MORAL ISSUE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 232, 1 October 1928, Page 7

MORAL ISSUE.

SMITH 'SLIGHTLY WET"

Political Expediency Keeps Many Americans Silent. EVILS OF PROHIBITION. (Australian and N.Z. Press Association.) NEW YORK, September 30. The Democrat candidate for the Presidency, Mr. Al. Smith, in an address at Milwaukee, gave a full exposition of his views on prohibition. He said political expediency was keeping thousands of men in public life who also thought as he did from expressing their views. Prohibition was a great moral issue. They had never had prohibition in America in the sense that intoxicating liquor was banished from it. There was as much as, if not more than, there was before prohibition. He asserted that the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Law had produced wholesale corruption among the officials charged with its enforcement. It was a well-known fact that there was an abundance of liquor in Washington itself. Millions of peoDle in the United States disagreed with Mr. Herbert Hoover (the Republican candidate), that prohibition was a noble experiment. Mr. Smith advocated a definition of what constituted an intoxicating beverage. He expressed the belief that "hard" liquor would be driven from the country if the people could be assured of an alcoholic beverage declared by common sense and science to be nonintoxicating. The speaker favoured an amendment . of the law to permit the States to decide upon prohibition for themselves, on a basis of State-wide referenda. He was not in favour of the return of the , saloon. I If he were ..ected, said Mr. Smith, it I would be his duty to lay this matter before every community he could reach and let each make its own decision. In > the me. jtime he would do everything t humanly possible to enforce the law aa • it 6tood.