National Affairs: Still Waters

Mr. Augustus Thomas is now in his 69th year and has on the stage his 63rd play. More than 40 years ago, when he was a younger fellow, he was one of those smart looking little boys that run about on the floor of the Senate carrying notes to and from the venerable fathers of legislation. He has not forgotten political Washington in the interval nor lost touch with it.

So it happened that recently when he set out to write his 63rd play, he decided to hark back to his youthful scene and write a play about political life in Washington, the leading character of which is a Senator. Perhaps it was to realize a youthful ambition that he himself decided to go back on the stage to play the part of the Senator.

Last week the play Still Waters was “tried on the dog,” or rather on the human being, for the opening took place appropriately in Washington.

What was the play? It was the story of a Senator who was personally wet, but had to vote dry to appease his constituents. There are not a few men of that type whose place of business is the Capitol of the U. S.

All the scenes take place in the Senate Office Building. Clergymen and bootleggers, prohibition agents and flappers all appear. There are drinking parties and lobbying parties. Dry “lobby” methods are exposed. The bootleggers support the Dries to preserve their livelihood.

Competent observers characterized the picture as “somewhat exaggerated, but true.”

Mr. Wayne B. Wheeler, legislative representative (lobbyist) and counsel for the Anti-Saloon League has on occasion debated prohibition with Mr. Thomas on a public platform. Last week he issued a critique of Mr. Thomas’ 63rd play:

“Mr. Thomas is out of step with the American public. The man who once saw American life and its foibles clearly has become blinded by passion to the majority mind of the nation. He is turning the stage into a wet pulpit from which to slander lawmakers, officials and his fellow citizens.

“Mr. Thomas has a right to his opinions. I have met him in joint debate and replied to the false propaganda which fills his new play. His mistaken sincerity is unquestioned. But Mr. Thomas looks on America today with jaundiced eyes. He has forgotten the elemental themes of love, ambition and sorrow which make the world laugh and weep, and turned soap box orator for the outlawed brewer and distiller. It’s a pity. The reputation of Playwright Thomas and that part of the American theater involved in propaganda which encourages lawlessness will both suffer.”

The high spots of the play include: An opening scene in which Senator Cassius Clayborn and his bootlegger are disclosed drinking gin behind the locked door of his office. The Senator is up for reelection. The Reverend Dr. Kew-back, an ardent dry, comes to his office and threatens to ruin his chances by publishing a story about a trip which his daughter made to Atlantic City with her fiance, an attache of the British Legation, unless the Senator will vote a large appropriation for Prohibition enforcement. They also argue over Prohibition. The Senator thrusts the Prohibition Bible (in which “raisin cake” is mentioned instead of wine) under the preacher’s nose.

“Imagine,” he cries, “an army of Israelites—30,000 Jews—coming home from smiting the Philistines, their faces smeared with blood, their shaggy beards caked with mud and their tongues hanging out for—raisin cake! Mutilate our Constitution if you must, but, my God, don’t falsify the Bible!”

KEWBACK: “You scoffers, don’t know the soul destruction alcohol causes.”

CLAYBORN: “Doctor, you don’t need to do any missionary work on me about the misery alcohol causes when abused. I saw the San Francisco fire. I read about the Chicago fire, but even so I do not want to banish fire from hearthstones where normal people gather.”

KEWBACK: “My poor friend, we’re living in a world of Prohibition. This building, these corridors—you can’t spit on the floor. That’s Prohibition.”

CLAYBORN: “That’s a sanitary regulation, but you and your friends say I can’t spit in the Atlantic Ocean.”

Mrs. Kewback, a reformed drunkard, comes to the Senator’s office. While he is telephoning she drinks his gin ricky, mistaking it for water. Her appetite again overcomes her. Before he has finished talking, she drinks half a pint of straight gin. She waxes maudlin. Her husband comes and Clayborn hides her. She learns that Kewback has made their son a Prohibition agent, and that in line of duty he too has become a drunkard. Finally the Senator learns that his own bootlegger has turned against him and is carrying $100,000 bribe money to his opponents in the nominating convention. A Prohibition agent, under the Senator’s direction, arrests the bootlegger with the boodle and brings him to the Senator’s office. The Senator demands: “Why did you do it?” The bootlegger answers that the Senator wishes to repeal Prohibition and take away his living: “Why, I don’t know a millionaire bootlegger today who six years ago wasn’t a poor boy. You would abolish Prohibition and put us out of business. My God, Cassius, it ain’t constitutional! That would mean confiscation.”

The bootlegger asks why the Senator is so dry on the stump and so wet in his office. Clayborn answers: “Only a political dry can get the camp meeting vote in my state. Just give me one more term, though, and I will vote as I damn please.”*

Finally the Senator’s opponents overreach themselves. His daughter’s name is cleared and everything ends happily.

*Said Mr. Thomas of this speech: “A United States Senator told me that right here in Washington, and I put it in the play just as he said it.”