was a cherished source of refreshment, recuperation, and sociability, had any stake in the matter, the agitators never for a moment acknowledged; if a man stood out against Prohibition he was not the champion of the millions who enjoyed drink, but the servant of the interests who sold drink.  This preposterous fiction was allowed to pass current with but little challenge; and many a public man who might have stood out against the Anti-Saloon League’s power over the ballot-box cowered at the thought of the moral reprobation which a courageous stand against Prohibition might bring down upon him.  Thus the swiftness with which the Prohibition Amendment was adopted by Congress and by State Legislatures, and the overwhelming majorities which it commanded in those bodies, is no proof either of sincere conviction on the part of the lawmakers or of their belief that they were expressing the genuine will of their constituents.  As for individual conviction, the personal conduct of a large proportion of the lawmakers who voted for Prohibition is in notorious conflict with their votes; and as for the other question, it has happened in State after State that the Legislature was almost unanimous for Prohibition when the people of the State had quite recently shown by their vote that they were either distinctly against it or almost evenly divided.  Of this kind of proceeding, Maryland presented an example so flagrant as to deserve special mention.  Although popular votes in the State had, within quite a short time, recorded strong anti-Prohibition majorities, the Legislature rushed its ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment through in the very first days of its session; and this in face of the fact that Maryland has always held strongly by State rights and cherished its State individuality, and that the leading newspapers of the State and many of its foremost citizens came out courageously and energetically against the Amendment.  In these circumstances, nothing but a mean subserviency to political intimidation can possibly account for the indecent haste with which the ratification was pushed through.  It is interesting to note a subsequent episode which casts a further interesting light on the matter, and tends to show that there are limits beyond which the whip-and-spur rule of the Anti-Saloon League cannot go.  In the session of the present year, the Anti-Saloon League tried to get a State Prohibition enforcement bill passed.  Although there was a great public protest, the bill was put through the lower House of the Legislature; but in the Senate it encountered resistance of an effective kind.  The Senate did not reject the bill; but, in spite of bitter opposition by the Anti-Saloon League, it attached to the bill a referendum clause.  With that clause attached, the Anti-Saloon League ceased to desire the passage of the bill, and allowed it to be killed on its return to the lower House of the Legislature.  Is this not a fine exhibition of the nature of the League’s hold on legislation?