directs that the law shall be violated on its own ships, for fear that
the commercial loss entailed by doing otherwise would further excite
popular resentment against the law? It has only to be added that since
the date of that editorial (June 18, 1922) the Anti-Saloon League has
come out strongly against the selling of liquor on Governmentowned
ships--a change which only emphasizes the point I am making. For, in
spite of the Tribune's shrewd observations, it soon became clear that
the Volstead act was being so terribly discredited by the preposterous
spectacle of the Government selling liquor on its own ships that
something had to be done about it; and it was only under the pressure
of this situation that a new line of strategy was adopted by the
Anti-Saloon League. What it will do if it finds that it cannot put
through its plan of excluding liquor from all ships, American and
foreign, remains to be seen. Now it may be replied to all this that a
certain amount of laxity is to be found in the execution of all laws;
that the resources at the disposal of government not being sufficient
to secure the hunting down and punishment of all offenders, our
executive and prosecuting officers and police and courts apply their
powers in such directions and in such ways as to accomplish the
nearest approach possible to a complete enforcement of the law. But
the reply is worthless. Because the enforcement of all laws is in some
degree imperfect, it does not follow that there is no disgrace and no
mischief in the spectacle of a law enforced with spectacular vigor,
and even violence, in a thousand cases where such enforcement cannot
be successfully resisted, and deliberately treated as a dead letter in
a hundred thousand cases where its enforcement would show how
widespread and intense is the people's disapproval of the law. There
are many instances in which a law has become a dead letter; where this
is generally recognized no appreciable harm is done, since universal
custom operates as a virtual repeal. But here is a case of a law