Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics Part 11

(1) They are to any normal man or woman, and especially to the young who have not yet become immersed in the more serious game of life, one of the greatest and most tonic joys. The stretching and tension of healthy muscles, the deep draughts of out-of-door air, the excitement of rivalry, the comrades.h.i.+p of cooperative endeavor, the ABANDON of effort, the glow of achievement, contribute much in immediate and retrospective pleasure to the worth of living.

(2) When not carried too far, the physical gain is clear. Regular exercise is necessary for abundant health; and of all forms of exercise the happiest is, other things equal, the best.

(3) In many ways there are potentialities of moral gain in athletics which do not result from ordinary exercise. There is the stimulus to intense effort, the awakening of strenuousness which may carry over into other fields of activity. Here, at least, indolence is impossible, alertness is demanded, and the willingness to strive against obstacles.

To put one's whole soul into anything is wholesome, even if it be but a game; and the man who bucks the line hard on the gridiron has begun a habit which may serve him well when he meets more dangerous obstacles and more doughty opponents on a larger field.

(4) The lesson of cooperation taught by teamwork of any sort is a valuable schooling. One of the prime needs of our day is the development of the spirit of loyalty, the willingness to subordinate individual welfare to that of a group, and to look upon one's own work as part of a larger endeavor. The man who has learned to take pride in making sacrifice hits is ripe to respond to the growing sense of the dishonorableness of making personal profit the aim of business or of politics.

(5) Athletic games, where properly supervised, inculcate the spirit of sportsmans.h.i.+p. To keep to the rules of longing, to restrain temper and accept the decisions of the umpire without complaint, to take no unfair advantage and indulge in no foul play, to give a square deal to opponents and ask no more for one's own side, to endure defeat with a smile and without discouragement- surely this is just the spirit we need in everything. It is vitally important that unsportsmanlike conduct should be ruthlessly stamped out in all compet.i.tive sports, and that every team should prefer to lose honorably than to win unfairly.

[Footnote: There has been a good deal of criticism of American intercollegiate athletics on the ground of their fostering unsportsmanlike conduct. A recent paper in the Atlantic Monthly (by C. A. Stewart, vol. 113, p. 153) concludes with this recommendation: "A forceful presentation of the facts of the situation, with an appeal to the innate sense of honor of the undergraduates; such a revision of the rules as will retain only those based upon essential fairness; and a strict supervision by the faculty;-upon the success of these three measures rests the hope that college athletics may be purged of trickery and the spirit of 'get away with it.' ... A few men expelled for lying about eligibility, and a few teams disbanded because of unfair play, would arouse undergraduates with a wholesome jolt."]

(6) Wherever they are taken seriously athletic contests require a preliminary period of "training," which includes abstinence from s.e.x incontinence, from alcohol, smoking, overeating, and late hours. The discipline which this involves is an object lesson in the requirements for efficiency in any undertaking, and excellent practice in their fulfillment. How far athletes learn this lesson and apply it to wider spheres of activity, it would be interesting to discover. In any case, they have proved in themselves the ability to repress inclination and find satisfaction in what makes for health and efficiency; and all who know the implications of "training" have received a subconscious "suggestion" in the right direction. The other side of the problem is this:

(1) Compet.i.tive athletics, if taken seriously contests,inevitably take more time and energy than their importance .warrants. A member of a college football or baseball team can do little else during the season. Studies are neglected, intellectual interests are subordinated, college figures essentially as a group of men endeavoring to beat another college on the field. If a man is bright he may "keep up with"

his studies, but his intellectual profit is meager; his energies are being absorbed elsewhere. This phenomenon has given rise to much satire and to much perplexity on the part of college administrations. A few have gone so far as to banish intercollegiate contests, a.s.serting thatthe purpose of coming to college is primarily to learn to use the brain, not the muscles.

(2) The strain of intense rivalry is too severe on the body. It is now known that the intercollegiate athlete is very probably sacrificing some of his life when he throws his utmost effort into the game or the race. The length of life of the big athletes averages considerably shorter than that of the more moderate exercisers. From the physical point of view, intercla.s.s or interfraternity contests, not taken too earnestly, are. far better than the intercollegiate struggles. They also have the advantage that far more can partic.i.p.ate. The problem before our college authorities and leaders of student sentiment is how to check the fierceness of the big contests-shortening them, perhaps, possibly forbidding entirely the more strenuous and how to provide sports for all members of the college; so that, instead of a few overstrained athletes and a lot of fellows who under exercise, we shall see every man out on the field daily, and no one overdoing.

This ideal necessitates far larger athletic grounds than most of our colleges have reserved. It may necessitate the abolition of some of the big contests that have been the excitement of many thousands. But it must not be forgotten prelude and preparation for life; they must not be allowed to usurp the chief place in a man's thoughts or to unfit him for his greatest after-usefulness. [Footnote: Cf. Atlantic Monthly, vol. 90, p. 534; Outlook, vol. 98, p. 597.] Is it wrong to smoke?

Statistics taken with care at many American colleges show with apparent conclusiveness that the use of tobacco is physically and mentally deleterious to young men. [Footnote: See, e.g., in the Popular Science Monthly for October, 1912, a summary by Dr. F. J. Pack of an investigation covering fourteen colleges. Similar investigations have been made by several others, with generally similar results.] It seems that smokers lose in lung capacity, are stunted slightly in their growth, are lessened in their endurance, develop far more than their proportion of eye and nerve troubles, furnish far less than their proportion of the athletes who win positions on college teams, furnish far less than their proportion of scholars.h.i.+p men, and far more than their proportion of conditions and failures. It is perhaps too early to be quite sure of these results; but in all probability further experiment will confirm them, and make it certain that tobacco is physically harmful as has long been recognized by trainers for athletic contests. The harm to adults seems to be less marked; perhaps to some it is inappreciable. And if there is appreciable harm, whether it is great enough to counterbalance the satisfaction which a confirmed smoker takes in his cigar or pipe, or any worse than the restlessness which the sacrifice of it might engender, is one of those delicate personal problems that one can hardly solve for another. But certainly where the habit is not formed, the loss of tobacco involves no important deprivation; its use is chiefly a social custom which can be discontinued without ill effects. Effort should be made to keep the young from forming the habit; college "smokers," where free cigarettes and cigars are furnished, should be superseded by "rallies,"

where the same amount of money could provide some light and harmless refreshment. This is not one of the important problems. But, after all, everything is important; and men must, and ultimately will, learn to find their happiness in things that forward, instead of thwarting, their great interests; what makes at all against health and efficiency-when it is so needless and artificial a habit as smoking, so mildly pleasant and so purely selfish-must be rooted out of desire.

The great amount of money wasted on tobacco could be far more wisely and fruitfully expended. We shall not brand smoking as a sin, hardly as a vice; but the man who wishes to make the most of his life will avoid it himself, and the man who wishes to work for the general welfare will put his influence and example against it.

H. S. King, Rational Living, chap. VI, secs. I, II. J. Payot, The Education of the Will, book III, sec. IV. J. MacCunn, The Making of Character, part II, chap. II. W. Hutchinson, Handbook of Health. L.

H. Gulick, The Efficient Life. F. Paulsen, System of Ethics, book III, chap. III. T. Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life. P. G. Hamerton, The Intellectual Life, part I.

CHAPTER XVI

THE ALCOHOL PROBLEM

OF all the problems relating to health and efficiency there is none graver than that of the narcotic-stimulants. With the exception of tobacco, which is probably, for adults, but mildly deleterious, their use is fraught with danger, both physical and moral; beyond the narrowest limits it is certainly baneful, while it is as yet an open question whether even a very slight use is not distinctly harmful.

The exact physiological effects of the several narcotic-stimulants are different, but they are alike in stimulating certain activities and depressing others; and their attraction for men is similar. Opium, morphine, and cocaine are more powerful drugs, and more inherently dangerous; but alcohol is much the most widely used and so most productive of evil. The hypodermically used narcotics need not be here discussed; for although they can give a far keener pleasure than alcohol, the penalty they inflict is more evident. Moreover, since their sale is not pushed by such powerful interests as continually stimulate the use of alcohol, they can, by the vigilant enforcement of existing laws, be readily removed from any general use. We turn, then, to the consideration of the one which has got a universal hold on the imagination and social habits of men, the only one that const.i.tutes at present a serious and complicated problem.

What are the causes of the use of alcoholic drinks?

(1) We may dismiss at once the suggestion that alcoholic liquors are drunk for the pleasantness of their taste or for their food value.

To some slight extent these factors enter in; but neither is important.

The taste for them is for most men an acquired taste; and with so many other delicious drinks to be had, especially in recent years, drinks that are far less expensive and without their poisonous effects, it is safe to say that the mere taste of them would not go far toward explaining the lure they have for men. As to their food value, there are those who justify themselves on the score of the nutrition they are getting from their wine or beer. But careful experiments have shown that the food value of alcohol is slight; and certainly, for nutrition received, these are among the most expensive foods, to be ranked with caviar and pate de foie gras. Beer is the most nutritious of the alcoholic drinks; but the same amount of money spent on bread would give about thirty times the nutrition, and a more all-round nutrition at that. Alcoholic liquors as food are, as has been said, like gunpowder as fuel very costly and very dangerous. [Footnote: See H.

S. Williams, Alcohol, p. 133; H. S. Warner, Social Welfare and the Liquor Problem, p. 80, and bibliography, p. 95.]

(2) A much commoner plea for drinking rests upon its sociability. But this is a matter of convention which can readily enough be altered.

There is nothing inherently more sociable in the drinking of wine than in the drinking of grape-juice, or coffee, or chocolate, or tea.

Indeed, one may well ask why the chief social bond between men should consist in drinking liquids side by side! Games and sports, in which wit is pitted against wit, or which bring men together in happy cooperation, together with the great resource of conversation, are more socially binding than any drinks. There will, indeed, be a temporary social hards.h.i.+p for many abstainers until the custom is generally broken up; one runs the risk of being thought by the heedless a prig and a Puritan. But that is a small price to pay for one's health and one's influence on others.

(3) More important than any of these causes is the craving for a stimulant. The monotony of work, the fatigue toward the end of the day, the severity of our Northern climate, the longing for intenser living, lead men to seek to apply the whip to their flagging energies.

This stimulus to the body is, however, largely if not wholly, illusory.

The mental-emotional effects, noted in the following paragraph, give the drinker the impression that he is physically fortified; but objective tests show that, after a very brief period, the dominant effect upon the organism is depressant. The apparent increase in bodily warmth, so often experienced, is a subjective illusion; in reality alcohol lowers the temperature and diminishes resistance to cold. Arctic explorers have to discard it entirely. The old idea of helping to cure snake bite, hydrophobia, etc, by whiskey was sheer mistake; the patient has actually much less of a chance if so drugged. Only for an immediate and transitory need, such as faintness or shock, is the quickly pa.s.sing stimulating power of alcohol useful; and even for such purposes other stimulants are more valuable. Reputable physicians have almost wholly ceased to use it. [Footnote: See H. S. Williams, op. cit, p. 4, 124-127; H. S. Warner, op. cit, pp. 87]

(4) The one real value of alcohol to man has been the boon of stimulating his emotional and impulsive life, bringing him an elevation of spirits, drowning his sorrows, helping him to forget, helping to free his mind from the burden of care, anxiety, and regret. As William James, with his unerring discernment, wrote twenty-five years ago: "The reason for craving alcohol is that it is an unaesthetic, even in moderate quant.i.ties. It obliterates a part of the field of consciousness and abolishes collateral trains of thought." [Footnote: Tolstoy also hit the nail on the head in his little essay, Why do Men Stupefy Themselves?] This use, in relieving brain-tension, in bringing a transient cheer and comfort to poor, overworked, worried, remorseful men, is not to be despised. Dull lives are vivified by it, a fleeting anesthesia of unhappy memories and longings is effected, and for the moment life seems worth living.

Without considering yet the physical penalty that must be paid for this evanescent freedom, we may make the obvious remark that it is a morally dangerous freedom. As the Odyssey has it, "Wine leads to folly, making even the wise to love immoderately, to dance, and to utter what had better have been kept silent." Alcohol slackens the higher, more complicated, mental functions-our conscience, our scruples, our reason- and leaves freer from inhibition our lower pa.s.sions and instincts. We cannot afford thus to submerge our better natures, and leave the field to our lower selves; it is a dangerous short cut to happiness. A far safer and more permanently useful procedure for the individual would be so to live by his reason and his conscience that he would not need to stupefy them, to forget his life as he is shaping it from day today. And the lesson to the community is so to brighten the lives of the poor with normal, wholesome pleasures and recreations, so to lift from them the burdens of poverty and social injustice, that they will not so much need to plunge into the grateful oblivion of the wine-cup.

(5) The most tenacious hold of the alcohol trade lies, however, in two things not yet enumerated. The one is, that much use of alcohol creates a pathological craving for it; the man who is accustomed to his beer or whiskey is restless and depressed if he cannot get it, and will sacrifice much to still for the nonce that insatiable longing. The other and even more important fact is, that the sale of liquor is immensely profitable to the manufacturers and sellers. The fighters for prohibition have to encounter the desperate opposition of those who have become slaves to the drug-many of whom may never get intoxicated, and would resent the term "slaves," but who have formed the abnormal habit and cannot without discomfort get rid of it. They have to meet the still fiercer hostility of those who are making money from the sale of liquor and do not intend to let go their opportunity.

What are the evils that result from alcoholic liquors?

The one real value of alcohol, we have said, lies in its temporary mental effects. It raises the hedonic tone of consciousness; it brings about, when taken in proper amounts, the well-known happy-go-lucky, scruple-free, expansive state of mind. What now is the price that must be paid for its use?

(1) The physical harmfulness of even light drinking is considerable.

(a) Alcohol, even in slight doses, as in a gla.s.s of wine or beer, has poisonous effects upon some of the bodily functions, which are clearly revealed by scientific experiment. [Footnote: See, for one testimony out of very many in medical literature, an article by Dr. Herbert McIntosh in the Journal of Advanced Therapeutics for April, 1912, p.

167: "Alcohol and ether are the two great enemies of the electrochemical properties of the salts necessary to organic life."

He speaks of "paralysis of the vaso-constrictor nerves," "inhibition of the cortical centers," etc.] Hence the temporary cheer must be paid for with usury by a much longer depression, resulting from the poisonous effects of alcohol upon the body. A jolly evening is followed by the familiar symptoms of the morning after. The extent of the physical and mental depression caused is not always realized, because it is spread out over a considerable period of time and may not be acute; a healthy person can stand a good deal without being conscious of the ill effects. But they are there. In bodily vigor, and so in mental buoyancy, the abstainer is IN THE END better off than if he drank even a little, or seldom.

(b) Careful and repeated experiments seem to show that even a very little drinking-a gla.s.s of beer or wine a day- decreases the capacity for both muscular and mental work. This loss of ability is not usually perceptible to the drinker; he often feels an illusory glow of power; but he cannot do as much. A bottle of beer a day means an appreciable loss in working efficiency. [Footnote: Accounts of the experiments will be found in H. S. Williams, op. cit, pp. 5-23, 128, 137; H. S. Warner, op. cit, p. 116. They had some realization of this truth even in the days of the Iliad. Hector says, "Bring me luscious wines, lest they unnerve my limbs and make me lose my wonted powers and strength."]

(c) Even a moderate use of alcohol increases liability to disease and shortens the chances of life. In any case of exposure to or contraction of disease, the total abstainer has a proved advantage over even the light drinker. The British life insurance companies reckon that at the age of twenty a total abstainer has an average prospect of life of forty-four years, a temperate regular drinker a prospect of thirty-one years, and a heavy drinker of fifteen years. Many other factors enter into the individual situation, of course; we know many cases where inveterate drinkers have lived to a ripe old age; it takes a great deal to break the iron const.i.tutions of some men. But averages tell the story. An authority on tuberculosis states that "if for no other reason than the prevention of tuberculosis, state prohibition would be justified" The use of alcohol predisposes the body to many kinds of disease; and according to conservative figures, approximately seventy thousand deaths yearly in the United States are caused by alcoholism and diseases that owe their grip to the use of alcohol. Besides this, a great deal of insanity and chronic invalidism, and a large proportion of deaths after operations, are due to this cause. [Footnote: See H. S. Williams, op. cit, pp. 25- 43, 149, 150; H. S. Warner, op. cit, chap. IV, and bibliography at end.]

(d) The chances of losing children at chances of begetting feeble-minded or degenerate children, are markedly greater for even moderate drinkers than for abstainers. Children of total abstainers have a great advantage, on the average, in size, stature, bodily vigor, intellectual power; they stand, on the average, between a year and two years ahead in cla.s.s of the children of moderate drinkers, they have less than half as many eye, ear, and other physical defects. This proved influence of even light drinking upon the vitality and normality transmitted to children should be the most serious of indictments against self-indulgence. Truly the sins of the fathers are visited upon the second and third generation. [Footnote: See Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, vol. IX, p.

234; H. S. Williams, op. cit, pp. 44-47.]

(2) The economic waste is enormous:

(a) Nearly, if not quite, two billion dollars a year are spent by the people of the United States for intoxicating beverages. Between fifty and seventy-five million bushels of grain are consumed annually in their production, besides the grapes used for wines. Nor does the money spent for liquors go in any appreciable degree into the pockets of the farmers who raise the grains; less than a thirtieth part finds its way to them, the brewers, distillers, and retailers getting about two thirds. The money invested in the beer industry alone was in 1909 over $550,000,000. [Footnote: See Independent, vol. 67, p. 1326; Year-Books of the Anti-Saloon League. For this whole subject of the cost of the liquor trade, see chap. V, in H. S. Warner, op. cit, and the bibliography appended.] The importance of the national liquor bill can be realized by a simple computation; it would suffice to pay two million men three dollars a day, six days in the week, year in and year out; it would suffice to build four or five Panama Ca.n.a.ls (at $400,000,000) a year. When we reckon up the total liquor bill of the world, a sum many times this, we can see what a frightful waste of man's resources is going on; for not only is there no a tremendous additional drain of wealth caused indirectly thereby.

(b) Among the factors in this additional drain of wealth, which must be added to the figures given above in estimating the total financial loss to the community, are: the loss in efficiency of workers through the- usually unrealized- toxic effects of alcohol; the loss of the lives of adult workers due to alcoholic poisoning-an annual loss greater than that of the whole Civil War; the support by the State of paupers, two fifths of whom, it is estimated, owe their status to alcoholism; [Footnote: See H. S. Williams, op. cit, p. 85] the support by the State of the insane, from a quarter to a half of whom owe their insanity directly or indirectly to alcohol; [Footnote: Ibid, p. 63]

the support of dest.i.tute and deserted children; [Footnote: Ibid, p. 89 ] the maintenance of prisons, of courts, and police - the Ma.s.sachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics has shown that eighty-four per cent of all criminals under conviction in the correctional inst.i.tutions of that State committed their crimes under the influence of alcohol. [Footnote: Ibid, p. 72] When we add to this the still greater numbers of incapables supported by their families and friends, we realize that the national drink bill is really very much greater than the mere sums spent for liquor. Comparative statistics show graphically how strikingly pauperism, crime, and dest.i.tution are diminished by prohibition. It is variously estimated that a fourth or a third or more of all acute poverty is due directly or indirectly to alcohol. Our munic.i.p.alities are always poor; all sorts of needed improvements are blocked for lack of funds. If this leakage of the national wealth can be stopped we shall be able with the money saved to create a radically different and higher civilization.

(3) The moral harm of alcohol is comparable to its physical and economic harm.

(a) As we noted when considering the value of alcohol, the higher nature is stupefied, leaving the emotions less controlled. The silliness, the irritability, the glumness, the violence, the l.u.s.t of men are given freer rein. The effect of alcohol is coa.r.s.ening, brutalizing; we are not our best selves under its influence. The judgment is dulled, the spirit of recklessness is stimulated-an impatience of restraint and a craving for further excitement. Even after the palpable effects of a potation have disappeared, a permanent alteration in the brain remains, which makes it likely that the drinker will "go farther" next time or the time after. The acc.u.mulation of such effects leads finally to the complete demoralization of character, to the point where a man's higher nature can no longer keep control over his conduct. This is what is meant by saying that alcohol undermines the will power. [Footnote: See H. S. Williams, op. cit, p. 56]

In particular, most s.e.xual sins are committed after drinking; and the gravity of the s.e.x problem is so great that this fact alone would justify the banishment of alcohol, the greatest of s.e.xual stimulants.

[Footnote: Cf. Jane Addams, A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, p.

189: "Even a slight exhilaration from alcohol relaxes the moral sense and throws a sentimental or adventurous glamour over an aspect of life from which a decent young man would ordinarily recoil; and its continued use stimulates the senses at the very moment when the intellectual and moral inhibitions are lessened."]

(b) A very large proportion of the crimes committed are committed under the influence of alcohol. In Ma.s.sachusetts, for example (in 1895), only five per cent of convictions for crime were of abstainers. In general, statistics show that from a half to three quarters of the total amount of crime has drinking for a direct contributing cause.

When we add to this the crime-inducing influence of the poverty, ill health, and immoral social conditions caused by drink; we can form some idea of the moral indictment against alcohol. [Footnote: H. S.

Warner, op. cit, p. 261.]

(c) The liquor trade is the most powerful of all "interests" in the corruption of politics, one of the most demoralizing phases of our American life. [Footnote: H. S. Warner, op. cit, chap. XI.] The saloon power is in politics with a grim determination to keep its business from extermination. It is able to throw the votes of a large body of men as it wills. It maintains a powerful lobby at Was.h.i.+ngton and at the state capitals. In many places it has had a strangle hold on legislation. The trade naturally tends to ally itself with the other vicious interests that live by exploiting human weakness-the gamblers, the fosterers of prost.i.tution, the keepers of vile "shows"; it has a vast revenue for the purchasing of votes, and, in the saloon, the easiest of channels for reaching the bribable voter. Corrupt political machines have been glad to use its support, and have derived a large measure of their strength there from. Were the liquor trade destroyed, the greatest obstacle in the way of political reform would be removed.

In sum, we can say that the evils caused by alcohol, instead of having been exaggerated, have never until very recently been sufficiently realized. The half hath not been told.

What should be the att.i.tude of the individual toward alcoholic liquors?

In the light of our present knowledge, the att.i.tude toward liquor demanded by morality of the individual admits of no debate. He may love dearly his wines or his beer, but his enjoyment is won at too dear a cost to himself and others; his support of the liquor trade is very selfish. He has no right to poison himself, to impair his health and efficiency, as even a little drinking will do. He has no right to run the risk of becoming the slave of alcohol, as so many of the most promising men have become; the effect of the drug is insidious, and no man can be sure that he will be able to resist it. He has no right to spend in harmful self-indulgence money that might be spent for useful ends. He has no right to incur the, however immeasurable, moral and intellectual impairment which is effected by even rather moderate drinking. He has no right to bequeath to his children a weakened heritage of vitality. He has no right, by his example, to encourage others, who may be far more deeply harmed than he, in the use of the drug; "let no man put a stumbling-block or an occasion to fall in his brother's way." The influence of every man who is amenable to altruistic motives is needed against liquor, to counteract its lure; we must create a strong public sentiment and make it unfas.h.i.+onable and disreputable to drink. Happily the tide of liquor-drinking, which has been rising rapidly in the last half- century, owing to the increase in prosperity, the great influx of immigrants from liquor-drinking countries, and the stimulation of the trade by the highly organized liquor industry, has at last, by the earnest efforts of enlightened workers, been turned. Men of influence are standing out publicly against it. Grape-juice has been subst.i.tuted for wine in the White House; Kaiser Wilhelm has become an abstainer, with a declaration that in the present era of fierce compet.i.tion the nations that triumph will be those that have least to do with liquor. So conservative and cautious a thinker as ex-President Eliot of Harvard has recently become an abstainer, saying, "The recent progress of science has satisfied me that the moderate use of alcohol is objectionable." The yearly per capita consumption of alcoholic liquors, which rose from 8.79 gallons in 1880 to 17.76 in 1900 and 22.79 in 1911, fell in 1912 to 21.98.

It is to be devoutly hoped that the tide will ebb as rapidly as it rose. What should be our att.i.tude toward the use of alcoholic liquors by others? The consideration of this question falls properly under the head of "Public Morality." But it will be more convenient to treat it here, following the presentation of the facts concerning alcohol.

The right of the community to interfere with the conduct of its members will be discussed in chapter xxviii, and we must a.s.sume here the result therein reached, that whatever is deemed necessary for the greatest welfare of the community as a whole may legitimately be required of its individual members, however it may cross their desires or however they may consider the matter their private concern. The argument against prohibition on the ground that it interferes with individual rights would apply also to child-labor legislation, to legislation against street soliciting by prost.i.tutes or the sale of indecent pictures, and, more obviously still, against anti-opium and anti-cocaine legislation. As a matter of fact, the older individualistic point of view has been generally abandoned now, and we are free to discuss what is desirable for the general welfare. We may at once say that whatever method will most quickly and thoroughly root out the evil should be adopted. Different methods may be more or less efficacious in different places; it is a matter for legitimate opportunism. But the goal to be kept in sight can only be absolute prohibition of the manufacture, sale, and importation of all alcoholic liquors for beverages. Education on the matter, and exhortation to personal abstinence, must be continued.