commonplace and receives no record; but to be run down in the traffic and break a limb is news. That receives its paragraph. It is the exceptional that receives the big headlines. And the big headlines about smuggling across the Canadian border and from the Bahama Islands or about wood alcohol are the proof that these things are exceptional. Otherwise they would not be news. That ethical passion which passed the 18th Amendment is now being diverted to its enforcement. The traffic across the Canadian border is being stopped, for Canada is now going dry. The traffic from the Bahamas under the British flag is being dealt with. 'We shall move heaven and earth to make Prohibition effective,' said the orator. 'You had better move the Bahamas,' came the reply. It would be a disaster if the false impression created in this country by the syndicated Press regarding the working of Prohibition in the States were to lead those in authority to imagine that the people of the States will regard with no indignation the British flag being used for the flouting of the laws and of the Constitution of the United States. It is impossible that that can go on. Everywhere in the States the organisation for making Prohibition effective is being tightened up. In social reform the citizens of the States are determined to lead the world. I for one am convinced that they will not be turned from their chosen path or deflected from their goal by bootleggers or by Jewish syndicates. Whoever will judge of the condition of the States regarding Prohibition from the newspapers in New York will find themselves misled. 'In New York,' says The World, 'it will be necessary to install three enforcement agents to a family, so that they can stand in three eight-hour shifts, or hire the entire population of the city as special enforcement agents and set every man to watch himself.' That is the sort of piffle that is supplied gratis to the newspapers in this country. What is forgotten is the fact that the millions of homes where the fathers and mothers live and toil, who have carried the law, say nothing. Their voice is not heard in their Press. And they have not weakened in their resolution that their country shall be a country where children shall grow up untempted and where monopolies shall no longer be free to fill the jails and the poorhouses. No amount of jibes can alter the fact that there has been no ethical revolution in the history of the world comparable to that passion for righteousness which passed the 18th Amendment and which is now determined to enforce it. 'Our parents,' said a wet orator lately, 'taught us to lay up something for a rainy day: how much nicer if they had only taught us to lay up something for a dry one.' The American will make any number of jokes about his climate, but his determination is unalterable that it shall be dry. There has been no great moral advance made by humanity in these last centuries which has been unable to hold its ground. Whatever dust may be thrown in their eyes, the people of this country may be certain that there will be no repeal. When the choice is 'Repeal' or 'Enforce,' the American chooses unhesitatingly. 'Enforce' becomes his watchword.

V

Though in the Western States full enforcement of the Prohibition Law has not been effected so far, yet the beneficial effects of the closing of the saloons are so many and great, that he who runs may read. There were four millions idle in the States at the time when I was there, but the nation was going through the greatest industrial crisis in its history with perfect calm, and without suffering the pangs of destitution, because workmen no longer wasted their money in the saloons. Here in Britain the idle have been pauperised by doles from the public exchequer; in the United States there have been no doles. The nation can thus come through a crisis of unemployment without half its number becoming a charge on the remainder. That is possible because the sources of waste are sealed up. Statistics amply prove that drunkenness is rapidly disappearing. The Salvation Army ceased its rescue work among the drunkards in New York because there were no more drunkards to be rescued. In Pittsburg I found the jail well-nigh empty and the poorhouse without sufficient inmates to keep it clean. It is the same everywhere. One great employer of labour, whose opinion I asked, said: 'Prohibition has given us a good Monday in our factory.' That was the most terse and effective testimony to Prohibition that I heard. There is no broken time owing to drunkenness. Industrial efficiency has been increased 20 per cent. One man who had an interest in a big hotel told me that the profits from soft drinks (non-alcoholic) were last year double the profit they used to make by the sale of alcohol. Hotels never had such a time of prosperity as they have had lately. The reason is that men can bring their wives and children to stay at the hotels with perfect safety. The proprietor of the biggest hotel in a city where I stayed told me that he was glad to be rid of the bar and that he would never have it back on any account. A Canadian-Scot who has prospered greatly told me how he became a Prohibitionist. 'I am interested in a mine in the north,' said he, 'and I went to visit it. I saw the men wasting their substance and their lives in the saloons—lying around drugged, with their pockets empty. It was shocking. I used to give $500 to fight Prohibition. When the wet agent came to my office after that for my subscription, I said: "Get out! I'll give $500 a year in the future to make an end of all saloons!" It is thus the movement spreads. The moderate drinker is as determined as the Rechabites that the saloon shall never open its door again—and it never will. One of the oddest testimonies in behalf of the success of the new law was this saying: 'In Detroit there has been a falling off in the taxi-cab trade.' The inference is that everybody can walk home now. 'We saw,' says Mr. Harold Spender, 'only a single drunken man in America for three weeks, and then he was a politician going to Washington.' In a period of three months I saw none. Though this reform has been in operation for so short a time, it has already effected the greatest miracle in modern history. It has healed the sick by the hundred thousand and it has raised the dead.

VI

The readers of the commercialised Press when they scan the inspired articles regarding America's social uprising have only to use their common-sense to realise that they are being served up falsehoods. They have only to think what a mighty change for the betterment of humanity has been wrought in the great cities where alcohol no longer seeks and lies in wait for the unwary at every street corner. Instead of liquor seeking him, the drouth must now seek the liquor—and the search is a toilsome one in a dry and parched land. What a deliverance that must be for the weak-willed when the State no longer, by licensed premises every few yards in the crowded streets, tempts them to take the road to pauperism and destruction. They have only to think of the lives of rich and poor whom they themselves knew, that have made shipwreck on these rocks and shoals, and think what a deliverance has come to the nation that no longer, with the marshalled host of its liquor sellers, seeks to enslave and destroy its citizens. They have only to look at the city of their habitation and ask themselves why it is that so many hundred thousand of their fellow-citizens live under conditions that mean unspeakable misery. Why are families doomed to one-roomed houses? why are children reared under conditions that mean their being damned before they are born? The answer is—Alcohol! In proportion to the number of public-houses in any district is the misery of the housing conditions. You have but to scratch the surface of human misery anywhere in our cities and you find the turgid stream of alcohol. Let the reader of the subsidised Press ask himself why all the money spent on clearing and cleaning