By Their Guns

We preface our stand in this and following edits upon the statement that no college daily has upon its staff men sufficiently informed of the ins and outs of the question to do more than express an opinion qualified by admitted ignorance upon certain portions of the evidence. Such an opinion is worth no more than the judgment of the men who form it and can be accepted for no more, no less. We realize that admitted ignorance has a tendency to diminish the value of expression in the eyes of those who prefer to be told in positive terms what they should and should not think. It enhances the value of such opinion in the eyes of those who view the problem intelligently as one too large and too complex to be adequately treated by anyone less than an expert. And even the experts are often deceived.

We frankly do not believe that Prohibition either is or can be enforced. We add, however, an important exception to this statement: enforcement is possible where an overwhelming majority are in favor of such action. The exception may seem a contradiction to our major premise, but closer analysis will show this contradiction to be negligible. In the college community, where a large percentage of men have and always, have had a desire for alcoholic beverages of one kind or another, there has always and is still a plentiful supply of liquor. Men who choose to drink are able to do so and can obtain what they desire to drink with little or no difficulty. And this is not merely the case in the college community. Beer is as plentiful in South Boston as more expensive liquor in the speakeasies that exist in quantities about the throbbing life of Times Square. The idea that men cannot obtain drinks in those places where there is a real demand for liquor is ridiculous. The workman can and does drink. He may prefer to make his own home brew, but if he does not there is ample opportunity to get what he wants at prices that he can or will afford. We do not subscribe to the idea that all speakeasies cater to the rich. The back room behind the corner grocery store in the average working community is just as much a speakeasy as the most elaborately furnished bar off Fifth Avenue.

Whether men are drinking more or less today neither we nor anyone else can tell. But that Prohibition has lessened the ability of anyone to get a drink in communities, which have a strong sentiment in favor of drinking, we deny.

Prohibition has been a success where the community as a whole really wished for its operation. Elsewhere it has failed. And the result is that one vast portion of the American public obey the law because they have no desire to disobey. The remainder, another group large enough to make an independent, nation of themselves, lives in willful disobedience to a law which they neither respect nor in any way follow. In other words, legal restriction, upon which government must be based, becomes the laughing stock of the present generation. Holding our point with respect to the colleges of America, we consider the situation particularly serious. That the supposed intelligentia of a nation should be environed by such an attitude can scarcely have other than serious consequences in the future.

This is our thesis, again, for what it is worth. We may be wrong but--at the least we believe in our theories and stand by our guns. The Dartmouth.