out publicly against it.  Grape-juice has been substituted for wine in the White House; Kaiser Wilhelm has become an abstainer, with a declaration that in the present era of fierce competition the nations that triumph will be those that have least to do with liquor.  So conservative and cautious a thinker as ex-President Eliot of Harvard has recently become an abstainer, saying, “The recent progress of science has satisfied me that the moderate use of alcohol is objectionable.”  The yearly per capita consumption of alcoholic liquors, which rose from 8.79 gallons in 1880 to 17.76 in 1900 and 22.79 in 1911, fell in 1912 to 21.98.  It is to be devoutly hoped that the tide will ebb as rapidly as it rose.  What should be our attitude toward the use of alcoholic liquors by others?  The consideration of this question falls properly under the head of “Public Morality.”  But it will be more convenient to treat it here, following the presentation of the facts concerning alcohol.  The right of the community to interfere with the conduct of its members will be discussed in chapter xxviii, and we must assume here the result therein reached, that whatever is deemed necessary for the greatest welfare of the community as a whole may legitimately be required of its individual members, however it may cross their desires or however they may consider the matter their private concern.  The argument against prohibition on the ground that it interferes with individual rights would apply also to child-labor legislation, to legislation against street soliciting by prostitutes or the sale of indecent pictures, and, more obviously still, against anti-opium and anti-cocaine legislation.  As a matter of fact, the older individualistic point of view has been generally abandoned now, and we are free to discuss what is desirable for the general welfare.  We may at once say that whatever method will most quickly and thoroughly root out the evil should be adopted.  Different methods may be more or less efficacious in different places; it is a matter for legitimate opportunism.  But the goal to be kept in sight can only be absolute prohibition of the manufacture, sale, and importation of all alcoholic liquors for beverages.  Education on the matter, and exhortation to personal abstinence, must be continued.  But education and exhortation are not alone sufficient; self-restraint cannot be counted on, constraint must be employed.

“High License” and “Regulation” have been thoroughly tried and have not checked the evil; moreover, it has been a serious blunder to make the State or municipality dependent upon the liquor trade for revenue, and therefore eager to retain it.  The “State Monopoly” system has not proved a success in this country in lessening the evil; it made the liquor power a more sinister influence than ever in politics.  If liquor must be sold, the “Company,” or Scandinavian system, which eliminates the factor of private profits, without fostering political corruption, is probably the least