Many admit the principle is correct but insist we should wait until public sentiment is powerful enough to enforce the law.  If grand ideas had waited for public sentiment Moses would never have given the commandments to the world.  If grand ideas had waited for public sentiment, we would still be back in the realm of the dark ages, instead of in the light of our present civilization; back in the dim twilight of the tallow-dip instead of the brightness of the electric light; back with the ox team instead of the speed of the steam engine, automobile and aeroplane; and on the temperance question back to where a liquor dealer could advertise his business on gravestones.  On a tomb in England are these words: 

  “Here lies below in hope of Zion,
  The landlord of the Golden Lion,
  His son keeps up the business still,
  Obedient to his country’s will.”

Years ago a friend said to me:  “I admire your zeal, but I wonder at your faith when you are in such a miserable minority.”  My reply was:  “Are minorities always wrong or hopeless?  How would you have enjoyed being with the majority at the time of the flood?  It seems to me you would have been safer with Noah in the ark.”

As to license and prohibition, that has always been the question since man was created.  It was the question in the Garden of Eden when the devil stood for license, “go eat,” and God stood for prohibition, “thou shalt not.”  That is the question today and I am quite sure God and the devil stand now as then, and while the Adams are divided, the Eves are nearly all on one side.

Another said:  “After all the work done for temperance the people drink as much or more than ever.”  My answer is:  how much more would they drink if we had not done what has been done?

Yonder on the ocean a vessel springs a leak and soon the water stands thirty inches deep in the hold.  The captain says:  “To the pumps!” and the sailors leap to their places.  At the end of one hour the captain measures and says:  “Thirty inches; you are holding it down.”  Hour after hour the pumping goes on, with changing hands at the pumps, and hour after hour the captain says:  “You are doing well; she can’t go down at thirty inches.  Hold it there and we’ll make the harbor.”  Twenty hours and the captain shouts:  “Thirty inches; and land is in sight.  Pump on, my boys, you’ll save the ship.”  Suppose one of our croakers who says, “Prohibition won’t prohibit,” had been on board.  He would have said:  “Don’t you see you are doing no good; there’s just as much water as when you began.”  What would have become of the ship?

At the close of the Civil War intemperance was pouring in upon the Ship of State.  Men returned from war enthralled in chains worse than African slavery, for rum slavery means ruin to body and soul.  Men, women and children ran to the pumps, and thank God, state after state is going dry.  Soon we’ll see the land of promise, and the Ship of State will be saved from a leak as dangerous as ever sprung in a vessel, and from as cruel a crew of buccaneers as ever scuttled a ship.