The Ethics of Prohibition

Extract

The United States of America began eight years ago to deal with the drink problem on a national scale. Professor Gilbert Murray has ranked that experiment in the New World with another great experiment in the Old World, the League of Nations. These two stand for him as earnest of world progress.

The vast majority of people in this country dismiss Prohibition with a shrug, and complain that it has nothing to do with them. They are hostile to it, as an idea, just as they are hostile to Bolshevism as an idea, but with this difference: the latter is a useful pawn in current politics : the former is not. I doubt very much whether the Liquor Popular Control Bill (known as the ‘Oxford’ Bill), and its rediscussion in the House of Lords in an amended form, has done more than annoy the Brewers and hearten the Temperance Societies—not that the ‘Oxford Bill is a measure of Prohibition: it is a measure of the country’s interest in liquor control. The Observer, which is a regular champion of the Bill and Temperance in general, takes to task the Government spokesman in the Lords debate for dismissing Prohibition in America by a contemptuous reference to Bootleggers. Yet American fiction and drama, as studied in this country, are largely responsible for this. The strength of Socialism in England could hardly Be gauged by the references of music-hall artists.

Let there be no mistake. Prohibition is the biggest political issue in the United States since Slavery. In both contests, ideas and principles are at war. How little this is realised, even in America, can easily be shown.