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THE REASON COMPANY ONE YEAR St.OO. 81 Express Building. FIVE CENTB. No. 2. WHAT SHALL WE DO TO BE SAVED? Shall we continue to do our earnest, anxious best to work out our own salvation, individually and collectively, along the line of least resistance, or. as irresponsible children, submit to be delivered into the intolerant hands of alien “salvationers, ” is the most vital question that could confront a people. When tin 1 politician, that most prolific breeding focus of greed, has become as extinct as the Dodo and the Megatherium, and statesmen and legislators have waxed as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves, then might some modern Moses of Prohibition hope to lead us dryshod and blindfolded through the Red Sea of Doubt into the promised Land of Moral Reform; but until then every mortal man had much better plod the weary way of his own bitter experience than that we should surrender one iota of our sacred right to save ourselves, or to damn ourselves, in our own good time and way. The art of life would seem to be an unselfish culti vation of self by learning how and when to hold on and let go—and discretion is not the better part of valor only, but of virtue as well. Inebriety may be, and possibly is, the deepest, deadliest, pitfall hidden in the darkened path of man today, and the feeble cry of a drunkard’s starving child remains in memory’s world long after all the pleasure and profit that wine ever gave to man is forgotten. The saloon, fostered by the same greed that gave us African slavery in the past and left us to struggle with its after evils today, is evi dently becoming as dangerous to public health as the open sewer or the fostering garbage heaps of the past. At its best it is only a poulticed pustule on the face of civilization. But in our frantic desire to rid ourselves of one evil, let us not, in God’s name, bring upon ourselves a greater one. Forcing others to be as good as we think they should be is a poor policy indeed. The one who is forced to keep sober against his will is of the same opinion still, and at the first opportunity will indulge his natural right to do as he pleases. It is well to remember that if we should really be lieve we have the right to compel our neighbor not to drink malted liquors, the next step is to conclude we also have the right to make him go to church— THE REASON A MILITANT WEEKLY. Savannah, Ga„ April 30, 1908 By EL. CRITO. our church, of course, to wear certain clothes, or to cut his hair in a certain style. We will have as much right to make him drink malted milk or lemonade as to make him stop drinking wine or whiskey. Such an attitude of mind would be, and has been, as menacing to public weal as any evil ever decried. .Many have indeed opined that most of the harm done has been the work not of the wisely wicked but of the unwisely good. .Men whose morals are of any value to them selves or to the communitv in which they live, are not virtuous or sober because they have to be so, but merely because they want to be so. It has ever been, is now. and ever will be, im possible to legislate any people into sobriety or morality, but it is neither impossible nor improbable that wise laws, justlv enforced, would in time re duce the danger to a minimum. Force defeats it self, and anything done in too great haste has usually to be done over again, and at greater cost. Sumptuary laws are out of time and place; they smack of the dark ages and hint of Torquemada. 'They breed tyranny as surely as does the stagnant pool the deadly stegomya fasciata, and, given full sway, would engender deadlier evils than those they endeavor to eliminate. It may be doubted, whether the bigot and the pharisee, will stand any better chance in the balance at the end of time than the drunkard ami the outcast. The liquor traffic certainly needs to be curtailed, to be kept within decent bounds, but Prohibition never did and never can do this. On the other hand local option has usually been a good local joke, the option being either the drug store or the corner grocery. But suppose that Prohibition should really pro hibit, and local option, from being a farce should become a tragedy as well —what then.’ Would such a machine-made virtue be worth the price we will have paid for it.’ Suppose that intemnerance, gamb ling. cigarette smoking, bridge whist, dancing, the theatre, the social evil, the trusts, divorce, race suicide and Mr. Roosevelt too. be finally eradicated, stamped out, and washed off the slate! what kind of Eves and Adams could or would inhabit such a >y/4l II yjf yl I uO E. LAMAR PARKER, Editor and Proprietor. Vol. 1.