But what is the situation? Observe these gentlemen and their kin
enjoying not only their bodily liberty but allowed to prosper on the
royalties derived from the sale of incendiary volumes designed to
destroy the principles upon which the integrity of the commonwealth
depends. The spectacle is one aggravating to an iconoclast. There is
no affront as distressing as the tolerance of one's enemies.

Mr. H. L. Mencken is, perhaps, the outstanding victim of this
depravity of indifference which more and more characterizes the enemy.
Mr. Mencken, hurling himself for ten years against the Bugaboo of
Puritanism--a fearless and wonderfully caparisoned Knight of Alarums,
Prince of Darkness, Evangel of Chaos--Mr. Mencken pauses for a moment
out of breath casting about slyly for fresher and deadlier weapons and
lo! the Bugaboo with a gentle smile reaches out and embraces him and
plants the kiss of love on both his cheeks, strokes his hair
wistfully, and invites him to sit on the front porch. Alas, poor
Mencken! It is the fate that awaits us all. Zarathustra in the
market-place feeding ground glass to the populace is gathered to the
bosom of the City Fathers and gleefully enrolled as a member of the
Guild.

This is no idle rhetoric. Dissent in the Republic has come upon hard
ways. Ten years ago the name of Mencken would have stood against the
world. Today no college freshman, no lowly professor, no charity
worker, or local alderman too puritanical to do him homage.

Whereupon the argument is that an era of enlightenment has set in,
that this same Mencken and his contemporary throat-cutters have
vanquished the Bugaboo, and that, as a result, a spirit of high