Nonsenseorship

Nonsenseorship, by G. G.
Putnam

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Title: Nonsenseorship
Author: G. G. Putnam
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NONSENSEORSHIP
BY
HEYWOOD BROWN GEORGE S. CHAPPELL RUTH HALE BEN
HECHT WALLACE IRWIN ROBERT KEABLE HELEN BULLITT
LOWRY FREDERICK O'BRIEN DOROTHY PARKER FRANK
SWINNERTON H. M. TOMLINSON CHARLES HANSON TOWNE
JOHN V. A. WEAVER ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT and the
AUTHOR of "THE MIRRORS of WASHINGTON" Edited by G. P. P.
SUNDRY OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING PROHIBITIONS
INHIBITIONS AND ILLEGALITIES
Illustrated By RALPH BARTON

WE HAVE WITH US TODAY

At current bootliquor quotations, Haig & Haig costs twelve dollars a
quart, while any dependable booklegger can unearth a copy of "Jurgen"
for about fifteen dollars. Which indicates, at least, an economic
application of Nonsenseorship.
Its literary, social, and ethical reactions are rather more involved. To
define them somewhat we invited a group of not-too-serious thinkers to
set down their views regarding nonsenseorships in general and any pet
prohibitions in particular.
In introducing those whose gems of protest are to be found in the
setting of this volume, it is but sportsmanlike to state at the start that
admission was offered to none of notable puritanical proclivity. The
prohibitionists and censors are not represented. They require, in a
levititious literary escapade like this, no spokesman. Their viewpoint
already is amply set forth. Moreover, likely they would not be
amusing.... Also, the exponents of Nonsenseorship are victorious; and
at least the agonized cries of the vanquished, their cynical comment or
outraged protest, should be given opportunity for expression!
Not that we consider HEYWOOD BROUN agonized, cynical, or
outraged. Indeed, masquerading as a stalwart foe of inhibitions, he
starts right out, at the very head of the parade, with a vehement
advocacy of prohibition. His plea (surely, in this setting, traitorous) is
to prohibit liquor to all who are over thirty years of age! He declares
that "rum was designed for youthful days and is the animating
influence which made oats wild." After thirty, presumably, Quaker
Oats....
And at that we have quite brushed by GEORGE S. CHAPPELL. who
serves a tasty appetizer at the very threshold, a bubbling cocktail of
verse defining the authentic story of censorious gloom.
Censorship seems a species of spiritual flagellation to BEN HECHT,
who, as he says, "ten years ago prided himself upon being as
indigestible a type of the incoherent young as the land afforded." And
nonsenseorship in general he regards as a war-born Frankenstein, a
frenzied virtue grown hugely luminous; "a snowball rolling uphill

toward God and gathering furious dimensions, it has escaped the
shrewd janitors of orthodoxy who from age to age were able to keep it
within bounds."
Then RUTH HALE, who visualizes glowing opportunities for feminine
achievement in the functionings of inhibited society. "If the world
outside the home is to become as circumscribed and paternalized as the
world inside it, obviously all the advantage lies with those who have
been living under nonsenseorship long enough to have learned to
manage it."
WALLACE IRWIN is irrepressibly jocose (perhaps because he sailed
for unprohibited England the day his manuscript was delivered),
breaking into quite undisciplined verse anent the rosiness of life since
the red light laws went blue.
"I am not sure, as I write, that this article ever will be printed," says
ROBERT KEABLE, the English author of "Simon Called Peter." (It is).
Mr. Keable, a minister from Africa, wrote of the war as he saw it in
France, and in a way which offended people with mental