In Indiana

Last week imaginative Indianapolis citizens pictured to themselves a scene which, fortunately, never actually took place. In their minds' eyes they saw a Prohibition officer tracking down a suspicious-looking individual whose coat-pocket bulged with a telltale protuberance. They saw him clap hand on this individual's shoulder, reach into the bulging pocket and withdraw a bottle containing whiskey. And they saw the arrested individual turn upon his captor the face of Ed Jackson, Governor of Indiana.

What basis existed for thus supposing Governor Jackson a lawbreaker? Evidence from no less source than Indiana's Attorney General, Arthur L. Gilliom. Mr. Gil-liom has been opposed to the Wright (state prohibition) Law which, drier than the Volstead Act, does not permit whiskey to be sold in Indiana even on a doctor's prescription. Seeking the Governor's aid in amending the Wright Law, Mr. Gilliom last week wrote to Governor Jackson, reminded him that during Mrs. Jackson's recent attack of pneumonia, a doctor had prescribed whiskey for her. Mr. Gil-liom recalled that the Governor had consulted him as to the "immediate and lawful acquisition of a pint of whiskey," had been informed that whiskey could not be legally obtained.

"You are then [continued the Attorney General's letter] in precisely the same situation as my wife and I were in just a year earlier when whiskey was prescribed in the cases of three or four children who were near death from typhoid fever and pneumonia. Of one of them it may be said with certainty that he could not have recovered without the use of this medicine.

"You and I procured the needed whiskey from friends who were secretly preserving it for just such anticipated emergencies in their own households, risking all the while discovery and imprisonment because of such mere possession."

Governor Jackson made no comment on his Attorney General's letter. Less reticent were E. S. Shumaker, head of the Indiana Anti-Saloon League, Mrs. Grace Altvater, head of the Indianapolis Women's Christian Temperance Union and the Rev. Dr. John Roach Straton, famed Fundamentalist.

Mr. Shumaker said that where state laws permitted prescription sales of whiskey, nearly all of whiskey so sold was for bootleg purposes; that whiskey possesses no medicinal qualities not possessed by grain alcohol and that grain alcohol was obtainable on prescription; that "we must bring about a better enforcement of the liquor law before we start tearing it down."

Mrs. Altvater said: "If I had a physician who prescribed whiskey, I would waste no time in changing my physician."

Said the Rev. John Roach Strat-on, fundamentalist leader: "Both the Governor and the attorney general did wrong. They should have permitted the members of their families to die and have died themselves rather than violate their oaths of office. An officer of the law swears to support the law and his family interests should not cut the slightest figure once he has taken the oath."

Meanwhile newly appointed U. S. Prohibition Commissioner Dr. James M. Doran and General Lincoln C. Andrews (whose resignation as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of Prohibition was last fortnight accepted but will not take effect until Aug. 1) announced that the manufacture of 3,000,000 gallons of whiskey would soon be authorized to replenish the low-running medicinal liquor supply.

Promptly protested Wayne B. Wheeler, general counsel of the Anti-Saloon League. He claimed that present stocks of medicinal whiskey are sufficient for the next six years.

Treasury officials argued, however, that such stocks diminished rapidly, "from evaporation and other causes."

As Mr. Doran's office of Prohibition Commissioner gives him the right, by act of Congress, to order replenishments of the medicinal whiskey supply, observers saw little chance for Drys to keep him from carrying out a project which both he and General Andrews are known to have favored for some time.