I fear that the law which makes it illegal for a minor to be admitted to a theater or a motion-picture palace is broken every day in every city of our broad and beneficent land. Yet I do not find pickets from Children’s Societies, standing about to see that the letter of the law is obeyed. We pretend to be deeply interested in the welfare of the coming generation--so interested, in fact, that the present generation is forced to give up its harmless toddy, that the children of tomorrow may be robust supermen and superwomen. The fact is that, to the fanatic, no law is sacred except the Eighteenth Amendment. The Fifteenth? Oh; why talk of it? The South knows its problems, and can cope with them. Besides ... well ... Ahem!... That’s another matter, and has no bearing upon the issue at hand. Why hasn’t it? Yet if you ask ten people in the street what the Fifteenth Amendment is the chances are that only one will be able to tell you. If the negro was enfranchised, he was enfranchised, and should be permitted to vote. That is the law of the land. It is part of our glorious Constitution. But do you hear anyone raising a row over the fact that no one pays any attention to it in certain parts of the South? Few zealots work for the rights of negro voters--none, I should say. It matters little to us that they are denied that privilege which belongs to every citizen here, whether he is black or white, or what his previous condition of servitude. Why should we respect one Amendment to the Constitution, and be allowed to hold in contempt another? Truly, the logic of the fanatic is hard to follow. If one of them reads these words, he will merely smile and pass on, and do nothing at all about it. For just now he is fearfully concerned over Mr. Volstead and the carrying out of his policies. One thing at a time, please. His interest may keep him busy for so many years to come that he will have the excuse of no free moment to study the Fifteenth Amendment. But all the Amendments should be enforced, or wiped off the books. Riding in a train once through the sanctified State of Kansas, where long they have refused to let you and me buy a cigarette, I asked for a package in the dining-car. “Can’t let you have ’em,” was the answer of the steward. “We’re on Kansas soil.” “Then why don’t you inform passengers before we cross the State line, in order that they may stock up?” I inquired--humanly enough, I thought. “They should look out for themselves,” was his rather unkind reply. I thought a moment. I did want a smoke, and I was determined to have one, despite all the laws in Christendom. I told my feelings to the steward. He saw that I was in earnest. In fact, he came to see the justice of my suggestion that passengers, unaccustomed at that time to so many restrictions (this happened in the halcyon, prehistoric days before Prohibition) should be given some hint of the approach of the State line.