This anomalous condition is found throughout the country; in countless minor matters it is impossible to tell whether one is obeying the law or not. Motoring from New London to Providence, one must not run at more than thirty miles an hour, I believe it is, if there is now any speed limit, in Connecticut; but as soon as one has crossed into Rhode Island it is against the law to run at less than thirty. Traveling on the train from Buffalo to Chicago, it is legal to buy cigarettes for the first hour or two; but after crossing into Ohio (no one knows when or where) it becomes illegal for two or three hours until one has again reached the safety of Indiana. Before Prohibition, it used to be legal for one to have a flask of whisky while going by train from Denver to Dallas—up to the imaginary line which separated some county in Texas from another, at which point one was a lawbreaker, and, as occasionally happened, could be hauled from the train and jailed. Ignorance of the law, as we have said, is considered to be no excuse. A law-abiding citizen who finds himself frequently breaking such laws feels none of the emotions which a reputable citizen should feel in such circumstances, and the fact that the situation is so obviously absurd insidiously breaks down the feeling that law as law should be implicitly obeyed. [Pg 129] Again, many laws are passed merely because it is the easiest way for lazy or supine legislators to rid themselves of noisy and fanatical minorities; likewise they may be passed by legislators who are simply ignorant or have some racial ax to grind. As instances we may cite the law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in Tennessee; the law recently passed by one of the Southern states, prohibiting the presence in any public or school library of any book “defining evolution” (which would rule out all dictionaries and encyclopedias); or the several so-called “pure history laws,” penalizing the critical writing of American history. Included also in this group are the broad censorship laws of various places, such as that which in St. Louis resulted in the seizure and destruction of a collector’s rare edition of Boccaccio, and that which makes it illegal for bookstores in Boston to sell a considerable number of current volumes sold almost everywhere else in the United States. As I write these lines my attention is called to the latest limitation of my liberty. I have in my library here that finest of all war books, All Quiet on the Western Front. The author comes nearer to telling the truth, the whole horrible stench of truth, about war than has anyone else. War is brutal, and it would be well if people could know how brutal. One or two incidents are brutally told, but there is nothing pornographic in the whole book. Yet I discover it can be published in America only in an expurgated form and that if I take my copy home it will be confiscated. My government will not allow me to read what any European in any country is free