NOT content with forcing us to close our lips to liquor, the Prohibitionists recently sent out a request, which amounted to an order, that no one should open his lips to speak disparagingly or in jest of the sacred Eighteenth Amendment. We were to be denied the blessed privilege of laughing at ourselves, even! I suppose that a few fanatics—oh, merely to study life, bless their hearts!—had gone into a vaudeville theater and had been incensed at the ribaldry of the actors and the shrieks of mirth of the audience over Prohibition wheezes. I have seen an assemblage in convulsions when some light mention was made of Mr. Volstead; and whenever a flask is displayed on the screen of some movie house, there never fails to follow a round of loud applause.  
Our comic weeklies and newspaper supplements continue to print Prohibition jokes, much to the delight of their readers. One fearless periodical, Judge, has come out openly for light wines and beer—and lost a valued contributor thereby. Another paper, on the contrary, solemnly prints this editorial, headed “There Are Jokes and Jokes”:
139 “A great concern operating vaudeville theaters in most of the large cities has issued an order that all performers must cut out their jokes about Prohibition. This is progress. It should be followed by orders to eliminate Prohibition jokes from our legislatures, courts, police stations, city halls, and all other places where men supposed to be serious and doing serious work are to be found. The outstanding fact about Prohibition seems to be that people forget that it came about through an amendment to the United States Constitution.”
Meanwhile, the mother-in-law joke is tolerated, and roared at. It is perfectly all right for a man to make fun of his wife’s mother, since there is no formal statute against such jests; but it is unthinkable that he should laugh at himself because he can’t get a simple glass of beer. The country he fought for, and was willing to die for, denies him an ancient form of enjoyment. He could make fun openly of negroes, though the Fifteenth Amendment tells him that they are his peers.
The reformer, you see, never counted upon the chaffing which the Volstead Act would have to stand. Ridicule can kill anything, and they know it now. Therefore, they must stop ridicule by mandate. Heaven knows there is little to smile at these days—except Prohibition. Are we to have that luxury taken from us too?
It looks that way. Yet no law can control people’s innermost feelings. No request—amounting to140 an order—can coerce a nation to do something it is not impelled to do, of itself. One remembers a sad time, not so long ago, when we were begged to remain neutral in thought, word and deed; and notices were printed in theater programs, urging us to make no demonstration when the troops of the Allies crossed the screen; to give no sign when the German army did likewise. Yet there was a burst of applause or a burst of hisses, just the same. The minds of a people cannot be controlled. It is nonsense to try to control them.
Now the fanatics would seek to rob us of the joy of laughter. For of course they despise and detest laughter. Laughter—ridicule—is a sword that can be used against them. We can make this whole business of Prohibition so ludicrous that we can laugh it out of the statutes. Guffaws have disturbed many a solemn meeting; and a single cartoon has broken many a promising politician. One may be able to stand up against a serious argument; but lampooning has destroyed even men of genius.
All was to be well the moment the Eighteenth Amendment became a fact. Everyone was going to sit still and take it very seriously, just as the Prohibitionists had planned. The lid was on, and on it would remain—forever and ever. Puritans have no sense of humor, or they would not be Puritans. They had not dreamed that someone would overturn the can on which the lid was placed, and, through sheer joy of living, shout and sing as of old.141 The habits of generations cannot be changed in a moment. We who had been accustomed to decent drinking did not intend to stop at once. We would “taper off,” as the topers put it. We had laid aside a little supply of jollity, and the word would go about that So-and-so had a large enough and deep enough cellar to permit him to entertain for at least three or four years.
One of the strange things about Prohibition was the fact that, with its coming, everyone imagined that everyone else would turn miser concerning treating. But here again the human element was forgotten. Everyone seems more anxious than ever to prove that his bootlegger has an exhaustless supply; and a certain pride is taken in handing out innumerable drinks. An aristocracy has arisen that even serves liqueurs after coffee—as though a plethora of crême de menthe and yellow and green chartreuse were in the land. The proverbial generosity of the American was never more in evidence. Where one was niggardly, perhaps, in the old days, one can scarcely afford to be so now; and those who accept drinks without returning them are frowned upon as unworthy. They are the outcasts of a new society, the lowest form of hanger-on. Of course they are not nearly so numerous as of old; therefore they are more conspicuous.
And so the laughter goes on; but even when the reformers do not hear it, they writhe, knowing of its existence. Once in a great while some echo reaches142 them, no doubt. Things have not “straightened out” as they had anticipated; and so they squirm, and rage, and puff up, and devise ways and means to call a complete halt on all merriment, whether it is directed at them or not.
In all seriousness a woman’s temperance society sent a mandate to every editor in the United States not long ago, bidding them cease satirizing Prohibition. It would not do, they contended, to continue to smile at the sacred Eighteenth Amendment. Mr. Volstead, also, was sacrosanct; and it was outrageous the way piety was pooh-poohed, and what did the editors mean by such conduct, and why didn’t they stop it and obey teacher and be good?
And every government official, when he gets up at a banquet to make a speech, begs his hearers to heed the law—though he knows full well that down the street another banquet may be going on, attended by officials equally high, where the law is never thought of. It is a sad commentary on our government when it is necessary thus to address the people. “We must be one people, one union—and that the American union,” shouted one representative of the government speaking in Chicago before a business men’s convention. And he went on to say, “Whenever a newspaper ridicules a law, plays up a policy of contempt for law and its enforcement and in its news and editorial columns fosters law-breaking, that newspaper is doing more to destroy American institutions than a Federal Judge can do to maintain143 them.... No man in public life who is possessed of vision and realizes his responsibility to Government would favor regulation of the public press by law, but it is obvious that the power of the press must not be used to foster disrespect for our Government and disobedience to its laws.”
Free speech will not be tolerated, if the fanatics have their way. Yet the first article in the Amendments to the Constitution says:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
In order that the Eighteenth Amendment may be upheld, the First may be forgotten.
But to get back for a moment to the ladies of the something-or-other temperance society. A brilliant writer, Mr. Edward S. Martin, answered them delightfully in Harper’s Magazine; and with the kind permission of the editors of that periodical, I am privileged to make extracts from his article. Mr. Martin never loses his temper, as the ladies certainly did. He remains, as ever, the tactful, urbane, pitying occupant of the editor’s easy-chair. He does not even frown. He speaks from a long experience, gently but to the point:
“The enforcement of Prohibition meets with some obstacles and furnishes food for thought to144 two large groups in the community—the people who want it enforced and the people who occasionally want something to drink. Just at the moment it see............