"ARISE YE PRISONERS OF THIRST."

In one of his Spoon River Poems, Edgar Lee Masters asks whether personal liberty means liberty of the mind or of the belly. If he had been on Boston Common yesterday his respect for the belly would have considerably increased. Fifty thousand souls yelled themselves hoarse against "the trick of a minority," a Boston Tea Party on a large scale was planned for the evening of June 30th, signs were displayed such as "First our beer, then our tobacco and then --" and "We fought for Democracy and we got Prohibition and Spanish Influenza." Whether prohibition be good or not the reaction against it is a healthy American one. The bloody Bolshevik forgets his paroxysms, the politician his politics, the average man forgets his mediocrity in a loud protest for his friend the bottle. If this is not the voice of the people, what is?