Now from the standpoint of pure calculation directed to the attainment of a strategic end, in a warfare between the power of a Government and the forces of a very large proportion of the population over which it holds sway, the Tribune may be entirely right. But what is left of the idea of respect for law? With what effectiveness can either President Angell or President Harding appeal to that sentiment when it is openly admitted that the Government not only deliberately overlooks violations of the law by millions of private individuals, but actually directs that the law shall be violated on its own ships, for fear that the commercial loss entailed by doing otherwise would further excite popular resentment against the law? It has only to be added that since the date of that editorial (June 18, 1922) the Anti-Saloon League has come out strongly against the selling of liquor on Governmentowned ships--a change which only emphasizes the point I am making. For, in spite of the Tribune's shrewd observations, it soon became clear that the Volstead act was being so terribly discredited by the preposterous spectacle of the Government selling liquor on its own ships that something had to be done about it; and it was only under the pressure of this situation that a new line of strategy was adopted by the Anti-Saloon League. What it will do if it finds that it cannot put through its plan of excluding liquor from all ships, American and foreign, remains to be seen. Now it may be replied to all this that a certain amount of laxity is to be found in the execution of all laws; that the resources at the disposal of government not being sufficient to secure the hunting down and punishment of all offenders, our executive and prosecuting officers and police and courts apply their powers in such directions and in such ways as to accomplish the nearest approach possible to a complete enforcement of the law. But the reply is worthless. Because the enforcement of all laws is in some degree imperfect, it does not follow that there is no disgrace and no mischief in the spectacle of a law enforced with spectacular vigor, and even violence, in a thousand cases where such enforcement cannot be successfully resisted, and deliberately treated as a dead letter in a hundred thousand cases where its enforcement would show how widespread and intense is the people's disapproval of the law. There are many instances in which a law has become a dead letter; where this is generally recognized no appreciable harm is done, since universal custom operates as a virtual repeal. But here is a case of a law enforced with militant energy where it suits the officers of the Government to enforce it, systematically ignored in millions of cases by the same officers because it suits them to do that, and cynically violated by the direct orders of the Government itself when this course seems recommended by a cold-blooded calculation of policy ! If