Prohibitionist forces over Congress or a State Legislature is not
absolutely unlimited--this game is not worth the candle.

To fight hard and long merely to get a concession like this, which is
in substance no concession--to get permission to drink beer that is
not beer and wine that is not wine--is surely not an undertaking worth
the expenditure of any great amount of civic energy. A source of
comfort was, however, furnished to advocates of a liberalizing of the
Prohibition regime by the very fact that the Supreme Court did
sanction so manifest a stretching of the meaning of words as is
involved in a law which declares any beverage containing as much as
one-half of one per cent. of alcohol to be an "intoxicating liquor."
If a liquor that is not intoxicating can by Congressional definition
be made intoxicating, it was pointed out, then by the same token a
liquor that is intoxicating can by Congressional definition be made
non-intoxicating. Accordingly, it has been held by many, if Congress
were to substitute ten per cent., say, for one-half of one per cent.,
in the Volstead act, by which means beer and light wines would be
legitimated, the Supreme Court would uphold the law and a great relief
from the present oppressive conditions would by this very simple means
be accomplished. What the Supreme Court would actually say of such a
law I am far from bold enough to attempt to say. That the law would
not be an execution of the intent of the Eighteenth Amendment is plain
enough; and it would be a much more substantial transgression against
its purpose than is the one-half of one per cent. enactment.
Nevertheless it is quite possible that the Supreme Court would decide
that this deviation to the right of the zero mark is as much within
the discretion of Congress as was the Volstead deviation to the left.
Certainly the possibility at least exists that this would be so. But
whether this be so or not, it is quite plain that Congress, if it