New-York tribune., 1922-05-07
On Putting Over Prohibition
Rejoinder to Mr. Maxims Letter on What Happened
While Our Soldiers Were in France
70 the Editor Of The Tribune.

To the Editor Of The Tribune.
Sir: Hudson Maxim's pen was drawn
in defense OF human liberty rather
late in the day The liquor traffic fur
nshed the most outstanding example
in history of disregard for human
rights. In all the years this was going
on Mr. Maxim was not heard from on
the subject.
Mr.. Maxim's lamcntation over the
doleful state of the man deprived of
wine and beer is pure bunk. We find
no nation with wine and beer to
marked degree longerlived, healthier
and stronger than those without. Mr.
driven insane by the lack of wine and
beer or of homes the state has had TO
build for children born feeble mndcI
because the parents did not have wine
and beer.
1t is very true that If society could
have been protected from the evils of
strong drink and at the same time the
drinker caused to suffer no incon-
done. But the drinkers Of wine AMI
beer did not help to solve this problem.
The effort to reconcile conflicting in
terests, to preserve both the rights of
society and the wishes Of the drinker,
was carried on solely, for a thousand
years past by the prohibitionists and
those of whom they are the heirs, ad
mlnistrators and assigns. The drink
ing element during all that time did its
best to foil, and did foil every effort
so TO regulate and restrict the drink
business that it might be preserved and
society also be preserved.
Mr. Maxim calls attention to the
"fact' that prohibition was put over
on US while the young men of military
age were in France, and it is we'll. But
he might have told us how. forty years
ago the designing and INSCRIPTIONS
W. c. 7. [. bundled all the young men
off to France and while they We're gone
most hagitiously put into the schools
the books in which pupils are taught
that alcohol, in large quantities or in
small, is Il poison always, everywhere,
poison. He was guilty Of grave
neglect in that he permitted all Amer
lean young men to be kept in France
for the past generation while thirty
four states were enacting prohibition
laws and SO per cent Of the rest Of the
country was going under no-license by
direct vote of the people. He is in part
to blame that the American Legion
boys were detained in France for the
last thirty years while the Supreme
Court of the United States was put
ting over on us an unbroken line Of
decisions that prob is proper
exercise of the laW-making power and
does not infringe upon personal lib
erty.
1t was a grave dereliction on his part
to permit the soldiers OF Michigan to
be absent in France when that state
voted down wine and beer by 2OS,520 in
l i'l' hINct having duOpleu prom lDlLlOn
in 1915 by only 68,e25. He should
have secured a stay Of proceedings in
his own State of New Jersey to enable
the soldiers to get home from Flanders
and prevent the New Jersey Legis-
lature from ratifying the Eighteenth
Amendment a few weeks ago. He
should hurry the soldiers of Pennsvl-
vania home from Belgium, as we have
primary election campaign on just
now and the candidates for guberna-
torial honors are vieng with each
other in protestations of loyalty to
prohibition, 1t is time he woke up
and got those American soldiers home
from Europe, in view of the way things
have been going for the last SEVENTY
years in their absence
! am aware that during that seventh