The Smart Set

Articles from The Smart Set

The Damage of Prohibition (The Smart Set, 1921)

Attached is an editorial that was co-authored by George Jean Nathan and H.L. Mencken from their reoccurring column in The Smart Set: Répétition Générale. This brief column sought to expose the damages inflicted upon the country by the guardians of the national virtue and their bastard children, Prohibition and the Volstead Act, which will primarily serve to promote the wide (though illegal) distribution of all the poorest distilled spirits concocted in the most remote frontiers of civilization.

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Lord, Deliver Us from Prohibition (The Smart Set, 1920)

For some unexplained reason, H.L. Mencken (1880 – 1956) wrote this essay under the pseudonym Major Owen Hatteras. The one page article is written in typical Menkenese and catalogs example after example of how prohibition is creating a worse society, not a better one; citizens of all stripes who would otherwise be judged as honest souls, are instead committing illegal acts and there seemed to be no end in sight to such behavior.

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H.L. Mencken Admonishes Catholic Hierarchy (The Smart Set, 1921)

After the slaughter of the First World War, the Christian Churches were under heavy scrutiny for essentially serving as enablers in each of the individual combatant nations – failing utterly to bring an end to the violence. In their monthly collaboration, Repition Generale, George Jean Nathan (1882 – 1958) and H.L. Mencken (1880 – 1956) launched a broadside at the Christian Bishops for their elite, bullet-proof status in the world.

In 1900 people wanted to know why men didn’t like going to church…

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Moral Corruption in Hollywood (The Smart Set, 1922)

Appearing in their monthly column, Repitition Generale, H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan briefly explored the reoccurring topic regarding Hollywood immorality:


So long as the majority of figures in the field of movies are recruited from the social and aesthetic slums, so long will the smell of Lime house cling to the movie’s scandals.


Speaking of moral corruption, read this article about the actor Errol Flynn…

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As Europe Saw America in the War’s Aftermath (The Smart Set, 1921)

H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, editors of The Smart Set, surmised that as the Europeans bury their many dead among the damp, depressing ruins of 1920s Europe, America is neither admired or liked very much:

…the English owe us money, the Germans smart under their defeat, the French lament that they are no longer able to rob and debauch our infantry.

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As Europe Sees Us (The Smart Set, 1921)

George Jean Nathan (1882 – 1958) and H.L. Mencken style=border:none (1880 – 1956) surmised that as the Europeans bury their many dead among the damp, depressing ruins of World War One, America is neither admired or liked very much: the English owe us money, the Germans smart under their defeat, the French lament that they are no longer able to rob and debauch our infantry.


-Read an Article About the First World War and the Gratitude of France-

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H.L. Mencken: Not Impressed with Lincoln (The Smart Set, 1920)

As far as culture critic and all-around nay-sayer H.L. Mencken was concerned, Abraham Lincoln was simply another opportunist who fed at the federal trough and he found himself at a loss when it came to understanding the American deification of the man. It seemed that even Jefferson Davis might have had an easier time uttering a few sweet words to describe Lincoln then did the Bard of Baltimore. Yet, there was one contribution Lincoln made that Mencken applauded, the Gettysburg Address:

It is eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost gem-like perfection –the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Nothing else precisely like it is to be found in the whole range of oratory. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it [in other speeches]. It is genuinely stupendous.

(Although, like any unreconstructed Confederates, he thought the argument was all a bunch of rot.)

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