A POLITICAL JUDGMENT DAY.

White Ribbon, Volume 20, Issue 237, 18 March 1915, Page 11

A POLITICAL JUDGMENT DAY.

Hy Daniel A- Poling, National Citizenship Superintendent of the United Society of Christian Hndeavour. (Conclusion of an address delivered in St. Louis, Missouri, January 15, Kji4, at a In ion meeting of temperance and religious organisations held in the WashingtonCompton Presbyterian Church, under the auspices of W.C.T.t .) No local, state or natii aal law, nor the sum of all anti-liquor laws alone, can ever solve the gigantic liquor problem. We who insist that the United States Government shall assume a proper attitude upon this vital national question; that she shall go out of partnership with the liquor traffic, and that in the last analysis >he shall ‘settle with organised alcohol upon the- high moral plane of righteousness and patriotism, know that mandatory law i> a tool, an opportunity, a fighting chance, and that it does not enforce itself. A tool calls for a labourer ; a fighting chance calls for a warrior; an opportunity calls for a man.

Prohibition i> not an automatic machine. Prohibition is not “permissive law.” Prohibition is mandatory law. Prohibition does not, can not enforce itself. “Prohibition does not prohibit.” Hut Prohibition is prohibitable. .Prohibition is subject to enforcement. Prohibition can be made dTe* tive. We-who here declare for national constitutional Prohibition and for the passage of the Sheppardllobson Dill, must be thoroughly aroused to the fact that, should Congress pass the measure and should the Legislatures of the necessary three fourths of the States declare for Constitutional Prohibition, thus amending the organic law of the land, we will still have failed of accom plishing our high purpose unless v.e elect to power political administrations openly committed to the safeguarding and enforcing of this national anti-liquor law. More clearly than ever before we sec the folly of entrusting worthy laws to unworthy political demonstrations. Out of .» multitude of past bitter defeats we have learned political wisdom. It would be a menu, mental tragedy to achieve national Prohibition by an amendment to th.» Constitution of the

United States without capturing for the administration of that law the executive department of (iovernment. We arc fully determined that no splendid enthusiasm shall in these fateiul days become our undoing. To day the united army of temperance commands : “Our laws shall declare Prohi lotion, and our political administration sh.dl be held accountable for the enforcing of Prohibition.” Worthy government is not by law alone, for government by law is anarchy; worthy government is not by administration alone, for government by administration is tyrannv. Government is by law and administration. For some months the conviction has grown upon ine, that we stand in the morning of .1 great political judgment day a day when men shall be made; a day when men shall be unmade; a day when political parties shall be weighed in the balances of a quickened political conscience, and when those found unworthy shall be abandoned. Not as a prophet, but as a humble assembler of facts, 1 am bound to declare that the despised political John the Haptist of this Republic's forty-four great rum years has not cried in vain. In this national day of prayer proclaimed by the incomparable White Ribbon host, the political fighting lines of the on>weeping enemies of the liquor traffic more* nearl} converge than at any time since the rum war began. And this is the morning of the judgment day. Since the 4th of July, n>i3, my eyes have >ecn, my ears have heard, and my mind has testified to incidents and developments in the anti-liquor fight, many of which twelve months ago would have found no place 111 my farthest hope. I hav > heard five thousand men with upraised hands, clenched into say in a voice that sounded like the ominous rollings of a great thunder: “(iod helping me, no political candidate or party, not declaring for the destruction of the liquor traffic, can have my support or vote.” I have heard the Anti-Saloon Le ague sweeping on from ten thousand victories declare for national constitutional Prohibition, and in one of the greatest reform gatherings of history, >ay, “On this i-sue wc tight—whenever a politician, or executive office, or a political party, prefers the liquor traffic above public morals, such men

must be set aside and such parties abandoned.” I have seen the united church of Jesus Christ under the leadership of her consecrated, organised youth, become militant for the political regeneration of the nation, and write upon her cross-crowned banners the* inspired word-, “A saloonless nation by iq-zo, the three hundredth year from the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth.” I have looked into the glorified faces of the women of the land, as they sat under their while standards and farvisioned leadership at Asbury Park. I have heard them say again as through all these wilderness marchings they have ever declared, “Total Abstinence for the* individual, Prohibition for the State and Nation. I have turned to an ever-increasing number of great periodicals to hear them prophesy, with Norton of Maine, with Collier’s, and the Philadelphia North American, the setting aside of men and parties unwilling to declare themselves upon the liquor question. To-day the Christian Endeavour World thunders editorially: “The voter? of the country are coming to see that a party, any party, that either actively or passively allies itself with the liquor interests, is not tit to live.” Only a month ago 1 heard the lionhearted Hobson challenge his colleagues of the Lower House of Congress, and in the presence of crowded galleries say: “We ought to have our party understand now, while the war is on, that it was never intended for an alliance with the liquor interests. Vet there is a great Democrat, a great Alabaman, w ho is pre sent to-day, who recently announced—at least that is the way I read it in the reports —that if Prohibition continues to be injected into Democratic politics, either Prohibition would be ground to powder or the Deir.oc ratic party must die. I take second place to no mans who loves his party, and let me tell you that if the Democratic party can only live by joining with the liquor interests to debauch the American people, then in God's name let it die!” I am violating no confidence when I tell you to-night, a few days in advance of the official public announcement, that a group of men, nearly all of whom ure national and international figures—a United States

Congressman, tour rx-Govcrnors, and a gentleman who has twice been a candidate for the Presidency, among the number —beginning in November of this year, will go into every State capital city and into every other great city of the nation with an epo< hmaking political challenge. 1 fully believe that before the elections of 1916 this movement will have enlisted millions of voters pledged to make their ballots count effectually for the destruction of the liquor institution. Slowly but surely we are coming to see the fundamental and vital relation ol the political party to our unique governmental system. Slowly tut surely the great political truth that the political party is the efficient tool by which the people rule, by which they make effective in government the principles for which they stand, has been possessing the minds and consciences of all “forward-looking” c itixens. To-day the finger of human welfare is writing upon the wall of liquor-controlled politic the political “tekel.” “Where there is no vision the parties die.” We stand in the morning of a great political judgment day!

Men and women, we are comrades in a great tight, a holy war. We have been a long time marching, and the road is blood-marked, but marvelously has the pace quickened in these latter days.

This new zest and heartening courage found everywhere is the fruit of a new realisation of brotherhood in a common cause. We do not forget the past, for out of it come knowledge and inspiration for the present. Put we have forever burned behind us the bridges of partisan hate, and forever behind us is the field of fratricidal strife. There is fighting and glory enough for all. Each organisation in its own place, faithful to its fundamental politics and principles, must do its o\ . peculiar work. No worthy organisation will be superseded; no worthy organisation can be >pared. Hut the goal is a common goal. There is everywhere and always one and the same end in view. The manv are parts of a mighty whole. And when in the fullness of time the hnal assault is marshalled against entrenched, blood smeared, age old liquordom, the broken quicksteps of divisions will become the- rhytnm of a united army.

On the 10th of December, 1913, a great committee went down to Wash-

ington and petitioned Congress. Two thousand men and women swept up historic Pennsylvania Avenue and Capitol Hill, a living appeal for the submission to the several States of the question of national constitutional Prohibition. I marched in that parade.

In front of me, in the Pennsylvania delegation, marched a gray-haired bishop, of my churc h. Erect, fine of face, with the spring of youth still in his step, his was a presence to which my eyes often turned. Once when he turned to me, I saw that there were tears in his eyes. It w«.s not the Hrst lime that he had marched up Pennsylvania Avenue! In 1865, ; boy of 19, under the battle-rent flags of hi-, regiment, fresh from Appomatox, he marc he el up Pennsylvania Avenue in the grand review. And this was the reater march of the two. Not the triumphal procession of a stupendous bloody strife, but the prophetic marshalling of a new and greater freedom in a land that knows no north and no south.

And, as though to bind forever the hearts of brothers once estranged, this new declaration of emancipation was given into the hands of an honoured son of Texas and an heroic Alabaman. Surely if ever the spirits of the departed return to the scenes of their earthly struggles and triumphs, God must have sent the soul of Lincoln to sanctify the consummation of that day. For as Lincoln died for a country united, he; dreamed .>f a nation without a saloon. Linco’n’s dream is coming true. “The mills of the Gods grind slowly,” but they grind. “The) arc coming, they are coming like the gathering of the clans, They are coming like the billows of the sea, And the bugle sounds reveille from the mid ! of a'l the lands, W ith the battle *.r\, S, coons shall cease to be.’ ”