King Alcohol and the Weed.

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Your editorial in the CRIMSON of Oct. 14, regarding the stand of the W. C. T. U. as to tobacco, and another on the subject of alcoholic conviviality which appeared in almost your first issue this fall, have aroused my curiosity.

Does the CRIMSON stand officially and solidly for John Barleycorn and for the Noxious Weed?

There seems to be somewhat of an alcoholic tradition around part, at least, of Harvard student life, and the CRIMSON editorial enshrines that tradition in print.

But what is the meaning of the recent nation-wide movement for constitutional prohibition? Is "personal liberty" to poison one's self by slow degrees recognized by either the law of the nation or public opinion? Is a man at liberty to use solutions of Paris green, arsenic, cyanide of potassium and other poisons, as beverages? Why should attractive solutions of alcohol, a slower but no less genuine poison than those mentioned, be sold and quaffed and dignified by custom and tradition as promoting good fellowship? Why in the name of common sense, should we not drink laudanum, "blue vitriol," dilute sulphuric acid and other such beverages if we insist on having wine, beer, whiskey, brandy and gin? The acknowledged poisons would merely hasten the result by a few years.

Naturally, the Weed is not in exactly the same class as His Majesty, King Alcohol. Although a few of us enjoy life. as well and save considerable good money by omitting tobacco from our menu, the overwhelming majority offer incense to the God of Nicotine. But to attack the W. C. T. U. or any other organization for attempting to curtail the use of this rather unnecessary and not universally worshipped vegetable, seems to me somewhat like shutting the doors and windows of a smoke-filled room while some one else is trying to ventilate it.

For my part, I hope the American public will finally realize that both "booze" and tobacco are dispensable luxuries, and that it would be better off without them.  ARCHIBALD B. MOORE, 1G