e Volstead act was being so terribly discredited by the preposterous
spectacle of the Government selling liquor on its own ships that
something had to be done about it; and it was only under the pressure
of this situation that a new line of strategy was adopted by the
Anti-Saloon League. What it will do if it finds that it cannot put
through its plan of excluding liquor from all ships, American and
foreign, remains to be seen. Now it may be replied to all this that a
certain amount of laxity is to be found in the execution of all laws;
that the resources at the disposal of government not being sufficient
to secure the hunting down and punishment of all offenders, our
executive and prosecuting officers and police and courts apply their
powers in such directions and in such ways as to accomplish the
nearest approach possible to a complete enforcement of the law. But
the reply is worthless. Because the enforcement of all laws is in some
degree imperfect, it does not follow that there is no disgrace and no
mischief in the spectacle of a law enforced with spectacular vigor,
and even violence, in a thousand cases where such enforcement cannot
be successfully resisted, and deliberately treated as a dead letter in
a hundred thousand cases where its enforcement would show how
widespread and intense is the people's disapproval of the law. There
are many instances in which a law has become a dead letter; where this
is generally recognized no appreciable harm is done, since universal
custom operates as a virtual repeal. But here is a case of a law
enforced with militant energy where it suits the officers of the
Government to enforce it, systematically ignored in millions of cases
by the same officers because it suits them to do that, and cynically
violated by the direct orders of the Government itself when this
course seems recommended by a cold-blooded calculation of policy ! If
the laws against larceny, or arson, or burglary, or murder, were
executed in this fashion, what standing would the law have in
anybody's mind? Yet in the case of these crimes, the law only makes
effective the moral code which substantially the whole of the
community respects as a fundamental part of its ethical creed; and
accordingly even if the law were administered in any such outrageous
fashion as is the case with Prohibition, it would still retain in
large measure its moral authority.

But in the case of the Prohibition law, an enormous minority, and v