Arizona state miner., 1925-09-19
FOREIGN PROH| IS
ASKED To CLOSE
HIS DISCOURSE

This clipping from the Common
veal illustrates the mentality OF
some of the more ardent Prohibi
tiOnists. A man who has to be told
"tO hire his own halP' and give the
others chance at Universal Chris
tian Conference is just the type of
man one would imagine could easily
be deluded into the believing that
prohibition was anything but a col
Ossal farce in America:
That must have been a rosy pic
ture of dry America with which Bish-
op James Cannon of Washington, D.
c., regaled his hearers at the Uni
versal Christian Conference at Stock
holm, Sweden, recently. So eloquent,
indeed, did the Bishop grow as he
described the felicities of aridity for
his fellows from moister landS-by
so many minutes did he exceed the
space allotted each speaker, that his
hearers, either unable to bear the
vision of an ideal they had failed to
reach for a moment longer or just
plain tired, took the unusual and un-
Christian course of begging their Wis
itor to conclude his remarks and rest
his case. At it's proper time and in
it's proper place, we are pretty sure
to have the full text of DR.. Cannon's
discourse, including the portion that
his fellow Christians at Stockholm
- h -
extract cabled by the Associated
Press it is evident that for the doctor
no mirage at all of light wines and
beer glimmers above the sands of
Volstead. "The great majority of
Christian citizens" he repeated, twill
never submit to a new legacy of al
cohOl trade"
The views which fellow conferees
at Stockholm got chance to hear
when DR.. Cannon (by request) had
resumed his seat, make somewhat of
a contrast, and a sharp schism would
seem to impend. Lord Salvesen, a
distinguished Scotch jurist, and pres
ident of the Scottish Public House
Reform League, drew a distinction
between regulation and prohibition
at which one can imagine his listener
from America shaking his head. For
the latter course he could see 'Fno
footing in the peoples mind or in
Justice" Nor is it likely that the
cold statistics furnished by the Rev
erend Henry Carter (Of England)
had any better luck, though they
showed that, contrary to general inn
preston, consumption of alcohol in
England has been reduced Al and
drunkenness SO per cent by the sane
exercise of control that war exig-
encies left in the energetic hands of
the British government.
What distinguishes your true-blue
dry advocate from commoner men is
his immunity to any figures or forms
of argument save such as buttress
his case His achievement in 1919
was spectacular victory for the
forces of bigotry and tyranny of
which the people at large, distracted
by the entry of their country into war
and world politics, hardly suspected
the power or even the existence
But, having won their campaign, the
retention of its fruits has become
more than point of honor with what
Mr.. Mencken calls the Baptist-Meth-
odist bloc It's protection now alb
serbs the energy and challenges the
pride of many thousands of master
full and ambitious men, too long con
demned to a role that kept them out
of the public consciousness for six
days in the seven The conquered
ground is doubly precious, first as an
earnest of re-acquired influence in the
state, then as a sally-point from which
new and further-reaching encroach
ments upon the human will are to be
directed in no far future. The ark in
which our Bible commentators of the
newer and drier school have depos
tied their "cake of raisins" and flasks
of grape-juice will soon have new anG
surprising contents. Meantime it is
guarded by hooded dragons anG
watched nv a Cyc1ODean eye-Star