George Jean Nathan and H.L. Mencken

American Mercury/October, 1924

The Triumph of Illusion.—As many of the great battles of the world are won by a blind following of illusion as by a realistic facing of facts. The illusion of Joan of Arc’s sainthood drew the French to victory over the English in the Fifteenth Century as the illusion of democracy drew the American colonists to triumph over the English in the Eighteenth. The first Crusaders, sweeping in a trail of white glory toward the East, were carried along on the invincible shoulders of divine illusion, and it was only when the purple illusion of Cleopatra’s love deserted him that Mark Antony met defeat at arms: under the warm spell of that illusion he defeated both Brutus and Cassius at Philippi. It was the illusion that Thomas Jonathan Jackson was like a stone wall that led his soldiers in gray to stand like rocks and bounce back to threefold defeat the men in blue who, without a similar illusion to support them, followed McClellan at Bull Run and Banks at Winchester and Cedar Mountain.

What Hath God Wrought!—In one of the Eastern bituminous coal-fields, on the slope of the Appalachian Mountains, a strike of miners has been in progress for three years. Ordinarily, such a struggle is marked by a great deal of human suffering, affectingly described in the New Republic. According to the precedents, all the strikers in the present case should be dead or in jail by now, and their wives and children should be homeless and in the last stages of starvation. But an agent lately returned from the scene tells me that no such horrors, nor any other, are actually on view. Instead, the strikers are well fed and easy in manner, their wives are arrayed in the latest habiliments recommended by Vogue, and their children are fat, merry and learning to be sinful.

By what process has this miracle been achieved? By the simplest process imaginable. By the process, in brief, of amending the Constitution of the United States. It is the Eighteenth Amendment that is responsible—the Amendment and the Volstead Act. The strikers, instead of starting to starve the day they struck, or throwing themselves with blood-curdling hosannas upon the bayonets and artillery of the mineguards—instead of resorting to such pre-Volsteadian follies, and so filling the New Republic with hot and sanguinary stuff, they retired in a peaceable manner to the high hills adjacent to the mines, constructed a series of large stills in the woods, and proceeded forthwith to the manufacture of a meritorious grade of white mule.

Today, they are not only eating regularly; they are getting rich. For they had the sagacity, from the very start, to enlist the mine-guards, their hereditary enemies, on their side. These guards now patrol the mountain trails for miles around, and keep a sharp lookout for Prohibition enforcement officers. When one is sighted he is laid for, seized, given a beating, and put aboard a train for home. If he returns, one of his ears is cut off. If he returns a second time he is executed painlessly, and his carcass thrown to the wild hogs of the mountain side. For months running, so my agent says, not a single Prohibition officer has ventured into those wilds. The honest miners refuse absolutely to pay graft. They are thus enabled to sell their product at a fair price. Once a week they load a tank car marked “Gasoline! Dangerous!” and start it for Washington. Four days later it comes back empty, and the sum of $8,250 is passed to their credit on the books of an eminent Washington trust company.

Thus a community long dedicated to hard and cruel labor, with intervals of the most abject misery, is now prosperous and happy. The fact is to be set to the honor of the Hon. Mr. Volstead, otherwise an ass. Moreover, the benefits that he has brought to that remote mountainside also radiate elsewhere. The inhabitants, like the rest of us, have to burn coal in Winter. Formerly they stole it from the mine company. Now they buy it in an adjoining valley, and so make work steadier for the miners there. More important still, they keep Washington supplied with a pure brand of forty-rod at a moderate price. There is enough to go round, and it is within the means of all. The processes of government are thus lubricated. The men who make and administer the laws are happier and more efficient. Every American citizen, even unto the remotest hamlets, is the gainer. The downfall of the Republic, by a small but appreciable interval, is postponed.

Per Contra.—I cannot entirely agree with those critics who inveigh against propaganda in art and who maintain that propaganda, having no place in art, ruins art in its presence. Great art, they contend, proves nothing, should seek to prove nothing, may prove nothing. Many of the world’s masterpieces confound such critics. “Hamlet” proves that it is futile for man to fight destiny, as “Macbeth” proves that evil thought and wrongdoing can profit no man. “The Mikado” is veiled propaganda against certain British weaknesses and peccadillos, as are also “Iolanthe,” “Pinafore” and “The Pirates of Penzance.” Wagner wrote “Der Fliegende Hollander” to prove that musical criticism as it was practiced in Dresden at the time was ridiculous: the opera is propaganda against all standpat criticism. Beethoven’s Ninth was composed to prove that his old teacher, Albrechtsberger, was something of a hanswurst. It proved it: it still proves it. Cervantes wrote “Don Quixote,” so he himself said, “to break down the vogue and authority of books of chivalry and to render abhorred of men the false and absurd stories contained in books of chivalry.” There is social and political propaganda in Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels,” as there are political plea and argument in Shaw’s finest play, “Caesar and Cleopatra.” What is the wonderful ceiling in the Sistine Chapel but Michelangelo’s successful attempt to prove that sculptural drawing may, in decoration, be the superior of painting?

Human Progress.—During the six months ending June 30 there were but five lynchings in the South—the lowest record in forty years. How is one to account for the fact? I point to two obvious influences: that of the Ku Klux Klan and that of the radio. Both have served to relieve the dreadful tedium of life in the late Confederacy, and so the Chandala have not had to resort to homicide for entertainment. The Klan has worked against the old wholesale butchery in two ways. In the first place, it has taken formal charge of all lynchings, and so introduced order into them, and even a sort of jurisprudence. It will not countenance hanging or burning a blackamoor unless there is some plausible evidence of his guilt; it prohibits the old system of doing one to death in mere naughtiness. In the second place, it gives the hinds of the backwoods so much other entertainment, with its ceaseless processions, tarrings and featherings, raids upon bootleggers and loose women, ceremonious visits to Baptist tabernacles, and so on, that they have been cured of their ancient boredom, and are thus less inclined than they used to be to dispose of it by orgy.

The radio has worked in much the same way. In the remotest fastnesses of Georgia, Arkansas, and Mississippi the peasants are now in nightly contact with the great currents of human thought. They hear speeches by Dr. Coolidge, William Jennings Bryan and the most subtle thinkers in the Chautauqua movement. They may tune in on stock quotations, baseball scores, or bedtime stories. Brass bands play for them, and they are soothed and mellowed by lectures on the cement industry and mental magnetism. There is thus no reason why they should swarm out into the night, pursue an Aframerican with dogs, and waste ten gallons of gasoline burning him. In the old days they were driven to it by sheer desperation. Life, at times, became insupportable without a show. But now they have a continuous show, and it is cheap, astounding and infinitely varied.

I believe that the legalization of dancing among the Methodists will work to the same benign end. Until a few months ago any Methodist who pranced with his girl was condemned to hell by his pastor, and the death-beds of those who defied the mandate were made horrible by their yells. But then the Methodist General Conference suddenly lifted the ban, and now any member of the communion is free to cavort all he pleases, so long as he does it in a reasonably decorous manner. This revolutionary change in policy is not yet generally known in the South, where news travels slowly, but soon or late it is bound to penetrate to the remotest swamps and hills. When it does so, the rustics will have another way to entertain themselves, and the adjacent Moors will be even safer than now. More, the Baptists will have to follow suit, else they will lose all their members to the church of Wesley. In the end, with the radio sparking, the Klan performing its public evolutions, and the sound of jig music filling the air, the Confederate States will be full of happiness, and a lynching will become as rare as it was in Sodom and Gomorrah, or as it is today in Paris, Biarritz or Union Hill, N. J.

Years ago, I anticipated the transformation now taking place. That is to say, I proposed setting up brass bands in all the Southern country towns, and introducing bullfighting into Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. It was my contention that every bull that was killed would save a Christian Ethiop. I now formally withdraw my proposal as no longer apposite. Its purposes have been met by the radio, the Klan meeting and the dance. The Methodists, I hear, think of following their surrender to Terpsichore with a surrender to Thespis. If they do, then the Southern blacks will become almost as free, safe and happy as they were under slavery. For in all human history there has never been a lynching in a town visited regularly by competent burlesque troupes.

The Englishman and the American.—There is always this difference, I find, between them. I have known many Americans who would not mind living in England, but I have never yet found an Englishman who said he would care to live in the United States.

A Phase of American Criticism.—The peruser of the art of criticism as it is currently practiced in the daily and weekly gazettes of the Etats Unis becomes steadily conscious of the fact that there has arisen a body of clichés with which that criticism answers those persons whose work and ideas do not happen to meet with its approval. There was a time, in the history of even this daily and weekly criticism, when its adverse criticism was based upon at least a measure of understanding of the point of view it championed and upon a sufficient familiarity with the other side of the question to make its adverse comment at once comprehensible and fair. Today, however, these is small disposition to box the other man’s viewpoint with any degree of intelligence or honesty. A study of such criticism reveals neither this intelligence nor honesty; it reveals, further, neither a tonic ridicule nor a sharp and devastating irony; it reveals, further still, neither the faculty for a good healthy horse-laugh nor a whacking and explosive slapstick. It tries to kill off its opponent by childish and inane means. It employs the tactics of the kindergarten.

Thus, when it finds itself at a loss as to sound and destructive criticism, it invariably falls back upon such recriminatory stencils as “So-and-so reminds one of a small boy drawing caricatures with a piece of chalk on the schoolhouse fence” or “One cannot expect a man like So-and-so to understand the principles by which the rest of us are guided.” The word tradition similarly looms large in the kind of criticism of which I am speaking. Whenever one of these critics doesn’t accurately know what is wrong with an opponent’s point of view, save that it seems to be wrong to him, he takes refuge in blaming it either upon the other man’s traditions or lack of them. Again, we hear endless whiffle about “bad boys”—a bad boy, apparently, being anyone who doesn’t believe exactly what the commentator concerned believes, and about “disrespectful attitude toward his elders,” as if respect for age were an article in the doctrine of sound criticism. More and more, in this daily and weekly criticism, a man’s ideas and performances are criticized less from the viewpoint of their honest worth and importance than from their adherence to or departure from the punctilio of the place and moment. Manners are rated above merit. A suave and poiseful nincompoop is regarded as the superior of a rough and forceful intelligence. The battle is not one of sound sense or effective seltzer-siphons; the battle is one in which the critic seeks to confound and put to rout his opponent with provincial rubber-stamps.

Historical Note.—The first law against lèse-majesté heard of in Rome was proclaimed not by an emperor, but by Saturninus, a democratic tribune. Its aim was not to protect the throne against the populace but to protect the populace against the aristocracy.

Observation CMXXIII.—The apparent romanticism of women is chiefly only appearance. They seem to take love more seriously than men, but that they really do so does not follow. Many of the romantic gestures that they make are no more than proofs of their hard realism. They are so realistic that they see clearly that realism is an impossible philosophy in this world—that its practice would make life unbearable. So they swathe it in make-believe. Men have much less sense. They try to grapple with reality—and come ignominiously to grief. The temple that shelters Truth is guarded by many dragons, and they have long teeth. Worse, it is guarded by Katzenjammer.

The Comedy of Sex.—In the current oppressively ubiquitous cackling of sex one finds the intelligentsia inclining more and more to the view that sex, far from being the sour-visaged tragedy that it is commonly supposed to be, is really of the essence of pure comedy. While this point of view is, of course, anything but new—having been the established philosophy of all bachelors and Turks over the age of twelve since the beginning of the Eleventh Century—it seems to me that, for all its major authenticity, it is not without its soupçon of a hole. Sex is a comedy, true enough; it borders, indeed, upon farce; but, like a comedy or a farce, it is played upon something approximating a theatre stage. The parties to the performance, the actors, are most often entirely serious about it, as are the actors of comedy and farce ever. The humor of sex is enjoyed not by the actors directly concerned in it, but by the onlookers, the audience. The bridegroom is not a comedian in his own eyes; he is a comedian in the eyes of his audience. The bride herself is wistful and a bit wet of eye; the wheezes are reserved for the mob around the punchbowl.

Paraphrasing Horace Walpole, sex is a tragedy to him who feels and a comedy to him who thinks. In the grip of sex, no man has ever thought. Sex, to the participant in its theoretical excitements, is thus ever purely emotional and hence removed, at least for the time being, from the domain of comedy. It may be funny in retrospect, but so too in retrospect are three-fourths of the tragedies of the world.

Plot and Character.—That character is always more important than plot in literature and drama is proved by the fact that we usually remember character in proportion as we forget plot. One remembers Huckleberry Finn; but what was the plot of “Huckleberry Finn”? One remembers Uncle Tom; but what was the plot of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”? One remembers Ben Hur; but what was the plot of “Ben Hur”? And so, too, with Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, King Lear, Tom Jones, Fanny Hill, Madame Bovary, Thérèse Raquin, Lord Jim, and a hundred others. The general trends of theme one may recall, but the plots have vanished from memory. Only the characters remain.

Note in the Margin of a Treatise on Psychology.—As I stoop to lace my shoe you hit me over the coccyx with a length of hickory (Carya laciniosa). I conclude instantly that you are a jackass. This is the whole process of human thought in little. This is free will.

Historical Note.—No woman can be too beautiful and be a lady.

The Champion.—Of the forty-eight sovereign States of this imperial federation, which is the worst? In what one of them is a civilized man most uncomfortable? Over half the votes, if the question were put to a vote, would probably be divided between California and Georgia. Each, in its way, is almost unspeakable. Georgia, of course, has never been civilized, save in a small area along the tidewater. Even in the earliest days of the Republic, it was regarded as barbaric by its neighbors. But California, at one time, promised to develop a charming and enlightened civilization. There was a touch of tropical balm in its air, and a touch of Latin and even oriental color in its ideas. Like Louisiana, it seemed likely to resist Americanization for many years; perhaps forever. But now California, the old California, is simply extinct. What remains is an Alsatia of retired Ford agents and crazy fat women—a paradise of Rotary and the New Thought. Its laws are the most extravagant and idiotic ever heard of in Christendom. Its public officers, and particularly its judges, are famous all over the world for their imbecilities. When one hears of it at all, one hears that some citizen has been jailed for reading the Constitution of the United States, or that some new swami in a yellow bedtick has got all the realtors’ wives of Los Angeles by the ears. When one hears of it further, it is only to learn that some distinguished movie wench in Hollywood has murdered another lover. The State is run by its Chambers of Commerce, which is to say, by the worst variety of resident Babbits. No man of any dignity seems to have any part in its public life. Not an idea ever comes out of it—that is, not an idea beyond the grasp of a Kiwanis Club secretary, a Christian Science sorcerer, or a grand wizard of the American Legion. Twice, of late, it has offered the country candidates for the presidency. One was the Hon. Hiram Johnson and the other was the Hon. William Gibbs McAdoo! Only Vermont can beat that record.

The minority of civilized Californians—who recently, by the way, sent out a call from Los Angeles for succor, as if they were beset by wolves!—commonly lay the blame for this degeneration of a once proud commonwealth upon the horde of morons that has flowed in from Iowa, Nebraska and the other cow-States, seeking relief from the bitter climate of the steppes. The California realtors have been luring in these hinds for a generation past, and they now swarm in all the Southern towns, especially Los Angeles. They come in with their savings, are swindled and sent home, and so make room for more. While they remain and have any part of their money left, they patronize the swamis, buy oil stock, gape at the movie gals, and pack the Methodist churches. Unquestionably, the influence of such vacuums has tended to degrade the general tone of California life; what was once a Spanish fiesta is now merely an upper Mississippi valley street-carnival. But it is not to be forgotten that the Native Sons have gone down the chute with the newcomers—that there is little more sign of intellectual vigor in the old stock than there is in the new stock. A few intransigents hold out against the tide of 100 per cent Americanism, but only a few. The rest bawl against the Reds as loudly as any Iowa steer-stuffer.

The truth is that it is unjust to blame Iowa for the decay of California, for Iowa itself is now moving up, not down. And so is Nebraska. A few years ago both States were as sterile, intellectually, as Guatemala, but both are showing signs of progress today, and in another generation or two, as the Prohibition lunacy passes and the pall of Methodism begins to lift they will probably burst into very vigorous activity. Some excellent stock is in them; it is very little contaminated by what is called Anglo-Saxon blood. Iowa even today, is decidedly more civilized than California. It is producing more ideas, and, more important still, it is carrying on a much less violent war against ideas. I doubt whether any man who read the Constitution in Davenport or Des Moines would be jailed for it, as Upton Sinclair (or one of his friends) was in Pasadena. The American Legion might protest, but the police would probably do nothing, for the learned judges of the State would not entertain the charge.

Thus California remains something of a mystery. The whole United States, of course, has been going downhill since the beginning of the century, but why should one State go so much faster than the others? Is the climate to blame? Hardly. The climate of San Francisco is thoroughly un-Californian, and yet San Francisco is almost as dead as Los Angeles. It was there, indeed, that that California masterpiece, the Mooney case, was staged; it was there that the cops made three efforts to convict poor Fatty Arbuckle of murder in the first degree; it was there that the late Dr. Abrams launched a quackery that went Mother Eddy one better. San Francisco, once the home of Mark Twain and Bret Harte, is now ravaged by Baptist dervishes and Prohibition enforcement officers. But if the climate is not to blame, then what is? Why should a great State, lovely physically and of romantic history, so violently renounce all sense and decency? What has got into it? God alone knows!

The case of Georgia is simpler. It happens to be the chief battle ground between the poor white trash who have been in control of the whole South since the Civil War and the small but growing minority of civilized rebels. That battle is going on all over the South, but in Georgia it is especially bitter, for there the poor-white trash are very strongly entrenched, and desperately determined to beat their antagonists. They have many advantages. They control the Legislature, they have the support of most of the newspapers, and they have produced a number of leaders of great boldness. Hence the Ku Klux Klan. Hence the prohibition of Darwinism. Hence the tax of $1,000 a performance on grand opera. But Georgia, though it is thus in the depths, is not hopeless. There are civilized Georgians, and they are by no means inactive. Today they carry on their fight against apparently hopeless odds, but if they keep their resolution they may win tomorrow. At all events, they keep on fighting, bravely and even gayly. But in California, as I have said, the civilized minority is in despair. In Los Angeles, indeed, it has gone so far that it has thrown up its hands and cast itself upon the Christian charity of the rest of the country.