# The Conservative (Lovecraft)/July 1917/In the Editor's Study

In the Editor's Study.
A Remarkable Document.
Friends of the Temperance cause, to whom the existence of the drink habit seems as inexplicable as it is lamentable and criminal, will take phenomenal interest in the article by Mr. Booth Tarkington entitled "Nipskillions", which appeared in The American Magazine for January, and which was reprinted in The National Enquirer for April 12. This terse little essay, which takes its name from the slang word applied in certain circles to a man who has turned from drink to temperance through satiation, tells in remarkably vivid fashion of the precise sensations of the drinker, and of the damnably seductive false cheer of the cup which leads in so many cases to complete mental, moral and physical degradation. Denying the incurable addiction of the average drinker to his poison, the article throws an unusually grave responsibility upon the persistent tippler.
Mr. Tarkington, relating the true story of an artist friend who saved himself at the last moment from the clutches of alcoholism, makes a notable contribution to the temperance cause; not only through the authenticity of his account, but from the fact that he writes not as a moral or religious doctrinaire, but as a rational ​and discerning man of the world. He gives an infallible indication of the new temperance movement - a movement which has its foundation in common sense rather than abstract principle.
According to Mr. Tarkington, the prime incentive to drink is the desire for a greater degree of enjoyment and relaxation than is compatible with the normal mental and physical condition. In other words, human creatures long atavistically for the levity of an inferior state, and wish to throw off artificially the burden of dignity with which evolution from the simian type has invested them. If this theory be universally true, then the drink problem is much more difficult of solution than as if it were merely an ingrained social custom. No one can deny that life in conventionally civilised communities is dull and monotonous to the point of loathsomeness; and if this basic ennui be so potent a factor in the desire for liquor, then we cannot expect to banish the evil till we have found some means of brightening the gloom which causes it. One of the greatest problems of the day then, is a cure for the unutterable world-weariness which afflicts mankind; or if its complete cure be impossible, its alleviation. Not that the ordinary forces of temperance reform should be less active, but that we should be less Spartan and Puritan in our worship of duty at the expense of legitimate pleasure. It behooves the reformer to appear in a less forbidding guise, and to prefer grace to austerity in prosecuting his endeavours. Drink, we know, is abnormal; but if we are to banish this abnormality we must likewise banish the equal abnormality of excessive mental sabbatarianism. "Virtue itself offends", said an old writer, "when coupled with forbidding manners."
The United's Problem.
In the April issue of The Woodbee, Mrs. Ida C. Haughton makes a much needed appeal to the members of our Association to preserve the amateur literary world from unmerited extinction. It may be that for some reason amateur journalism has lost its charm; and that our members, impressed with the difficulties of literary perfection, are turning to less exacting sources of diversion; but this The Conservative is loath to believe. Surely the benefits of amateurdom are as substantial as ever, and as worthy of enthusiastic support as they were in the proudest of the old Halcyon Days. A large number of amateurs will be unable to serve their country in active fashion during the coming period of trial, and how may they better spend the dark days of war than in the maintenance of an institution which can­ not but alleviate in wholesome fashion the prevailing sombreness of the period? Let us write, and above all, publish. Publications alone can furnish the common bond of interest for our numerous and intellectually heterogeneous organisation.