"When the lazy or dull-witted students fail in the examination," said a wise schoolmaster, "I try to find out what is wrong with the boys; when the best in the class fail to pass, I try to find out what is wrong with myself." The Eighteenth Amendment is treated with contempt, the Volstead act for its enforcement is violated without compunction, by countless thousands of our best citizens. It is idle to try to find out what is the matter with these people; they are as good as we have, or can ever hope to have. The thing to do is to find out what is the matter not with the law-breakers but with the law. How the Eighteenth Amendment is a crime against the Constitution of the United States; how it violates the principle which lies at the bottom of respect for law; how it makes for despotism, whether by a majority or a minority; these and other aspects of National Prohibition are briefly discussed in this book. Of such discussion of the fundamental issues of Prohibition there has been a lamentable dearth. It is the author's hope that this book will contribute in some degree toward the rescue of the country from the evils to which he directs attention - toward its return to a sound view of the relation of government to life. Unless it does so return, the injury already done to American institutions and to the temper of American life will prove but a foretaste of others perhaps even more destructive of the spirit of liberty and individuality. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.