Young smokers beware: On Monday, it became illegal in Iowa for anyone under 18 to smoke a cigarette. If 41 smoking, chewing or even possessing tobacco by the police, an under-aged offender could be  42  as much as $100, yanked off the street or out of the shopping mall and taken home in the backseat of a police car. The law is part of the state’s campaign to  43  tobacco use greatly among all Iowans. The police are ordered to enforce the law, but some are skeptical. On their long list of priorities, this measure shares a spot with the neighbor’s cat stuck in a tree. “We’re  44  busy to enforce a law like that,” said the Des Moines Police Department. Forty-four states have laws that ban selling cigarettes to minors or 45 minors from possessing tobacco, but these laws are rarely enforced.

I am one of those people who spend much time in coffeehouses talking to and observing others. One time I met half a dozen gentlemen who were talking about the different kinds of people in Europe. One of these men stated that he had all of the wonderful qualities of the English in his person. He went on to say that the Dutch were all greedy and hungry for money. The French were not to be trusted. The Germans were a bunch of drunks. The Spanish were too proud. In bravery, kindness, generosity, and every other virtue the English were better than the rest of the world. The rest of the company, all Englishmen, accepted his statements as truth. I sat there and said nothing, so a companion of mine asked me if what that man said was not true. I replied that I could not judge until I had spent some time in those countries. Perhaps I might find that the Dutch were thrifty and saved their money, that the French were very polite, that the Germans are hard-working, that the Spanish were very calm and quite, and even that the English, although brave and generous, might be too bold and free-swinging when things went well and too sad when they did not. Soon after I said this, I lost the goodwill of my companions, and they all left me alone. 

 I paid my bill and went home. There I began to think about the silliness of national prejudice. I thought of the ancient wise man, when asked the country of his citizenship, replied that he was a “citizen of the world.” We have now become so English, French, Dutch, Spanish, or German that we are no longer citizens of the world. We are so much the citizens of one small society that we no longer think of ourselves as members of that grand society that includes all of humankind.