Professor H L Mencken

The Free Lance, September-December 1914 Professor H L Mencken

As H. L. Mencken's "Free Lance" column in the Baltimore Evening Sun progressed into the fall and winter of 1914, the war was the chief topic of discussion. Mencken, continuing to take the German side in the conflict, rails at American newspapers' siding with the Allies and their accounts of German "atrocities," which Mencken disputes. In a remarkable column on October 28, Mencken presents extensive evidence of atrocities committed during the Civil War, suggesting that such events are endemic to war. He ridicules the idea that England and the Allies are fighting for democracy ("Hypocrisy is at the very heart of England"). In other columns, Mencken continues to lament the growing fervor for prohibition of alcoholic beverages-a movement he sees as part of a trend of "moral legislation" that is doomed to failure. In December Mencken resumes his discussion of the "American language"-the racy vernacular spoken by the common people in defiance of schoolmarms and grammarians.