Article October 27, 1928 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Ernest H. Cherrington, Janet Mabie, S. Parkes Cadman

[Ernest H. Cherrington, LL.D., Litt. D., in the Christian Herald, New York, New York]

Will Prohibition succeed? There can be only one reply to such a question. Every tendency that is a natural result of the character and traditions of our people, the increasing pressure of modern life, the developments in science as well as in industry, the more accurate knowledge we have of the mental, nervous, and physical deterioration that result from alcoholic indulgence, in brief, practically every active force that is a factor in modern life rephrases this question in positive form and declares emphatically that national prohibition cannot fail.

This salutary law, this American policy of Government—to borrow two descriptive phrases used by President Coolidge—is a natural and not an artificial product. No one invented it. Neither the idea nor the form it eventually took was the result of deliberate purpose. Rather were they the inevitable evolution of the social, political, and economic life of the nation. Actually, American citizens never had to choose whether they would have prohibition or not. They are faced by the inescapable logic of events which made prohibition the only solution of some of the most difficult problems ever faced by any nation of people. It was not war hysteria, but the calm, cold, dispassionate logic of events which prepared the people of this nation for that drastic legislation which has outlawed forever the brewer, the bartender, and all their works. As Abraham Lincoln once realized that this nation could not exist half slave and half free, so it dawned upon the consciousness of the American people that no highly developed civilization could continue half drunken and half sober. We had to choose between falling in the rear of the procession of nations, unable to keep step with the leaders of the race, or abandoning the habit which handicapped us, to assume with a bold stride a foremost place in the industrial life of the world.

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