THE Prohibitionists contend, when we who are but human suggest that the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act should be changed, that the law is the law; and now that these are part of our statutes, they are there to stay, that they must not be tampered with or altered in any way; that it is up to every good American to accept them, not to complain, not to make any utterance which would be apt to disturb the sweet peace these laws are intended to bring to us.  
They forget that it is they themselves who saw fit to change our laws. Are they bad Americans because they did so? When the shoe is on the other foot.... But the analogy is so obvious that there can scarcely be any necessity of arguing the matter.
I have written, in a previous chapter, about a few of the laws which are disobeyed. Am I a bad American, a poor sport, for instance, because I refuse to believe in capital punishment? It is the law of my State that a man found guilty of murder in the first degree must go to the electric chair. Called to serve upon a criminal jury, I plainly say that I do not believe in capital punishment. I am excused.89 My conscientious scruples are taken into consideration. I imagine that only a small percentage of us believe in sending a man to his death, even for so serious a crime as murder; yet the statute abides. We continue to send men to the gallows, or the chair—though some States have been wise enough to abolish the barbarous habit.
I have conscientious scruples about trying a man for violation of the Volstead Act; for it would hardly be possible for me to convict a fellow citizen who had been spied upon by a detective in a bathing-suit, as I read not long ago that one man had been. I am against the manner in which evidence is obtained; and I would distrust, even under oath, statements of witnesses who hired themselves to the Government as plain-clothes men to visit beaches and bathing pavilions in order to discover some unlucky devil in the act of taking a nip from a pint bottle after he was shivering from his plunge in the ocean. There is a human element in such a case. I may be too emotional for perfect jury service. Granted. But that is something beyond my control. I cannot change my temperament. I loath the spectacle of one part of the population striving to discover something evil in the other part. It seems unnecessary to me. Peeping Toms are a far greater menace than the people peeped at. I do not feel morally bound to respect a law which so many respectable fellow citizens likewise disrespect. I think stupid legislation is an abomination; that the world90 would be a happier place were it not for censorship of morals and manners. I think that most people instinctively know the difference between right and wrong, and that, through education, they can be made to understand and see all those little differences and shades which sometimes confound us.
There are divorce laws upon our Statutes which millions of people violently and bitterly oppose. Is a good Roman Catholic a bad American citizen because his conscience refuses to let him condone the rulings of our Courts in divorce trials?
On April 24, 1922, in St. Mary’s Protestant Episcopal Church, Emmerton, Maryland, a sermon was preached by the Reverend W. A. Crawford-Frost on the subject of “Obeying a Disreputable Law.”
The minister took as his text the verses from Esther 1:7 and 8: “And they gave them drink in vessels of gold, (the vessels being diverse one from another,) and royal wine in abundance, according to the state of the king. And the drinking was according to the law; none did compel: for so the king had appointed to all the officers of his house, that they should do according to every man’s pleasure.”
He said in part:
“Recently President Harding and Secretary Hughes have made pathetic appeals to the people of America to respect the law. That such a request should have been considered necessary is itself a sad commentary on the state91 of affairs existing in our republic. There is a difference between obedience and respect. All good citizens are called upon to obey the laws, whether they respect a particular law or not; but they are not called upon to respect a law that is not respectable.
“There are disreputable laws just as there are disreputable men.
“When is a man properly looked upon as disreputable? That depends on the time and place and the people who do the looking, but in most ages and countries there are some things that the universal conscience of man holds to be not respectable. Thus lying, robbing, cruelty and blasphemy are disreputable, and a man who lies, robs, is cruel and blasphemes is a disreputable man.
“Accordingly, if a law can be shown to lie, to rob, to be cruel, and to blaspheme God, it is a disreputable law and does not deserve respect, though all good citizens should obey it until it is repealed.
“To call upon the people of America to respect a law that is not respectable is fundamentally dishonest, for it breaks down the distinction between what is respectable and what is disreputable and calls upon us to admire and look up to that which we should despise and abhor.
“Now I will give you reasons why I consider that the Volstead Act lies, robs, is cruel and blasphemes God. It may be that my arguments are not sound, but they appear to me to be so, and all that a man can do is to go according to his conscience and his common sense.
“It seems to me that it is a lie to say that all beverages containing more than one half of one per cent of alcohol are intoxicating. No man’s stomach can hold enough of a drink containing twice that proportion of alcohol to become inebriated thereby. It is a physical impossibility. He would have to absorb at least a gallon at one time to do it....
92 “The Volstead Act robbed thousands of men whose capital was invested in what they considered to be an honorable industry and one that promoted the health and happiness of mankind on the whole, even though five per cent injured themselves by it.
“It robbed them by taking away their property from them without compensation. It robbed their employees of their living by throwing them out of work. It robbed the taxpayers, who now have to pay out of their own pockets by compulsion the billions of dollars that were formerly spent cheerfully and voluntarily by the users of alcoholic beverages.
“The Volstead Act is cruel to invalids who under it cannot afford to get the proper alcoholic beverages needed to preserve their lives. I could quote scores of the highest medical authorities to prove this, but only have space for a few:
“Dr. Paul Bartholow, of the Jefferson Medical College: ‘Beer, ale and porter are much and justly esteemed as stomach tonics and restoratives in chronic, wasting diseases. Alcohol is an important remedy in the various forms of pulmonary phthisis. In convalescents from acute diseases there can be no difference of opinion as to the great value of wine as a restorative.’
“Dr. Samuel C. L. Potter, of the Cooper Medical College, San Francisco: ‘In anemia and chlorosis good red wines are almost indispensable. It is an absolute necessity in the treatment of lobar pneumonia. In fevers, alcohol is often most serviceable.’
“Dr. Frederick C. Shattuc, of Harvard University: ‘In typhoid fever if the heart shows undue weakness I consider it a grave error in judgment to withhold alcohol. The danger of forming the alcohol habit is practically nil in the subjects of acute general infection. They are more likely to acquire a distaste than a liking for it.’
93 “Dr. Daniel M. Hoyte, formerly of the University of Pennsylvania: ‘Alcohol has long been used to abort a cold. The patient takes a hot bath, and after getting into bed drinks a hot lemonade containing one or two ounces of whiskey. This produces diaphoresis and aids in the elimination of the toxins.’
“Dr. Binford Throne, writing in Forschheimer’s Therapeusis: ‘All cases of diphtheria have more or less myocarditis, and all should be given stimulants from the first. The best is good whiskey or brandy.’
“Dr. Charles P. Woodruff, Surgeon in the United States Army in the Philippines, wrote in the New York Medical Journal, December 17th, 1904, as follows:
“‘In 1902 I obtained a mass of data on the physical condition and drinking habits of a regiment of infantry which had about three years in the Philippines. I must confess to being somewhat disconcerted and disheartened at first by the total; the excessive drinkers were far healthier than the abstainers, only one half as many were sent home sick and one sixth as many of them died. I had hoped to prove the opposite.... The damage done to these young men by occasional sprees is not so great as the damage done by the climate to the abstainers. What a lot of misstatements have we received from our teachers, text books, and authorities!’ He concludes:
“‘I suppose some medical editors would advise hiding these figures on the ground that they would be an advantage to the whiskey dealers who buy Kansas corn from Prohibition farmers. They would no doubt rather see our soldiers die than let them know that a drink of wine at meals might save their lives.’
“In his report he had stated that approximately 11 per cent of the abstainers died, while about 3? per cent of the moderate, and less than 2 per cent of the excessive, died. About 15 per cent of the abstainers were invalided94 home, about 9 per cent or 10 per cent of the moderate, and about 8 per cent of the excessive drinkers.
“And yet in the light of stupendous facts like these the Volstead Act is passed, hampering physicians in their work of mercy and making it sometimes impossible for them to give the remedies that God intended to prevent suffering and preserve human life. Could diabolical cruelty go further than that?
“To torture an invalid is as devilish as it is to burn a well man at a stake.
“More. It is a thousand times worse because it is so much more widely spread. Hundreds of invalids are being tortured all over the United States to-day for every white man that ever was burned at the stake by the Indians.
“Every loyal member of the Protestant Episcopal Church should hold that the Volstead Act is a blasphemy against God. Jews, Unitarians and others who do not consider that Jesus was God, are entitled to hold different views from us regarding the religious aspect of this Act, but for us there is no escape. We believe that Jesus was God, and we believe that He made wine at Cana and that He ordered it to be drunk publicly in His memory for all time to come. Our Church has declared that unfermented grape juice is not wine and should not be used for it in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. A law to say that wine containing more than one half of one per cent alcohol should not be allowed to be made and carried about freely from place to place, implies that Jesus did wrong in making it and ordering it to be used publicly by Christians. If He did wrong, He was not God. Therefore, the Volstead Act from the standpoint of our Church, blasphemes God.
“Every true Churchman, consequently, should despise and abhor the Volstead Act as lying, robbing, cruel and blaspheming and unworthy of respect, although it must be95 obeyed by all good citizens till it can be repealed. We give it obedience, but not respect.
“‘But,’ some will say, ‘if this is so, why should we obey such a law? Would it not be better to rebel against it, to flout it openly and take the consequences?’ It is unjust. It is tyrannical. It is un-American. It is due to a combination of religious and universal ignorance of physiology. It is the result of active political propaganda carried on by money of persons who are financially interested in prohibiting alcoholic beverages. The weapons used have been trickery, deception, falsification of statistics, lobbying, slander and abuse. It has been forced on legislators by intimidation of the grossest kind. Good men have been afraid to oppose it, for fear of being called ‘boozers,’ ‘bootleggers,’ lawbreakers,’ and other opprobrious epithets. It was smuggled in as a war measure when our young men were overseas, and later on was made more and more stringent, till it far surpassed in tyranny any thought entertained by its supporters in the beginning. Why should we obey such a law? Would it not be more American to treat this piece of iniquity as our forefathers treated the Stamp Act?
“No. It is our duty to obey it. We could not repeal the Stamp Act, and we can repeal this. In the case of the tyranny of George III there was no legal redress. All that freedom-loving men could do was to rebel. That tyranny was forced on us from the outside. This we have allowed to be imposed on us in our supineness by tyrants in our own household. The two cases are not similar. We must obey the Volstead Act till we can repeal or amend it....
“Bolingbroke declared, ‘Liberty is to the collective body what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty no happiness can be enjoyed by society.’
“I refuse to be silent when I see America, the hope of96 mankind, likely to be bound hand and foot by the tyranny of ignorance and religious fanaticism....
“The maxim of John Philpot Curran, ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,’ was never needed in America more than it is at this moment. This is no time for patriots to be silent.
“According to Burke, the people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. In this case the delusion is that they are following Christ while they are really following Mahomet, the anti-Christ. That delusion must be exposed until everybody sees it clearly.
“We must not forget what Colton said: ‘Liberty will not descend to a people. A people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned to be enjoyed.’
“How can this be done? Listen to Savonarola: ‘Do you wish to be free? Then above all things love God. Love one another and love the common weal; then you will have liberty.’
“It is all right to regulate drinking by law, provided it is the right kind of a law.
“The extraordinary thing about our text is that it shows the legal regulation of drinking to be no new thing, for it existed in the time of Queen Esther, 510 B.C., or just 2432 years ago, because our text says ‘and the drinking was according to the law.’
“But the law allowed all the liberty that was right and proper. It says: ‘None could compel; for the king had appointed to all the officers of his house that they should do according to every man’s pleasure.’
“It was a joyful and festive occasion, like the wedding at Cana, and Ahasuerus then, as did Jesus later on, recognizes that the proper use of wine would Promote happiness and health and that the guests present would be trusted not to abuse it.
97 “But though laws regulating drinking may be necessary to well ordered society, these laws must be equitable and sensible, regulation, according to the scriptures, not prohibition. The drinking should be ‘according to the law.’ One great trouble about the Volstead Act is that the drinking goes on just the same but it is not ‘according to the law,’ and instead of getting pure liquors people are being poisoned by the thousands all over the country.
“Would it not be better to follow the Bible and have the liquor drunk according to the law?
“This can only be done by modifying the law so as to make it conform with the Bible. If the law is dishonest, cruel or unjust, we must vote to change it if we love God, and love our neighbor and love the common weal. We must either repeal it altogether or amend it, so as to make it honest, kindly and fair, so that we may have law and liberty at the same time.
“And Americans will do it. In the immortal words of Daniel Webster: ‘If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth’s central fire, it may be smothered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, and at some time or other, in some place or other, it will break out and flame up to heaven.’”
This is powerful language which strikes at the very root of things, but Dr. Crawford-Frost is not the only fearless clergyman who has spoken his mind on this all-absorbing question. Archbishop Glennon, of St. Louis, has scored the Eighteenth Amendment. In an interview given at Atlantic City in August, 1922, he bravely said:
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“The Constitution has been considerably weakened by the addition of the Eighteenth Amendment, for the Prohibition clause limits rights, while the rest of the Constitution grants rights. Matters referring to alcohol and drugs should be left to the police courts of the various cities and states.”
When he was asked if he thought Prohibition a benefit to the cou............