Our Sky-Blue Future

GEORGE S. CHAPPELL

What we May Reasonably Expect under the New Blue Laws

WE read much in the papers of the organized efforts made by bodies of selfworshipping citizens who, though in a minority, propose by sheer righteousness to force their standards of conduct upon the lives of all of us.

The papers are full of the claims of the reformers and the programs of their reforms. These are called the Blue Laws, in memory of the ancient statutes governing the personal conduct of our Puritan ancestors. Opposed to this plan of making the world chemically pure, we have the less rigorous majority, the Liberal Party, so to speak, whose conception of rational pleasure admits of many activities which are sternly frowned upon by the professional moralists.

For some absurd reason the Liberals seem to object to being made virtuous by act of Congress. They shriek quaint things about "personal liberty" and "sacred rights" and so on. Apparently they think that in the future they may be prevented from doing something that they really want to do.

What our Liberals actually need is some one to pat them metaphorically on the hand and say "There, there." They need to be told that there is not any real reason for worry at all. Under the new regime there is every reason to believe that the world will be a gayer, brighter and a much more exciting place than it is now.

Reforms Effected by the 18th Amendment

THINK for a moment what has happened under the 18th Amendment. Parties were never so frequent, nor so copiously irrigated. Merely meeting a man on the street is a good and sufficient reason for proceeding at top speed to the nearest shaker. A country dinner-party is but the excuse for a house-tohouse cocktail canvas; the guests arrive protuberant with clandestine containers and, if the host, in turn, does his part, what might once have been merely a genial affair develops into the wildest kind of bacchanal.

Thus, we may as well admit frankly that, as far as the 18th Amendment goes, we not only are not restrained by the law, but we break it and enjoy doing it.

Isn't this exactly what will happen with the new laws, if the reformers accomplish what they propose? Consider a few of the diversions on their black-list. Sunday is craftily selected as a special peg on which to hang the moral regeneration of society, but of course we all know that a real reformer firmly believes that "every day will be Sunday bye-and-bye." He is merely using the day of rest as a spiritual shoe-horn. On this day he is satisfied to propose that out-of-door exercise other than walking to and from kirk shall be a crime. A man may "commit golf", but he cannot play it. Automobiling (for pleasure, as distinguished from church-going) is to be a misdemeanor punishable by fine or imprisonment or both. Gambling at any time is slated for absolute removal. All other forms of intellectual activity, art, moving-pictures, dancing, the theatre, etc., are to be draped, sterilized, and drycleaned on week-days and absolutely forbidden on Sunday.

"All pleasure," cries the reformer, "is taboo!" And Echo answers "boo."

Consider, my dears, the prohibition of golf. What will happen? Isn't it perfectly obvious, judging from our experience with the 18th Amendment, that golf will be driven indoors? We have all heard of the courses in our large department stores with bunkers made of rugs, greens of carpet and "rough" of cocoa matting. The idea is only in its infancy. When the owners of some of our large country-houses really concentrate on this subject I can readily see some magnificent interior-links laid out through their extensive salons.

One of my friends, Mr. Herman Applethorpe of Bernardsville. who is about to build a large house among the New Jersey hills, has already taken into account the future of golf and has had the plans of his mansion drawn by one of our most able golf-architects. Bogey for the house is sixty-eight, which is good going, considering the sporty nature of the second floor nine with a series of short holes and tricky dogs-legs through bath-rooms, linen-closets and the like. Applethorpe particularly prides himself on the 19th hole, which is a reproduction of the famous Hoffman House Bar.

Where the prohibition of open and aboveground Sunday golf will work the most harm is in the small suburban home. How distinctly I can hear the crash of family portraits resulting from a sliced drive and the wails of the woe-begone wife as her frenzied spouse takes a huge divot out of the well-worn Axminster. Little do the reformers know what a dreadful implement a niblick can be in the home. For years some of our best minds have sought to control it. Can it be done, think you, by act of Congress?

Automobiling on Sunday is another target of the reconstructionists. The mind stands appalled at the prospect of what will happen if the millions of Sunday voyageurs are actually forced to forego their weekly jaunt into the country. Oil stocks will slump out of sight, road-houses will fail, little girls who sell flowers by the wayside will starve to death and domestic discord will break out like a black plague in the myriad families who, under present conditions, are allowed to take their differences of opinion out into the open air.

Sunday Motoring in the Future

F course it will be utterly impossible to prevent people motoring on Sunday. The effect of the new law will be to tremendously increase the amount of night traffic. One will be invited for a week-end motor trip in some cryptic and mysterious manner. A mere word or suggestion will be sufficient to intimate the nature of a proposed excursion. For instance we may expect some such invitation as this: "Won't you come to us for Saturday and Sunday? We are lunching on Sunday with the Caswells in Mt. Kisco. Honk-honk." People will sleep all day in order to be up bright and early for seven P. M. breakfast. Then the jolly midnight luncheon in a sound-proof, hermetically sealed road-house, en route, and the late dinner at the journey's end just as the sun is rising! Isn't it a jolly picture? Motoring will necessarily be done without lights in order to avoid detection by the automobile-enforcement agents, and the resulting accidents will make, the Monday morning obituary column a sort of fashionable "Who's Dead, and Why".

Framers of the Blue Laws propose to rigidly limit the use of gasoline, but it has already been proved that a Ford will get eighteen miles out of a gallon of distilled water with a raisin in it, and we have only to add a cake of yeast in order to produce perfectly good home-brew gas.

The Doom of Bridge

RIDGE as it is now played is doomed. Everyone plays for some sort of stake, no matter how small, and this is not to be permitted at any time under the new regime. Here again we shall see subterfuge and secrecy find a method of evasion. I have already been approached by one of the world's worst bridge-players, who is organizing a tremendously secret society similar to the Ku-KluxKlan and composed entirely of bridge addicts. Members of this society are bound by one of the most dreadful oaths I have ever heard, compared to which the rites of a Greek-letter fraternity sound like a maiden's prayer. One of the provisions specified in this oath is that if any member shall ever divulge to any bridgeprohibition agent the secret meeting place of the clan, his hand shall promptly rot off at the wrist and his tongue shall wither at the root and drop out—like a dried fig. Really, it's horrible!

Among the associates of this mysterious organization bridge will never be mentioned by name. An entirely new language has been invented which doesn't mean what it seems to mean at all. The new word for "bridge" is— but there,—I can't tell you that. If you are a member of the clan, you know it already; if not, something awful would happen to me if I blabbed.

The moving pictures have been so surely menaced by the Blue Birds of Unhappiness that already the industry is preparing to flood the country with propaganda justifying its existence. One thing is certain: the American public has become so inoculated with the movie virus that, if the films are done away with and people are denied the excitement of the screen, they will actually begin to live their moving-pictures. It will not be at all unusual to see our younger men, on their way to business, propelling themselves hand-over-hand, along the telegraph wires, or leaping from the top of a Fifth Avenue bus into a passing limousine. Wit and humour will reflect the standards of our favorite movie-comedians and the life of a dinner party will be the one who can do the funniest things with the food. Little do we realize as yet the possibilities of a chocolate eclair!

Movie-life, as we shall undoubtedly live it, will be a hectic affair with a great many hairbreadth escapes and rough work generally, but it is sweet to think that every day will end, conventionally, with a close-up,—in which each actor will kiss his favourite partner before the "good night" signal is flashed. It is understood that all kisses are to be passed by the National Board of Censors.

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A New Moral Code

TN some way or other, we may be sure, society will work matters out along its own lines. Through initial chaos and confusion, in the face of the most outrageous infringements of its personal liberty, it will fall back on a policy of evasion, subterfuge and hidden lawlessness until, lo! out of chaos will emerge a brand new moral code, a set of ethics which will work out perfectly to suit our new, and blue, conditions. Just as nowadays we smile indulgently when a prominent citizen is convicted of illegal traffic in liquor—some of which we perhaps hoped to share with him—so, in the future, when all is forbidden, all will be condoned.

Fortunately, all the reformers mistrust each other. Mr. Wheeler, the astute counsel of the Anti-Saloon League, solemnly warns good Doctor Crafts, of the International Reform Bureau, that the public can be pushed just so far. Wise gentleman that he is, he fears a reaction in which even the good work of his mighty league may topple over; in fact, he may possibly realize that it already has toppled over. The Rev. Crafts, in turn, is much embarrassed by the lurid utterances of that brilliant divine, Brother Bowlby—a happy name! —to whom even the bare legs of infants are a source of pain. An ex-governor of Missouri, prepared to speak on the enforcement of the dry law, refuses to appear, lest he seem to encourage the Puritan Sabbath. Perhaps he enjoys a round of Sunday golf.

So, you see, the whole matter may fall to the ground because of the divided counsels of the Prunes and Prisms, and we, the poor unorganized members of the silent majority, may be forced to work out our own salvation after all, instead of having someone do it for us.