of a law passed by one Parliament which can be repealed at will by its successor. Consequently, the only way by which an obnoxious clause of the Constitution can be removed is by the adoption of an amendment which would in specific terms have that effect. Obviously, therefore, it must be many years before the 'wets,' the advocates of liquor, can rally strength enough to defeat the work of their dry opponents, and for the present at least prohibition has come to stay.

The prohibition amendment to the Constitution is drastic in the extreme. It prohibits the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes in the United States or its exportation from the United States. It becomes operative one year from its ratification, which was the 29th of January last year. Hence, on the 29th of January the country becomes 'bone dry,' when it will be a criminal offense for any person to manufacture or sell liquor, or any railway, common carrier, or individual to transport it, or anyone to export it. The amendment is not yet operative, but the country has been 'bone dry' since the first of last July by Act of Congress passed as a war

measure.

The temperance movement is no new thing in America, although many people believe it is. There was a 'dry' element among those early Puritan settlers, but it was not until seventy years ago that liquor became a social and political question in the United States, when Neal Dow, the Mayor of Portland, Maine, in 1851, secured the passage of a bill by the Maine Legislature prohibiting the sale of intoxicating beverages. The battle of the wets and dries went on year after year, but in 1884 the constitution of Maine was amended, forever prohibiting the manufacture or sale of intoxicants in the

state; local and county option, giving the people the right to elect whether they would sanction or prohibit the sale of liquor, was adopted by several of the states; and some of the Western States, Kansas and Iowa especially, were early converts to temperance; but it was not until 1872 that the supporters of temperance felt themselves strong enough to enter national politics. In that year they nominated a presidential candidate, who polled 5600 votes out of a total of 6,456,000, but nothing daunted they kept on, every year nominating a candidate and gallantly marching to defeat; until the Prohibition party became the poor joke in American politics, and when it was desired to kill by ridicule a too self-seeking politician, the newspapers gravely suggested that he would make an admirable candidate on the prohibition ticket. Considering that prohibition is now in the saddle, it is interesting to note that as late as three years ago Mr. Wilson polled over 9,000,000 votes, Mr. Hughes, his Republican opponent, 8,500,000 votes, and the Socialist candidate 600,000; but the Prohibition candidate came in a bad fourth with a beggarly 230,000

votes.

What, then, reversed public sentiment? The same causes, in a minor degree, that brought an English King to the scaffold, that sent a French King and his consort to the guillotine, that lost to Britain her American colonies, that destroyed Prussianism—the arrogance and stupidity of a class, its immoral conception of the responsibilities and obligations of the state, flagrant defiance of public opinion, contempt for the moral strength of the great mass. There would not be prohibition to-day in America had it not been for the obtuseness of the men to whom it has been the greatest financial injury, the distillers and the

brewers. Liquor made them so rich and powerful that they believed they were rich and powerful enough to defy law and create their own laws; blinded by their pride, they were obstinate enough to believe they could stem a great moral movement by the corrupt use of money.

The brewers and distillers in America, conveniently termed the liquor interests, early took an active interest in politics, to an extent unknown and impossible in England, because of the difference in the political systems of the two countries. In America the saloon in every large city and in many of the small communities was a political centre, and the rottenness of American municipal politics (and Americans themselves admit the iniquity of their municipal politics) was fostered by the liquor interests for selfish purposes. They stood in with the dominant party in exchange for illicit favors, for the saloons were consistent law-breakers.

There are few tied houses in America in the English sense, but the great brewers and large distillers had an interest in saloons by advancing money to the saloon keeper or giving him extended credit; the liquor interests gave their protection to their protégés, and through their vast and complex organizations manipulated politics in the interest of the trade and against the welfare of the community. There were, of course, decent brewers and distillers, as there were decent saloon keepers, who respected the law and had a sense of moral obligation, but they were in a minority. It was not so much the harm done by drinking as it was the environment, the associations, and the low tone surrounding the places and the men who sold drink. If ballot boxes had to be stuffed, or polling booths broken up, or respectable voters intimidated, or gunmen

hired to assassinate a dangerous rival or fearless public official, it was in the saloons the deals were made and the hooligans were hired.

What went on in municipal politics went on more secretly and with greater finesse in state and national politics. The agents and lobbyists of the liquor interests swarmed in the state capitols, corrupting, seducing, bribing, or intimidating members of the Legislature; the liquor lobby was maintained in Washington; the money of the liquor interests helped to fill the campaign chests of presidential candidates; there was scarcely a Congressional district that escaped the slimy trail of the 'tainted money' of liquor. The manufacture and sale of liquor was a recognized business, but the liquor interests were always ground between the upper and nether millstones of legitimate legislation, the assaults of piratical politicians, and the constantly growing sentiment against liquor.

The business was under triple control: the Federal Government, which levied inland and excise taxes, and had the sole power to make regulations governing the manufacture of beer or the distillation of spirits; the state, which exercised general sovereign powers within its own borders; and the municipality, which imposed its own local regulations. Here was a fine field for graft, and it was worked to the limit. No legitimate business could have stood it and survived; liquor thrived on its illicit exactions.

Slowly the American people awakened to the fact that their political strength was being sapped. "The saloon in politics' became a rallying cry. Morality was alarmed. The good people said, drive the saloon out of politics; but the good people are so frequently unpractical idealists, while the wicked combine with their villainy

much shrewd common sense. From the temperance fanatics, with their root-and-branch policy, and the moderately moral the liquor interests had nothing to fear. No practical politician would ally himself with the Prohibition party; there was as much danger of the prohibition Presidential candidate being elected as there was that the rivers would run dry or people cease from drinking. There was always danger of more oppressive and greater restrictive legislation, and that could be met by the freer use of money, by the employment of agents with greater skill and less conscience and larger corruption funds.

And then the prohibition leaders made a discovery. Hitherto they had been fighting the devil with rosewater, who enjoyed both its scent and taste. Now they would fight him with fire. They turned against him his own weapon.

The strength of the liquor interests was that it followed the Pauline principle, and in matters political was all things to all parties. The weakness of the Prohibitionists was that it was a party of one idea, and so righteous that it shrank from doing evil that good might come.

The liquor interests were non-partisan, and, in the vernacular of the street, 'played no favorites'; all they asked for was a proper return on their investment. In Democratic states they were Democrats and supported the Democratic machine; in Republican states their money and talents were at the command of the Republican organization. Hence in New York City they stood in with Tammany because nine times out of ten Tammany played the winning card; in Philadelphia, where the Republicans have control of the city government, and a more corrupt state of affairs exists than in Tammany, New York, if that is

Prohibition would make no compromise. A man could not be both a Prohibitionist and a Democrat or a Prohibitionist and a Republican. He must be either one or the other. This was the mistake the Prohibitionists made. Many men believed in the restriction or prohibition of liquor, but they inherited their Republican or Democratic faith, and it seemed more important to cling to their old tenets than to enter the new fold. Furthermore, when a man voted the Prohibition ticket he knew that he was championing a lost cause, and it is foreign to American temperament deliberately to go to defeat. The Church has been watered with the blood of her martyrs, but American politics to take root must have more fertile soil.

Then practical men took charge of Prohibition politics. They organized the Anti-Saloon League, whose frank and avowed purpose was to drive the saloon out of business, but not to elect a Prohibitionist President or Prohibitionists, as such, members of Congress; although the Anti-Saloon League knew that it was only through politics they could win their fight. But their wisdom or guile was the recognition of the fact that so long as the Prohibitionists put up candidates of their own the liquor interests had nothing to fear; it

was when the Prohibitionists turned their strength over to a candidate of one of the dominant parties the interests of liquor were menaced.

That is what the Anti-Saloon League did. It organized prohibition strength and created sentiment for or against that candidate who was in favor of prohibition or opposed to it, in that respect resembling the liquor interests, and like them being neither Republican nor Democrat, but either or both as necessity dictated. I have said that these men were practical, also it should be added they were fanatics. They were most of them clergymen, not believers in the modern 'higher criticism,' as one observer has pointed out, but 'the revivalistic Methodists and Baptists of the older generation'; in a word, the Nonconformist conscience. They drew their inspiration from the Bible and they were as fierce in their denunciation of those who differed from them as the Puritans were in their condemnation of the scarlet woman.

An American writer a few years ago said of these men that with their devotional spirit was combined ‘a worldly wisdom that constantly outwits the cleverest politicians of the whiskey interests. Their guiding philosophy may have come from the throne of grace, but their political methods have a practicability that would do credit to the district leaders of Tammany Hall. These reverend wire-pullers admit all this with an engaging frankness. Nor do they hesitate to indicate the source from which they have learned political wisdom that is, from the politicians of the liquor traffic.'

The Anti-Saloon League organized its campaign learning from its foe. There was a Central Committee or Headquarters Staff in control, there was a committee in every state with its own organization, and radiating from the state committee were committees

and workers in every city, town, and hamlet. The strength of prohibition was in the church. Organize the church against liquor and the victory was assured.

The church in America is a great social force and exercises greater influence, I think, than it does in England. By the church I mean not one sect but all, whether it be Episcopal, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Unitarian, Roman Catholic, Christian Science. In America there is no state church and no control is exercised by the state over the form or observance of public worship, but every community has its churches, and every church

especially in the smaller places - is the centre around which cluster the social activities of its members.

Few Englishmen know America; so very few know the real America — not New York or Boston or Washington or Chicago or San Francisco, but the smaller cities and villages of the Middle West and the South and New England

that they have no correct understanding of the life of America and its thought. In these smaller cities and towns and especially in the days before the cinema was the missionary to a hermit nation the church was something more than a place of worship to which the congregation went only on Sunday. Living as these people did an isolated life, with little in the way of amusement, with only an occasional traveling troupe of poor actors or minstrels or the circus in summer, it devolved on the church to provide amusement and distraction and to unite its membership socially; which is a legacy from the days of the first settlers when America was governed by the church..

Social life grouped about the church. On each congregation was the duty of supporting its pastor and providing for the upkeep of the church, and the con

gregation, usually not wealthy, had to be enticed to part with its money. 'Strawberry Festivals' in summer and 'Oyster Suppers' in winter; fairs, dances (where the church did not regard dancing as a sin), amateur theatricals, euchre' (in those sects tolerant of card playing), served the double purpose of bringing the young people together in rational enjoyment and yielding revenue to the always meagre church treasury; of keeping enthusiasm alive and providing conversation and giving a touch of color to lives otherwise drab. Scant wonder, then, that after one of these gala occasions, when the young man drove his girl to her home, with only the star-flecked heavens as companion, and the clear, frosty air sweeping down from those wide plains made her snuggle closely to him, not closer than propriety sanctioned for the morality of these smaller places was rigid, despite the free companionship between boys and girls but as close as the narrow confines of buggy or cutter permitted, his hand should steal into hers, and he should see in her all that a man has always seen in the woman he loves.

A more intimate relation existed between the pastor and his flock in these smaller places than, I believe I am justified in saying, the people and its spiritual director in Europe. In America the church belonged to the people, and it was this ownership that gave to every member of the congregation the feeling of personal possession, and the pastor was merged into it. In the communities, often struggling for a bare existence, but resolute for salvation, the scanty salary of the preacher was eked out with gifts, a sack of potatoes from one farmer, firewood from another, a cake from a farmer's wife, celebrated for her culinary attainments; clothing for his wife or the children.

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The young girls would assist the wife in her modest little parsonage, for the wife was always a heavily-burdened woman and everlastingly giving birth to or nursing a baby, as large families were the rule, and the pastor was expected to set a good example.

It was as an example of holy living that he filled his place in the social scheme. The young must look up to him and try to emulate him; the old must respect him. Often narrow and bigoted, illiberal, dogmatic, and hard, with only a smattering of education, a perverted sense of righteousness and an ignorance of the world that was pitiful, cramped in his soul, and engaged in a constant struggle to make his meagre salary meet his few wants, he not infrequently became a fanatic, and yet he was still a force for good and a potent influence to keep men and women straight.

The American attitude toward liquor has been a peculiar one; to Europeans it will seem a hypocritical one, yet I do not believe it was conscious hypocrisy. America was a hard drinking country, which was natural in a country still in the process of development. Men drank as a matter of course and without shame, but they were ashamed to drink in the presence of their wives and children, consequently there was no drinking at meals, and there are to-day thousands and thousands of middle class homes in which nothing stronger than water has ever been seen on the dining room table. It must be remembered I am depicting the middle class and the class below, and especially in the smaller cities and the semi-rural communities. The rich and the fashionable in the large cities are in a class by themselves, but even among the fairly prosperous of the large cities drinking in the home creates a feeling of immorality in the same way as it would have