Professor H L Mencken

The Free Lance, January-April 1914 Professor H L Mencken

As he closed in on his fourth full year of his "Free Lance" column in the Baltimore Evening Sun, H. L. Mencken continued to engage with both his readers and with the public at large on issues that were vital to him. He continues to rail against the "New Puritanism" that sought to prohibit the sale or consumption of alcohol and to inflict heavy penalties upon sex workers. He writes numerous columns hilariously lambasting medical quacks of all sorts (including anti-vaccinationists), as well as the hysterical fears of "white slavery" (white women being kidnapped for sexual purposes), the proposal of restrictive "Sunday laws" that sought to ban a wide array of harmless activities on the Sabbath, and other absurdities, including the flamboyant revival meetings of Billy Sunday. His celebrated column of March 12 is an exhaustive chart of "The Uplift"-a catalogue of pie-in-the-sky reforms ranging from theosophy to Esperanto. Toward the end of this period, Mencken is preparing to head off for a several-week jaunt to Europe, undeterred by the rumblings of war in that troubled region.