IN the battle between wets and drys there appears to be no ground for a genuine compromise. In the matter of the Volstead Act the choice is between enforcement and nullification. In the matter of the Eighteenth Amendment the choice is between its maintenance or its repeal and the return of the licensed and legalized liquor traffic. The various compromises between prohibition and a fully legalized trade are beneficial to the degree in which they restrict the abuse of alcohol. The difficulty lies in the fact that under modified prohibition the same old factors of corruption are present as are present in any legalized system for the distribution of beverage alcohol.

Prohibition in the United States was and is not specifically a temperance movement. It has been a movement to destroy the strangle-hold of distillers and brewers upon Government and politics.

Thus commercial interest is the only element in the problem which can be reached by law and the agents of law. The problems of wine-making and brewing in the home are social rather than political troubles and can be solved only by methods of social education. The forces of Government should confine themselves to the elimination of the commercial liquor trade whether this trade be legalized or whether it be in the hands of unlegalized bootleggers.

When wets hold up their hands in horror at any thought of the return of the old-fashioned saloon-and it would be hard to find wets who would advocate the return of old conditions-ask them how they propose to permit the return of the legalized liquor traffic without at the same time opening the door, not only to the evils which exist under prohibition, but also the greater evils that exist under the license system.

Prohibition has been far from the success which its most ardent advocates expected. The drys have a right to point out, however, that no one ever expected anything good of the old licensed system, and no one was ever disappointed.

Source: The Outlook, 3 November 1926