Says 18th Amendment Was Adopted Through "Negligence of Citizen Who Now Sits Up and Howls" and Declares "We Are Being Governed by Cheap Politicians" Who Put Themselves Over Because Voters Neglect to go to Polls.
Paris, May 26.—(AP)-General John J. Pershing attacked prohibition as a source of racketeering today, attributing it to the apathy of the American people.
Passage of the Eighteenth amendment "was simply done through the negligence of the citizen who now sits up and howls," he asserted with unwonted vigor at a luncheon of the American Club today.
Scoring those who failed to vote In the primaries, tho general said "we are being governed by a lot of cheap politicians who put themselves over on the Americans who are too neglectful to go to the polls."
The general's pungently phrased speech astonished those at the gathering, evoking roars of approval.
The commander of the American expeditionary force in the world war, in paying tribute to Marshal Louis Franchot d'Espcroy, who was a fellow guest, recalled a lunch with him west of Solssons in the fall of 1917, saying the marshal quizzed him on the possibilities of prohibition.
"I said I was a little bit frightened that they might be putting it on us while we were gone and it might be in effect when we got back," Gonorol Pershing said.
Vigorously assailing what he described as conditions of lawlessness in the United States, General Pershing said he understood the feeling with which posses in the old days strung up outlaws, although he did not advocate such methods.
He asserted prohibition never would have been adopted If the masses of the people had voted on it. The voters permitted such evils as brigandage, racketeering, bootlegging and gangsters, he added, by failing to vote the proper men into office.
Wed May 30, 2012 4:08 pm