He has heard a dapper young society man in Massachusetts glibly state that the best bootlegger in his town is a federal Prohibition officer, who can “get him anything he wants from beer to whiskey and liqueurs.” And the dapper young man thought this was “perfectly all right, and rather good to know in these arid days.” Moreover, one was perfectly certain that what one purchased from this scoundrel was the real thing—no chance of wood-alcohol blindness, or anything of that sort.
You will notice that what the Young-Old Philosopher has seen is not confined to any one section of the country. He has traveled considerably to make his observations.
This is the America of today, as the Young-Old Philosopher sees it. He says he is not so worried about the present generation as about the generation that may come after it. Surely the potential mothers and fathers of children a decade hence are not fit to take upon themselves the responsibilities and burdens of parenthood. What kind of offspring will they produce? So long as we are looking ahead, providing for the welfare of the race to be, let us wisely look far enough ahead so that our eugenics may mean something. It is folly to pretend to be altruistic, to dip into the immediate future, at the expense of the present. We will produce a decadent race if we are not careful.
Do you like this America of today? The Young-Old Philosopher says frankly that he does not.
Neither do I. And neither do you—if you are a good American.
And what about the America of tomorrow?
CHAPTER XVIII
OTHER REFORMS
When books of the quality of “Jurgen” can be suppressed—happily this romance of James Branch Cabell has been restored to the libraries and book-stalls of the land—we are facing a dangerous precedent. “Casanova’s Homecoming” was likewise censored. But the Vice Society might be about better business. I could name a dozen volumes which they have stupidly imagined should be withdrawn from circulation, but it would be merely an idle repetition. The principle remains the same.