The chapter from Mr. John J. Leary, Jr’s, book, “Talks with T. R.,” entitled “On Prohibition,” is used in this volume by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.

Thanks are also due the editor of Harper’s Magazine, for his kind permission to include portions of E. S. Martin’s article, and to the Rev. W. A. Crawford-Frost, for his consent to reprint extracts from his sermon.

Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls have been most helpful in permitting the use of their files of The Literary Digest; and Mr. William L. Fish, Mr. Frederic J. Faulks, Mr. Thomas K. Finletter and Mr. Herbert B. Shonk rendered much assistance in the preparation of this volume.

Two chapters are reprints of articles which originally appeared in the New York Times.

I must also thank Mr. Markham, Mr. Le Gallienne and Mr. Montague for the use of their poems.

The strange phenomenon of Prohibition, after an appearance amongst us of over three years, is still non-understandable to the majority of a great, and so-called free, people. It is one of the most astonishing manifestations the world has ever witnessed. It came upon us like a phantom, swiftly; like a thief in the night, taking us by surprise. Yet the Prohibitionists will tell you that no one should be amazed, since for years—for almost a century—quiet forces have been at work to bring about this very thing.

Most of us can remember how, not so many years ago, when we wished to throw away our vote, we cast it for the Prohibition ticket. Some unknown “crank” was running for office on a dry platform. “What a joke,” we said, “to give him the weight of our affirmation, to enlarge his pitiful handful of white ballots! It will be a good way to get even with the arrogant Mr. So-and-So.”

And into the box we laughingly dropped the bit of paper which might cause a mention to be made of the crank in the next morning’s news columns. Delightful, insincere flattery, which could not possibly do any harm. How well, how thoroughly, how consistently we gave it, never dreaming that the solemn hour would strike when our gesture would no longer be a joke.

The morning came when the headlines in our newspapers proclaimed the fact that State after State was following the road of Kansas, Washington, Maine and Oregon, to mention only a few States which for some time had elected to make laws that were almost blue. Local option—yes, we had heard of it in the effete East. There were districts, we knew, which chose the path of so-called virtue; and they were welcome to their sanctimoniousness. In our hearts we rather approved of them for the stand which they had taken—particularly when we learned, on an occasional visit, that it was mighty easy to give a dinner-party with plenty of liquid refreshment. All one had to do, it seemed, was to lift the telephone receiver in Bangor, and ask that Boston send over a supply of whatever one desired. There were no restrictions against the transportation of liquor over the State line, though it was impossible to purchase wines and spirits in the holy community itself.

Our national insincerity began right there. The hiding of the ostrich’s head in the sands—that is what it amounted to; and we all smiled and laughed, and went on having a perfectly good time, and we told one another, if we discussed the matter at all, that of course the worst could never, never occur. What rot even to think of it; what idiocy to take seriously a state of affairs so nebulous and remote. It was like predicting a world war—which eventually came about; it was like dreaming of the inconvenience of a personal income tax—which also came about; it was like imagining that man would be so uncivilized as to break all international law—which, only a few years later, he did. Who foresaw the use of poisonous gas in the most frightful conflict of history? Who had vision enough to tell us that noncombatants would be killed, as they were in Belgium, though treaties had been signed which forbade such wanton cruelty? Who could foretell the bombing of cities far beyond the firing line? Yet these atrocities occurred with singular regularity once the world entered upon that stupendous struggle which began in August, 1914. We came to take such happenings for granted. We grew accustomed to terror, as one grows used to pain; and all that we had built and dreamed went crashing to dust and ashes.

Prohibition, I venture to say, was the last thing in the world the American people expected to have come upon them. Though temperance advocates were thick through the country, the brilliant bar-rooms held their own; and we came to look upon them as an essential part of the pageant of life, especially in cosmopolitan cities, with Salvation Army lassies entering them to pass the tambourine. Men in their cups gave generously; and I often wonder if the revenue of pious organizations has not seriously diminished, now that there are no haunts of vice for holy workers to penetrate. Surely they must miss this casual liberality—the coin or the bill cast with a grand and forgotten gesture into the extended hand.

But do not imagine I am holding a brief for the corner saloon. The sins of an enforced Prohibition are many, as I shall seek to prove; but the passing of the common drinking-place cannot be deprecated. No sane, thinking citizen wishes to see a return of promiscuous debauchery. A glimpse now of the London “pubs” in the poorer districts of the English capital is enough to convince any American that he should thank his stars—if not his three-stars—that one phase of our social consciousness has vanished forever. If we could have sensibly rid ourselves of these rum-hells, without punishing a vast multitude of us who knew how to drink wisely, much good would have been accomplished. But, American-like, we had to go the whole gamut; we had to make ourselves ridiculous before the rest of the world, in order to bring about a check upon the gross appetites of a scattered few.

There is no doubt in my mind that there will be a reaction. The pendulum has swung too far, as any observer must admit. The present conditions throughout the country are so disgraceful that something must be done to remedy them. Our personal habits became a matter for federal investigation; our daily conduct is now given to the scrutiny of the authorities—to our everlasting discredit. We are a nation of self-appointed law-breakers, rejoicing alike in our secret and open wrong-doing. We are the laughing-stock of Europe; we are the jest of Canada and Mexico, our neighbors, and decent Americans feel that a stigma has been put upon them. We stammer explanations to visiting foreigners, who, confused and confounded, ask us what it all means; we are confused ourselves at the muddle our Government is making of the whole wretched business; and yet, being Americans who tolerate all kinds of injustices, we meekly submit, the while we complain, and are too lazy, most of us, to lift up our voices, to utter one word publicly in derision of this monstrous foolishness.

What is to happen to us? Are we to become a race of machines, supinely submitting to autocratic mandates? We have always allowed ruffians to rule us in our civic politics; and though once in a while we bitterly cry out, the ruffians, knowing our weaknesses only too well, pay no attention. We are like the worm that turns; but who cares, since no change is evident when the worm shows its other side?

One of the great troubles with America is that only in rare instances will the finer type of young manhood enter politics. We leave the high business of running the Government to men of inferior caliber, whereas in a land like England, a political career is a distinction, as much to be chosen and sought as the Church. Until we come to a realization of the peril that confronts us through our spirit of laissez-faire we shall deserve, as Plato says, exactly the kind of Government we get.

With all our recognized national gusto and verve, there can be no denial of the tragic fact that we are mentally indolent when a political cause is in the balance. I have known men of worth in the professions and in the world of business to neglect the polls on Election Day in order to indulge in a game of golf; yet these are the first to cry out when the low-brow politicians triumph. We permit our jury-boxes to be filled by incompetent German-American grocers and butchers, clerks with little imagination, played-out failures and cab drivers and chauffeurs who are morons. Even the women, who were so anxious for equal suffrage, find, in many cases, that civic duties are a burden, and avoid their obvious responsibilities. We let George do everything which we find in the least unpleasant.

Well, there is a price for such lethargy. It is terrifying to read over the names of the judges and magistrates on the American Bench, and see how many are of foreign origin. Listen to the roll-call in any court-room. The Poppelfingers and Morinos and Sauerkrautzers predominate. Where are our first American families? It might be well to ask, indeed, where they will be in another generation or two.

You and I walk along the streets and see a man suddenly stricken. A crowd quickly gathers about his pitiful form, stares into his countenance. A policeman calls an ambulance. A gong rings, and he is carried off to a hospital. You and I go our way, with perhaps a momentary tug at our heart. But it never occurs to us that the man in the street might have been ourselves. Such things happen to others—no, they could never, never happen to us. The lightning may strike a neighbor’s house or barn—but not our own. Death or disaster may come to the other fellow—never to us.

“It never can happen” might be our national slogan. Thus has a stupid Pollyanna optimism penetrated our civic thought, our political consciousness, our spiritual being; and the false doctrine is screamed from every housetop from Manhattan to Gopher Prairie. Pretty little poems, printed in neat frames, greet us wherever we turn. They urge us to cheer up, that it is not raining rain, but only flowers, and that God’s in His heaven and all’s right with the world—forgetting that Browning, when he penned his immortal line, referred to a particular morning for a particular man of vision, and by no means intended to be quoted out of his context, as a basis for the silly “gladness” of hoards of people who think they think. Our music-halls are crammed with comedians who sing, in loud voices, something about what’s the use of worrying, it never was worth while, and bidding us smile, smile, smile. And we clap and giggle and stamp our easy-going feet, and go out into the night, and are shoved and pushed into an over-crowded subway train, and still fondly cherish the delusion that we should keep on smiling, though a brutal train-guard’s boot is jammed into our reluctant back, so that we may become one more sardine in the steel box he is so expert in packing.

It would all be very amusing were it not so serious. Sinclair Lewis, who is becoming the best photographer this country ever produced, has not given us a false picture of our towns and cities. He tells the brutal truth, bravely. But we read him, smile, and say that of course it’s all very well, and such localities may exist, but they are not those in which we dwell. And all the while, about us, are the very folk his deft pen has drawn. Babbitt—what a stupid old fool he is, and we may have seen him in smoking-compartments; but we never will admit that he is our next-door neighbor.

The day may come when we will have to admit that he is our very self. We have the superiority complex. Which of course is nothing but a confession that we are inferior. And in allowing restriction after restriction to be put upon us, how, in the name of common sense and in the words of the man in the street, do we get that way? We are the most governed people in the world today. There are plenty of laws, but little order; and the millennium that the Prohibitionists promised with the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment is farther away than ever.

Let us wake up, and face conditions as they are. Let us not try to delude ourselves into a state of false happiness, when, at heart, we are the most unhappy nation now breathing the celebrated air. It is high time we did some solemn thinking. The writing is on the wall. It is our business to read the words inscribed there in letters of fire.

Are the American people any worse than other people, that they should be put en masse upon the water-wagon? Who is it that sits in judgment over them? What unseen Kaiser, Czar, autocrat passes sentence upon their morals? We fought a War to get rid of such leaders and rulers; and now, ironically enough, we find ourselves under the domination of far stronger task-masters.

I have recently been traveling through a great portion of this great country. Everywhere I found a curious unhappiness. People may not be articulate about their sorrows, just as the poor may not speak of their poverty; yet the canker is there, the worm i’ the bud is eating away the heart of the flower. Perhaps I should use the word discontent rather than unhappiness. Or restlessness. Or resentment. At any rate, the feeling, whatever it is, exists; and there is a new menace over our days. The placid reformers, resting between reforms, smack their lips in sadistic glee. In the face of repeated and open violations of the law, they give out interviews to the effect that all is moving serenely; that the people are under beautiful control—though they have to admit that they squirm once in a while. Here again it is a case of stupid optimism. They want all to be well, and they fondly imagine that all is well. They will have a great awakening; for this smoldering discontent and anger is bound to rise in a great tide one of these days.

At the trial, the package in evidence was placed on a large green-covered table, in the presence of the jury and the court. The prosecuting attorney worked himself into a fine fury of eloquence. The majesty of the law must be upheld.

Listen to a lady reformer in Chicago, speaking after a church league meeting, in September, 1922. Evidently she is out of touch with the world, secure in the sanctity of a liquorless home. She has never attended a real dinner-party, poor dear; and somehow my heart goes out to her.

“The law is being enforced, and the results are more than satisfactory. The brewers are skulking opponents. What are they doing now?” she inquired blandly of her audience. “Some are making candies, some soft drinks, some other things; but they are all making money, and are happy. Prohibition is a wonderful thing, and I am proud to be a citizen of the country that has adopted it.”

How sweet and cheerful! But as she spoke, I wonder if she knew that almost around the corner real beer and whiskey were easily procurable. That as she uttered her oracular words, men with hip-flasks passed the door behind which she was speaking, on their way to joyful occasions.

The law was never less effectively enforced, dear lady. You are living in a world of dreams and fancies. You should get about more, and meet the flappers and jeunesse dorée, who could tell you and show you a thing or two. Your rhapsodies are all very well; but your smug delight in conditions has a note of pathos to one who has observed the country as it is, and not as you would have it. Alas! you are but deluding yourself, and my heart goes out to you in your simplicity.

Is the law being upheld when, at a dinner-party at a certain country club, 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 they laughed at the Constitution of the United States. I saw them and heard them myself. They came to get drunk—and certainly succeeded. Everyone at that party deplored the company’s behavior, was loud in denunciation of Prohibition and what has come in its wake; yet went on eating and drinking and dancing with the casual remark that it was of no consequence whether or not they broke the law, since everyone was doing it.

Is there any veneration for the law of the land when advocates of the Eighteenth Amendment, men who sponsored it publicly, in private deride it, and, at the mention of Mr. Volstead, sneer and jeer, and purchase cocktails in New York restaurants at a dollar apiece, gulping them down openly?

I asked such an advocate—a politician who would like to be called a statesman—why it was that, if he believed in the Volstead Act, he continued to consume his daily quota of Scotch. I don’t believe anybody had ever ventured to put such a frank question to him. His wife, on my left, blanched—she, by the way, never touches a drop; but her exalted husband is fond of the cup that cheers—and inebriates. He has held high office, and has been loud in his advocacy of Prohibition—for the other fellow. He glared at me when I rashly put my question to him, lifted his glass high and cried out, intending to be witty (I thought him merely disgraceful, and drunk, as usual), “I drink as much and as often as I can, in order to lessen the supply!” And then he had the effrontery to add: “Of course I mean to see to it that the law is upheld, when liquor cases come up before me.”

Yet I had read a statement of his in the newspapers when he was running for office, declaring that wine was a mocker, and that whosoever was deceived thereby was not wise. Oh, yes, he could quote Scripture with a vengeance, this minion of the law. My lady friend in Chicago, seeing him on the street, would count him as among the holy band who have put their O. K. upon Volstead, Anderson, et al. Yet behind closed doors he is a Mr. Hyde who takes a fiendish pleasure in his dual nature. I like him not. The lady in Chicago is at least consistent. Were I a W. C. T. U. worker or an Anti-Saloon member—or even a judge who tried bootleggers—I think I should strive for a similar state of holiness, and always be willing to let my left hand know what my right hand was doing.

The truth is that laws of intolerance defeat their own ends. The instant you tell people not to do something, they have an irresistible desire to do it. There cannot be laws greater than the people themselves. And that law is the most insidious and dangerous of all which discriminates between the rich and poor.

I am, by temperament and training, a Conservative; yet I confess that were I a workingman deprived of my beer, I would find it hard to remain calm, when, returning from my day’s labor, I was forced to go to an arid tenement, passing the homes of those who possessed well-stocked cellars—and who replenished them at will.

Those who labor ceaselessly for the cause of Prohibition will tell you that it will not always be possible to obtain liquor; that the rich, too, will come to a state of drouth; and I have even heard some of them say that, after all, there are many things the rich have always had which the poor could not possess, and drink is but another symbol.

For such light arguments I have no use. I could only say to so profound a student of human nature and the humanities that he, along with his kind, is sowing the wind, and will reap the whirlwind. With money, we seem to be able to purchase anything we desire in this land of lost liberty. One of them is a wine-cellar. Mr. Volstead did not quite dare to make it illegal to drink in one’s home. There might have been a serious exodus from the country had such a drastic law been passed—or even seriously considered. Since Magna Charta a man’s house has been his castle; and an invasion of the sacred precincts would cause unlimited chaos. Yet in certain of our States, John Doe search-warrants may now be obtained, and officials may enter one’s dining-room to ascertain if drinking is going on. It is unthinkable, but it is so. But, then, there are many foolish legislative blunders made from year to year, and a placid and long-suffering people pay little attention to them. I have heard men complain of the laws in their community, who would not lift a finger to see that they were changed.

In the Far West recently, learning of a certain intolerable mandate, I could not resist asking a lawyer why his State stood for it. His only reply was that they gave it little thought—until someone from outside, like myself, came along and drew its horrors to their attention. Then, with the going of the stranger from their midst, they settled down once more to calm acquiescence; or else they openly disobeyed the law, and, when they thought of the possible consequences, roared with laughter. For no one had ever been put in prison for a violation of the statute—and of course no one ever would be. Then why have it on the books? Oh, well, what difference did it make? The women wanted it there, but of course they didn’t mean it, and it was a joke anyhow, and it wasn’t worth worrying over, when you came to think of it, and maybe the Legislative body had to earn its salary, and how about a little game of golf to forget it?

I suppose we have come to be such a hodge-podge nation that we are losing sight of all the old ideals our forefathers fought for. The passage of the Eighteenth Amendment may have been the best thing that could have happened to us, since it has, in a sense, aroused us to the point of anger, whereas piffling restrictions put upon our liberty have left us cold and indifferent. But here, at last, is something big enough to cause most of us inconvenience—and the American people do dislike to be inconvenienced. We could get together on this burning subject, where we would fail to dovetail on lesser questions. Our heterogeneous citizenry is inflamed, as one man; for the German-American wants his beer, the Italian-American his red wine, the Irish-American his grog, the English-American his ale and port, the Russian-American his vodka, the Swedish-American his punch, the French-American his champagne and light wine, and so on down the line and through the maze of races that go to form our vast Republic.

Is it too late to get together? Here again we may fail to act in concert; for the foreigner within our gates, feeling the contagion of our national slothfulness in a Cause, and waiting to get his cue from us, sits back and wonders why we do not act.

And many an American waits and wonders too.

When we sit back and rail at the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, we lose sight of other laws equally tyrannous which, however, do not happen to affect us.

Is it generally known, for instance, that in the State of Utah there is a statute which makes it a misdemeanor to purchase, sell or smoke cigarettes? One may not puff in a public place; yet one may do so in private, the law contends. The Mormon Church is opposed not only to drinking and smoking, but to coffee-drinking as well; and as the elders in that church are the big property owners in Salt Lake City, controlling the hotels and other public buildings, when I went there not long ago I wondered if I would be permitted to light a weed.

With soda-fountains gracing the lobbies of the smartest caravanseries, I had my doubts; but when I casually asked where the cigar-stand was, I was directed to a garish counter, and beneath gleaming glass cases I saw, to my amazement, all brands of cigarettes on sale. I asked how this could be.

“You don’t take this law seriously?” a native said to me.

“I am getting so that I cannot take any law seriously,” was my natural answer—as it undoubtedly would have been yours, dear reader. Yet you and I call ourselves perfectly decent, God-fearing American citizens, do we not?

I hadn’t the slightest trouble in purchasing everything that I wanted; yet a new fear possessed me. After dinner, would it be possible to smoke in the main dining-room?

To make a long story short—it was. Everyone was doing it, just as though a law had never been heard of; and I saw Mormons consuming coffee, too. Think of it!

For almost two years now the farce has gone on. No one thinks it curious any more that the mandate is not obeyed.

They told me of a case recently tried out there. A small tobacco merchant—an Italian, if I recall correctly—was arrested for selling a package of cigarettes to a detective. (To remind people of the august legislature and to give the tax-payers another reason for being taxed, a minion of the law must go about now and then, on a fat salary, to investigate conditions.) At the trial, the package in evidence was placed on a large green-covered table, in the presence of the jury and the Court. It was all very incriminating. The prosecuting attorney worked himself into a fine fury of eloquence, denouncing the pitiful little culprit in high-faluting language that the wretch on trial could not possibly understand. The majesty of the law must be upheld. This was terrible; it was atrocious—though nothing was said of the fact that down in the heart of the city, every hour of the day, this same law was openly violated. The judge solemnly charged the jury—and hastened out to luncheon.

But the twelve good men and true were out only a few moments. They brought in a verdict of not guilty.

“How can this be?” cried the Court, in wrath. And the counsel for the people tore his hair, metaphorically, if not literally. The detective looked blank. Then the foreman arose and said that the jury had had no evidence presented to them that cigarettes had been sold, as the package covering the alleged malignant little weeds had never been opened.

And so the money of the good citizens of Utah is being spent on such opera-bouffé trials—and they continue to stand for it.

A delightful state of affairs, my masters. Such incidents should get into the papers more frequently. For we can all stand anything but ridicule. And when the law is thus made ridiculous, it is to laugh, isn’t it?

Or should one remain serious in the face of such nonsense—as of course the reformers would have us do.

Well, I am afraid they will have to pass laws against smiling before I can be brought to terms. And even then I may break another law—and go to jail for it. Or more likely remain peacefully at home, as I do now, breaking so many that I have stopped counting them.

I fear that I break the speed laws—as do you. I am afraid that most of us do. Yet I am not conscious of good ladies of any N. S. L. S. (National Speed Law Society) giving up tea-parties that they may get out on the highways to watch us, and report us, and, if need be, arrest us themselves. Yet when you and I dine at a restaurant in a city like New York, we are apt to note a policeman in uniform standing in the doorway, his eagle eye upon us, to see that we do not take flasks from our pockets. I wonder what would happen if, under the very nose of this representative of law and order, one should pour from a bottle some harmless iced-tea. Alas! I fear that the law is not to be trifled with in that way. The dignity of our jurisprudence must not be disturbed. One might be hauled up and arraigned for disorderly conduct, or for some such trumped-up charge.

But it is a pretty picture, isn’t it, to see perfectly good tax-payers watched and spied upon while they eat their meals? Ye gods! and in a supposedly free country! How our ancestors must turn in their graves—they who wrote something, didn’t they, about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”?

Who shall define that last phrase today? I wonder what it means—what anything means—in these topsy-turvy times.

Not long ago, in solemn conclave in an eastern city, a holy body of men and women aroused the whole country to its first volume of fury by suggesting that gatling-guns be used to enforce obedience to the Prohibition law. In their fanatical zeal, they were seriously for murdering a number of us, and they saw no humor in their announcement. What were a few lives, if the LAW was upheld?—a law, by the way, which millions of thinking people do not believe should ever have been put upon our statutes. No more shameful resolution was ever made at a public meeting; yet I would not have been surprised had it been passed, to such a state of imbecility have we come. Why stop where we are? Let the digging in go on; let the teeth of the law sink into your flesh until we groan in agony. Let the busybodies and the cranks become as thick as flies and locusts in time of pestilence. Let them gather in battalions around us, sting us, flay us, torture us—until at last the vestige of manhood which is left in us may cause us to turn upon them.

I fear that the law which makes it illegal for a minor to be admitted to a theater or a motion-picture palace is broken every day in every city of our broad and beneficent land. Yet I do not find pickets from Children’s Societies, standing about to see that the letter of the law is obeyed. We pretend to be deeply interested in the welfare of the coming generation—so interested, in fact, that the present generation is forced to give up its harmless toddy, that the children of tomorrow may be robust supermen and superwomen.

The fact is that, to the fanatic, no law is sacred except the Eighteenth Amendment.