Our national insincerity began right there. The hiding of the ostrich’s head in the sands--that is what it amounted to; and we all smiled and laughed, and went on having a perfectly good time, and we told one another, if we discussed the matter at all, that of course the worst could never, never occur. What rot even to think of it; what idiocy to take seriously a state of affairs so nebulous and remote. It was like predicting a world war--which eventually came about; it was like dreaming of the inconvenience of a personal income tax--which also came about; it was like imagining that man would be so uncivilized as to break all international law--which, only a few years later, he did. Who foresaw the use of poisonous gas in the most frightful conflict of history? Who had vision enough to tell us that noncombatants would be killed, as they were in Belgium, though treaties had been signed which forbade such wanton cruelty? Who could foretell the bombing of cities far beyond the firing line? Yet these atrocities occurred with singular regularity once the world entered upon that stupendous struggle which began in August, 1914. We came to take such happenings for granted. We grew accustomed to terror, as one grows used to pain; and all that we had built and dreamed went crashing to dust and ashes. Prohibition, I venture to say, was the last thing in the world the American people expected to have come upon them. Though temperance advocates were thick through the country, the brilliant bar-rooms held their own; and we came to look upon them as an essential part of the pageant of life, especially in cosmopolitan cities, with Salvation Army lassies entering them to pass the tambourine. Men in their cups gave generously; and I often wonder if the revenue of pious organizations has not seriously diminished, now that there are no haunts of vice for holy workers to penetrate. Surely they must miss this casual liberality--the coin or the bill cast with a grand and forgotten gesture into the extended hand. But do not imagine I am holding a brief for the corner saloon. The sins of an enforced Prohibition are many, as I shall seek to prove; but the passing of the common drinking-place cannot be deprecated. No sane, thinking citizen wishes to see a return of promiscuous debauchery. A glimpse now of the London “pubs” in the poorer districts of the English capital is enough to convince any American that he should thank his stars--if not his three-stars--that one phase of our social consciousness has vanished forever. If we could have sensibly rid ourselves of these rum-hells, without punishing a vast multitude of us who knew how to drink wisely, much good would have been accomplished. But, American-like, we had to go the whole gamut; we had to make ourselves ridiculous before the rest of the world, in order to bring about a check upon the gross appetites of a scattered few.