Governor Miller's message on the enforcement of the prohibition amendment and the Volstead law is a model of clarity and logic. It disposes of all opposition in the epigrammatic declaration: "The honest enforcement of the law may lend to its modification: the tolerated disobedience of it can only breed disorder and create contempt for all law." In these words Governor Miller sets forth a fundamental principle. There has been a strong tendency here abouts to place the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead law in a class apart and to talk and act as if a citizen were free to obey or to violate them as he chose. Governor Miller recalls people to their senses with the sharp reminder that law is law. To disobey the prohibition law because you don't like it is to give a hold-up man license to take your pocketbook because he doesn't like the law against stealing.

No one can dispute the Governor's characterization of the "present conditions" relating to the enforcement of prohibition as scandalous. "Open and notorious violation," flagrant acts of corruption"--if these manifestations are not enough to warrant such a demand as Governor Miller makes, then we had better stop professing to be governed by law. One point in the message should appeal with special force to those who have objected to the Eighteenth Amendment as an invasion of State rights. If we are to leave its enforcement to the Federal Government it would require "an army of agents in every State," which "manner of enforcement will strongly tend to break down State power." The Governor urges "the speedy passage of an effective enforcement act conformable to the act of Congress on the subject." The Legislature should take this course.  New York Evening Post