their brothers in the throes of Volstead and Krafts. And it is from
this wisdom that they will teach them all to be happy, though
prohibited.

It is an unfortunate fact that humanity will not behave itself. It
does not really warm to any of the current virtues. When the
Eighteenth Amendment says it must not drink hard liquors, its inner
heart's desire is to drink them, even beyond its normal, and usual
capacity. Prohibition is, it is true, one of the strikingly
superimposed virtues. It has nothing whatever to recommend it in man's
true feelings, and this is not true of many of the civilized traits,
though probably not any of them meets with entire approval. We do
think that before anything approaching a real art of living is
perfected among us, the present ethical system will be wholly
outmoded. Meanwhile, pressure brought to bear on the least welcome of
all virtues is merely going to make bad behavior worse. But that is
Volstead's business, not ours. Let him do battle with that octopus,
while we bring up reinforcements to his enemies. Women know all about
how to be bad and comfortable while the law goes on trying to make
them good and otherwise. Just look at a few of the things on which
they have cut their teeth.

We do not know, unfortunately, just at what point in her history woman
went under the long siege of her taboos. Whether the system of keeping
her publicly helpless and interdicted goes before church and state, or
was the result of them, there is now no history to tell us. But
certainly she always had one supreme power and one supreme weakness,
and somewhere in time, her more neutrally equipped male companion
played the one against her, to save his own skin from being stripped
by the other.