we are really
reading of a war that is being waged by a vast multitude of good
normal American citizens against the enforcement of a law which they
regard as a gross invasion of their rights and a violation of the
first principles of American government. The state of things thus
arising was admirably and compactly characterized by Justice Clarke,
of the United States Supreme Court, in a single sentence of his recent
address before the Alumni of the New York University Law School, as
follows:

The Eighteenth Amendment required millions of men and women to
abruptly give up habits and customs of life which they thought not
immoral or wrong, but which, on the contrary, they believed to be
necessary to their reasonable comfort and happiness, and thereby,
as we all now see, respect not only for that law, but for all law,
has been put to an unprecedented and demoralizing strain in our
country, the end of which it is difficult to see.

Upon all this, however, as concerned with the conduct of the people at
large, perhaps enough has been said in previous chapters. What I wish
to dwell upon at this point is the conduct of those who, either in the
Government itself, or in the power behind the Government--the
Anti-Saloon League--are carrying on the enforcement of the Prohibition
law. They are not carrying it on in the way in which the enforcement
of other laws is carried on. In the case of a normal criminal law--and
it must always be remembered that the Volstead act is a criminal law,
just like the laws against burglary, or forgery, or arson--those who
are responsible for its enforcement regard themselves as
administrators of the law, neither more nor less. But the enforcement
of the Prohibition law is something quite different: it is not a work
of administration but of strategy; not a question of seeing that the
law is obeyed by everybody, but of carrying on a campaign against the
defiers of the law just as one would carry on a campaign against a
foreign enemy. The generals in charge of the campaign decide whether
they shall or shall not attack a particular body of the enemy; and
their decision is controlled by the same kind of calculation as that
made by the generals in a war of arms--a calculation of the chances of
victory. Where the enemy is too numerous, or too strongly entrenched,
or too widely scattered, they leave him alone; where they can drive
him into a corner and capture him, they attack. To realize how