PROHIBITION: To Make a Better Country

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"To Make a Better Country"

On the slope of Capitol Hill, in neat position to help the U. S. government function, lives the Anti-Saloon League of America. Its building is of humble brick, painted a bellicose red. Upon its windows in large gold letters is painted the name: "Wayne B. Wheeler."

Wayne B. Wheeler is dead. People said that the brains of the Anti-Saloon League died with him last September. Whether that is true or not, the League has not been the same since. Last week, when its bigwigs met in Washington, they could scarcely decide whether to continue the Rev. Dr. Francis Scott McBride as Mr. Wheeler's heir to the title of Superintendent or to substitute Dr. Ernest Hurst Cherrington, who for many a year has been the League's business manager and publisher at Prohibition's birthplace in Westerville, Ohio.

Rev. Dr. McBride represents the Wheeler tradition of alert, energetic lobbying, vote-swaying, political-threatening. Mr. Cherrington represents a faction of the League which conceives that Wheelerism has been misunderstood in the U. S.; that the League's moneyed lobbying has made the League almost unpopular; that the League's wisest course now is to spend its millions after the fashion of manufacturers of tomato soup and cigarets, on national advertising and an "educational" campaign.

Last week, the League bigwigs compromised. They continued Dr. McBride as Superintendent. Promptly U. S. politicians were warned that only Drys need hope to have Anti-Saloon League money spent on their campaigns. For Mr. Cherrington, the bigwigs created the post of "Director of Publicity, Education and Research."