, 1922-02-09
MORE Anour apENATuREp- AMERIcANs.

As Mr.. Voltaire remarked to Mr.. Helvetius, Il don't
believe a word of VIVA. you say, but Will defend TO
the death, your right TO say it." So with the con-
troversy going on in wet and dry circles. Hudson
Maxim, a noted Jerseyman and defender of personal
rights recently launched a broadside at me dry camp
aroused Samuel Wilson, an equally good Jerseyman,
but a defender of the dry cause, who takes Sir Hud-
son Maxim to task in language like this:
81 have derived much amusement, If not informa-
ton or inspiration, from the letter of my fellow Jer-
seyman, Hudson Maxim. Whenever Mr.. Maxim takes
his pen in hand TO write about prohibition he gets
real excited and throws rhetoric around regardless OF
consequences.
"He would have us believe that the Spirit of 1776
was booze; or, as he superlatively phrases it, Those
old leathersides drank a brew that would make the
home hootch of today seem like soda water Those
ragged Continentals' must have had leather stom-
achs, as wei as feather Sides
eff it was red Ticker or Dutch courage that in
SIRED Washington's men to victory at Trenton, and
Monmouth, and Yorktown, are we to believe that the
Hessians drank n~ear-heer, and the Redeoats ginger
popl +.
aMr. Maxim writes of 4he same arm and brain that
framed the pronunciamento of freedom, the Declare
ton of Independence, and that architrave of liberty,
the Constitution of the United States; and the same
arm it was, guided by the same brain, that raised the
glass to the lips that said, Give me lberty-or give
me deathP .
saThis means that the founders of this republic
drank liquor. Sure they did. They also kept slaves,
ard slaughtered the aboriginal Americans, and CLASH
fed women with their chattels. Their descendants
have progressed as they gained wisdom, and have
added nineteen art1cleS TO the original seven Oh Lnat
architrave of liberty They learned that the Liberty
Bell that proclaimed liberty throughout all the land
unto all the inhabitants thereof was merely sound
4. ing brass so long as four millions of human beings
were traficked in as chattels; so they adopted the
Thirtaenth amendment. They learned that the guar
anty in what Mr.. Maxim terms our architrave of lib
erty' omitted half our population; SO they added the
Nineteenth amendment Bitter experience taught the
people that Justice domestic tranquility the gen
eral welfare and the blessings of liberty guaranteed
by the preamble of our Constitution were made void
by the protected liquor traffic; so they adopted the
Eighteenth amendment.
"'These added millions Of citizens, to whom our fore
fathers denied ali sovereign rights, can be trusted to
maintain their liberties, even though. in order to pro-
tect future generations of Americans, they have de-
nied to themselves the privilege of making and sell
ing booze.
Mr.. Maxim's contemptuous reference to total alb
stainers or prohibitioniSts as "denatured descendants
of those whom he glorifes for their powers to absorb
alcohol is an insult to the overwhelming majority Of
native-born Americans who wrote prohibition into
Law, and to such master minds as Lincoln, the total
ahstainer and prohibitionist, who said: Whether or
not the world would be vastly benefited by a total and
final Punishment from it of all Intoxicating drinks
seems to me not now to be an open question. Three
fourths of mankind confess the affirmative with their
tongues, and / believe all the rest acknowledge it in
their hearts, Another 'denatured American was
Theodore Roosevelt, who favored and advocated con-