COMPARES DR. ELIOT WITH KING SOLOMON

Washington, D. C., May 21.--Comparing Dr. Charles W. Eliot'68, president of Harvard University, emeritus, to King Solomon, Representative Emmanuel Celler, one of the "wet" leaders in the House of Representatives, criticised the aged educator for his views on prohibition in a letter made public here today. Mr. Celler's communication was a reply to a long letter written by President Eliot on May '15, explaining why, at the age of 88, he became an exponent of national prohibition.

Following the recent pronouncement on the liquor question by President Nicholas Murray Butler, LL.D. '09, of Columbia University, Representative Celler wrote President Eliot, contrasting the latter's position in 1897, when he was opposed to prohibition, and his present support of Dr. Butler's pronouncement. In reply to this letter, President Eliot said that he became a total abstainer from liquor at the age of 83. At this time, he said, he came to the conclusion that nationwide prohibition was necessary, basing his conclusions on the results of the medical examination of results for the national army.

Tells of Wet Days Here

In further explanation of his change of view, President Eliot related two sets of observations which he had made of the "local option" method of regulating liquor sales. The first observation was made while he was spending most of his summers on the island of Mount Desert, in Maine. Although the Maine prohibition laws were rigidly enforced there, at the neighboring summer colony of Bar Harbor it was impossible to enforce the laws at all, because of the importation of liquor from neighboring states. Later in Massachusetts, when Cambridge was dry and Boston Wet, Dr. Eliot again observed the failure of the dry laws.

"These two sets of observations," wrote President Eliot, "one at Mt. Desert and the other at Cambridge, taught me that prohibitory legislation to be effective must be nation-wide, and that only national authority could really prevent both the manufacture and the transportation of intoxicating drinks.... When the results of the medical examinations of the drafted recruits for the American Expeditionary Force were published, with their very disappointing demonstration of the physical incapacity of a large proportion of the recruits, and Congress took measures for the protection of the camps of American troops preparing to go to France against saloons and brothels, I saw that the opportunity had come for nation-wide action against the curse of alcoholism in the United States."

Representative Celler Replies

In his reply to President Eliot's letter, Mr. Celler says:

"At 90 years of age you endorse prohibition and have became a total abstainer. Is not the comparison between your good self and King Solomon irresistable? Aside from the Wisdom of both of you, many a time in his vigorous youth Solomon slaked his thirst with the flowing bowl, but in his old age claimed 'wine is a mocker.'

"I somehow prefer the youthful Solomon of the 'Song of Songs' to the Solomon who wrote the crochety old proverbs when the shadows of his life were lengthening.

"We all esteem you highly, Dr. Eliot, but somehow I prefer your disapproval of prohibition as expressed at the age of 63 rather than your approval of it expressed at the age of 90."