in the
least due to a strengthening of this sentiment. On the contrary, it is
safe to say that feeling about drunkenness, about the drink evil in the
sense in which it was understood a generation ago, is far less intense
than it was then. The prohibition movement in its present stage is not the
old prohibition movement advancing to triumph through the onward march of
its proselyting zeal; of true prohibitionist zealots the number is
probably less, in proportion to the population, than it was forty years
ago. Its great accession of strength has come from the growth of that
order of ideas which is common to all the "efficiency" movements of the
time. And that growth helps it in two ways. On the one hand, to the little
army of crusaders against the Demon Rum there has come the accession of a
host of men who are not thinking about demons at all, but who calmly hold
that the world would be better off without drinking, and that this is an
all-sufficient reason for prohibiting it. And on the other hand, millions
of persons who, in former days would have cried out against this way of
improving the world--against the impairment of personal liberty and the
sacrifice of social enjoyment and social variety--have no longer the
courage of their convictions. The temper of the time is unfavorable to the
assertion of the value of things so incapable of numerical measurement.
Against the heavy battalions led by the statisticians, and the
experimental psychologists, and the efficiency experts, what chance is
there for successful resistance? On the opposing side can be rallied only
such mere irregulars as are willing to fight for airy nothings--for the
zest and colorfulness of life, for sociability and good fellowship, for
preserving to each man access to those resources of relaxation and
refreshment which, without injury to others, he finds conducive to his own
happiness.

* * * * *

It is hardly necessary to say that, in taking up these various movements,
no attempt has been made at anything like comprehensive discussion of
their merits. Whatever may be the balance between good and ill in any of
them, they all have in common one tendency that bodes danger to the
highest and most permanent interests of mankind; and it is with this alone
that I am concerned. What that tendency is has, I trust, been made
sufficiently clear; but it will perhaps be brought out more distinctly by
a consideration of the "Life Ext