H.L. Mencken
The Smart Set/February, 1923
§1
No. 3002.—It is a fact of history that, since the beginning of the Christian era, there have been only two men possessed of noteworthy imagination who have been content to love but one woman in their lives.
§2
The New Order.—Feminism made its first and perhaps greatest advance when civilized women began addressing their husbands by their given names. The custom, of course, is not old. Down to Dickens’ time the majority of English wives called their husbands Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones, not Paul or Wolfgang. On the Continent, even today, it is probable that Schultz and Duval, without the honorific, are quite as common as Hermann or Etienne. But in the English-speaking countries the use of the simple given name is now almost universal—and it is precisely in the English-speaking countries that the old high rights and prerogatives of the husband are in greatest decay, and wives are most impertinent and bombastic. I connect the two phenomena. If a woman respects and venerates her husband as she ought to respect and venerate him, then the right to address him familiarly by his first name must needs fill her with a sense of impudence and even sacrilege. It is, in its way, quite as if the first mate of a ship were privileged to call the captain Mike. Let any first mate of ordinary human weakness and fallibility do that a half dozen times, and he will straightway begin to criticize the captain’s orders, and soon or late he will disobey them. Thus I see the lowly origins of a slave rebellion which, in its latest phase, takes the extravagant and grotesque form of a refusal, by married women, to use their husbands’ surnames at all.
§3
In Memoriam.—The death, not long ago, of Richard K. Fox, editor and publisher of the Police Gazette, has brought one to ponder afresh on the persistent underestimation of the man that clung to him during his lifetime. Of the editorial generation of Richard Watson Gilder, Henry Mills Alden, Walter Hines Page and Lyman Abbott, Fox—regarded purely as an editor—was the only one of the five to achieve broad international fame, a fame acutely bestowed upon him by foreigners who were shrewd and wise enough to penetrate the prejudice against the man in America and discern his extraordinary talent and capability for the job he had selected as his life’s work. Here in America, as you will reflect, Fox and his journal were treated mainly as a joke: the two were summarily and idiotically condemned with the designation “barbershop.” But the Europeans, the English in particular, were quick to see through the cheap yokel disesteem in which the man and his paper were held and to estimate the fellow in the terms of the peculiar genius that was his. Perhaps not more than two other men—Dana and Hearst —have exercised so profound an influence as Fox on the practical side of American journalism. This may seem superficially far-fetched, but even a cursory survey of the man’s philosophies and practices must convince the skeptic.
Often humorously described as “the paper that everybody read and nobody took,” the Police Gazette was the first journal in the United States to treat of sports in such wise that the layman could understand what they were about. Fox’s editorial plan, since imitated by every journal in America and Europe, changed the entire manner of this kind of reporting. The Police Gazette, further, was the first periodical to use a species of tinted paper that made reading easier on the eyes and that, from a commercial point of view, spectacularized the appearance of the paper and made it sell. Consider Fox’s imitators in this direction: Bennett and his New York Telegram, Pulitzer and the sporting edition of his New York Evening World, Hearst and the late editions of his New York Journal, to mention only three, and all of these in a single city. There are hundreds of other imitations throughout America; there are two in London; there are two in Paris; there is one in Vienna; there are three in Berlin; there is one in Rome.
Turn to the question of advertising. Fox was, during his life as he remains after his death, the only publisher in America who was not a hypocrite in this department. He appreciated that the object of printing advertisements was, finally and simply, to make money—and he conducted himself accordingly. “Pay me what I charge and I’ll print any dingblasted ad. you give me.” That was his intelligent attitude, and that was an attitude that he never changed. The fake moral tone of his fellow publishers he had no use for. “Ads” as he once eloquently put it, “aren’t literature; they have nothing to do with the text of my Gazette; they are simply extra money in my pocket. Shoot!” The result was that the advertisements in the Police Gazette were the most interesting to be found anywhere in America; and the second result was that, being interesting, they made the advertisers almost as rich as Fox himself. There is perhaps not a civilized man in America who does not recall these advertisements, laugh at them as he will. Name another journal of whose advertisements the same thing can be said! And, when all is said and done, advertisements are meant solely to be read and to pay.
Fox was, contrary to opinion in certain benighted quarters, an eminently moral man. Born in Belfast, Ireland, his early training was of a distinctly religious turn, and his career began on the staff of the Ulster Banner, a church publication. In all the years that he owned and edited the Police Gazette, he never once published, or permitted to be published therein, the photograph of any woman who was not pure. He would print pictures of women in tights—some of them almost nude—but never the picture of one who wasn’t, so far as he knew, moral and virtuous. Well, never is perhaps stretching the thing a bit too far, for at one time, during his absence in Europe, a dozen or more pictures of dubious gals got into the Gazettei’s pages and contrived to cast suspicion on Fox’s editorial integrity in this quarter. But those in the know never doubted that integrity for a moment, as his prompt dismissal of the guilty sub-editor immediately upon his return from abroad left no further room for suspicion.
The confidant of many famous men—General Ulysses S. Grant, for example, was one of his closest friends, as were Lincoln, Garfield and Grover Cleveland—Fox gained the admiration of everyone who knew him intimately for his clear statement of editorial policy. That policy had but two clauses, and they were as follows:
1. Be interesting.
2. And be damn quick about it.
Fox invented condensed journalism. “Tell your story in three paragraphs at most,” he would order his slaves. “If you can’t tell it in three, tell it in two. And if you can’t tell it in two, get the hell out of here!”
Fox’s influence was felt by the monthly magazines no less than the daily newspapers. The Century Magazine, for example, today still shows clearly the effect of certain phases of the fox editorial philosophy, as do to a slightly lesser degree the Atlantic Monthly, the Christian Herald, and most certainly The Smart Set. During the war, indeed, the last named directly imitated Fox in printing its contents on pink paper, and abandoned was found to be a most successful plan only because that paper was much too expensive. This is no place to go extensively into Fox’s direct and very great influence upon the editorial departments of the various magazines, but the editors of those magazines will freely and frankly attest to it.
Fox originated the prize contest, the current favorite circulation-getting device of the dailies and weeklies. He originated the practice of holding various events directly under the auspices of a journal. He originated the motto: “Clean sport for clean people in clean places.” Looked on with social disfavor at home, he was the pet of the British aristocracy. Looked on as the editor of a mere low barbershop paper in America, he was regarded on the Continent as the most enterprising, the most audacious, and the most thoroughly honest of the American editors of his day. Richard K. Fox, two humble editorial followers salute your genius and your memory! May God rest your noble bones.
§4
Note in the Margin.—For the normal man there is but one use and value in marriage: it protects him, at least temporarily, from another marriage.
§5
Psychology at 9 A.M.—It is in the throes of Katzenjammer that men reveal their true souls. The Puritan always makes a vow that he will never do it again. The civilized man simply resolves to be a bit more careful.
§6
Moral Indignation—The ill-fame of the Turks in the world, like the ill-fame of the Mormons, is chiefly due to their practice of polygamy. This is a practice which inevitably excites the imagination of men doomed to monogamy, and particularly of men doomed to monogamy with bossy, prudish and anaphrodisiac women, which is to say, the normal men of western Christendom. They envy the Turk and hence hate him. Every time the English press agencies report him dragging a fresh herd of dark-eyed, charming Levantine women into his seraglio, they hate him more. They way to arouse a Puritan to the highest pitch of moral indignation is not to rob an orphan; the way to do it is to grab a pretty gal around the waist and launch with her into the lascivious measures of a Wiener walz. Men always hate most what they envy most. Roosevelt and the German Junkers. Wilson and the Kaiser. The Socialists and the president of the National City Bank.
§7
Tragedies—An unsuccessful candidate for the vice presidency . . . A street-walker unable to make a living at it./
§8
The Reason.—There is no legitimate actor who can resist the powerful lure of the movies. It isn’t the money that fetches him. It isn’t the softness of the job. It isn’t the great publicity. It isn’t the soothing, warm climate of California. It is simply this: the movies enable an actor to look at himself. God never made a cabotin who could resist so beguiling and overpowering a temptation.
§9
Where the Money Goes.—Eight months ago there were sent to me, by registered parcel post from Philadelphia, two pairs of gloves. The value placed upon them was seven dollars. The package was lost in transit, and a claim was duly made. This is what happened:
1. Four letters of inquiry from the Postal department in Washington.
2. Five different post-office investigators assigned at different times to track down the package.
3. An agent of the post-office at Philadelphia detailed to have a long document filled in and signed by the sender.
4. An agent of the post-office at New York detailed to have a long document filled in and signed by me who failed to receive the package.
5. Another letter from Washington.
6. Various records and tracers verified at both the Philadelphia and New York post-offices.
7. An agent delivers a cheque in reimbursement.
Time consumed: Eight months.
Approximate amount of money spent by the Government to investigate and verify the claim—agents, stenographers, file clerks, time, etc.: Perhaps $300.
Value of the lost package and claim: $7.
§10
True Americans.—What could be more fatuous than the current denunciations of the so-called Ku Klux Klan as an anti-American organization? It is, in point of fact, probably the most thoroughly American verein ever set going in the Republic. It supports the doctrine that obscure and anonymous men have a right to regulate the most private acts and even the most private opinions of their betters; it maintains as a fundamental principle of law that an unpopular man has no rights in the courts; it resists any and every differentiation of American from American, on cultural, religious or ethnic grounds, and insists that all shall be identical; most important of all, it teaches that it is good morals and good sportsmanship for thirty or forty men to arm themselves, put on false-faces, and then go out and ill-use a man who is alone and unarmed. All these notions are of the heart’s blood of Americanism, and particularly the last. Give a man an independent spirit, give him a sense of justice, give him tolerance and charity, above all, give him a keen sense of honor, and you plainly spoil him as an American. He may be a worthy man in every way, and deserving the highest respect, but he is no more an American than a Ludendorff, an Anatole France or a General Obregon is an American. Americanism means something quite different. If you want to know just what it means, and are honest enough with yourself to accept the fact when you encounter it, simply read the principles and study the practises of the Ku Klux.
As I have hitherto pointed out in this place, the current agitation against the Klan is extremely disingenuous and dishonest. It is chiefly carried on, not by men who are genuinely opposed to the principles we have rehearsed, but simply by men whose oxen happen to be gored. Under different circumstances they would advocate and practice the very acts that the Klan is now accused of. Nine-tenths of them, in truth, have advocated and practiced such acts at some time or other in the past. If there are any exceptions to this I shall be very glad to hear of them. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to print a serial roll of honor of the native-born Americans who, at any time within ten years past, have ever openly fought (or even argued) for common justice and decency toward men whom they regarded as their enemies, and who seemed to them to threaten peril to their lives and property. I hereby dedicate a whole page to that roll of honor, and give all interested parties six months to fill it.
§11
No. 3003.—Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few.
§12
No. 3004.—Woman is the holiday of man. Sometimes she is the Christmas; sometimes she is the Valentine Day; sometimes she is the Labor Day; sometimes she is the Decoration Day; more often she is the Fourth of July.
§13
The Englishman.—Of all men, the civilized Englishman makes perhaps the most agreeable companion. He is freer from objectionable nonsenses than the man of any other nationality. His manners are more pleasant, his conversation is more cosmopolitan, his tastes are more in accordance with one’s own than a Frenchman’s or German’s or American’s or any one’s else. He is more intelligently amiable; he is a better drinking partner; he is less given to prejudice, indignation, moral intensity, bosh. This, of course, is true only of the worldly and educated Britisher. His fellow countryman of a lower level is a dodo most sour.
§14
Manifest Destiny—lt seems to be generally agreed by all competent persons that soon or late the United States must engulf Mexico—nay, not only Mexico, but also all the little republics down to the Panama Canal, not to mention the remaining West Indies. Indeed, the pressure of inevitable expansion already begins to make itself felt, and no ranting by sentimental Liberals will ever lift it. Superficially, it seems to be the oil, copper and precious metals of Mexico that Uncle Sam is itching for, but this seeming is chiefly only seeming. As a nation we do not actually need these things, however much a few American profiteers may covet them. But we do need a first-rate tropical annex to our imperial business, and there it lies across the Rio Grande, ready at hand. The Philippine annex is too far away and too hard to defend; too small; our own southern territory is mainly desert. But in Mexico, easy to grab and easy to hold, lies a region of lush jungles that more than matches the tropical possessions of any other capitalistic empire, and if it were properly developed it would yield us enough rubber, coffee, tobacco, hardwoods and other such things to make us independent of South America, and so greatly promote our national security. We have no rubber in the United States, and no certain means of getting it in time of war. As the experience of Germany demonstrated in the last war, a shortage of rubber is far more serious than a shortage of either copper or oil—in fact, it is so serious that it is almost fatal.
The conquest of Mexico, of course, will present military difficulties and it will undoubtedly convert all the rest of the Latin American republics into our active enemies, but those difficulties will not be insuperable nor will that enmity do us much permanent damage. In the last analysis we are stronger than the whole of Latin America taken together, and we can beat it if the need ever arises. Moreover, we’ll be able to beat it much more easily after we have Mexico than we could beat it today, for today a war with it would cut us off from essential supplies. The military problem need not give us any concern. Even Sir John Pershing, if he had had a free hand, could have seized the Mexican capital and all of the Mexican ports in 1915 and reduced the resistance of the Mexican army to a futile guerilla warfare in the woods and hills. The next time, it is highly probable, we’ll send a more talented Hindenburg to the front than Sir John. And in any case we’ll support him with more men and more guns.
This grand enterprise, indeed, is inevitable, and only romanticists attempt to deny it. We can no more stay behind the Rio Grande than we could stay behind the Mississippi. What is somewhat less obvious is that destiny will eventually shove us northward in exactly the same manner. That is to say, we shall grab Canada some day, just as we grabbed Oregon in 1848. So far we have not done so simply because the pressure behind the natural impulse has been more than counterbalanced by contrary pressures, chiefly of a cautionary nature. Moreover, the value of Canada, until very lately, was not very evident; it seemed to be chiefly a snow-waste inhabited by scattered bands of half-civilized French Canadians. But during the past two or three decades it has been developed in so brilliant a manner that its possibilities are patent to everyone. In the East it now has large and prosperous cities, in the far West the prairies have been converted into farms, and now comes Dr. Steffanson, the arctic explorer, with news and proofs that even the vast northern areas may one day be of enormous value, and even absolutely necessary to our national existence.
The conquest of Canada, as things stand in the world today, would be enormously difficult and expensive, and so no one advocates it as a practical enterprise. But the fundamental impediments, realistically examined, reduce themselves to two, and neither shows any sign of permanence. The first, obviously, is the opposition of England; since the ham-stringing of our fleet by the so-called Disarmament Treaty a very serious matter. The second is the opposition of the Canadians themselves—their extremely bitter hatred of the United States. But, as I say, neither need detain us, once the time comes. No sane person believes that we’ll ever tackle Canada so long as we remain at peace with England, but who will argue that the present peace with England is likely to last? Certainly no one who understands the competitions which lie at the bottom of international relations. We are moving rapidly and inevitably into the position occupied by Germany before 1914—that is, into the position of England’s chief competitor for the sea-borne commerce of the world—and soon or late, unless we come to disaster otherwise, that rivalry will take on a violent and implacable character. In brief, England will have to try to cripple us in order to save herself—and the moment the combat is joined, Canada will become a convenient club for belaboring the Motherland. More, it will instantly attract our Elder Statesmen as a club that will be charmingly edible and nourishing after its use in war is over.
The military problems presented by an invasion of Canada are considerably less serious than those presented by an invasion of Mexico. The territory to be conquered is much larger, but getting into it will be vastly easier and it will not be necessary to seize so large a part of it. Once a few towns are taken and the chief railroads are in our hands, Canada will be quite unable to make any further resistance. These towns and railroads, as a glance at the map will show, are all so conveniently located that they almost seem to have been laid out by the strategists of the General Staff at Washington. Even a militia colonel, given troops enough, could take them in ten days—and in the second or third month of the next war there will be troops enough, in our northern tier of states alone, to beat any conceivable army that Canada can muster. To cut off Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia from Ontario and Quebec will be a job for a sergeant and twenty men. To reduce Ontario and Quebec themselves, and with them the Maritime Provinces, will be a matter for the Landwehr.
Moreover, there is little reason to believe that the Canadian army will make any serious resistance. In the first place, the futility of it will be manifest from the start. In the second place, the reliability of at least a part of the troops will be seriously open to question. This part will be made up, not of native and patriotic Canadians, but of Americans settled in Canada. During the late war it was easy to enlist such pioneering and adventurous men in the army, and they performed valiant deeds for England and the Empire in Northern France—in fact, it would not be unreasonable to argue that they saved England and the Empire, at least in the first year of the war—but if the antagonists were not England and Germany but England and the United States it is highly probable that large numbers of them would take the side of the United States. If they did so, and any considerable number of French Canadians slacked as they did in the last war, then the resistance of the loyal Canadians would be feeble and hopeless from the start.
The number of such Americans in Canada is usually greatly underestimated. Not only do they constitute a large minority of the recent settlers in the western provinces; they are also very numerous in Ontario, and particularly in the big cities. Their presence, in fact, is partly responsible for the bitter anti-American feeling which rages among the native Canadian loyalists. These loyalists see their country gradually succumbing to peaceful penetration. Such towns as Toronto, Hamilton and London are now quite as American as Scranton, Pa., or Joliet, IIl., and so are Vancouver, Winnipeg, Calgary and even Regina and Edmonton. The four western provinces, in fact, have been settled by precisely the same wave of immigration which settled Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas. The international boundary grows more frail and academic every day. Even if there is no war the whole of Canada west of the Soo will be thoroughly American within twenty-five years.
To obliterate the boundary will be a good job, not only for the United States, but also for Canada. Its existence simply dooms Canada to an incurable second-rateness. It can never hope to be anything more, at best, than a puerile and unconvincing imitation of the United States. It lacks the variety of resources, the geographical compactness, the military power that are necessary to a nation of the first rank. Its politicians are a trashy and tacky lot, bent only upon attracting the condescending notice of their English overlords by a fawning loyalty. Like all colonies, it constantly loses its best men to the Motherland. Worse, it is in the position of a colony with two Motherlands: both England and the United States drain it. Its provinces would be immeasurably better off as American states. They would help to augment the power and dignity of the United States, and they would share in that power and dignity. Their development would proceed more rapidly; more first-rate men would settle in them; they would become richer and more secure.
What stands in the way of that upward step is simply a sentimentality. Like many another sentimentality it will be disposed of, soon or late, by force of arms. To attempt to halt the inevitable expansion of so vast and powerful an organism as the United States by appeals to principles and ideas is as childish as to attempt to overcome gravity by prayer.
§15
The Lamp.—One of the most beautiful of all things is a beautiful lamp. Nothing in the world, save it be music, can so soothe and set a-dream the mood of mortal man. The past and all the present and some of the future are encompassed in its soft, persuasive glow. It is the symbol of love, of home, of wistful and vagrant fancy, of all the hopes and despairs of one’s life on earth. God made the sun and moon and stars, but man, His child, out of necessity made for himself the lamplight as a beacon and a haven for the innermost secrets of his heart of hearts.
§16
Definition.—The Tenth Commandment: the theological Monroe Doctrine.
§17
Observation en Passant.—Where you find a log-roller you find, relevantly and simultaneously, a wooden-head.
§18
The Flag.—One small piece of colored cheesecloth stuck on the end of a pole has often frustrated all the sober thinking that has been done since the world began.
§19
The New Psychology.—Since life insurance solicitors, Bible peddlers, sellers of obscene photographs, retail bootleggers, agents for new filing systems and other such nuisances began taking the courses in personal magnetism, scientific salesmanship and mental mastery advertised in the magazines, I have made it the rule in my office that none are to be withheld from audience with me by Otto, the janitor. I like to see them myself, and bask in their sorcery. I like to observe the technic imparted to them by the advertising professors. It is a technic that is extremely complex, magnificently amusing, and wholly nonsensical. I now know and recognize every part of it: the approach, the suggestion, the clinch, and so on. Since the day the first such graduate entered my place of business, I have never bought a single thing from any visitor, not even a set of the P. F. Collier edition of Josephus Flavius or a patent collar-button. But in the old days, before scientific psychology began to reinforce the time-honored tale of the sick wife and the mortgage, I used to fall very often.
§20
Political Note.-—One of the causes of the general corruption of the public service under democracy lies in the fact that any man who is willing to take public office must ask for it, nay, beg for it, and of his inferiors. There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as the office seeking the man. The man must go after it openly, and in order to get it he must somehow win the good-will of a mob that, if he is really self-respecting, he despises. The business is humiliating and debauching. No man can go through with it without suffering permanent damage; few men can achieve it without the complete destruction of their inner integrity. Even aspirants to appointive office are not free from the curse. They do not have to appeal directly to the mob, true enough, but they usually have to appeal to some creature of the mob, which is almost as bad. For an office to be offered to any man who has not made an open bid for it is almost unknown. The view of the transaction set up by elections is carried over into appointments. It is assumed as a matter of course that all offices should be reserved for men who know how to wheedle and grovel, and are without honor.
Under systems of government which concentrate all visible power in the hands of a superior caste, free from mob control or intimidation, there is no such need for the nascent public officer to show the talents of a street-walker or auctioneer. He may be put into office without asking for it or desiring it, and even against his vigorous opposition. And even if he asks for it, he at least asks it of someone who is his equal or his superior: he does not have to abase himself before swine, with whom, ordinarily, he would disdain to have any traffic. The result is that he may go into office without compromising his honor, and the second result is that he is very much more likely than his democratic colleague to conduct himself as a man of honor after he gets in. If I remember history correctly, the late Wilhelm I, of Germany, in 1848 or thereabout, was offered the imperial crown by a so-called parliament of his subjects, and refused it politely on the ground that he could accept it only from his equals, é.g., from the sovereign princes of the Reich. To a democrat this attitude appears puzzling, and, on reflection, contemptible and offensive. But that is not to be marveled at. To a democrat any attitude based upon a concept of honor, self-respect and personal dignity seems contemptible and offensive.
§21
God Changes Sides.—“God,” said Napoleon, “is on the side of the heaviest battalions.” But that was yesterday. Today, God is on the side of the shrewdest diplomats.
§22
Love and Hatred.—Love is the democrat of the emotions; hatred, the aristocrat.
§23
The Business Ahead.—The most important job confronting the intelligent minority of men today is not the discovery of new truths. More new truths have been discovered during the past half century, indeed, than the world can take in; it will be centuries before even a half of them can be digested and put to use. What is really needed today is a wholesale destruction of old errors. The number of them remaining in full force and effect is really quite appalling. Fully nine-tenths of the ideas that most human beings believe in, in religion, in politics and even in the arts and sciences, are wholly and palpably nonsensical. Behind the average man’s concept of patriotism, for example, there is literally nothing that is true. The whole idea is as idiotic as the average Zulu’s notion of therapeutics. And what the average man believes about the nature of the banshee he calls his God and the aims and intents of that God is entirely without any evidential support in the known facts, or even in the reasonable probabilities. Certainly it needed no elaborate proofs by Prof. Dr. James Harvey Robinson to demonstrate that the habitual thinking of mankind is loose, hollow and without sense. The fact must be plain to anyone above the mental capacity of a Rotary Club president or a cockroach.
But here something is usually overlooked, and that is this: that setting up a new truth does not necessarily or even commonly dispose of an old error. On the contrary, the ensuing conflict and pother very often give the old error new life, for the great majority of men have a great dread of intellectual novelty, and stand against it instinctively whenever they encounter it. I believe absolutely that the effort to propagate the hypothesis of natural selection, carried on by a small party of atheists since 1870 or thereabout and by a timid rabble of so-called “science” teachers for a dozen years or so, has greatly prospered the old superstition of special creation in the United States. That theory is no longer regarded complacently, and as it were, carelessly; it now has enthusiasm behind it, and the crusading spirit, and in a few years it may take on a medieval violence. Such adroit politicians as the Hon. William Jennings Bryan already discern its possibilities for vote-getting. Does the Hon. Warren Gamaliel Harding accept it as gospel? I don’t know. But this I do know: that if he inclines toward the Darwinian heresy, Harding will at least have acumen enough to keep silent about it. He is a competent politician, and as such he must know very well that it is extremely hazardous to take the side of sense, when sense is in combat with superstition.
What the world needs, before sense can ever get a fair chance, is a wholesale destruction of superstitions. Is the enterprise feasible? I am not going to answer either yes or no, but it may be worth attempting. Until it is attempted it will be useless to pile up any more new truths. The stock already on the shelves will last for centuries. The rate of consumption is so slow that the supply produced in the eighteenth century is still on the table. Practically everything that was produced during the nineteenth century remains untouched.
§24
Ex Parte.—I am not a pacifist; I believe in wars. I am not a matador; but I believe in bull-fights.
§25
The Sheriff as Messiah.—It is one of the incurable delusions of man that he can make his brother good by law. In many of the Southern States this delusion takes the visible form of laws prohibiting what is called miscegenation—that is, the intermarriage of the white and black races. The penalties provided are usually extraordinarily severe. A white man who marries a yellow wife, even if she have but one-thirty-second of black blood, may be imprisoned for 15 or 20 years. Nine Southerners out of ten believe that such laws are necessary to maintain the scarlet purity of the Anglo-Saxon race—that an appreciable number of their brothers, if not restrained by fear of the sheriff, would marry colored women, and that some of their sisters would espouse darkey gentlemen. They point, indeed, with great pride and satisfaction to the fact that, with such draconian laws on the books, no such embarrassing alliances ever take place. But who can prove any relation of cause and effect here? Suppose a given Southern white woman wanted to marry a colored man. What would prevent her meeting him in Pennsylvania, where the thing is perfectly legal, or in Massachusetts, where it is laudable and heroic? But nothing of the sort ever takes place. I have yet to hear of a single case. In other words, the presence of such laws upon the books has nothing to do with the matter at all. Miscegenation is unheard of in the South simply because all of the whites and most of the blacks are against it. The appalling punishments provided for it are nothing but buncombe. They could no more discourage the practice, if any considerable body of opinion began to support it, than the punishments provided by the Volstead Act discourage men and women from drinking alcohol.
§26
The Yellow Bugaboo.—The delusion that the Japs are a race of extraordinary warriors, almost invincible in battle, is one that has flourished long enough. It will blow up with a bang in the next war, but meanwhile why cherish it so romantically? Behind it there is absolutely nothing in the way of plausible evidence. The only thing that gives it even the weakest support is that the Japs, in two wars against feeble and preposterous foes, finally managed to win. Their combat with the Chinese, in 1895, was so one-sided that it almost took on the character of a mobbing by the American Legion or Ku Klux Klan. The Chinese, without effective modern ships on the sea and with only the most meagre armament on the land, were simply slaughtered. It was almost as safe and cowardly a business as the American blackjacking of Spain in 1898. There was never a moment when the Chinese had one chance in a million to win.
The contest with Russia in 1904 and 1905 presented appreciably greater difficulties, but even so they were never serious—that is, they would not have been serious to a genuinely warlike people. Consider what went on on land and sea. On the land the brave Japs, in direct contact with their base, took two long years to beat a Russian army that was 7,000 miles from home, and that had to get all of its supplies and reinforcements over a single-track railway line. On the sea a superior Japanese fleet, fresh from the dockyards, defeated a Russian fleet that had been at sea for four or five months, and was so covered with barnacles that it could scarcely maneuver. Even so, the Japs barely managed to dispose of their foes, and when they came to the peace table it turned out that they were so near collapse that the Russians boldly took most of the fruits of victory away from them. The same Russian army, at least octupled in size, operating directly from its bases and supplied with almost unlimited arms and ammunition, was completely destroyed by one-third of the German army in but half again as long a time as it took the whole Japanese army to beat it.
The Japanese operations in front of Kiaochau, in the early part of the late war, deserve a far more careful study than they have got from military experts. Here the Japs faced a small and ill-trained force of 3,000 or 4,000 Germans, mainly reservists of middle age—a force cut off from all supplies and reinforcements, unaided by a fleet, and fighting from behind fortifications that were chiefly improvised. Against this forlorn and hopeless foe the gallant yellow men launched their whole navy and a whole corps of their army. Nevertheless, it took them four months to capture Kiaochau, and even then the English had to help them. The Germans actually put out in small launches and blew up Japanese cruisers. On land, if they had had enough supplies to keep an ordinary regiment of foot going, they would have held off the Japs for at least a year, and killed thousands of them. The whole war shows no record of a more ignominious business. No wonder the English, after the fall of the town, refused to salute the Japanese flag!
It is these brave devils who now cause the whole Pacific Coast to quake, and who fill the Navy Department at Washington with alarms. In every discussion of the inevitable struggle with them—even in Hector Mywater’s—one encounters the absurd assumption that, in a fight at fair odds, they would stand a good chance of beating the American Navy. I am not one who overestimates the fighting capacity of the American Navy, which has never been tried in a modern war, but nevertheless it seems to me nonsensical to fear that it could not dispose of the Japs, even at long odds. Their battleships, so formidable on paper, are probably simply imitations, just as all the other things they produce are imitations. An imitation looks impressive only by contrast with worse imitations. Put beside the reality it quickly shrinks and shrivels.
So much for the sea. If the coming war involves land operations, the chances are that the Japs will lose all their apparent fearsomeness in the first battle. Modern war on land was invented by occidentals, and requires occidental qualities for its effective conduct. The orientals are brave and useful in close fighting, but they lack the steadiness needed for large operations at long range. Certainly no one will argue that the East Indian Gurkas are inferior to the Japs as soldiers; nevertheless, the English had to take the Gurkas out of the first line in France during the first year of the war. Artillery punishment was more than they could bear. They weakened under it, and then broke and fled. In Mesopotamia, fighting against poorly armed and badly led Turks, they did very well, but in the West, facing a modern military machine of the highest effectiveness, they went to pieces. The Japs, suffering the same punishment, will probably go to pieces in the same manner. They played hob with the poor Chinese, who were almost unarmed, and they finally managed to beat the Russians, who were supplied almost as badly and led ten times worse, but what reason is there to believe that they would stand up to a white army with unlimited arms and ammunition, and led by competent generals?
At the moment their military effectiveness is probably even smaller than it was when they performed their heroic assault upon the German clerks and drummers at Kiaochau. This is because they are engaged upon a complete reorganization of their army, and haves not yet brought it to perfection in its new form. Until four or five years ago their military system was simply a slavish imitation of the German system; they believed that it made them irresistible. With the defeat of the Germans, they began searching eagerly for other models, and now they seem to be imitating the French. Today, as before, their scheme is second-hand and second-rate. When it is tested in a real war, the fact will become instantly and brilliantly evident.
§27
Wisdom and Age.—Nothing is more easily disputable than the doctrine that age brings wisdom. Consider, in example, a few concrete and conspicuous cases of men whom the advancing years have relatively deleted of what variable share of wisdom was theirs in the years before: Thomas A. Edison, Woodrow Wilson, George Santayana (to an appreciable degree), Arthur Wing Pinero, Romain Rolland, Arthur Conan Doyle, Gabriel D’Annunzio, Brander Matthews, Hilaire Belloc, Gilbert K. Chesterton, Georges Clemenceau, Maurice Hewlett, the late Andreyev and Paul Bourget, Henry Arthur Jones, Hugo Stinnes, Maximilian Harden, Henry Cabot Lodge… .
§28
An Outline of the History of the Progress of the United States of America from 1775 to 1923.—George Washington didn’t have a single decoration from a foreign government. Otto Kahn has twenty-six.
§29
The Monthly Award.—The beautiful custard pie awarded monthly by Répétition Générale to the most ineffable dose of whim-wham produced during the period goes this time to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for his treatise entitled “The Coming of the Fairies.” The judges announce a unanimous decision. In addition to the elegant pie, the judges announce that they bestow upon Sir Arthur a specially designed and very handsome medal, fashioned of soft clay, as a further mark of honor for the enviable and surpassing perfection of his performance.
§30
Who’s Who in America.—Here are a few names selected at random from the most recent edition of “Who’s Who in America”: Johan Arnd Aasgaard, Warren Gard, John Arthur Gamon, Lawrence O. Murray, Archibald Rutledge, George Whitfield Jack, Albert Mathews Jackson, William Wackernagel, Joseph A. Wilkinson, Frank Doster, Simon Benson, John William Adams, Paul Martin, George Alfred Stringer, Edwin Mood Wilson, Miss Gulielma Zollinger, George Zurcher, Seward W. Jones, Seth B. Jones, Samuel A. Jones, Richard S. Jones, Willie Jones, Wiley Emmet Jones, W. Ralph Jones, Jacob Hay Brown, Brenton Thoburn Badley, Clair Stark Adams, Frank Mason North, John McFarlane Philipps, Willard Duncan Vandiver, Elie F. Cartier Van Dissel, Lacey Kirk Williams, Oscar Wisner, Homer Lyon, P. W. Meldrim, Bernard John Otting, Philo A. Otis, Frank Edson Parlin, Charles Henry Strout, Jocelyn Paul Yoder, Bonney Youngblood, Charles Louis Zorbaugh, Samuel Marinus Zwener, Harold McAfee Robinson, Henry Scholte Nollen, Fayette Avery McKenzie, Aline McKenzie, Bernard Michael Kaplan, Orrin Roe Jenks, John J. Hoppes, Charles Jerome Greene, George Blow Elliott, Mary Hannah Johnson Claxton, Carl Harry Claudy, Dixie Carroll, Charles Fergus Binns, John Joseph Babka, Frederick Somers Bell, Edwin Henry Dickinson, Benjamin Daviese Hahn, Fred Porter Haggard, Alpheus Baker Hervey, Ernst F. Pihlblad, Marcus Cauffman Sloss, Elsa Ueland, Evans Tyree, Thomas Dyson West, Charles Marcus Horton, Evalena Fryer Hedley, Willis Lloyd Gard, Harvey C. Garber, Herbert Friedenwald, William Sterne Friedman, John Kelly Giffen, James Robert Howerton, Harold L. Ickes, William F. Hypes, Oran Faville Hypes, Herman Tyson Lukens, Abraham C. Ratshesky, Evaleen Stein, Aurelius. Stehle, Arthur Lewis Tubbs, Arthur Markley Tschudy, Lillian Wainwright Hart Tryon, Arthur Cook Trumbo, Henry Hunter Welles, Jr., Elias Lyman, Abby Lillian Marlatt, Alvan Markle, Max Mason, Louis Hermann Pammel, Guido H. Stempel, John Francis Sims, Walter Joseph Meek, Louis Bernstein, Charles Seligman Bernheimer, Ernest Bernbaum, Jesse Grant Chapline, Edna Dean Baker, James Andrew Braden, Mary Melinda Kingsbury Simkovitch, Mary Helena Dey, Edgar Oakes Achorn, Edward Everett Nourse, Woodson Ratcliffe Oglesby, Frederic Austin Ogg, Eliza Calvert Obenchain, Henderson Madison Jacoway…
Who are these eminent gents and ladies? Who has ever heard of them? What have they done?
§31
The Verdict.—The net result of two thousand years of Christian propaganda and practice in the world is this: that if a man stands up today and announces publicly that he is a Christian, all other men, including especially all other Christians, begin to suspect him at once.
The Archive 