PROHIBITION IN U.S.A.

Evening Star, Issue 18399, 6 October 1923, Page 12

PROHIBITION IN U.S.A.

OXFORD MAN’S EXPERIENCE. DEBASEMENT OF YOUTH. 'jFi’.om Our London Coxihespomdent.] August 23. A former Oxford man of my acquaintance has just returned from a Ion" visit to America, where he had, as an absolutely impartial and expert observer, peculiar facilities for studying how Prohibition works. Ho says its moral and physical results aro more than deplorable. Open defiance of this particular unpopular law is leading to the breaking of many others, and the poisonous stuff supplied as liquor is playing havoc with American physique. He is acquainted with most countries, but nowhere, ho asserts, has he Been so much drunkenness amongst young people, and especially girls. Most discreditable scenes are enacted at dinner parties and dances. Girls who would never dreftm otherwise of drinking alcohol are enticed by the sporting inducement of breaking the Volstead Law into taking terrible stuff, not wine, but absinthe, gin, fierce, raw alcoholic mixtures, and even wood spirit. Between the dances the young people, instead of sitting out, dash outside to their queued cars, each containing wicker baskets of prohibited liquor, and drink feverishly. Much serious illness results from the quality of the drink. My informant declares that bootleggers recognise a dollar a ease as the regulation price for getting liquor passed by the Prohibition navy—a new form of American graft. Moreover, besides the bootleggers there are now pirates, who attack the latter’s boats and carry off the spoils, often after fatal fights. Prohibited liquor is more or less openly drunk all over the country. One of the most famous racket clubs has, a bar in its grill room, and over 300 clothes lockers, each of which is in reality a wine bin. And so the sordid story ffjx as