Arnold Bennett once said that the classics were kept alive, not by the man in the street, but by the passionate few. He was dead right. In the words of your beloved majority, he said a mouthful. Now, because my neighbor and my neighbor’s neighbor have a weakness for the best-sellers (not the best cellars), and find a robust pleasure in never thinking of anything beyond baseball, I do not see why I should be forced to indulge in a stupid Pollyanna optimism and forget and neglect my Keats and Shakespeare. CHAPTER V MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR DE-MOCKERY-CY What psychological effect will this constant contempt for the law of the land have upon us as a people? Surely something dire and dreadful is seeping into the national spirit, and we are in grave danger of coming to a human dislike of all laws, in consequence. We talk of Prohibition as a good thing for the generations to come; but how about disregard for the law as it will affect our children and our children’s children? Drunk, they might not be responsible; sober, to their higher selves they are accountable for their shortcomings in regard to our statutes. A lack of veneration for an orderly carrying out of a mandate is a serious thing. But to hear the young people talking these days about the sanctity of the Eighteenth Amendment is not a heartening experience. They jeer at it, and openly roar with laughter when it is mentioned. No one wishes danger to overwhelm us; but it will, unless something is done to remedy the present abhorrent conditions, which, I repeat, are making most of us unhappy. We are entangled in too many legal nets; and it is not pleasing and edifying to see an ex-Judge or jurist who came out strong for Prohibition sitting night after night in a certain restaurant, imbibing his cocktail, creating scandal in a more than crowded room. He is not in his cups these days--only in his demi-tasses. I wonder if he knows what an example he sets to the flappers down the room, and with what derision his high-and-mighty public utterances are now greeted whenever he opens his mouth to speak between drinks? I hear men and women saying all the time, “America is no place to live now. The streets of our large cities at night look like villages in some remote district. Dull, dull, and drab, drab. One more tyrannical law, one shadow of that deep blue which imperils us, and we will go and live abroad--anywhere but here.” Is that pleasant talk to listen to? Does it make one proud to be an American? It is not well to have such feelings fomenting in the hearts of those who honestly and sincerely love their native land--love it so much that during a terrible war they were proud to offer to die for it, or allow their sons to die for it. But this is not the time to desert the old Ship of State. Now, as never before, the United States needs its best blood, its best workers, its best citizens, to put the country back where it belongs.