choice of evils; and it is not easy to decide between them. On the one
hand, we have the disrespect of the Constitution involved in the
enactment by Congress of a law which it knows to be less than a
fulfilment of the Constitution's mandate. On the other hand we have
the disrespect of the law involved in its daily violation by millions
of citizens who break it without the slightest compunction or sense of
guilt, and in the deliberate failure of the Government to so much as
take cognizance of the most numerous class of those violations. In
favor of the former course--the passing of a wine-and-beer law--it may
at least be said that the offense, whether it be great or small, is
committed once for all by a single action of Congress, which, if left
undisturbed, would probably before long be generally accepted as
taking the place of the Amendment itself. A law permitting wine and
beer but forbidding stronger drinks would have so much more public
sentiment behind it than the present law that it would probably be
decently enforced, and not very widely resisted; and though such a law
would be justly objected to as not an honest fulfilment of the
Eighteenth Amendment, it would, I believe, in its practical effect, be
far less demoralizing than the existing statute, the Volstead act.
Accordingly, while I cannot view the enactment of such a law with
unalloyed satisfaction, I think that, in the situation into which we
have been put by the Eighteenth Amendment, the proposal of a
wine-and-beer law to displace the Volstead law deserves the support of
good citizens as a practical measure which would effect a great
improvement on the present state of things.

CHAPTER X

PROHIBITION AND SOCIALISM