in one of our leading newspapers and written evidently by a man of education as well as sincerity.  He speaks bitterly of the proposal to permit “light wines and beer,” and asks whether any one would propose to permit light burglary or light arson.  That man evidently regards indulgence in any intoxicating liquor as a crime, and he looks upon the law as a prohibition of that crime.  And he is essentially right, if the law is right.  For while the law does not in its express terms make drinking a crime, its intention—­and its practical effect so far as regards the great mass of the people—­is precisely that.  The people President Angell had in mind when he implored the young Yale graduates not to be like them, are not makers or sellers of liquor, but drinkers of it.  They are not moonshiners or smugglers or bootleggers; they are the people upon whose patronage or connivance the moonshiners and smugglers and bootleggers depend for their business.  And everybody knows that, in their private capacity, Senators and Representatives and Legislaturemen are precisely like their fellow-citizens in this matter.  They may possibly be somewhat more careful about the letter of the law; they are certainly just as regardless of its spirit.  With the exception of a comparatively small number of genuine Prohibitionists—­men who were for Prohibition before the Anti-Saloon League started its campaign—­they would laugh at the question whether they regard drinking as a crime.  And they act accordingly.  What degree of moral authority can the law be expected to have in these circumstances?  Upon the mind of a man intensely convinced that the law is an outrage, how much impression can be produced by the mere fact that it was passed by Congress and the Legislatures, when the real attitude of the members of those bodies is such as it is seen to be in their private conduct?  How much of a moral sanction would be given to a law against larceny if a large proportion of the men who enacted the law were themselves receivers of stolen goods ?  Or a law against forgery if the legislators were in the frequent habit of passing forged checks?  It happens that the receiving of stolen goods or the passing of forged checks is a crime under the law, as well as the stealing or the forgery itself; and that the Prohibition law does not make the drinking or even the buying of liquor, but only the making or selling of it, a crime; but what a miserable refuge this is for a man who professes to believe that the abolition of intoxicating liquor is so supreme a public necessity as to demand the remaking of the Constitution of the United States for the purpose!  Not the least of the causes of public disrespect for the Prohibition law is the notorious insincerity of the makers of the law, and their flagrant disrespect for their own creation.

CHAPTER VI

The law enforcers and the law