em and the will endlessly
more unfit for the duties of the day than a glass of lager beer on
a hot summer's evening.

_Drying up a Nation Emotionally_

What would result if prohibition should really prohibit, and all the
inhibitions which a mild use of beer and wine promise to the brain
really be lost? The psychological outcome would be twofold: certain
effects of alcohol which serve civilization would be lost; and, on the
other hand, much more harmful substitutions would set in. To begin
with: the nation would lose its chief means of recreation after work.
We know to-day too well that physical exercise and sport is not real
rest for the exhausted brain-cells. The American masses work hard
throughout the day. The sharp physical and mental labor, the constant
hurry and drudgery produce a state of tension and irritation which
demands before the night's sleep some dulling inhibition if a
dangerous unrest is not to set in. Alcohol relieves that daily tension
most directly.

Not less important would be the loss on the emotional side. Emotional
desire for a life in beauty would yield to the triviality of
usefulness. Puritanism has held back the real American spirit of
artistic creation in fine arts and music and drama: prohibition
without substitutes would crush still more the esthetic spirit in the
brain of man and would make beauty still more the domain of women. Her
more responsive physiological constitution does not need the
artificial paralysis of the inhibiting centers. The mind of the
average woman shows that lower degree of checking power which small
alcoholic doses produce in the average man. But just therefore she and
men of the female type cannot carry on alone the work of the nation. A
national life without the artificial inhibitions of the restraining
centers becomes for the large masses a matter of mere practical
calculation and righteous dulness. Truly the German, the Frenchman,
the Italian who enjoys his glass of light wine and then wanders joyful
and elated to the masterpieces of the opera, serves humanity better
than the New Englander who drinks his ice-water and sits satisfied at
the vaudeville show, world-far from real art. Better America inspired
than America sober. Can we forget that in almost all parts of the
globe even religious life began with intoxication cults? God Indra was
in the wine for the Hindus and Dionysius for the Greeks. It is the
optimistic exuberance of life, the emotional inspirat