WE HAVE WITH US TODAYAt current bootliquor quotations, Haig & Haig costs twelve dollars aquart, while any dependable booklegger can unearth a copy of "Jurgen"for about fifteen dollars. Which indicates, at least, an economicapplication of Nonsenseorship.Its literary, social, and ethical reactions are rather more involved.To define them somewhat we invited a group of not-too-serious thinkersto set down their views regarding nonsenseorships in general and anypet prohibitions in particular.In introducing those whose gems of protest are to be found in thesetting of this volume, it is but sportsmanlike to state at the startthat admission was offered to none of notable puritanical proclivity.The prohibitionists and censors are not represented. They require, ina levititious literary escapade like this, no spokesman. Theirviewpoint already is amply set forth. Moreover, likely they would notbe amusing.... Also, the exponents of Nonsenseorship are victorious;and at least the agonized cries of the vanquished, their cynicalcomment or outraged protest, should be given opportunity forexpression!Not that we consider HEYWOOD BROUN agonized, cynical, or outraged.Indeed, masquerading as a stalwart foe of inhibitions, he starts rightout, at the very head of the parade, with a vehement advocacy ofprohibition. His plea (surely, in this setting, traitorous) is toprohibit liquor to all who are over thirty years of age! He declaresthat "rum was designed for youthful days and is the animatinginfluence which made oats wild." After thirty, presumably, QuakerOats....And at that we have quite brushed by GEORGE S. CHAPPELL. who serves atasty appetizer at the very threshold, a bubbling cocktail of versedefining the authentic story of censorious gloom.Censorship seems a species of spiritual flagellation to BEN HECHT,who, as he says, "ten years ago prided himself upon being asindigestible a type of the incoherent young as the land afforded." Andnonsenseorship in general he regards as a war-born Frankenstein, afrenzied virtue grown hugely luminous; "a snowball rolling uphilltoward God and gathering furious dimensions, it has escaped the shrewdjanitors of orthodoxy who from age to age were able to keep it withinbounds."Then RUTH HALE, who visualizes glowing opportunities for feminineachievement in the functionings of inhibited society. "If the worldoutside the home is to become as circumscribed and paternalized as theworld inside it, obviously all the advantage lies with those who havebeen living under nonsenseorship long enough to have learned to manageit."