be men,
others would be something less. It is true that, so far as regards the
imbecile, the insane, and the criminal, such a state of things obtains as
it is; but this stands wholly apart from the general life of the race, and
has no influence whatever on the habitual feelings and experiences of
human beings. The normal life of mankind is shot through and through with
the idea that a man's a man; all that is highest in feeling and conduct is
closely bound up with it. Lessen its sway over our feelings and thoughts
and instincts, and how much benefit in the shape of "preventing Czolgoszes
and Schranks" would be required to compensate for the loss in nobleness,
in depth, which human life would suffer?

* * * * *

The prohibition movement belongs, in the main, to a wholly different order
of things. The fight against the evils of drink, as it has been carried on
for a century or more, has been animated by a moral fervor which classes
it rather with the fight against slavery, or with the great revivals of
religion, than with those movements which owe their origin to a
calculating and cold-blooded perfectionism. Its leaders have been fired
with the ardor of a war directed against a devastating monster, to whose
ravages was to be ascribed a large part of the misery and wickedness that
afflict mankind. It is true that the economic and physiological aspects of
the drink question were not ignored; the total-abstinence men were glad
enough to have this second string to their bow. But the real fight was not
against alcohol as one of many things concerning which the habits of men
are more or less unwise; it was a fight against the Demon Rum, the ally of
all the powers of darkness. The plea of the moderate drinker was rejected
with scorn, not because there was any objection to moderate drinking in
itself, but because total abstinence was the only true preventive of
drunkenness, and drunkenness must be stamped out if mankind was to be
saved. The moderate drinker was censured not because he was wasting his
money, or failing to "conserve his efficiency," but because for the sake
of a trivial self-indulgence he was giving countenance to a practice which
was consigning millions of his fellow men to wretchedness in this world
and to everlasting damnation in the next.

Now this remarkable thing about the present extraordinary manifestation of
growth and strength in the prohibition movement is that it is not