One hears a great deal about the way the Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment were “put over” on the American people. It is true, as I have said, that the legislation came upon us suddenly; but everything was done in a perfectly legal and orderly manner. The people did not realize how far the Anti-Saloon League, and kindred organizations, had gone in their work. Also, deny it as they will, the advocates of Prohibition used the War as an excuse, as a cloak for their propaganda. It was perfectly right for the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy to forbid the sale of liquor to our men in uniform after we got into the conflict. We were at War; and it would have been as foolish for our boys to get drunk as it would be for an actor to go on the stage intoxicated. Moreover, in the heroic glamour of those now happily vanished days, it was so easy for soldiers and sailors to be “entertained” by any and everyone. Better, then, to clamp the lid on tightly. It was a time for efficiency; and no one is so foolish as to contend that the consumption of whiskey in large doses makes for a hardier race. One believes, with St. Paul, in “moderation in all things.” Youth, in a period of stress, needs direction, just as children do. Having arrived at an age of reason, man should be permitted to go his own way. But just as we needed discipline in the ranks--physical discipline--we needed spiritual discipline in wartime. There can be no real argument about this, I think. But even here we failed, partly. Liquor _was_ sold to men in uniform. And men in uniform wanted it, and found many ways to obtain it. The forbidden apple is always the sweetest; and the more we restrict and preach and restrain, the more eager certain natures will always be to achieve the very thing we decry and withhold. The war, of course, was responsible for many upheavals. We could not enter such a fiery conflict without feeling its bitter after effects, any more than one can drink immoderately and not feel ill the next morning. That we fought to make a weary world safe for democracy is now nothing but a joke--a Gilbert and Sullivan joke worthy of a deathless lyric. Indeed, a short time ago, had a librettist put into a comic opera some of the happenings between 1914 and 1918--only some of them, mind you--his book would have been hissed off the stage. There are some things that are true to life, but not true to fiction. For instance, think of the irony of our boys being sent across the seas to shoot guns at the Prussians and begging them to free themselves from an autocratic Kaiser, and, during their necessary absence, being deprived of a glass of beer when they came back home.