The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-10-21
PRESS ON PINcHoT's CHARGE

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 PRESS ON PINCHOT'S CHARGE
 The sensational pronouncement of Governor Clifford Pinchot on prohibit ton enforcement and his intimation that failure is responsibility resting directly upon the president, have been topics for animated press comment which has been so widespread as to take in the whole prohibition question. "Governor Pinchot insists that the law can be enforced" says the Kansas City Times. "And 1t can be. To as- sume that it cannot be made operative is to doubt the whole scheme of gov ernment. It is true that enforcement of the prohibitory law meets with ex- traordinary difficulties. Effective enforcement of law is impossible with out an aggressive public sentiment be- hind the enforcement effort"
 The New York Herald in it's com ment says: gro bring about real en- forcement the public mind must be changed so that it will favor the law. Until this happens there will be no perfect prohibition" But to put the whole burden of enforcement on the president, according to the same pub lication, If not impossible, is st least impracticable. For a president, bur dened with thousand tasks, to reach over the head of the secretary of the treasury and direct personally the course of the internal revenue bureau and it's prohibition commissioner is out of the question" Says the Memphis Commercial Appeal: with the su- premacy of the law at stake it is no time for divided counsels, for political manipulation or for open antagonisms among the forces commissioned to pre- serve the republic as government of law. It is the duty of president, gov- ernors, judges, police, state constabul- ary, sheriffs and marshals and their deputies and all others, including law abiding citizens, to see that the con- stitution of the Union is preserved in- violate and free from fear, favor or political jockeying."
 Governor Pinchot is tho first high public official in the United States" says the Philadelphia Public Ledger, "who has had the courage and the hon. esty to speak the truth, and the whole truth, about the failure of the eigh- teenth amendment, and about the causes of that failure" The Chicago Tribune is not so impressed by the Pennsylvania governors words, say ing: 'Mr. Pinchot says that few thousand or hundred thousand crimi- nals cannot be kept outside the law if the government wants to bring them within it, but he either is not trying to think accurately, or he doesn't care for facts which he easily could ascer- tain. In a wet community the boot legger is sanctioned by public opinion, and the drinkers do not regard them selves as lawless in buying"
 The political aspect of the Pinchot speeca arouses much comment. After quoting from the Washington Post, the Knoxville Sentinel says: "When the court organ openly sneers at Governor Pinchot's furious onset on the federal administration for it's now notorious non-enforcement of the dry law, we may assuredly know that the war is on good and strong, and that the pillows of the battle will not subside much short of the ides of November, 1924. It must either force the president to abandon an attitude of lip service to prohibition and of passive consent to the law-violation, and thus excite the active antagonism of the wet forces, or it must get him in bad with the dry forces by exposing the unwillingness to wage real war in behalf Of the cause"
 Of tho political rhase the Philadel-