The vital distinction between the citizen of America and the citizen of a state, although oftentimes one is the same human being, is probably known to many of the modern leaders and lawyers who have considered and argued about the supposed Eighteenth Amendment. But it has been wholly ignored in every argument for or against the existence of that Amendment. As a matter of fact, that vital distinction has always been so important a part of our American institutions that it has been the subject-matter of repeated decisions in the Supreme Court. It is a distinction amazingly important, in substance, to individual freedom in America. So true is this that one of the most important Amendments ever made to the _federal_ part of our Constitution was primarily intended to require that every state must extend to the “privileges or immunities of citizens” of _America_ the same respect and protection which the American Constitution had previously only required that each state must extend to the citizens of the _other states_. When the conventions made the original constitution, Section 2 of Article IV commanded that “The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” After the Civil War had closed, it quickly was realized that this federal command of the Constitution did not protect the citizens of _America_ in any state. And so this command was added to the _federal_ part of the Constitution by the Fourteenth Amendment, namely, that “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens” _of America_. It would be idle to repeat here the famous Supreme Court decisions in which that Court has been obliged to dwell upon the important result accomplished by this vital change in the federal part of our Constitution. In such cases as the Slaughter House Cases, 16 _Wall._ 36, Paul v. Virginia, 8 _Wall._ 168, Re Kemmler, 136 _U.S._ 436, U.S. v. Cruikshank, 92 _U.S._ 542, Blake v. McClung, 172 _U.S._ 239, Maxwell v. Sow, 176 _U.S._ 581 and numerous other cases the important decisions have turned entirely upon the vital distinction between a citizen of America and a citizen of a particular state, even though the same man had the two capacities. Each decision turned upon the fact that the protection given to him in one capacity, by some constitutional provision, did not extend to him in the other capacity. If all this had not been forgotten and ignored during the five years which began in 1917, the story of that five years would have been entirely different. Everyone would have known that the respective attorneys in fact for societies or states could not grant new power to interfere with the individual freedom of the members of an entirely different society, America.