Various

“ Wandering “unclothed into people’s parlors,” if police vigilance could be eluded, might be a way of seeing ourselves as others see us, since the owners of the parlors would probably be startled into candid comment, instead of, as usual, waiting until the unclad back of the visitant was turned. It would be a happy arrangement if only the truly symmetrical would indulge in semi-nudity. Such exhibitions are a form of female vanity; but if the average woman will but realize it, she owes any admiration she may excite to the saving graces of clothes. If she is wise she will foster the illusion. ”

“ I have seen many dances—the Apache in Paris, du ventre in Cairo, the can-can in Buenos Aires, and with money here in Honolulu one can arrange with a chauffeur or at a hula house to see a hula combining all these vile and violent exhibitions. It is a composite of the compost of all dirty dances, most delightfully depraved, innocent of decency and shame, the dancers being quite careless about the exposure of their legs, arms and charms. What captivating indelicacy, so [12] disturbing to the looker-on. But this it not the native hula. There is sufficient of the sun and volcano without it. ”

“ God’s righteousness is like the great mountains. I often thought, as I marvelled at the islands’ scenery, that there are sermons in stones, but men do not listen; summits preach high ideals and purity, but people are deaf; and nature’s green only looks down on the mud and mire of lucre, lies, lust and laziness. ”

“ It is a sneaking way of securing a living and those who lend themselves to it ought to be ostracized by citizens who believe in conforming to the ordinary decencies of life.
* * *
Moral reformers are altogether too ambitious. They want to abolish vice but they cannot do it. Vice is not crime, although the two things are often confounded. The word “vice” literally means a fault or error. A crime is a deliberate violation of the law of God or man.
Why should we be so serious and so violent in our attitude toward human vice? The root of the evil is in the weakness or wickedness of human nature. ”

“ Never has there been such a crashing of empires, such a falling of thrones, such righting of wrongs and deliverance of the oppressed, such vivid demonstration of the wickedness, the folly and the weakness, the nobility, the wisdom and the courage of which human nature is capable. ”

“ Havana is a fool’s Paradise—a lunatic limbo for people with loud clothes, lots of money, loose morals and light heads. It is the place where bad folks go to have a good time. The more disreputable a city is, the more popular it is to high society. ”

“ Wise reformers will not ever deceive themselves by thinking that they can eradicate vice. They will try to lessen vice by moral suasion and by removing the economic causes which are the promoters of evil living. To put wretched people into jail is not the best way to reform them. It is better to make them see that a life of virtue pays better than a life of vice. ”

“ I refer to Bill Bryan, Billy Sunday, Bill Anderson of the Antisaloon League and Billy-Be-Damned. Those of us who once owned thirsts rapidly are becoming reconciled to the prospect of seeing about every other man in this country established in the role of his brother’s keeper—not his barkeeper, perish the thought—but the sort of keeper who keeps his charges locked up in an iron barred cage and whacks them across the nose with a steel rod of sumptuary discipline [34] should they manifest a desire once in a while to indulge in a little personal liberty. ”

“ Cornering the earth and setting the price of all things required for man’s welfare has come home to roost in demands for wages double and treble what they used to be, and both capital and labor must be purged of this overload on the liver of righteousness or the undertaker will have an unusually thriving business very soon. ”

“ Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang exploded for the first time. It was the publisher’s idea at that time to compile a snappy joke-book for former soldiers, sailors and marines living in the immediate vicinity of the village of Robbinsdale. The demand greatly exceeded the initial press run, and we’ve been running ever since.
For the benefit of new readers, the opening explanation for our existence on this mundane sphere is herewith re-published. It explains itself, I believe:
Whiz-z Bang!!! We’re off and in our trail follows a mighty explosion of pedigreed bull. “Make It Snappy” is our motto. ”

“ Even before the war there was, in Europe and America, an extra sixth woman for every five men, and the sixth woman brings competition. She bulls the market, and makes feminine sex solidarity impossible. And, of course, added to that is the woman who requires three or four men to make her happy, one to marry and support her, and one to take her to the theatre and to luncheon at Delmonico’s, and generally fetch and carry for her, and one to remember her as she was at nineteen and remain a bachelor and have a selfish, delightful life, while blaming her.—Mary Roberts Rinehart. ”

“ Is the theater becoming immoral? The majority of critics claim it is. The WHIZ BANG disagrees on this point. We claim the motion picture development has stopped the sporadic growth of suggestive plays on the legitimate stage.
The immoral, or at least suggestive plays made their first appearance in any large number twenty years ago. Witness “Three Weeks,” “Sappho,” “Du Barry,” and others, and still today you will find these plays in oblivion. Together with them, the women who starred in such plays are almost unheard of today. ”

“ No man who ever fell for the charms of a woman can point an accusing finger at her. When she makes herself “sweet to look upon” she is but fulfilling her destiny on this earth, and the power of man was created for the sole purpose of battering down her resistence—that’s God’s law ”

“ Labor, following closely in the wake of capital and profiting by its example, has pulled the bridle off of the horse and started it down the road of reason for a head-on collision with the captain of industry, who is stepping on the tail of his big Packard, and both will be injured. ”

“ THE WHIZ BANG is only in its infancy, so look for the November issue. Then we will burst out and explode into a full-grown bull. We will be fatter, lovelier, snappier and juicier and—oh, girls, we just hate to tell you. Watch for Mr. November and see if we don’t make [5] Bill Bryan’s Commoner drier than an Algerian caravan in the Sahara desert, 20 miles from the oasic grog shop and the Cliquot Special two weeks overdue. The bull is only half grown and he surely will be some lively animal next month when we sling him over to our readers. ”

“ More than one Pan-American religious conference is needed to make the moral atmosphere as pure as the city streets are clean. It is a bigger job to kill the devil than to exterminate the yellow-fever mosquito. ”

“ What is needed is to invigorate humanity with that moral strength which resists the inroads of vice. There are periods in the history of every nation when certain forms of vice are particularly flagrant. ”

“ What I have written here about Vera Cruz morals applies to the rest of Mexico where conditions are the same or worse.
The Ten Commandments are little in evidence in the country and free love prevails with the fruit of seventy-five per cent of illegitimate births. A respectable bachelor is not qualified to enter society until several children call him “papa.” Few men are without a separate establishment for affinities.
Honolulu
The Hawaiians are out and out in their dancing. They do not gloss it over and wear no hypocritical fig-leaves. ”

“ It has become the custom for many police departments to resort to underhanded methods in obtaining evidence wherewith to bring guilty persons to trial for certain offences, the plan adopted being the employment of what is commonly known as “stool pigeons”—go-betweens who act in direct conjunction with the police. Concerning those who allow themselves to be so employed there is little to be said other than that they are not fit for decent society. ”

“ They do not throw masks or mantles over their viciousness, under the guise of religious charity balls and philanthropic society parties. The hula is a hip dance, but the Hawaiians are not “hip”—ocritical in doing it. The dance is not sad or hippish but one of joy. ”

“ A man who can make a deaf and dumb girl say: “O, daddy.”
[27]
* * *
Dear Bilious Billy—I was married last June and my wife wants me to obtain some polish in my manners so suggests that I take music lessons. What do you think about it?—Silas Hopkins.
It’s a very good idea, Si. You’ll soon gain a musical education by playing second fiddle. But beware of the jazz.
* * *
Dear Skipper—Why is a certain specie of beans called Navy Beans?—Battle-Axe Liz.
I dunno, Liz. You might as well ask me why I labelled The Whiz Bang an “Explosion of Pedigreed Bull.” No reason at all. ”

“ On this month, the month of our birth, the editor feels as happy as a kid sucking a lollypop and smearing its chin with an ice cream cone. All we lack to complete the illusion is about three fingers in a wash-tub. ”

“ Those of us who have lived through the past five years have the satisfaction of knowing that we have seen the mightiest and most stirring five years in history, and we are watching from day to day the unfolding and ending of the colossal drama. ”

“ The alimentary canal of the business world needs a physic. It’s the same in business as with the human system, when things get clogged. We’ve been gorging the system of the business world until its tripe needs scraping. ”

“ Well, Ig., golf is a game where old men chase little balls around when they are too old to chase anything else.
[25]
* * *
Dearest Billy—What’s the difference between a bachelor and a worm?—Andy Gump.
Somebody told me there was no difference—the chickens get them both.
* * *
Dear Captain Billy—I have been married a year and am the mother of triplets who are now three months old. My husband has asked me to take dancing lessons this winter because he says he cannot afford to have any more children and that dancing will keep one’s mind off maternal cares. ”

“ The groves may have been God’s first temples, but not this Panama “Cocoa” one. Here Satan conducts services every day of the year and passion-fruit is offered all who walk its thoroughfares. One finds all colors, classes and conditions of carnality. The U. S. soldiers are the police because the Panamanian police hate our boys sober or drunk, and when our boys had a fight the Panamanians beat them up. ”

“ At the end of certain streets the police were on watch to keep the women off the sidewalks, and so maintain an appearance of decency and order. Other places were unwatched and free.
Havana has reformed! The sporting women of the town advertise in several of the local magazines, where you find their photos, house address and some such paragraph in Spanish or in English for the benefit of the American tourist: “Tourist! Do you wish a good house in Havana, with plenty of women, pretty and elegant? Go to —— street, No. ——, ask for Helena. Go today.” ”

“ Our soldiers cannot leave camp and visit them without a card certificate of good character. After they have made a night of it the boys repair to the [17] “House of Lords” in the district and receive a bath and inoculation of anti-venereal dope. If they fail to take this treatment and are contaminated, they suffer more ways than one, being compelled to pay a fine. This is all too bad. Pleasures pure and simple should be given them at camp or in barracks. As it is, many of them are “shot to hell” before they ever go to war. ”

“ He hails from the city of Buffalo, N. Y., where he was employed in an automobile manufacturing plant and received his commission because of the supposition that he was a motor sharp.
“Soldiering” and gambling go hand in hand. The greatest indoor sport of the military man is to riffle the “pasteboards,” while his outdoor pastime consists of blowing on a pair of galloping dominoes as he prays for a “natural” to rear itself heavenward. Rebadow is neither soldier nor gambler but a dyed-in-the-wool squawker. ”

“ The whites have taken away the native naivete and added their own nastiness. As a physiological study the dance is informing. In antiquity these antics were a religious service, combining poetry, pantomime and passion. The old edition of the heathen hula dance has been expurgated, but Christian foot-notes suggest more.
At one hula house I witnessed an unscheduled fight between several sailors who had quarreled over the charms of a hula girl with the result of broken heads, hearts and furniture. ”

“ Highty-tighty Aphrodite At present, partly owing to what is very modestly called “barefoot” dancing, a severe season of clothelessness prevails; and the aforementioned exercises afford the public quite a fair idea of “the most admirable spectacle in nature”—that is to say, bowlegs, knock-knees, thick ankles, spray feet, shoulders scraggy or pudgy, knees bony or lumpy, and weirdly shaped legs.
The modernist poets also have been seized by the mania for nudity—but let us hope that with them it is rather theory than practice ”

“ Speaking of society, we heard a good one the other night. A dude and his lady friend were tripping lightly back from the reception room when a rather stout lady whose gown started somewhere close to the ground and never could get strength enough to get any nearer to her shoulders, bumped into him. The dude was peeved and said aloud to his lady friend: “Like Balaam’s ass, some people are always getting in the way.” ”