The Fanatics' League

COREY FORD

Containing some personal nominations for a new and much-needed organization in these Benighted States

"My dear sir. writes a hopeful correspondent from California, Mr. George S. Albee, "we have a peculiar opportunity offered us. The attacks on the Eighteenth Amendment have focussed, and made selfconscious, an intelligent minority of liberals in America. Very well—ours is a government by organized minorities. Instead of waiting for a dictator or a revolution, why don't we take steps to keep your Crusaders, the Women's Association for Prohibition Reform, and other similar groups from disbanding, and rivet them together now into a permanent National Betterment League?

"We have the brains, we have the money, and now. at last, we have the organization ready-made. Out with fake bonus-eers, in with sterilization of the syphilitic insane, out with wildcat financiers and rugged individualism, in with planned economics—the vista is tempting! What would be the chances, do you think?"

I think, my dear Mr. Albee, that the chances would he lousy. Your plan, like the Eighteenth Amendment, may he noble in motive; but, like the Eighteenth Amendment. it never would work. It never would work, for one reason, because a National Betterment League would suffer from a surfeit of virtue. It would be dead of sheer ennui in a year.

You say that this is a government by organized minorities. You do not go far enough. Ours is a government by organized minorities; but they are organized for very special and usually very selfish reasons. To be sure, some of them, like the Crusaders, are working altruistically for a noble cause such as the repeal of an insane Amendment; but the great majority of them, the Veterans' Lobby and the Inflationists and the Antiquated Saloon League, are all fighting quite candidly for various selfish causes which make no pretense of being noble at all. And at least, selfish or unselfish, all of them have one characteristic in common: they are fighting either for something or against something. Without some definite prejudice to battle about, any group would stultify, and grow vague and virtuous and dull. An organized minority, gathered together serenel) for no more specific a purpose than Good Government, Utopia, or the contemplation of its collective navel, would very soon bore itself to tears. All that goodness would begin to cloy. It would grow restless, and mischievous, and begin reaching out to meddle into social reform, and in time —what is worst of all—it would become pompous and dictatorial and intolerant, and assume unto itself the smug right to legislate goodness, and pass more laws and more and more Amendments that would be noble in purpose and vicious in practice. I imagine that even the Anti-Saloon League once was just such an honorable organization.

No, Mr. Albee. I think that a National Betterment League, such as you suggest, could do far more hurt to a country, simply by its high-minded efforts to meddle into other people's personal affairs, than any vendetta of organized racketeers in the world. There is more actual danger in a handful of ardent missionaries, consecrated to being their brother's keepers and setting out with a holy gleam in their eyes to mind his business for him, than there is in a whole Chicago-ful of anarchists and communists and reds.

It is on the opposite side, of the coin, Mr. Albee, that the real value of your suggestion is stamped. Unwittingly, your letter presents for the first time the possibility of organizing another and very different group, diametrically opposed to yours, which should really be of inestimable worth to these benighted states. In fact, the importance of this new group cannot be exaggerated. It would not be a League organized, like yours, for Better Government. On the contrary, it would be dedicated frankly to Worse Government, to the overthrow of the Constitution, the defeat of representative democracy, and the complete tyranny of the masses by the small but organized minority that would compose its membership. It would favor the bonus-grab, for example, and the immediate freedom of the Philippines, and inflation, and the Eighteenth Amendment. Its members would be drafted from the Veterans' Lobby, and the Ku Klux Klan, and Anti-Saloon League. It would be opposed automatically to all reason, temperance, common-sense. It would stand for everything bigoted, intolerant, selfish. For want of a better name, it would be called the Fanatics' League of America.

The purpose of this Fanatics' League, briefly. would be to safeguard and preserve the one great good which Prohibition has brought about. For years, since the Eighteenth Amendment became a Jaw, our country has rejoiced in a certain unique and indispensable blessing that the Dry Law has given us. Prohibition may have cheapened our national respect for law, it may have made the new-fashioned saloon co-educational and instilled the patriotic ideal of dipsomania in the prep-schools of the land, it may have ruined the American kidneys, it may have set back the clock of Temperance fifty or a hundred years; but at least, in all fairness, it has yielded us one tremendous boon. It has enabled us in this country to separate the apes from the angels, the sheep from the goats.

With one magnificent gesture the Eighteenth Amendment split the nation accurately into two camps: the tolerants and the fanatics. As a result, for thirteen years we have had in the Prohibition Question an infallible litmus-paper to test the character of our associates. We have had only to ask a man one question: "Are you a Dry?" If he could reply, after all these years, that he was still in favor of the Eighteenth Amendment, then we did not need to inquire further into his intellectual pedigree, his moral character, his patriotism, his sincerity or his common-sense. We knew. That man, ipso facto, was either a fanatic or a fool. If lie was sincere in his belief that Prohibition had bettered conditions one iota, then we could put him down at best as an honest imbecile. If he was deliberately shutting his eyes to the facts about him, then we knew him for a criminal. In either case, we did not need to associate with him any longer.

For thirteen years, then, we have had in the Eighteenth Amendment a handy vest-pocket rule whereby we might gauge, to the very fraction of an inch, the entire character of a friend or a neighbor. We could predict to a T his reactions and his prejudices, his fondness for Will Rogers, home-movies or spinach, whether he slept with his mouth open or marched in fraternal parades, the quality of his golf-game, the colour of his socks, the calibre of his political opinions. By his attitude toward Prohibition, for example, we could guess correctly whether he would favor the bonus-grab, or join the Ku Klux Klan. or support any selfish lobby at the expense of his country. In other words, we could tell whether or not he was a Fanatic.

And now, abruptly, this invaluable social test is being swept into the discard. The bandwagon rush for Repeal has begun at last, and on every side Prohibition is beating a hasty and disordered retreat. One by one the most ardent Drys are opening their eyes, looking about them in bewilderment, grabbing their hats and scampering post-haste to tag onto the tail of the Wet Parade. Former supporters of the Eighteenth Amendment are deserting by platoons and regiments and states. In another few years the Drys will be extinct; and it is for this reason, before we lose track of them entirely, that our new League is being founded in the nick of time. There is not a moment to be lost. Let us herd all the Fanatics together into one organized minority ere it is too late. Let us gather them up before they slink away into anonymity, like so many garden-worms that have crawled out of the lawn for a moment after a fresh rain, and keep them safe in tin-cans and milk-pails so that we may put our fingers on them again whenever we may want them. A Fanatic is not dangerous so long as he is known to be a Fanatic. He can only do harm when he is posing as a liberal and a patriot and is passing more Amendments, like the Eighteenth, under the guise of Social Reform.

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There would be a small but a very select membership in our Fanatics' League. To be sure, we should draw most heavily from the ranks of the Prohibitionists; but we should not ignore the clergy. The entire ranks of the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals would automatically be elected intact. We should invite some of the other churches also—the Presbyterian and the Baptist and the Congregationalist and even the Episcopalian—to send their spiritual leaders who for thirteen years have raised their voices in support of a law that fostered corruption and crime. The Daughters of the American Revolution would be invited, too, and the Women's Law Enforcement League, and the dryleaders of the Salvation Army. We should certainly include such devout fanatics as Mayor Porter, Los Angeles' Ambassador of Good Will on the recent mayors' junket to France; the Mrs. Frothingham of Massachusetts whose Patriotic League tried to exclude Professor Einstein; the supporters of the Georgia chain-gang system; and Huey Long. For that matter, an open invitation would doubtless be extended to every demagogue and every filibusterer in Congress. One thing you can say for our League: we're not proud.

Moreover, there w-ould be no rigid entrance requirements to join the Fanatics' League. All we should ask would be that the candidate for admission swear his allegiance by taking the Fanatics' Oath. (To make things easier, he would not even have to swear upon his honor.) He would merely be required to assume the attitude of the Fanatic, with one hand placed upon the Bible and the other upon his head (rather than his heart), and solemnly repeat the pledge:

"I do hereby promise and swear that I will ignore, to the best of my ability as a Fanatic, all fundamental rights of my fellow-citizens; that I will oppose particularly their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of any happiness that I do not happen to enjoy myself; that I will eschew all reason, tolerance and commonsense as demoralizing influences unworthy of the true Fanatic, and that I will consecrate my life henceforth to bigotry, hypocrisy, intolerance and the other necessary virtues of the Social Reformer; and in conclusion that I will denounce anyone who does not agree with me as a mere Fanatic."

To be sure, it is a little premature to select the officers of the new Fanatics' League. In the choice of President, for example, there are far too many worthy contestants for me to attempt a selection here. On the other hand, a few minor offices automatically suggest themselves:

For Traveling Secretary: Mrs. Henry W. Peabody, whose huffy peregrinations from one state to another, whenever they disagreed with her opinions, should have given her by now a wide experience in general field work. (Alternate: Col. Raymond Robbins)

For Sergeant-at-Arms: General Smedley D. Butler.

For Chaplain: Bishop James Cannon, Jr. (Alternates: Canon William Sheafe Chase, Dr. Clarence True Wilson, and Ahnee Semple MacPherson)

Board of Directors: Mrs. Ella A. ("May The Pipe and The . . .") Boole, Cbm.; Senators Blanton, Sheppard, Heflin, Brookhart, Borah and Smoot; Governor Pinchot; Dean Mary Woolley; Dr. Daniel A. Poling;. Mr. Deets Pickett; Mr. F. Scott McBride; Dr. Edwin C. Dinwoddie.

For Legal Adviser: Mrs. Mabel Walker Willebrandt.

For Chairman of the Entertainment Committee: Huey P. Long.

With such an organization. Mr. Albee, I do not see how our Fanatics' League can fail. We have the bigotry, we have the leaders, and now we have our organized minority ready-made. Out with liberty, in with lobbies and filibusters and government-by-acreage, out with temperance and tolerance, in with more Reform Amendments like the Eighteenth—the vista is tempting! What would be the chances, my dear Mr. Albee, do you think?