More New Ground

Once again country-wide debate on Prohibition moved to new ground last week when the subject upcropped without warning before the twenty-first conference of Governors assembled at New London, Conn. (seep. 11). Heretofore these political meetings had studiously avoided this political subject. When governors did debate it last week, their sentiment was preponderantly Dry, as was to be expected among politicians discussing the law of the land.

The Prohibition question was injected into the otherwise tranquil conference by a letter from Chairman George Woodward Wickersham of the National Law Enforcement Commission to Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York in which Mr. Wickersham proposed an enforcement scheme whereby the U. S. would deal with wholesale bootleggery, the States with the retail trade. He hinted at modification to make the law "reasonably enforceable."

Though the governors did nothing about it, the Wickersham letter produced reverberations and repercussions throughout the land, set politicians and prohibitors to talking out loud.

In St. Paul, Minn., Andrew John Volstead exclaimed: "Nullification! . . . They would in effect repeal the 18th amendment in wet localities by divided responsibility."

In Washington, Dry Senator Borah of Idaho remarked: "Mr. Wickersham has at last succeeded in making it clear that he regards the law as unenforceable."

Dry Senator Caraway of Arkansas: "Prohibition suffered the worst blow by the Wickersham statement that it has ever received. ... I expect Wickersham to resign soon. . . . Personally I hope he resigns. . . . The usefulness of the Commission is destroyed if he remains at its head."

Dry Senator Thomas of Oklahoma: "Governor Smith, if elected President, could not have appointed anyone starting out to destroy Prohibition any more than the Hoover Commission chairman has done."

The Methodist Episcopal Board of Temperance, Prohibition & Public Morals: "Not . . . revolutionary. . . . Prohibitionists have never believed it is desirable to set up a national police force . . . for the sole purpose of enforcement. . . . Unfortunate word 'modification' . . . interpretation ... to imply that state laws may be enacted which in fact legalize alcoholic content in beverages prohibited by the Federal Constitution, we believe an entirely mistaken one. . . ."

Clinton Norman Howard, Chairman of the National United Committee for Law Enforcement,* at a W. C. T. U. meeting at Round Lake, N. Y.: "The people will not let their constitution be wickershamed into a squatter sovereignty hodgepodge. . . . Maryland, Wisconsin and New York are where South Carolina was in the conflict against the abolition of slavery. . . . They are the copperhead and slacker states and are more culpable in time of peace than any slacker citizen in time of war."

* An unofficial volunteer organization of drys not to be confused with the President's National Commission on Law Enforcement.