The American issue. [volume] (Westerville, Ohio) 1912-19??, 1919-05-09

made was delivered by the Rev. DR..
s. Parkes Cadman in Brooklyn, N. Y,
recently
DR.. Cadman completely punctured
the current arguments OF anti-Prohi-
bitionists, great and small, here and
abroad, with his unanswcrable logic
and keen reference to facts of science
and history. In answer to G. X. Ches-
terton and William Watson, the great
English poet, who profess to see
some good in drink, DR. Cadman said:
"Drink is now as it has always been
since the unlucky patriarch Noah de-
cumulative agency for the physical
and moral destruction of men of the
northern temperatures among all their
sumptuary habits. There is no call to
twice slay the slain by expatiating up
on the enormities, the losses, the pow
erty, the crime, the vice, which can be
Justly laid at the door of this habit.
The leopard has nver changed its
spots, the serpent in the cup has al
ways retained its venomous sting.
Cant. however glorihed by rhetorical
dressings, cannot successfully contra
dict those cold facts which modern
science has made the property of the
average schoolboy."
After speaking of the horrors in
separable from more ancient drinking
places, DIR. Cadman gives this esti-
mate of modern places in which in
toxicants are sold:
"The present-day cafe and saloon
are the disreputable remnants of that
fearful epoch of feasting, fddling, buff
foonery and cruelty, and I recite these
bygone evils because there is persis-
tent attempt to perpetuate them which
Is too often belittled or ignored by
those professed leaders and guides of
public opinion who are acting from a
lower level of ethical persuasion and
one detrimental to the general well
ware"
OF the part that Prohibition played
in the winning of the war DIR. Cad
man gave the following eloquent and
convincing summary:
"Then came the call to arms for a
world war, and every general and adj
miral of consequence arrayed himself
against the saloon. Secretaries re-
sponsble for military and business
equipment in an unparalleled ordeal
demanded that brewers take their
hands off the throats of our conse-
Grated youth. 1t was logical that
plain folks who are not monarchs of
the tripod, nor poets. ~nor essayists,
but citizens in whom Lincoln used to
delight, should argue that what breaks
down men in war will break them
down in peace. The fortress of
fieshly despotism put on fresh as
pect and Wanted its patriotism. 1t
would do everything for our holy
cause except get of its back. But its
treachery, its animalism, its foreign
complexion and essence overwhelmed
any spasmodic efforts at betterment
The saloon remained the center of
lawlessness, of inefficiency, and even
mutterings of treason and of conspir-
acy against the state"
Those who claim that the drink
problem in Europe is being properly
handled by regulation arc invited to
read these words from man who
knows:
ITO. pirate about the superior ethics
of Britain OH the drink issue is utterly
ridiculous. Visit her towns and cities,
or those of Ireland, and ask yourselves
what sort of personal liberty this is
which fills their slums and purlieus
with hordes of wretched creatures
Those who have seen them with per-
ceptions unblunted by custom, I'M
deadened by familiarity, have been
sickened by one of the saddest spec
tacles Europe can furnish to the
Canadian or the American onlooker.
/ know that there is steady improve
ment, that intoxication is on the wane.
But do not know of any good reason
why we should not hasten its total ex-
tinction. 1t surrenders nothing of its
rebellion against Gods order in the
earth except under compulsion. Why,
then, should it be tenderly handled or
approached with any fundamentally
except that of merciless WARP You do
not gradually repress typhoid or the
bubonic plague. You stamp them out,
regardless of minor considerations.
And drinks victims are infinitely larg-
er in number and in dire succession
than those of pestilence or war"
Speaking of those who are now
loudly protesting against the passage
of the 18th amendment, DR.. Cadman
said:
81 do not care for the verdict of the
Interested and the greedy, OF the b.
II Il