If a German stands up to talk about prohibition, he might just as well sit down at once, for every one in America, of course, knows beforehand what he is going to say. Worse, every one knows also exactly why he is so anxious to say it: how can he help being on the wrong side of this question? And especially if he has been a student in Germany, he will have brought the drinking habit along with him from the Fatherland, together with his cigar smoking and card playing and duelling. If a poor man relies on his five quarts of heavy Munich beer a day, how can he ever feel happy if he is threatened with no license in his town and with no beer in his stein? Yet my case seems slightly different. I never in my life played cards, I never fought a duel, and when the other day in a large women's college, after an address and a reception, the lady president wanted to comfort me and suggested that I go into the next room and smoke a cigar, I told her frankly that I could do it if it were the rule in her college, but that it would be my first cigar. With beer it is different: Last winter in traveling I was for some days the guest of an Episcopal clergyman, who, anticipating the visit of a German, had set up a bottle of excellent beer as a welcome, and we drank together the larger part of the bottle--but I think that is my only case in late years. When I had to attend a Students' "Commers," I was always protected by the thick mug through which no one could discover that the contents never became less during the evening. I live most comfortably in a pleasant temperance town which will, I hope, vote no-license year by year as long as freshmen stroll over the old Harvard Yard. And although I have become pretty much Americanized, I have never drunk a cocktail. The problem of prohibition, thus, does not affect my thirst, but it greatly interests my scientific conscience; not as a German, but as a psychologist I feel impelled to add a word to the discussion which is suddenly reverberating over the whole country. But is it really a discussion which we hear? Is it not rather a one-sided denunciation of alcohol, repeated a million times with louder and louder voice, an outcry ever swelling in its vehemence? On the other side there may be the protests of the distillers and brewers and wine-growers and bottle-makers and saloon-keepers, and perhaps some timid declarations of thirsty societies--but such protests do not count, since they have all the earmarks of selfishness; they are ruled out, and no one listens, just as no one would consult the thieves if a new statute against pickpockets were planned. So far as the really disinterested public is concerned, the discussion is essentially one-sided. If serious men like Cardinal Gibbons raise their voices in a warning against prohibition, they are denounced and overborne, and no one cares to imitate them. _The Fundamental Evil of American Public Opinion_