THE IDES OF MARCH

Yesterday, for the first time in twelve years, the House of Representatives voted upon legislation to end prohibition, with results now familiar to everyone. Those who note only the dry majority in the roll call ignore its essential significance. That can best be seen in the light of the national Prohibition poll of the Literary Digest.

American legislators, long criticized for their inability to lead popular opinion, now show that they are scarcely better able to follow it. Two years ago when the present members of the House of Representatives were elected, the opinion of their constituents was already growing hostile to prohibition. But now that depression and universal corruption have led people to question the wisdom of spending $300,000,000 a year for non-enforcement, popular opinion has shown a marked reversal. The present poll reveals a citizenry at least three to one against prohibition.

The failure of the dry representatives to conform to this change of heart must be attributed to the incurable timidity of the political mind. Having once gone on record in favor of Prohibition, most of them lack courage to recognize the inevitable, and they take comfort in the hope that economic issues will over-shadow all others in the coming elections. Possibly the more realistic among them, hearing the applause for the wets which burst from the gallery, felt a less purblind confidence in the issue. The hedgers and straddlers of a dead decade are now once more on the fence, in a different sense. More than a graceful literary allusion lurked in the cry which was heard during the voting: "The Ides of March are come; stand up and be counted!"