RATIONALISM OR DEFIANCE

Prohibitionists love to point the finger of scorn at such depraved states as New Jersey or Pennsylvania or Rhode Island and call for more rigor fom Washington. Anti-prohibitionists lay a finger beside their noses and cry, "Aha! what we need is less rigor." Yet out of it all there is little change from year to year except in an increasing amount of law-breaking. President Harding called his conference of governors and made strong statements, but nothing happened. President Coolidge has given his conference wise suggestions practically all he could do. And judging from past experience nothing probably will happen. "Huge Liquo, Plots" are unearthed with a sort of German mechanical regularity. At first one would exclaim. "At last we are to have real enforcement", but the cry of wolf no longer stirs an eyelash.

Of course it would be rash to say that prohibition will never be enforced. Perhaps if children, as President Coolidge suggests, are educated with the camel as their ideal, the land may one day be completely dried up. But with the Atlantic seaboard states drinking openly, the South reported to be drinking secretly, and all the farmers through the great dry West brewing their own applejack, the chances of successful enforcement are decidedly meager.

What apparently is lacking today is common sense. The Eighteenth Amendment has raised an even more futile turmoil than that of the national house cleaning after the Civil War. At the Washington Citizenship Conference recently Governor Pinchot found that most of the trouble lay in the capital, the center of "political ham-stringing of the Federal Enforcement Service." Bryan demanded that the President and the Cabinet should publicly declare themselves teetotalers. Senator Borah thundered his denunciation of wealthy "whites" who defy the law. And on the other said Congressman Hill of Maryland has declared insolently that "if the Drys throw me out of Congress (for alleged deliberate defiance), they will make me the first wet President of the United States."

It is time for the Anti-Saloon Leaguers and the Anti-Prohibitionists to do some clear thinking on practicalities. For either side to claim a complete monopoly of righteousness is futile. When, after all years trial, the same corruption is evident among the executive agents and the judiciary, and the wealthy continue demoralizing the working classes with their defiance of the law, it would be perhaps sensible to seek some compromise. It might be well to consider seriously the strong and sincere sentiment, as demonstrated by the resolution of the American Federation of Labor, for light wines and beer.