Bruce & Borah

While the Senate was trying to agree to vote on the Italian debt settlement, Senators Bruce of Maryland and Borah of Idaho got into a public argument on prohibition. The height of it:

Mr. Bruce: "I know this, as I said before, that whether we like it or dislike it, the opulent portion of the American population are going to have their wine, Constitution or no Constitution, statute or no statute. That has been demonstrated."

Mr. Borah: "The Senator has stated the issue. Let us argue it. The Senator has stated that the issue is that they propose to have what they want with reference to intoxicating liquor."

Mr. Bruce: "They do." Mr. Borah: "Regardless of the Constitution of the U.S. or the statutes?

Mr. Bruce: "They do."

Mr. Borah: "If that be true, and I have no doubt that is just what the Senator thinks--"

Mr. Bruce: "I do."

Mr. Borah: "If that be true, is it not the orderly thing to do, so long as we profess to live under a constitutional government, to amend the Constitution in the manner provided by the Constitution itself? Can the Senator conceive of anything more demoralizing and undermining to the good citizenship of the people than to have a solemn pledge in the Constitution and to have great Senators stand upon the floor of the Senate and say the people are going to have what they want regardless of whether it is constitutional or not?"

Mr. Bruce: "I can conceive of nothing more deplorable, nothing more tragic, nothing more scandalous, but I take human nature as it is. In other words, I look at this question exactly as the Free Soiler looked at the institution of slavery."

Mr. Borah: "Of course, and when Wendell Phillips spoke with reference to that proposition he said, "To hell with the Constitution!"

Mr. Bruce: "Yes, he did."

Mr. Borah: "But there came along the man who, disregarding Wendell Phillips, found a way to solve that great question by amending the Constitution and effecting the change which he desired under the Constitution and not in violation of it."

Mr. Bruce: "How did he find it? He found it by tracing his way through fire and smoke, and flame and blood."

Mr. Borah: "I am one of those who believe that the Constitution is of sufficient value, if it is necessary, to trace our way through blood and fire in order to maintain it as it is."

[Applause on the floor and in the galleries.]

Mr. Bruce: "So do I, when a great question like slavery is involved; so do I when a great issue like that of national sovereignty is involved, but not with nothing more here involved than the question as to whether a man is or is not allowed to enjoy what I conceive to be a perfectly rational measure of human indulgence."

Mr. Borah: "Yes, there is scarcely any vice human nature has such that the particular person who possesses it does not resent the fact that the law prohibits or inhibits him from enjoying it."

Mr. Bruce: "That is not so. There is no uprising against the punishment for forgery or false pretenses, and above all there is none against punishment for murder, rape or arson."

Mr. Borah: "But every man who commits forgery feels toward the law exactly as the Senator does toward prohibition."

Mr. Bruce: "He does what his neighbors do not. The difference in this case is not only the man who takes--"

Mr. Borah: "I am not sure the Senator's neighbors do."

Mr. Bruce: "I have stated to you before that many of my neighbors regard with great indulgence the violation of the great lunacy--the Volstead Act--because, as they conceive, that act has no true moral sanction behind it. It endeavors to pronounce something as being criminal per se that is not criminal at all."

Then the two Senators argued the propriety of the New York state referendum.

Mr. Bruce: "Outraged nature claims its rights, and there is nothing which I regard with more satisfaction than the fact that when I was a boy, living in a remote countryside, all the white citizens of that community, without reference to station in life, were banded together like brothers for the purpose of nullifying those atrocious amendments to the Federal Constitution and defeating the will of Congress, and, thank God, they defeated it."

Mr. Borah: "The Senator is preaching the doctrine of Trotsky here in the Senate of the United States!"

Mr. Bruce: "Oh, no."

Mr. Borah: "Yes, the Senator is; he is preaching anarchy."

Mr. Bruce: "It is not the Senator from Maryland, but the Senator from Idaho, who wishes us to recognize the Soviet government."

Mr. Borah: "I do. I think it would be really an example for us, the way we are pursuing things in this country at this time. I think we could learn lessons from them."