“The enforcement of Prohibition meets with some obstacles and furnishes food for thought to two large groups in the community--the people who want it enforced and the people who occasionally want something to drink. Just at the moment it seems as if the people who want a drink are somewhat ahead of the other group in the competition; at any rate, the group that wants enforcement seems to think it necessary to make extra effort. To _Harper’s Magazine_, as doubtless to hundreds of other periodicals, has come a communication from the Committee for Prohibition Enforcement of a much-respected and powerful organization of women, which announces that the committee has adopted a program, the items of which it communicates. The fifth item is to the effect that all the ministers be urged to preach and teach the necessity for respect for and observance of the law. The sixth item runs, ‘That every theatrical manager, movie manager, and editor, whether of a daily, weekly or monthly publication, be requested to see that all jokes ridiculing Prohibition and its enforcement are eliminated from any production, film, or article coming under his jurisdiction, and that the matter be treated with that seriousness that the subject merits; and that this resolution be thrown on the screen and printed in the different papers and magazines throughout the country.’ “The demand for protection from jokes is often made and always implies that there is something that needs to be joked about. There is a sin called ‘sacrilege.’ If we joke about things that are sacred to enough people, it gives a kind of offense which, even if the law does not punish it, it is not safe to excite. There is a sin of blasphemy, which we suppose the law will still punish if it is gross enough. It will be agreed that the considerate people do not jest about sacred things, nor even about things which, though not sacred to themselves, are sacred to the people they are talking to. Well, then, is Prohibition one of these sacred things we must not talk about? Are amendments of the Constitution and the Volstead law to rank with the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount as not being safely subject to derisive comment? “Something like that seems to be in the minds of the women whose communication we have received, who include item six in their program, but if so, their attitude is wrong. A constitutional amendment is not sacred, much less a Volstead Act. It is the Volstead law that the jokes on Prohibition are aimed at more than the amendment. If we cannot joke about an act of Congress, then indeed things have come to a restricted pass. If a law is bad, one of the ways to beat it is to laugh it out of court. If that is being done about the Volstead law, the ladies who want that law enforced would do well to examine it and see why it is not enforced, rather than try to stop jokers from laughing at it.