He has known another minion of the law who admitted that, though he had not violated the Volstead Act, for conscientious reasons, had never so much as had a case of bought-and-paid-for whiskey or beer carted to his door, he had somehow “found” a bottle or two in his home, left there by sympathetic friends, he supposed; yet he did not inquire. “Conscience doth make cowards of us all,” as _Hamlet_ said; but how one absolves himself is a matter of private concern. Rationalism could go no further than this minion’s processes of reasoning. Strange indeed are the ways of powerful public officials, obeying one law to the letter, and letting their ethics slip and slide when it comes to some other law which they do not really wish to keep, and do not really wish to break. He has heard a dapper young society man in Massachusetts glibly state that the best bootlegger in his town is a federal Prohibition officer, who can “get him anything he wants from beer to whiskey and liqueurs.” And the dapper young man thought this was “perfectly all right, and rather good to know in these arid days.” Moreover, one was perfectly certain that what one purchased from this scoundrel was the real thing--no chance of wood-alcohol blindness, or anything of that sort. You will notice that what the Young-Old Philosopher has seen is not confined to any one section of the country. He has traveled considerably to make his observations. This is the America of today, as the Young-Old Philosopher sees it. He says he is not so worried about the present generation as about the generation that may come after it. Surely the potential mothers and fathers of children a decade hence are not fit to take upon themselves the responsibilities and burdens of parenthood. What kind of offspring will they produce? So long as we are looking ahead, providing for the welfare of the race to be, let us wisely look far enough ahead so that our eugenics may mean something. It is folly to pretend to be altruistic, to dip into the immediate future, at the expense of the present. We will produce a decadent race if we are not careful. Do you like this America of today? The Young-Old Philosopher says frankly that he does not. Neither do I. And neither do you--if you are a good American. And what about the America of tomorrow? CHAPTER XVIII OTHER REFORMS When books of the quality of “Jurgen” can be suppressed--happily this romance of James Branch Cabell has been restored to the libraries and book-stalls of the land--we are facing a dangerous precedent. “Casanova’s Homecoming” was likewise censored. But the Vice Society might be about better business. I could name a dozen volumes which they have stupidly imagined should be withdrawn from circulation, but it would be merely an idle repetition. The principle remains the same.