Everyone is ticketed, docketed, labeled, put in a card-index. This tabulation of citizens—how we smiled at it when the Prussians carried it to the extremes they did! Poor creatures, we said of them, to stand for such arrant nonsense.
A jolly state of affairs! It makes one feel so loving toward one’s Government, doesn’t it? We are all children, and Uncle Sam is no longer a symbolical old figure, but an avuncular autocrat who goes about, nosing everywhere, almost invading the sanctity of our homes (ah! he may do it yet!) in his senseless quest for this and that. But just as Santa Claus could never get down every chimney in the world, one feels certain that Uncle Sam cannot pry into every wine-cellar, and examine, if he had all eternity, every tiny bank balance. Moreover, my friend will not cheat on his income tax. He, at least, is decent.
Let us not delude ourselves that we are living in a democracy any longer. Laws were passed from time to time in the history of our great country, without the people’s vote; but they were laws that served our best interests and did not interfere with our personal liberty. When our rights as citizens were molested, we got up on our hind legs and yelled. “What is this?” we naturally inquired. “Why, it is what has always been done,” came the answer from the bar of injustice. And that was literally true. Only we didn’t know it. “You can’t break the Constitution,” was a further argument. “Once a Federal Amendment, always a Federal Amendment, you know.”
And why, pray? If the good old iron Constitution cannot be tampered with, it is high time that it was. If our forefathers who framed it meant it to be an utterly inelastic document, they didn’t count on the elastic minds of the American people. “New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,” said the wise James Russell Lowell once; and nothing is more certain than the fact that the moment has come when the people should be heard, and not a handful of legislators, who rushed madly to lay in a stock of wine and spirits when they saw which way the wind was blowing their straws.
It grieved me, as a good American, to hear an Englishman say the other evening before a lot of my fellow-countrymen that his idea of a complete life would be to spend nine months of the year in England as a British citizen and three months in the United States as an American subject. There was much mirth; but somehow I could not laugh and I hope these Constitutional Amendments, coming so thick and fast, are not causing me to lose my sense of humor.
It was a statement in which so much of truth was compressed that I shuddered; and I thought of all the forms of verboten that have lately been foisted upon us. I recalled how, ten years ago, a friend of mine had returned from Germany and told me, laughingly, how the poor subjects of the Kaiser were eternally forbidden to do this and that. It was verboten, verboten, verboten everywhere the eye turned—in the parks, in restaurants, in the galleries, in the theaters—everywhere. Always some petty restriction, some tyrannical interference with the masses. And he said then how contrary to the broad American spirit was this constant stress on “Thou shalt not.” We both smiled over it, and pitied the much-ruled and controlled Germans. “What a glorious land we live in,” we said, in unison, lifting our glasses, “and how proud we are of our freedom.”
But could we honestly say that now? Do not let us be hypocrites. Before foreigners, we bravely and loyally uphold our form of Government, because one does not like to cleanse his soiled linen in public or reveal a family quarrel; but deep down in our hearts—I hear it discussed everywhere I go—is a feeling of apprehension; and the everlasting question is being asked, “Whither are we, as a people, being led?”
If the political machinery is being clogged with too many foolish and unnecessary laws that are merely jokers and venemous restrictions, why do we not speak out in meeting, call together groups of citizens, as we are privileged to do under the Constitution (unless another Amendment has been added since this was written), and protest against this extravagant misuse of power?
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.