minds of most persons who publicly
express their regret over the prevalence of law-breaking. What they
are thinking about, what the Anti-Saloon League talks about, what the
Prohibition enforcement officers expend their energy upon, is the sale
of alcoholic drinks in public places and by bootleggers. But where the
bootlegger and the restaurant-keeper counts his thousands, home brew
counts its tens of thousands. To this subject there is a remarkable
absence of attention on the part of the Anti-Saloon League and of the
Prohibition enforcement service. They know that there are not hundreds
of thousands but millions of people breaking the law by making their
own liquors, but they dare not speak of it. They dare not go even so
far as to make it universally known that the making of home brew is a
violation of the law. To this day a very considerable number of people
who indulge in the practice are unaware that it is a violation of the
law. And the reason for this careful and persistent silence is only
too plain. To make conspicuous before the whole American people the
fact that the law is being steadily and complacently violated in
millions of decent American homes would bring about a realization of
the demoralizing effect of Prohibition which its sponsors, fanatical
as they are, very wisely shrink from facing.

How long this demoralization may last I shall not venture to predict.
But it will not be overcome in a day; and it will not be overcome at
all by means of exhortations. It is possible that enforcement will
gradually become more and more efficient, and that the spirit of
resistance may thus gradually be worn out. On the other hand it is
also possible that means of evading the law may become more and more
perfected by invention and otherwise, and that the melancholy and
humiliating spectacle which we are now witnessing may be of very long
duration. But in any case it has already lasted long enough to do
incalculable and almost ineradicable harm. And for all this it is
utterly idle to place the blame on those qualities of human nature
which have led to the violation of the law. Of those qualities some
are reprehensible and some are not only blameless but commendable. The
great guilt is not that of the law-breakers but that of the lawmakers.
It is childish to imagine that every law, no matter what its nature,
can command respect. Nothing would be easier than to imagine laws
which a very considerable number of perfectly wel