The reason England has always been such a comfortable country to live in is because of the spirit of constructive criticism that has filtered through the nation. If a Londoner does not like the service on the tram roads, he writes to the _Times_ about it, and the matter is adjusted. He has the backing of all his neighbors--and ten to one they have written, too. But how many Americans, insulted in the subway or by some public servant, will sit down and write a letter of complaint? We stand meekly like droves of cattle behind tapes in motion-picture “palaces,” pressed by eager little ushers endowed with a momentary authority, until released and permitted to fumble our way down dark aisles to such seats as we can find. We allow grand head-waiters to hold us in check when we enter a smart restaurant, not indeed behind tape, but behind a silken cord--which does not mitigate the insult, however; and we humbly beg them to see if they can get us a table--and some of us slip them a greenback to gain their august favor. We allow ticket speculators to buy up all the best places in our theaters, adding what profit they demand, and say nothing--though there is a statute forbidding such extortion. “Ah, we’re here for a good time, and we don’t care what it costs us,” is the answer of the average visitor to the metropolis when he is asked why he does not protest against such unjust measures. I have known only one rich man to refuse rooms at a fine hotel, simply because he felt it wrong to pay seventeen dollars a day, no matter what his bank balance. It is people like that who help the rest of us to a return to normal conditions. He thinks of someone but himself. Yet we talk of Prohibition as though we were manfully trying to save the next generation from the perils of drink! We are doing nothing of the sort. We are merely bowing our craven heads to a mandate because we have neither the courage nor the energy to speak loudly against a stupid law foisted upon us by an organized minority. Our altruistic purpose is not apparent, for it never existed. “Ah, but,” someone whispers, “the majority want this and that; so we must give in to them.” Even so, why should we give in to them? The majority of people prefer flashy, meaningless movies and Pollyanna and Harold Bell Wright and chewing-gum and cheap jewelry and Gopher Prairie and slapstick humor and loud laughter and a crowded beach on Sunday, and hideous neckties and shirts and summer furs, and a hundred and one other things entirely foreign to my desires; why, then, should I walk in their path, jump over the hurdles that the multitude puts in front of me?