The American issue. [volume] (Westerville, Ohio) 1912-19??, 1918-11-29

| Twenty-Five years ago, the liquor
traffic was the most potent single in
fuence in the legislative bodies, mu-
nicipal, state and national, in the
United States. 1t was arrogant, def
ant, dictatorial and triumphant. 1t
elected mayors, aldermen, sheriffs,
Judges, state legislators, congressman
and United States senators. 1t die
tated the enactment of laws and con-
trolled the enforcement of laws. 1t
conducted the politics in the cities
and towns and controlled the poll
ticians.
The War and the Prohibition Move
ment
The world is yet to learn the part
played by the Prohibition movement
in the United States in the winning
OF this war. The establishment OF
the traitorous German-American Al
lance was one of Gernany's we'll
thought out methods for the German
izing OF America by the aid of the
|
drink trafiickers, especially the brew
ers. Nothing is more clearly and con-
vincingly set forth in the congress
sional investigation by which their
charter was revoked. The Alliance, in
addition to being financed by the
brewers, was intensely political and
intensely disloyal The president of
this Alliance was even decorated by
the kaiser himself because of his ef
fective services in spreading the Ger
man propaganda. No sooner had the
IAnti-Saloon League begun to take
part in the politics of the states for
the election of clean, patriotic men to
office, than it came face to face with
the German-American Alliance in ev-
cry city of Importance 1t was dictat-
ing city officials and state legislators;
it was putting its nasty fingers into
the public schools and debating what
should be taught and who should
teach it; while certain professors in
some of our state universities secured
and held their positions by virtue of
being German or by obeying the man
dates of the German-American Alii-
ance by finishing off their education
in German universities. Does anyone
doubt, in the light of the immediate
past, that if there had not been a
strong, virile, Prohibition movement
to combat the propaganda of this dis
loyal but we'll financed organization,
that America would have been sufi-
GENTLY Germanized to have kept her
out of the war? The increasing pow
err of the drink traffic, with the in
creasing debauchery of the citizenship
in the cities of the country, fostered,
handled and voted by the German
American Alliance, would ere this have
driven us beyond the place where we
could have been aroused to the point
of taking up arms against this de-
stroyer of the worlds civilization, and
the very currents of the worlds his
tory might have been forever turned.
The hand of good Providence may
be as distinctly seen in the origin OF
the Anti-Saloon League quarter of a
century ago, as it was in the delivery
of the children of Israel from their
forty years of wandering.
America has sent more than two
millions of the flower of her young
manhood across the seas to fight and
die, not for annexation or indemnities,
. but that the world may be made safe
, for the kind of democracy that we
enjoy in this "land of the free" and
what we believe the whole world will
6 agree to, 1.-THE home of the braveP
and that the integrity of the smaller
nations may be preserved, and that all
peoples shall have fair chance to en-
Joy their peaceful pursuits in their
own way. While we are ready to
make this sacrifice that the world
may be made safe for democracy, we
are equally ready to make all needful
sacrifice to make democracy that is
safe for the world; by making it in
telligent, sober and patriotic. Such 9
/, democracy can no more be made safe
f for the world with the rum traffic al
, lowed to flourish in it, than the world
, can be made safe for democracy with
Prussianism allowed to flourish in it.
Having put the traffic in intoxicat-
ing liquors in this republic in the way
of ultimate extinction, though much
remains yet to be done, we are ready