in justice, and so long as you are
rich and really confident of remaining so, you can have Prohibition and
be as drunk as you choose.
I see that some remarks by the Rev. R. J. Campbell, dealing with social
conditions in America, are reported in the press. They include some
observations about Sinn Fein in which, as in most of Mr. Campbell's
allusions to Ireland, it is not difficult to detect his dismal origin,
or the acrid smell of the smoke of Belfast. But the remarks about
America are valuable in the objective sense, over and above their
philosophy. He believes that Prohibition will survive and be a success,
nor does he seem himself to regard the prospect with any special
disfavour. But he frankly and freely testifies to the truth I have
asserted; that Prohibition does not prohibit, so far as the wealthy are
concerned. He testifies to constantly seeing wine on the table, as will
any other grateful guest of the generous hospitality of America; and he
implies humorously that he asked no questions about the story told him
of the old stocks in the cellars. So there is no dispute about the
facts; and we come back as before to the principles. Is Mr. Campbell
content with a Prohibition which is another name for Privilege? If so,
he has simply absorbed along with his new theology a new morality which
is different from mine. But he does state both sides of the inequality
with equal logic and clearness; and in these days of intellectual fog
that alone is like a ray of sunshine.
Now my primary objection to Prohibition is not based on any arguments
against it, but on the one argument for it. I need nothing more for its
condemnation than the only thing that is said in its defence. It is said
by capitalists all over America; and it is very clearly and correctly
reported by Mr. Campbell himself. The argument is that employees work
harder, and therefore employers get richer. That this idea should be
taken calmly, by itself, as the test of a problem of liberty, is in
itself a final testimony to the presence of slavery. It shows that
people have completely forgotten that there is any other test except the
servile test. Employers are willing that workmen should have exercise,
as it may help them to do more work. They are even willing that workmen
should have leisure; for the more intelligent capitalists can see that
this also really means that they can do more work. But they are not in
any way willing that workmen should have fun; for fun only increases the
happiness and not the utility of the worker. Fun is freedom; and in that
sense is an end in itself. It concerns the man not as a worker but as a
citizen, or even as a soul; and the soul in that sense is an end in
itself. That a man shall have a reasonable amount of comedy and poetry
and even fantasy in his life is part of his spiritual health, which is
for the service of God; and not merely for his mechanical health, which
is now bound to the service of man. The very test adopted has all the
servile implication; the test of what we can get out of him, instead of
the test of what he can get out of life.
Mr. Campbell is reported to have suggested, doubtless rather as a
conjecture than a prophecy, that England may find it necessary to become
teetotal in order to compete commercially with the efficiency and
economy of teetotal America. Well, in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries there was in America one of the most economical and
efficient of all forms of labour. It did not happen to be feasible for
the English to compete with it by copying it. There were so many
humanitarian prejudices about in those days. But economically there
seems to be no reason why a man should not have prophesied that England
would be forced to adopt American Slavery then, as she is urged to adopt
American Prohibition now. Perhaps such a prophet would have prophesied
rightly. Certainly it is not impossible that universal Slavery might
have been the vision of Calhoun as universal Prohibition seems to be the
vision of Campbell. The old England of 1830 would have said that such a
plea for slavery was monstrous; but what would it have said of a plea
for enforced water-drinking? Nevertheless, the nobler Servile State of
Calhoun collapsed before it could spread to Europe. And there is always
the hope that the same may happen to the far more materialistic Utopia
of Mr. Campbell and Soft Drinks.
Abstract morality is very important; and it may well clear the mind to
consider what would be the effect of Prohibition in America, if it were
introduced there. It would, of course, be a decisive departure from the
tradition of the Declaration of Independence. Those who deny that are
hardly serious enough to demand attention. It is enough to say that they
are reduced to minimising that document in defence of Prohibition,
exactly as the slave-owners were reduced to minimising it in defence of
Slavery. They are reduced to saying that the Fathers of the Republic
meant no more than that they would not be ruled by a king. And they are
obviously open to the reply which Lincoln gave to Douglas on the slavery
question; that if that great charter was limited to certain events in
the eighteenth century, it was hardly worth making such a fuss about in
the nineteenth--or in the twentieth. But they are also open to another
reply which is even more to the point, when they pretend that
Jefferson's famous preamble only means to say that monarchy is wrong.
They are maintaining that Jefferson only meant to say something that he
does not say at all. The great preamble does not say that all
monarchical government must be wrong; on the contrary, it rather implies
that most government is right. It speaks of human governments in general
as justified by the necessity of defending certain personal rights. I
see no reason whatever to suppose that it would not include any royal
government that does defend those rights. Still less do I doubt what it
would say of a republican government that does destroy those rights.
But what are those rights? Sophists can always debate about their
degree; but even sophists cannot debate about their direction. Nobody in
his five wits will deny that Jeffersonian democracy wished to give the
law a general control in more public things, but the citizens a more
general liberty in private things. Wherever we draw the line, liberty
can only be personal liberty; and the most personal liberties must at
least be the last liberties we lose. But to-day they are the first
liberties we lose. It is not a question of drawing the line in the right
place, but of beginning at the wrong end. What are the rights of man, if
they do not include the normal right to regulate his own health, in
relation to the normal risks of diet and daily life? Nobody can pretend
that beer is a poison as prussic acid is a poison; that all the millions
of civilised men who drank it all fell down dead when they had touched
it. Its use and abuse is obviously a matter of judgment; and there can
be no personal liberty, if it is not a matter of private judgment. It
is not in the least a question of drawing the line between liberty and
licence. If this is licence, there is no such thing as liberty. It is
plainly impossible to find any right more individual or intimate. To say
that a man has a right to a vote, but not a right to a voice about the
choice of his dinner, is like saying that he has a right to his hat but
not a right to his head.
Prohibition, therefore, plainly violates the rights of man, if there are
any rights of man. What its supporters really mean is that there are
none. And in suggesting this, they have all the advantages that every
sceptic has when he supports a negation. That sort of ultimate
scepticism can only be retorted upon itself, and we can point out to
them that they can no more prove the right of the city to be oppressive
than we can prove the right of the citizen to be free. In the primary
metaphysics of such a claim, it would surely be easier to make it out
for a single conscious soul than for an artificial social combination.
If there are no rights of men, what are the rights of nations? Perhaps a
nation has no claim to self-government. Perhaps it has no claim to good
government. Perhaps it has no claim to any sort of government or any
sort of independence. Perhaps they will say _that_ is not implied in the
Declaration of Independence. But without going deep into my reasons for
believing in natural rights, or rather in supernatural rights (and
Jefferson certainly states them as supernatural), I am content here to
note that a man's treatment of his own body, in relation to traditional
and ordinary opportunities for bodily excess, is as near to his
self-respect as social coercion can possibly go; and that when that is
gone there is nothing left. If coercion applies to that, it applies to
everything; and in the future of this controversy it obviously will
apply to everything. When I was in America, people were already applying
it to tobacco. I never can see why they should not apply it to talking.
Talking often goes with tobacco as it goes with beer; and what is more
relevant, talking may often lead both to beer and tobacco. Talking often
drives a man to drink, both negatively in the form of nagging and
positively in the form of bad company. If the American Puritan is so
anxious to be a _censor morum_, he should obviously put a stop to the
evil communications that really corrupt good manners. He should
reintroduce the Scold's Bridle among the other Blue Laws for a land of
blue devils. He should gag all gay deceivers and plausible cynics; he
should cut off all flattering lips and the tongue that speaketh proud
things. Nobody can doubt that nine-tenths of the harm in the world is
done simply by talking. Jefferson and the old democrats allowed people
to talk, not because they were unaware of this fact, but because they
were fettered by this old fancy of theirs about freedom and the rights
of man. But since we have already abandoned that doctrine in a final
fashion, I cannot see why the new principle should not be applied
intelligently; and in that case it would be applied to the control of
conversation. The State would provide us with forms already filled up
with the subjects suitable for us to discuss at breakfast; perhaps
allowing us a limited number of epigrams each. Perhaps we should have to
make a formal application in writing, to be allowed to make a joke that
had just occurred to us in conversation. And the committee would
consider it in due course. Perhaps it would be effected in a more
practical fashion, and the private citizens would be shut up as the
public-houses were shut up. Perhaps they would all wear gags, which the
policeman would remove at stated hours; and their mouths would be opened
from one to three, as now in England even the public-houses are from
time to time accessible to the public. To some this will sound
fantastic; but not so fantastic as Jefferson would have thought
Prohibition. But there is one sense in which it is indeed fantastic, for
by hypothesis it leaves out the favouritism that is the fundamental of
the whole matter. The only sense in which we can say that logic will
never go so far as this is that logic will never go the length of
equality. It is perfectly possible that the same forces that have
forbidden beer may go on to forbid tobacco. But they will in a special
and limited sense forbid tobacco--but not cigars. Or at any rate not
expensive cigars. In America, where large numbers of ordinary men smoke
rather ordinary cigars, there would be doubtless a good opportunity of
penalising a very ordinary pleasure. But the Havanas of the millionaire
will be all right. So it will be if ever the Puritans bring back the
Scold's Bridle and the statutory silence of the populace. It will only
be the populace that is silent. The politicians will go on talking.
These I believe to be the broad facts of the problem of Prohibition; but
it would not be fair to leave it without mentioning two other causes
which, if not defences, are at least excuses. The first is that
Prohibition was largely passed in a sort of fervour or fever of
self-sacrifice, which was a part of the passionate patriotism of America
in the war. As I have remarked elsewhere, those who have any notion of
what that national unanimity was like will smile when they see America
made a model of mere international idealism. Prohibition was partly a
sort of patriotic renunciation; for the popular instinct, like every
poetic instinct, always tends at great crises to great gestures of
renunciation. But this very fact, while it makes the inhumanity far more
human, makes it far less final and convincing. Men cannot remain
standing stiffly in such symbolical attitudes; nor can a permanent
policy be founded on something analogous to flinging a gauntlet or
uttering a battle-cry. We might as well expect all the Yale students to
remain through life with their mouths open, exactly as they were when
they uttered the college yell. It would be as reasonable as to expect
them to remain through life with their mouths shut, while the wine-cup
which has been the sacrament of all poets and lovers passed round among
all the youth of the world. This point appeared very plainly in a
discussion I had with a very thoughtful and sympathetic American critic,
a clergyman writing in an Anglo-Catholic magazine. He put the sentiment
of these healthier Prohibitionists, which had so much to do with the
passing of Prohibition, by asking, 'May not a man who is asked to give
up his blood for his country be asked to give up his beer for his
country?' And this phrase clearly illuminates all the limitations of the
case. I have never denied, in principle, that it might in some abnormal
crisis be lawful for a government to lock up the beer, or to lock up the
bread. In that sense I am quite prepared to treat the sacrifice of beer
in the same way as the sacrifice of blood. But is my American critic
really ready to treat the sacrifice of blood in the same way as the
sacrifice of beer? Is bloodshed to be as prolonged and protracted as
Prohibition? Is the normal noncombatant to shed his gore as often as he
misses his drink? I can imagine people submitting to a special
regulation, as I can imagine them serving in a particular war. I do
indeed despise the political knavery that deliberately passes drink
regulations as war measures and then preserves them as peace measures.
But that is not a question of whether drink and drunkenness are wrong,
but of whether lying and swindling are wrong. But I never denied that
there might need to be exceptional sacrifices for exceptional occasions;
and war is in its nature an exception. Only, if war is the exception,
why should Prohibition be the rule? If the surrender of beer is worthy
to be compared to the shedding of blood, why then blood ought to be
flowing for ever like a fountain in the public squares of Philadelphia
and New York. If my critic wants to complete his parallel, he must draw
up rather a remarkable programme for the daily life of the ordinary
citizens. He must suppose that, through all their lives, they are
paraded every day at lunch time and prodded with bayonets to show that
they will shed their blood for their country. He must suppose that every
evening, after a light repast of poison gas and shrapnel, they are made
to go to sleep in a trench under a permanent drizzle of shell-fire. It
is surely obvious that if this were the normal life of the citizen, the
citizen would have no normal life. The common sense of the thing is that
sacrifices of this sort are admirable but abnormal. It is not normal for
the State to be perpetually regulating our days with the discipline of a
fighting regiment; and it is not normal for the State to be perpetually
regulating our diet with the discipline of a famine. To say that every
citizen must be subject to control in such bodily things is like saying
that every Christian ought to tear himself with red-hot pincers because
the Christian martyrs did their duty in time of persecution. A man has a
right to control his body, though in a time of martyrdom he may give his
body to be burned; and a man has a right to control his bodily health,
though in a state of siege he may give his body to be starved. Thus,
though the patriotic defence was a sincere defence, it is a defence that
comes back on the defenders like a boomerang. For it proves only that
Prohibition ought to be ephemeral, unless war ought to be eternal.