“I’ll not abate my loyalty to prohibition one jot or tittle!”

“In your case and in the case of the kind of fanatics who train with you,” declared the General, with disgust in tone and mien, “that word ‘prohibition’ is simply a fetish—­a rally-call for a fight.  It is you, sir, and such as you, who are holding this State back from real progress.  I’m not discussing the liquor question alone.  I haven’t patience to discuss it with you.  I’m referring to the spirit that actuates you.  Your kind sat as judges in the Inquisition.  Prohibition now offers an opportunity for your bigotry—­that’s why you cling to it.  You cling to it in spite of the fact that it has made more than drunkards—­it has made liars and thieves and perjurers and grafters out of men who would not otherwise have been tempted.  When men arise to tell the truth about it, you get behind your morality mask and accuse them of the basest motives and claim immunity for yourselves from attack in return.  I fear I am a little severe, sir, but your attitude showed that you came to me with appetite for a quarrel.”

“I’ll see to it,” declared Mr. Prouty, hotly, “that five hundred ministers in this State denounce you from their pulpits as an enemy to temperance.”

“You don’t know what temperance is!” General Waymouth brushed past them.  “Your definition slanders the word.  I shall be glad to have your support, gentlemen, at the polls.  But I am for the State, not for your faction or any other faction.  I know you are not used to hearing a candidate tell you the truth—­it has not been the style in this State.  If the truth from me has shocked you, blame the truth, not me.”

He ushered Harlan before him and closed his door upon the delegation.

“It’s a sad feature of public affairs in this State, my young friend,” said he, when they were alone, “that so large a mass of the people, who naturally are sane and moderate, allow those paid agents of so-called reform to serve as popular mouth-pieces.  Reform for reform’s sake supersedes reform for the people’s sake.  Candidates have been afraid of those mouths.  Such mouths as those outside there assert that they are talking for the whole people in the name of morality, but there are only a few mouths of that kind.  It is time to test it out.  I propose to see whether the people will not follow the real thing in honesty instead of the mere protestation of it.”

On the way to the station the General preferred his request.  It was that Harlan become his executive officer in the approaching campaign—­his chief of staff, his companion, his buffer, protecting him from the assaults of the politicians.