Nonsenseorship | Page 2

blinders. He
declares that the war quite completely knocked humbug on the head
and bashed shams irreparably. "Rebels," says he, meaning those who
speak their mind and write of things as they see them, "must be
drowned in a babble of words."
And then HELEN BULLITT LOWRY, the exponent of the
cocktailored young lady of today, averring that to the pocket-flask, that
milepost between the time that was and the time that is, we owe the
single standard of drinking. She maintains that the debutantalizing
flapper, now driven right out in the open by the reformers, is the real
salvation of our mid-victrolian society.
No palpitating defense of censorship would he expected from
FREDERICK O'BRIEN of the South Seas, who contributes (and
deliciously defines) a precious new word to the vocabulary of
Nonsenseorship, "Wowzer." The nature of a wowzer is hinted in a ditty
sung by certain uninhibited individuals as they lolled and imbibed
among the mystic atolls and white shadows:

"Whack the cymbal! Bang the drum! Votaries of Bacchus! Let the
popping corks resound, Pass the flowing goblet round! May no
mournful voice be found, Though wowzers do attack us!"
DOROTHY PARKER gives vent to a poignant Hymn of Hate, anent
reformers, who "think everything but the Passion Play was written by
Avery Hopwood," and whose dominant desire is to purge the sin from
Cinema even though they die in the effort. "I hope to God they do,"
adds the author devoutly.
From England, through the eyes of FRANK SWINNERTON, we
glimpse ourselves as others see us, and rather pathetically. In days gone
by, lured by reports of America's lawless free-and-easiness, Swinnerton
says he craved to visit us. But no more. The wish is dead. We have
become hopelessly moral and uninviting. "I see that I shall after all
have to live quietly in England with my pipe and my abstemious bottle
of beer. And yet I should like to visit America, for it has suddenly
become in my imagining an enormous country of 'Don't!' and I want to
know what it is like to have 'Don't' said by somebody who is not a
woman."
Also is raised the British voice of H. M. TOMLINSON, singed with
satire. He writes as from a palely pure tomorrow when mankind shall
have reached such a state of complete uniformity of soul, mind and
body, that "only a particular inquiry will determine a man from a
woman, though it may fail to determine a fool from a man."
Tomlinson's imagined nation of the future is "as loyal and
homogeneous, as contented, as stable, as a reef of actinozoal plasm."
And over each hearth hangs the sacred Symbol--a portrait of a sheep.
Next is the usually jovial face of CHARLES HANSON TOWNE (that
face which has launched a thousand quips) now all stern in his
unbattled struggle with Prohibition, dourly surveying this "land of the
spree and home of the grave."... "My children," says Towne, "as they
sip their light wine and beer..." He is, at least, an optimist! But then, we
are reminded he is also a bachelor.
In his own American language JOHN WEAVER pictures the feelings

of an old-time saloon habitué when his former friend the barkeep, now
rich from bootlegging, with a home "on the Drive" and all that, declares
his socially-climbing daughter quite too good for this particular "Old
Soak's" son. Weaver's retrospect of "Bill's Place" will bring damp eyes
to the unregenerate:
"So neat! And over at the free-lunch counter, Charlie the coon with a
apron white like chalk, Dishin' out hot-dogs, and them Boston Beans,
And Sad'dy night a great big hot roast ham, Or roast beef simply yellin'
to be et, And washed down with a seidel of Old Schlitz!"
"The Puritans disliked the theatre because it was jolly. It was a place
where people went in deliberate quest of enjoyment." So says
ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT, who emerges as a sort of economic
champion of stage morality, though no friend at all of censorship.
Despite the mot "nothing risqué nothing gained," Woollcott
emphatically declares the bed-ridden play is not, as a general thing,
successful. "A blush is not, of course, a bad sign in the box-office,"
says he, developing his theme, "but the chuckle of recognition is better.
So is the glow of sentiment, so is the tear of sympathy. The smutty and
the scandalous are less valuable than homely humor, melodramatic
excitement or pretty sentiment."
And last in this variegated and alphabeted company the anonymous
AUTHOR OF "THE MIRRORS OF WASHINGTON" who views the
applications of nonsenseorship from the standpoint of national politics.
G. P. P.

CONTENTS
We Have With Us Today. G. P. P.
Evolution-Another of Those Outlines. GEORGE S. CHAPPELL
Nonsenseorship. HEYWOOD BROUN

Literature and the Bastinado. BEN HECHT
The Woman's Place. RUTH HALE
Owed