ENFORCING PROHIBITION

Southland Times, Issue 19173, 18 February 1924, Page 5

ENFORCING PROHIBITION

AMERICA’S GREAT PROBLEM CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION DEMANDED MANY SERIOUS OCCURRENCES. (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copjn-ight.) (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) WASHINGTON, February 16. (Received February 17, 5.5 p.m.) Senator Green, of Vermont, was shot and seriously wounded during a gun battle on a street between the Internal Revenue Agents and bootleggers. The reply of the British Government to the latest American communication regarding the seizure beyond the three mile limit of the British schooner Tomoka, the alleged rum-runner, is expected to disclose the specific way and extent to which the new British Ministry would go in its announced desire to protect the British flag from misuse in connection with the liquor smuggling traffic. Mr C. E. Hughes (Secretary of State) in reply to a protest asserted that while the ship was under the British flag, she was American owned, and that the enterprise was an effort of American citizens to use the British flag as a cloak. The Washington correspondent of the New York Sun says that the shooting of Senator Green probably assures an exhaustive Congressional investigation in connection with the enforcement of Prohibition in Washington. If not a national incident, it is not the first in which the lives of pedestrians here have been endangered by pistol battles. Prohibition officers and bootleggers’ chases through the streets have been numerous and a number of accidents has already occurred to bystanders. The Citizens’ Association passed a resolution asking that the practice be stopped. The whole question is complicated by a four-cornered dissension between the city police, Treasury department officials, State department investigators and Federal enforcement agents, who charge each other with dishonesty, several persons on all sides being recently suspended. Charges of liquor purchases by high officials and ordinary citizens are increasing. There have been repeated demands previously for an investigation of the situation but every move for public inquiry has fallen short of the mark.

Senator Green’s shooting, however, has aroused his friends who are planning adequate action