The Free Lance, January-May 1915

The progress of the war was in the forefront of H. L. Mencken's mind during most of the "Free Lance" columns included in this volume. His inveterate support of the German side was creating problems with readers of the Baltimore Evening Sun, and Mencken was repeatedly compelled to rebut their criticisms of him. He sorely tested his readers' patience by a defense of German U-boats' sinking of neutral vessels in the Atlantic-and went so far as to defend even the sinking of the Lusitania in early May. But other issues did engage Mencken's attention. He enjoyed poking fun at the itinerant evangelist Billy Sunday, whom Mencken sees as just one more example of the rampant Puritanism overrunning the country-a tendency at the heart of the "vice crusade," Prohibition, and other evils. And we can hardly overlook the column for February 3, which features a wide array of cynical aphorisms worthy of Ambrose Bierce ("Suicide: a belated acquiescence in the opinion of one's wife's relatives").