VOLSTEAD LAW.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18659, 7 April 1926, Page 9

VOLSTEAD LAW.

CHARGES MApE BY WETS. (bi cable—press association—copiright.) (AUSTBALIAN AND • K.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION.) WASHINGTON, April 5. Senator Edge, opening the Wets' case before the Senate Sub-Cornmit-teo set up to consider six measures for the repeal or modification of the Volstead Law, said:—"The Volstead Law has placed human happiness under the irritating and harassing domination of sour, corrosive, and narrow-minded Puritanism, which does not hesitate to avow its enmity even to such innocent recreations as smoking and dancing.

"It has brought the Church deeply into politics; has established a settled commerce between tho worthier and most unworthy members of tho community; has created an underworld almost as thoroughly organised as the respectable world above; has tended to bring all laws, including itself, into more or less disrespeci; and has lowered the prestige of tho Federal Government.

"It has fostered deceit, perfidy, espionage, and tyranny in some "of their meanest and most hateful aspects, and lastly it has been responsible for the unprecedented phenomenon of thousands of thousands of reputable men and -women, including ministers of the law itself, living in habitual disregard of the Constitution and the law."