THE CALL TO PATRIOTISM

BY BISHOP WILLIAM F. ANDERSON

AMERICAN democracy is at the cross-roads. Is our government to meet its Waterloo in connection with the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution? If certain influential classes of our citizens continue to make war upon the Constitution no man knows what may happen. Lawlessness is the acknowledged peril of democracy. If the disregard of a law affected one statute only, the consequences would not be so serious, but when the Constitution of the United States is brought into wide contempt it is time for the lovers of law and order to sound the alarm. It is perfectly apparent that the American people do not at all appreciate the seriousness of the situation. If the prediction had been made ten years ago that we would have national prohibition at the time when it came, there would have been a feeling of general incredulity; but it has now been written into the Constitution by legal process and is as much a part of the Constitution as any other article of that sacred document. So that the issue as we now face it is not merely that of temperance or prohibition. It is a much larger issue. It is the question of the maintenance of the law and the support of the Government. The real question is whether a free people, having secured an enactment touching a moral issue, can enforce the law which they have enacted. If they cannot, then popular government breaks down. No utterance upon this subject has been more heartening or more to the point than that of Chief Justice Taft. During the years of its development the proposed prohibition amendment did not command his wholehearted support for reasons which he held conscientiously. But when it was written into the Constitution he declared that to be the end of the argument for all law-abiding citizens. This position is as sound and as inescapable as any principle of law can possibly be. There are those who regard the matter very lightly, and from many quarters of acknowledged influence there has been

an effort to laugh it out of court by ridicule. There are many others who look upon it as a purely domestic affair pertaining only to our own country. The fact is that here is an issue with a world-wide setting of tremendous significance. This will become easily apparent as the following propositions are considered: First, during the last fifty years or more there has been a worldwide movement in all civilized lands looking toward freer government. It is one of the notable features among the countries of Europe since the outbreak of the War, where more than a score of kingdoms have fallen. In every instance, there has been an insistence upon a larger participation in government affairs by the rank and file of the people. This has been equally true of the nations of the Orient. China has been feeling after it, inconclusively to be sure, and yet very persistently, for a number of years. So, too, is India. And the papers have been commenting recently upon such a movement even in Turkey and countries of the Near East. It is not too much to say that it is a world-wide movement.

Second, the movement is traceable to the example of the United States more than to any other single influence. It is pathetic, how people in all parts of the world look toward America as God's Country. Our own nation has furnished the example of the largest experiment the world has ever seen in popular government. Travelers in the Orient tell us that Abraham Lincoln is the patron saint of the growing generations of those countries as truly as he is the patron saint of the growing generations of our own country. Third, in the eyes of other nations American democracy is on trial, and the test which other nations are making of the efficiency of our Government focalizes upon the Eighteenth Amendment. If by any possibility America were to fail in this forward movement, the verdict all over the world would be that American democracy had failed. Discriminating men in various parts of the world consider that our achievement in government is still in the experimental stage. It is for the United States to answer the charge by demonstrating the efficiency of our government. If we were to fail it would mean the turning back of the wheels of progress as regards government of the people, by the people and for the people, for hundreds of years in all parts of the world. The

destinies of many peoples are wrapped up with the integrity of the enforcement of this Amendment to the Constitution. No enactment of our National Congress has attracted such wide attention and elicited so much world interest since the Emancipation Proclamation.

Two or three classes of people among us are especially blameworthy. I have in mind, first of all, those who are entrusted with the enforcement of the law. For such men to make a fiasco of law enforcement is a crime against all federal authority and all good government. Happily, there are indications that many leaders are becoming aware of the situation. It was especially refreshing to read this sentence from the inaugural address of Governor Fuller, of Massachusetts:

Violation of the prohibition amendment constitutes one of the gravest problems of the present day. As chief executive, it is my purpose to have the laws of Massachusetts enforced regardless of every consideration save that of justice.

Every law-abiding citizen of the Commonwealth should rally to this call of its chief executive. The people of this country are growing quite impatient of the alarming lawlessness which is rampant in so many places. There are unmistakable indications that the time is near at hand when the demand will be insistent for leaders of moral backbone who will require the "enforcement of the law regardless of every consideration save that of justice", in the language of Governor Fuller. It is noteworthy that Governor Smith called upon the people of New York to make Sunday, January 25, a day of prayer in their homes and churches in behalf of law and order. It is worth while to observe the exact wording of his proclamation. The picture of the Governor of the Empire State calling the people to prayer in the interests of the better enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment is one of the most unique and interesting scenes which American politics has furnished in this generation.

There is a widespread feeling that the Federal Government should take this matter very seriously. The destiny of the nation is in it. The Amendment was adopted by Constitutional process and every step must be taken to secure its conscientious enforcement. Anything less than this will make us the laughing stock of

the world and democracy will speedily become a byword among the nations.

I have been amazed that so many sources of publicity have been so lacking in the appreciation of the vital interests of this perilous situation. There are, of course, exceptions. All honor to them! I mean to include in this group of offenders only those who have been at fault. I do not classify them. They classify themselves by their known attitude toward the law. We do not like to think about it, but one cannot help asking the question, "How largely is the press of this country still under the domination of the interests of the old liquor traffic?" I have sometimes found in the public press sentiments positively seditious. More than once I have put aside the morning paper with a feeling of disappointment and sometimes of disgust that no man was found in its management who would speak a brave word for his country's honor and safety. If we continue to sow to the wind we are sure in due time to reap from the whirlwind a revolution which will imperil the very foundations upon which our Government and its institutions are builded.

There is a class of would-be respectable citizens who treat this whole matter contemptuously as though it were a joke. Some of them belong to the so-called higher social classes. Their practices are vicious in a degree which it is difficult to characterize. By this course they are creating a class hatred which is detrimental to every interest of good government and good order. By these practices they have made many of the laboring classes feel that there is a discrimination in the law in the interests of those who have sufficient social standing to defy the law. The situation calls for courageous and heroic treatment. Such men are breeders of bitterness. They are sowers of sedition: they court the fires of a thousand hells upon our beloved America. They are our most undesirable and our most dangerous citizens.

The Eighteenth Amendment of course is not 100 per cent efficient. What law is? Take the law against murder. One man in every 12,000 in the United States dies by the hand of a murderer-in Great Britain, one man in every 456,000. But that the law is making remarkable progress is the testimony of such expert economists as Mr. Babson and those who know the facts in the

case. In view of the situation, what are we to say about the bootlegger and those men who connive with him for the defeat of the law? There is but one answer. The bootlegger is a traitor to the United States Government and to popular government of every form in all parts of the world. The same is true of the newspaper management which apologizes for him and the man who aids and abets his nefarious business. Our Government upon occasion when the case has required it has treated in a very straightforward manner those who have been traitorous in spirit and practice. It would be a very wholesome thing if the public were to see the situation in its right light and were to deal in peremptory fashion with those who undertake to overthrow the Constitution.

I believe the time is not far distant when there will be a sentiment among the law abiding citizens of this country to see this matter in its true light and to deal with it accordingly.

I am not speaking now primarily as a prophet or as a reformer. I am speaking as a patriot, as a man who loves his country and who believes that its Constitution should be maintained and the majesty of its laws held sacred by all who enjoy its protection. I prize our heritage as American citizens next to the Christian revelation. This condition holds a unique opportunity for the moral forces of the Republic. Our country was founded in a period of high moral idealism unsurpassed in the history of the world. Its Constitution was the crystallization of the best thought and aspiration of the age which gave it birth. From that day until this day in every hour of crisis and peril the churches have proven the backbone of the nation. It is now time for the people who believe in law and order to rally to the nation's need in an hour of lawlessness and peril. True patriotism takes root and comes to fruitage in earnest moral conviction. It was this which gave solace to the burdened soul of the immortal Lincoln, who thanked God for all the churches. More than once this nation has been adjudged a Christian nation by high legal authority. As it is so in theory, let the moral conviction of all the churches heartily unite to make it so in fact.

WILLIAM F. ANDERSON.