COLLEGE MEN NOT A GANG OF INEBRIATES

"All this talk about the young folks going to the dogs and drinking themselves blind is pure nonsense. They are youthful and filled with sap and vinegar, but that does not mean that they are a gang of inebriates." In such a manner, W. E. "Pussyfoot" Johnson, former Federal prohibition agent, smilingly told a CRIMSON reporter yesterday that college men today are "all right."

"Colleges are no worse than the rest of the country as regards wetness," said Pussyfoot, "Colleges are apt to have a reputation for being wet because the shortcomings of a few students get into the papers as typical of all students. If two or three college fellows get drunk and cause a fuss, the story can promptly be found in all the newspapers, but no mention is made of the 10,000 or 20,000 students who ostensibly do not drink. The whole country read the other day of the fraternity in a middle-western university that was found to have a still in its basement, but nothing was said of the 400 or 500 colleges in the country that have no stills.

"There are approximately three times as many people in colleges today as there were in the pre-prohibition days, yet no one will say that there is now even one third as much drunkenness as in the old times.

"Europe is rather free from prohibition laws, but there is, nevertheless a considerable movement towards a restriction on alcohols," indicated the prohibition agent, who spends a large part of his time in Europe, and who has his main office in London.

"In Jugo-Slavia, the college students themselves enforce a form of prohibition. From their central headquarters in a building which the government has set aside for the organization, the students direct about 20,000 people throughout the country in a movement for prohibition, and publish two dry newspapers. In this work, the young people take the lead, and gradually draw in the older.

"Similar work is being carried on by the younger generation in Bulgaria and Lithuania. The methods include obtaining anti-alcohol pledges, spreading the doctrines of prohibition, and getting towns to vote to go dry. To date, 62 Bulgarian villages have voted against alcoholic beverages."

In Esthonia, Latvia, and Egypt, further reforms are being carried out by the young people, of which the few college students form a nucleus, Pussyfoot Johnson explained. Throughout all Europe there is an agitation for some form of prohibition. In France and Italy, doctors favor a regulation for medical and hygienic reasons, while in England and Germany, there is a feeling for some kind of regulation as a matter of public economy and efficiency.

"The people of the United States are getting used to prohibition," Johnson concluded. "Laws are better enforced, and there is a stronger feeling in favor of the Eighteenth Amendment. No law is ever perfect, but the Volstead Act, strictly enforced, will in the next few years become as nearly perfect as a law can become.