“Despite Mr. Lasker’s protest that it will ruin the American merchant marine, the opinion of Attorney General Daugherty regarding the sale of liquor on vessels flying the flag of the United States is fairly certain to be upheld by the Courts. There is plenty of law and precedent behind it. But every phase of law and precedent that supports the opinion as it touches American shipping runs counter to the opinion as applied to liners under alien flags. “Ships chartered in the United States, according to Mr. Daugherty, are subject to the laws of the United States, are, in fact, American territory; but ships chartered in foreign countries are not foreign territory. As soon as they enter American waters all vessels subject themselves to American law, which means, of course, the Volstead Act. How this comes about is not clearly explained. It would naturally be supposed that if an American ship were American territory a British ship would be British territory, and so on. Mr. Daugherty cannot have it both ways. On one point or the other he must change his mind or have it changed for him. “But even though the enforcement law did not apply to European vessels within the three-mile limit, it is difficult to discover in what way they would violate it by carrying a sealed supply of liquor. Possession of liquor, as defined by the courts, must include a change of ownership. It is not legal for a manufacturer to ship liquor to a consumer through the United States, but it is legal for an owner of bonded liquor to remove it from one place to another within this country. Alien ships traversing American waters with sealed liquor aboard would be guilty of nothing which American citizens are not allowed on land by judicial decision.” Well, if the bars are closed forever on American ships, it will but add to the present discontent; and again there will be an expression of our national hypocrisy. It does not take much vision to see what will inevitably happen. For just as people drink now on land when they feel so inclined, they will drink upon the ocean; and every steward on every American liner will become a bootlegger, whispering into the ears of passengers something like this: “Say, I have some fine old Scotch--the real thing--only twelve dollars a bottle. Want some? I’ll see that it’s brought to your state-room. Oh, no; there’s not a particle of danger. Everybody’s doing it.” And thus will the comedy go on; thus will the playing of the farce be extended beyond the three-mile limit, and within it, too; and once more we will appear before the world in our cap and bells. No arrests will be made. Things will simply drift along; and by and by, even though the Eighteenth Amendment remains in the Constitution, and the Volstead Act continues to be a part of our laws, both may be forgotten, just as some of the old statutes of the Puritans, still upon the Massachusetts records, have been allowed to float into a limbo of dreams.