Dry-hards

COREY FORD

In which the recent exile of Mrs. Peabody points the way to a happy solution of our Prohibition difficulties

• Mrs. Henry W. Peabody, Chairman of the

Women's National Committee for Law Enforcement, has closed her home in Beverly, Massachusetts. It seems Mrs. Peabody was considerably miffed by the fact that her home state went on record in the recent elections as being overwhelmingly opposed to the current Prohibition Law, which is apparently the only Law that Mrs. Peabody's Committee is concerned with enforcing; and rather than linger in an "outlaw state" where, as she expressed it, life was not going to be safe another minute, the good lady gathered up the folds of her black bombazine skirt in one determined hand, seized her bewildered grandson in the other, and flounced down to Florida in a huff.

Now, the burghers of Beverly, viewing Mrs. Peabody's indignant defection from Massachusetts with admirable equanimity, may have experienced nevertheless a mild astonishment at her selection of an alternative, state. It may have puzzled her former neighbours that the good soul, apprehensive of the unbridled Crime Wave which was scheduled to engulf the Bay State promptly on the morning of November fifth, should have fled to Florida, of all places, for a haven of refuge. For I trust I am betraying no secret when 1 suggest that the current reputation of Florida is not based precisely on its aridity. During my own occasional visits to our popular winter resort, I have gathered, on the contrary, the distinct impression that the fabled Fountain of Youth was still doing business at the same old stand. Gangsters, rum-runners and racketeers, as I recall, seemed to rub elbows at every street-corner. Mr. Capone and other magnates of the whiskey-business were popular visitors at Palm Beach. There was even some slight evidence of friction between the rum-runners and the Coast Guard in the occasional spraying of civilians along Miami Beach with ricocheting bullets, or the sinking now and then of a private citizen's yacht. In view of these recurrent phenomena, Mrs. Peabody's former neighbours may have felt that her departure from Beverly for Orlando somewhat resembled the device of jumping overboard in mid-ocean to avoid seasickness.

a It is only after studying the deeper implications of Mrs. Peabody's voluntary exile that the inevitability of the whole thing becomes crystal clear. In fact, her hegira from Massachusetts, at the very instant it declared for Temperance, fleeing with the baffled rage of an evil spirit before the sight of a holy relic, must impress disinterested students as utterly logical and just. There should have been nothing unforeseen in her instinctive recoil from the light of reason. Indeed, the unerring alacrity with which this most uncompromising Prohibitionist made haste to join the company of the most uncompromising gangsters and the most uncompromising racketeers was but another proof in support of the old, old theory that extremes always meet. The coalition of these two outstanding foes of Temperance, the criminal wet and the fanatic dry, was but the preliminary noisy hunching of birds of a feather, preparatory to their natural and inevitable hibernation south. Mrs. Peabody simply was seeking her kind.

And that, I think, is the outstanding good which has been accomplished in ten years by this Noble Experiment that has made America, not the hope of the world, but its laughing stock. Prohibition may have cheapened our respect for law, it may have encouraged imbibing among our fair sex and planted a few stray seeds of dipsomania among our prep schools, it may even have set hack the hands of temperance some fifty or a hundred years: hut at least, bless its heart, it has accomplished one unique and worthy result. It has enabled us in this country to distinguish the angels from the apes. In all our hypocritical history, this is the first actual test of those Fourth of July principles of liberty and independence on which our Constitution is allegedly founded. The Civil War split the country north and south, but it was primarily a sectional dispute; the higher issues of humanity which our orators thundered were apt to be confused with the more prosaic quarrels of economics and labor. But the Prohibition question is essentially a question of principle, (t has split the country, not into economic sections or divisions, but into two moral camps: the tolerants vs. the fanatics, the forces of Temperance vs. the combined forces of gangdom and Prohibition.

Myself, I thank my benevolent stars that I was born into an age that has provided such an infallible litmus-paper to test the character of my friends and neighbours. If I meet a man who is still in favour of Prohibition, after ten years, then I do not need to inquire any further into his pedigree, his moral integrity, or his intellectual calibre. For I do not believe that there can be left now in America so much as one sincere and intelligent Dry. If he is sincere in his convictions that the Eighteenth Amendment is right, then he is either a fool or a fanatic, blind to the increasing proof about him that morals cannot he controlled by laws; or if he is not an honest imbecile, then he is swayed by ulterior motives of political expediency or greed. It is a very handy little vest-rule to apply. I can measure accurately the whole character of a man, his religious tolerance, whether he cheats at solitaire, the books (Continued on page 90) he reads, the breadth of his plusfours, his fondness for spinach, whether he exhibits home-movies, eats yeast, reads Calvin Coolidge, carries an umbrella in a crowd or beats his wife, how he holds his liquor, the way he behaves on a camping-trip in the woods, his preference for Cross-Word Puzzles, Floyd Gibbons or Tom Thumb Golf, whether he sleeps with his mouth open, wears one glove and carries the other, or marches in fraternal parades —all by his answer to the simple question: "Do you believe in Prohibition?"

(Continued from page 58)

Now, this suggests a golden opportunity which our country must not miss. Here is our one supreme chance for a little national house-cleaning; and before the Eighteenth Amendment is repealed and it is too late, we should make the most of it.

Fortunately the recent departure of Mrs. Peabody from Massachusetts has furnished the example. If all the other Dry-Hards in America will follow her shining standard, the Noble Experiment will have justified itself after all. Now let the Heflins of Alabama and the Fesses of Ohio and the Forts of New Jersey and all the other disgruntled and repudiated Prohibitionists close their own homes, in turn, shoulder their kit-bags, and trudge in Mrs. Peabody's wake in a sullen and increasing army.

It will be a long and arduous march. Some will suffer from cold and exposure, and fall by the wayside. A few weaker spirits, noting the overwhelming evidence of referenda and magazine polls, will question the integrity of their own convictions, and will falter and drop slowly to the rear until they desert the exodus and return to their

homes in chastened silence. But the staunch leaders, the Prohibitionists who have shown their courage and their stamina like Mrs. Peabody, they will not flinch from hardship now. In the firmness of their intention to leave the "outlaw states" behind them, they will quicken their steps toward that distant reservation where life will be safer and Prohibition a success.

And on this Dry Reservation of their own, in peace and perfect understanding, the ardent supporters of the Eighteenth Amendment can achieve perfect enforcement at last. On their own Reservation, seeing eye to eye on the value of the Prohibition Law, the rum-runners and the clergymen can legislate and enact and persecute to their heart's content. Unhindered by the advocates of Temperance, they can pass amendments to their Constitution, and abolish in time all the other devices of the devil, such as the automobile, and tobacco, and jazz, and sex. If they desire to maintain the name of "America", they may even have that; after all, under their control in the past decade, the honoured old title has been brought somewhat into disrepute. By sworn treaty the government of the United States will not interfere with them.

And here the members of our future generations may visit them now and then, until they are extinct, peering at them curiously through barbedwire fences ("Please Do Not Feed or Otherwise Annoy"), noting their quaint tribal laws and customs, and perhaps wondering, a quarter century from now, that this tiny group of fanatics and criminals were ever able to bully the whole United States.