e places of trade? The armies which are sent
forth to save, to feed, and to clothe men's lives, no less than the
armies of bloodshed have need of the same high discipline. They, too,
are crippled and broken, they are driven back and hurled to defeat by
those moral foes which march under the banner of self-indulgence.

Here is an evil traffic which flaunts its wares in our faces in every
city block where the forces of righteousness have not risen in strength
to cast it out. But we have fallen upon times when the economic forces
are lining up solidly with the verdict of medical science and the power
of religion in a relentless opposition to the use of alcohol as a
beverage. In these days the man who thinks more of his job than he
does of his grog has the floor.

The wise railroad managers know full well that a tippler in the cab of
an engine or at the flagman's post means sooner or later a frightful
accident with loss of property and life. The owners of intricate and
delicate machinery in the great factories know that placing in control
men whose brains have been clogged and drugged with liquor is as
foolish as throwing sand into the ball bearings. "Safety First" means
"Sober First." The taxpayers are becoming no less insistent--they have
learned that the open saloon means added crime and poverty where they
must foot the bills. Decent people have grown tired of cleaning up the
muss and the dirt occasioned by the rum sellers. The moral forces of
the community recognize the fact that the liquor business allies itself
openly with immoralities of every sort. The people are saying in state
after state, in country after country, "Time's up! You have failed to
show your right to be! You will have to go." The habit of indulgence
in that which robs men of strength, of intelligence, of conscience,
finds every good man's hand against it.

We read in this strange story that Samson's strength was in his hair.
When his locks were cut away by the fair and false hand of evil he was
as weak as a woman.

How much of sober history and how much of poetic allegory there may be
in these glowing statements it is not easy to say. But the moral
content of this record is clear. When those slender and delicate lines
of contact which, as he believed according to his vow as a Nazarite,
bound him in loyalty to the source of all strength, were broken, then
his splendid prowess was no more. "It is that little half-inch rim of
the tre