Across the corridor revellers were bawling over and over in chorus:
"'Let's take a drink,
Let's take it now,
God only knows how dry I am!'"
"That's a good thing to reaffirm—I don't mean the song they're singing in that room across there! It's a good thing to pledge ourselves to promote temperance," said the General, "but that isn't the point at issue. I have another plank that I've written for our platform."
He drew a second paper from his pocket.
"Gentlemen, some politicians, more than half a century ago, simply to use a temperance movement for bait in a political campaign, dragged into our party a moral, social, and economic question that belongs to the whole people—not merely to us as a party. Let the people, when the right time comes and they decide the matter differently, make a law that the majority desires and will stand behind. Just now we have in our constitution a law that forbids the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors in this State. There is no option in the matter. Just so long as our party, the dominant political power, uses that option, it is in disgrace with all decent men. I—"
There was a knock at the door—the private door.
Harlan started up, but his grandfather pulled him back into his chair.
"Go on, General," he said.
"I have drawn a resolution. Here it is: 'As a party, we deplore the fact that temperance, through the so-called prohibitory law, has become a matter of politics, its football to the extent that holders of public office, sworn to enforce the laws, turn from that enforcement in order to cater to public opinion which otherwise might deprive them of office. We declare against this intolerable system of protection of lawbreakers. Until the people shall repeal the law, we, the dominant party of the State and in control of enforcement, do pledge ourselves to faithfully enforce it, employing such law as we now have and invoking new powers through the legislature to assist us, so long as the prohibitory law shall remain in our constitution.'"
It was now Chairman Presson's turn to look uncomfortable.