REGULATION VERSUS PROHIBITION.
By S.
The following extract from the New Voice is a complete answer to the oft-repeated denunciations of prohibition which we hear from the lips of liquor men. We are continually being told that prohibition of the traffic is a failure. Do the facts given below indicate that “regulation” or license is anything else?— “As an illustration of the state of civilization produced by a ‘regulated’ drink traffic, the first page of last Thursday’s Cincinnati Enquirer was worthy of study. In the second column there was a brief news note of some previously exploited horror, the centerpiece of which was a headless body in a Columbus saloon. The fourth column tells of ‘drunken tramps’ shooting at officers and citizens in a town in a neighboring State. The fifth column bears big headlines telling of a brutal murder and suicide by a man who had been ‘on a spree’ for three weeks. Column seven, with headlines five inches deep, tells a shameful story of outrage and possible murder, of which two girls were the victims, and the means of accomplishment drugged whisky. Across the bottom of columns seven and eight, four inches in double measure tell another story of outrage, in which the victim is first made helpless by being plied with liquor in a saloon, and during which a would-be rescuer is fatally wounded. On the same page the outcome of the Hamilton murder trial—a whisky case at Minneapolis—is told. If only a half of this had happened in prohibition States, what texts it would make for editorials on the ‘failure of prohibition,’ but every crime mentioned was committed in the realm of regulation. Is regulation a success?” And in connection with this may we not ask another question, namely, in view of these facts, what becomes of the declaration that the world is growing better? Rather, is it not indisputable evidence that we are hastening to a crisis in the history of the world? Evils of every description are waxing worse and worse, and deceptions of every kind are multiplying on every hand. These are the tokens which the Lord Himself gave of the nearness of His coming. They are strong arguments for the abolition of the liquor traffic; they are unmistakable signs that the coming of the Just One draweth nigh. S.