experience of its opposite. Prohibition is a restraint of liberty so
clearly unrelated to any primary need of the state, so palpably
bearing on the most personal aspect of a man's own conduct, that it is
impossible to acquiesce in it and retain a genuine and lively feeling
of abhorrence for any other threatened invasion of the domain of
liberty which can claim the justification of being intended for the
benefit of the poor or unfortunate. So long as Prohibition was a local
measure, so long even as it was a measure of State legislation, this
effect did not follow; or, if at all, only in a small degree. People
did not regard it as a dominant, and above all as a paramount and
inescapable, part of the national life. But decreed for the whole
nation, and imbedded permanently in the Constitution, it will have an
immeasurable effect in impairing that instinct of liberty which has
been the very heart of the American spirit; and with the loss of that
spirit will be lost the one great and enduring defense against
Socialism. It is not by the argumentation of economists, nor by the
calculations of statisticians, that the Socialist advance can be
halted. The real struggle will be a struggle not of the mind but of
the spirit; it will be Socialism and regimentation against
individualism and liberty. The cause of Prohibition has owed its rapid
success in no small measure to the support of great capitalists and
industrialists bent upon the absorbing object of productive
efficiency; but they have paid a price they little realize. For in the
attainment of this minor object, they have made a tremendous breach in
the greatest defense of the existing order of society against the
advancing enemy. To undermine the foundations of Liberty is to open
the way to Socialism.

CHAPTER XI