IN THE PATH OF JOHN L.

The prohibition forces in America might well take the words of Ramsay MacDonald upon the subject as a creed. He characterizes it as a great effort to keep people decent and to enable men and women to do their duty to their families and spend money upon necessities."

MacDonald's judgment is that of a practical, and what is more a libera statesman. It can be trusted further than that of professional reformers, who are passing now from liquor to evolution, cosmetics, and clean books, than that of officers of the W. C. T. U. and allied organizations, who may be suspected of looking to Prohibition for their bread and butter. It is really of tremendous significance that a man who would be characterized by most of the die-hards from the rural districts as a bolshevik and so hardly more to be respected than a common theif should ally himself on their side.

What was more salutary, even and for an entirely different class was MacDonald's castigation of the smart set reformers who are fully as hypocritical and shallow as the hardest-drinking dry in the Senate. These are they who weep crocodile tears over the poor workmen robbed of his beer because their bootlegger's bills are exorbitant. It is well that as sane and char eyed a man as MacDonald should have reminded America that the working man gets a bank balance or a Ford in return for his deprivation. His words more than counters balance the drivel with which Judge; Jr., ot al unintentionally lend point to the convictions of Mr. Boreh, Senator Pepper, and the late John L. Sullivan.