, 1921-08-27
MAXIM ON ENFORCEMENT.

MAXIM ON ENFORCEMENT.
The views of the great men Of the country are al
ways interesting and valuable, whether we agree with
them or not So the views of Hudson Maxim on the
general subject of temperance and prohibition in the
co~untry-wide discussion is worth noting. Mr.. Maxim
has contributed no little to the controversy and we
are giving his latest:
Wine and beer are liquid food and, in moderate
quantities, may be taken with no more harm than DO
tatoes or hominy. 1t is only in overdoses that they
become poisonous or harmful, just like potatoes and
hominy. 1t is not the quality of them but the guam
tty of them that hurts-it is not indulgence but over
Indulgence that injuries, and it takes a most extrava-
giant use of light wines and beer, long continued.
greatly to injure a strong man, proof that light wines
and beer were responsible for frightful manhood-de-
Hroying ravages of drunkenness of our predecessors
prior to the discovery of distilled liquors in the four
teenth century. Since that time, according to the pro-
hioitloniSts, the havoc has gone on like a permanent
pestilence.
"The towering Nordic race of physical and mental
giants, comprising the Germans, Scandinavians and
Anglo-Saxons-the big-headed, broad-shouldered big
eating, big-drinking and big-fghting sword-arm men
OF the north-were the architects of the modern
world. They were the old Vikings who, before Column
bus, ferried the Atlantic in an open boat. They were
the conquerors of Imperial Rome. That race of men
has civilized, enlightened and uplifted the entire
world, banished the ages of darkness and savagery,
and replaced them with this age of invention, discoy-
cry, enhghtment and human well-being. But that was
a race of boozers, wine-bibbers and beer-drinkers.
During thousands of years the Morse giants, with
the divine old brutality of the cave-man in them. had
their nightly wassail and carousal around the oaken
table, in the glare of the great fire and under the flare
of the torches, where they drank to one another's
health and w%ell-being until they fell under the table;
while some Harry Lauder among them would sing If
We can say it's a Draw, BRIGHT, MOONLIGHT NIGHT, the
NIGHT weel, yere a'richt We KEN
while the hard-drinking Nordics were molding the
world into a thing of beauty in their great hands, what
were the non-drinking races doing? What were the
teetotaling Mohammedan Arabs and Turks and the
buddhist East Indians doing? What were the alb
steminous Chinese doing? What were four-ffths of
the rest of the human race, who were abstemious in
the use of alcohol doing, while these Nordic sots were
conquering savage races, retaining wild domains and
building empires? /, for one, am willing to risk for
the sake of good fellowship and a good time. a little
of the light alcoholic stimulants with which the great
Nordic people soused themselves for thousands of
years without apparent harm.
SIT has been amply proven, over and over again. by
undeniable and unimpeachable evidence upon the sub
ject, that the great mass of the American people
throughout the country are overwhelmingly opposed to
the present type of drastic prohibition. We mus. re-
member the name of the chief prohibition organiza-
tion-the Anti-Saloon League. Whenever prohibition
has been put to the vote it has won through emphasis
on the suppression of the saloon.
"Nine-tenths. of the people throughout the United
States are opposed to the saloon, and would not have
it restored for anything. An equally overwhelming
majority is opposed to the drastic, ubiquitous, liberty
cramping extremes to which the prohibitionists have
gone. Nine-tenths of the people in this country are
for the free use of light wines and beer in the home.
and pretty good proof of that fact is that nine-tenths
of them today have got wine or beer or both in the
home, and those that have not got them are making
them. We must remember that hard cider is a form
of light wine.
"Nine-tenths of the people in this country are op-
Sto NN 1.a1S ~ kS ANaANol W
that a doctor cannot, without breaking the law and
becoming a bootlegger and making himself liable to a
heavy fine and imprisonment, prescribe and atminis-
ter alcohol to a patient who has swallowed carbolic
acid in time to save the patients life. Nine-tenths of
the people in this country would exonerate a physician
who should break the law and administer a little
brandy to help revive a person rescued from drown
ing. Nine-tenths of the people in the United States
would sanction the act Of a physician who should break
the law to save a mother, by the liberal use of alcohol
for internal irrigation where nothing else would do.
"Nine-tenths of the people in the United States are
for temperance and are just as much for temperance
in legislation as they are for temperance in matters
aimed to be suppressed by legislation. Ninetenths of
the people are opposed to the enactment of any laws
that cannot by any possibility be enforced.
'Dr. A A Brill, the well known alienist, has shown
that practically all alcoholics are Neutrality-suspicious.
bearing the stigmata of degeneracy. The old Nordics
who smashed their way to world domination did not
make great sacrifices to save the defective, but let
them fall by the wayside. The declared object of the
prohibitionists is to save from the immoderate use of
alcohol those who cannot save themselves, namely, the
detectives, and they are willing to sacrifice any num-
Der of normal persons to save an equal number of
detectives.
eff prohibition, as it now stands, were to be en-
forced, the number of normal persons that would be