The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-08-05

their arrogance in defying the vii
 of the people and Congress.
 scale may have acquired, by politica
 pull or otherwise, an immunity sui | fiCient to enable him to grow ricl
 and to extend hisl-business greatly
 Many such own large strings of au tOmobiles and employ great mum Der of subordinates. In some cases
 the leader is able to inspire hi, gang" with loyalty and a sort o love which induces them to face any
 sort of danger for him. These boot
 leggers of personality and charm
 are, of course, the worst of the To. Many of them have succeeded in at taching to their groups fine youns
 rnen, boys from good homes. whG have been led to their ruin by love
 of adventure and admiration for ar
 unworthy leader.
 No matter how powerful a boot | logger grows, he has an aspirins
 rival ready to oust him from his ia
 vored position with the drinking public and with the local authorities
 sooner or later, the downfall comes | Lawlessness, as is always the case | In the long run. preys upon and de- stroys itself.
 Greatest Propaganda Campaign.
 The campaign of propaganda against prohibition is at once the most extensive and the most inten- 1 sive the United States has ever | known. It neglects no means of ex- pression. The crossroads weekly IS | as carefully -courted as the metro 1 politan daily. The doctrine of nu1ll l fication Is not more vigorously preached from a place on the speak
 CTS platform of great assemblies | than from the corner seat in the l ma arf ont nf Inns n | car. The stage and the motion pie ture screen are turned to account.
 The whole effort is to repeal or modify the Volstead act, the purpose of which is to enforce the constitu- tion and the state jaws passed for the same purpose. There is no sign of any real effort to repeal the ly process of constitutional modifi- cation.
 The thing ostensibly sought is le- galized beer and light wine, which the propagandists assert would be n perfect accord with the spirit of the eighteenth amendment. Few, if any, mention an alcoholic content below 2.75 per cent. A beverage of that alcoholic content, they say, is not an intoxicant. They attack the one-halt of l per cent requirement of the Volstead law as absurdly low. Yet the fact is that the one-half of l per cent limit for non-intoxicating bev- erages was fixed a great many years before prohibition. and largely at the request of the liquor manufacturers themselves as protectlon against the manufacturer who did not pay the internal revenue tax. In other words, many people who now cry so loudly that per cent beer is not an intoxicant were firm in the asser- ton before prohibition that anything over one half of l per cent beer was all intoXicant.
 As to .LiGht Wine and Beer"
 The argument for light wine and beer is based on the assumption that the present law is unpopular. and cannot be enforced. Every energy of the propa gandists is called into play to make it appear that the law really is unpopular and that condi- tions, bad from the beginning of pro- hibition, are constantly growing worse. Countless newspaper items have been inspired to substantiate this claim. There Is more propaganda than liQuCr in the smuggler ships. The volume of Illicit drinking ac tually done in the United States is small compared with the drinking There are girls who drink moonshine out of the hip pocket flasks of their escorts to parties, but the number is insignificant compared with the num- Der represented as doing it, School boys have been made drunk by boot leggers or by somebody, and one orc niinent newspaper asserts that it was by the propagandists themselves but the number has been magnified out of all reason in the propaganda material.
 Those who carry on extensive propaganda must have much money. Many believe that d considerable part of it comes from foreign countries.
 Let Europeans themselves tell what is being done in the nations of that continent to force a return to legalized liquor in the United States.
 On June 25 of this year, Lord Astor was quoted in dispatches from Lon don as saying that ever since the experiment., the British liquCr trade has been carrying on anti-Amer. ean propag ganda. He objected to what he called deliberate attempts to mis- represent everything associated with the United States. Tt is tragic thing" he is quoted as saying that while anti-British propaganda In the United States has ceased, people are working in England to misrepresent the attitude and actions of America"
 o O O
 Arguments From Overseas.
 On October 21 of last year Amer ican newspapers carried dispatches from Brussels reporting the holding tf an anti prohibition congress in which the countries represented were Belgium, Canada, Spain, Fin land, France, England, Denmark. Italy, Norway, Sweden and Swtzer- land. Senator Delannoy of Belgium, who presided, is reported to have de- fined the object of the congress as an energetic struggle against the tendencies of modern legislation to sacrifice individual and commercial | liberty. It was announced that a world fight against prohibition was planned, with the United States as the center of the wet campaign. | Count de Nun of France was placed | in the dispa tches, at the head of the l international committee of defense to bring the dry people back into the wet fold"
 The next Gay a 'follow-up story was sent out from Paris. Jean Cou- prie, one of the French delegates t. | the Brussels congress, had returneL nome and was interviewed. lie was | ouied as saying, among otnel | things: We believe that we hay,
 at least the right to offer our whole
 hearted support 10 American vets r | 4ney will accept. They will find oul | organization amply backed fnan sially and with hundred millior
 advocates back of 1t. Further de-