The National Prohibitionist

THE LEAGUE'S ATTITUDE
TOWARD THE PARTY.

The attitude of the Anti-Saloon League toward the Prohibition party has always been one of the difficult themes of discussion and many of our own people have seriously criticized Prohibition papers for what they have called "opposition to a kindred organization." There has been a great deal in the attitude of the League to seriously try the patience of radical Prohibitionists throughout its whole history, as, for example, when the founder of the League has repeatedly told audiences that there is no need of a Prohibition party, and that if a need should ever arise, the League would give the country such a party, or when League leaders have supported notorious drinking men against well qualified Prohibition candidates, or when, as in Milwaukee at the present moment, the head of the Anti-Saloon League opposes any movement for Prohibition, and even for Sunday closing, and asserts that all the League wants now is to have the dives closed at midnight, and does not care whether the mayor to be elected is in favor of Prohibition or opposed to it. These facts make an introduction to an editorial which appeared on December 14 in the Anti-Saloon League's official paper, The American Issue. The editorial bears the caption "Keep Moral Reform Out of Partizan Politics." The paragraph which gives the gist of the whole, says:

It is a fatal mistake to identify the temperance, or any other moral, reform with the fortune of any one party. A political party must of necessity have a number of issues in its platform. The opposite political platform may have an equal number of different issues. Let the first party espouse the cause of Prohibition, and immediately that issue is encumbered with the advocacy or rejection of every other issue in the election. The only way to get temperance forward is to keep it disentangled just as far as possible from any political party whatever. The omni-partizan is the true method.

Whatever anyone may think concerning the honesty and good faith of the League or the beneficent character of its work, it must be patent to every thinking man that the violence of the saloonkeepers and misrepresentations of the daily papers can present no force that as an opposition to the growth of the Prohibition party, is for a moment comparable with the force exerted by an organization that professes to represent temperance sentiment and voices itself in this way concerning the most vital of all phases of the question. Prohibitionists who know, from long years of careful study, that the only solution of the drink problem is Prohibition with a Prohibition party behind it, ought to have very little difficulty in deciding where they stand with regard to an organization that voices its views in this fashion.