"Tragic Joke"

Ralph D. Blumenfeld is 64 years old. He was born in the U.S., worked on Chicago and New York newspapers. Then he went to England and became editor of the London Daily Express--owned by the most potent of Canadian-born peers, Lord Beaverbrook. Editor Blumenfeld toured the U.S., this autumn, as guest of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Last week, back in London, he told of the one ineffaceable memory of his tour--Prohibition, "the greatest, most tragic joke any nation played upon itself in the history of civilization."

Editor Blumenfeld elaborated: "This deadly [U.S.] 'gin' has ruined more homes, wrecked more young lives and showered more misery on a great and generously minded country than years of straightforward drunkenness on pure spirits ever witnessed during the generations before prohibition bit itself into the nation's vitals. . . .

"I went to many private dinners in all parts of the country, and with only one exception--in Chicago--I never saw a prohibition table. I went to cocktail parties attended by State officials, United States legislators, judges, college presidents, by--it seems ridiculous to enumerate them. With the fewest possible exceptions, they all drank as much as or more than they did before prohibition. All say that prohibition is a sad, degrading farce. The only hope they have for unfastening the .millstone around their necks is that the Volstead act will gradually fall into desuetude and that the nation will, by common agreement, observe it in the breach as we do some of our old Stuart blue laws. . . ."