Storms are first forecast by those who fear them most. Storms in human affairs are often precipitated by sheer nervousness.
At the Democratic convention, where the present tension about Prohibition began to become national, the Drys were so much in the majority that there never was any serious likelihood of the party adopting a Wet plank. The law-enforcement plank that was adopted omitted a declaration against modification of the Prohibition laws for two reasons:
1) The nominee upon whom the party had decided was everywhere known to favor modification. To pledge the party against modification would have created an absurd impasse.
2) The nominee's reiteration of his pledge to enforce the law if elected could only be accepted, by Democrats, as the word of an honest man. His reiteration of his disbelief in the present form of Prohibition was neither startling nor offensive to sincere Prohibitionists in the party. They had known his position. They honored his candor. They doubted his power to change the law.
The outstanding Drys of the party reinforced this doubt with determination. Josephus Daniels said: "The primary duty of Democrats in the South and other sections is to stand by the ship and concentrate every effort in securing the election of a Democratic Senate and House which will give hearty support to Smith in every measure of reform in which we stand together. . . . But they should stand in Congress like a stone wall against any recommendation that Smith as President should make to modify the Prohibition enforcement act. . . ."
Senator Carter Glass of Virginia and Governor Dan Moody of Texas refused to bolt the party because of what the nomi nee had said. Their attitude was, in effect: "We need and want Smith for many reasons. We can keep him in hand on this Prohibition matter, which is only one of many matters to be considered by the Democracy."
Thus far it was an issue within a party, and Nominee Smith did not hasten to force it further. He postponed his answer to Mr. Daniels until next month.
Nevertheless, all last week the land reverberated with alarums and Prohibition ceased to be a problem peculiar to the Democratic Party.
Secretary Ernest H. Cherrington of the World League Against Alcoholism cried out: "The gage has been thrown in what promises to be the greatest 'wet and dry' battle that the nation has ever seen."
David Leigh Colvin, national chairman of the Prohibition Party, thought the situation looked so serious that he turned reproachfully upon Prohibition's greatest promoter, the Anti-Saloon League, and flayed it as follows: "The Anti-Saloon League is not a party, and it is not even a league. It is merely a group of paid superintendents. The Anti-Saloon League has engaged in a number of shady political deals which have discredited it." Mr. Colvin, who was in Chicago arranging for the Prohibition Party's annual convention there this week, said that the Prohibition plan this year would be to back a Dry Democrat who might hamper Smith's progress in one or more States in the Solid South.