Prohibition was a fascinating episode in American history which has attracted the attention of a number of writers. This paper does not seek to present any new historical evidence. Perhaps, in history as well as in photography, over-enlargement can lead to loss of definition, so the object is to assess what evidence is appropriate in answering various questions about Prohibition.

Calvin Coolidge became President on the morning of 3 August 1923. He was to hold that office for five years, six months, and thirty days, during which time he would have a splendid opportunity to secure the destiny of his party. Some of the activities of several of the more seedy characters of the Harding Administration were about to become public knowledge, while the one-interest basis on which Republican power rested was becoming increasingly obvious. In the scandals which followed his accession, Coolidge acquitted himself well, the ‘anti-propaganda’ technique he adopted in fighting the revelations bringing him, it might be argued, an even greater victory at the polls in 1924 than he otherwise would have received. But the party's destiny went well beyond the Twenties, and the success, or lack of it, which would greet the Republicans in the decades beyond depended in large fashion on Coolidge's efforts to pry his party from the rut in which it had firmly planted itself. For by the time Coolidge entered the White House the Republicans had violated a basic canon of practical politics by allowing themselves to become the spokesmen of one interest, to the neglect of those others which, if they ever got together, could easily put an end to Republican dominance. More broadly, the party by this time was a rather exclusive vehicle in which, oblivious to others around them, serenely rode whites, Anglo-Saxons, and Protestants. There were others in this vehicle but by the post-war period they were mostly in the rumble seat, and none too happy about it.

Racial and religious tension and conflict in New York City have dramatically increased over the past few years. Charges of ‘black anti-Semitism’ and ‘white racism’ abound, while meaningful communication between the races is less than it has ever been. The general context within which the situation has developed has been that of the growth of the Black Power concept and the resulting black challenge to the white economic, political and educational power structures. This challenge, so different from the glorious days of the civil rights decade of the 1950s when blacks and whites marched together in the South, represents a realization among black leaders that the basic problems of jobs, housing and education in the urban ghettos of America have to be solved before there can be any real progress of black Americans as a group. This, however, brings them into conflict with whites with vested interests to protect, and the resulting controversy has been bitter. An example of the break-up of the old civil rights coalition following the presentation of a challenge to white self-interest can be seen in the mobilization of the majority of Reform Democrats of the FDR–Woodrow Wilson Club to defeat plans to pair PS84, a predominantly white elementary school, and a nearby black and Puerto Rican school. David Rogers, in 110 Livingston Street, quotes one disappointed club member saying: ‘All their old liberalism went by the boards. They are liberal in the abstract, and when the problem is far away, say in Selma, Jackson or Birmingham, but not for their children or their schools and neighbourhoods.’ The same, as we shall see, could be said of the ‘liberal’ United Federation of Teachers.

It may be that an element of contradiction is integral to any outstanding literary work. A major writer, in presenting one philosophical viewpoint or attitude directly, cannot help, by virtue of his sensitivity and breadth of awareness, but present the alternative angle indirectly. Nevertheless, although the narrative may shuttle ambiguously between two such poles, there should finally be no doubt as to which side of the argument the author inclines to. A limited degree of ambiguity makes for vitality. A total ambiguity makes for inferior art. If this criterion is acceptable the reputation of Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor may deserve revaluation. Critical opinion, which turns upon Melville's attitude towards Captain Vere, appears to have reached a stalemate, in spite of the recent publication of the Hayford-Sealts authoritative edition of the story which the editors hope ‘will narrow the ground of disagreement and widen that of understanding’. A division still exists between the ‘straight’ readers who see Vere as exonerated and the ironists who believe that Melville is subtly undercutting the validity of Vere's stand.

Few critics have attempted to answer the question most often asked by those who grew up to find the revolutionary young poets of the Twenties embalmed as Elder Statesmen of the Fifties. Is Eliot really a great poet? What are the indisputably major poems and how do we read them? Why—a question so far ignored by all Eliot commentators—why has Eliot had so little influence on the younger English poets? This last question is even more relevant now that we can see that 1918–55 produced in England little more than a few good but essentially minor poets. And the fact that the emphasis must now be placed on (for example) Empson, Graves and Betjeman, rather than the fashionables with which we were plagued in our youth, does not render the question any the less relevant. There are certainly points of difficulty in Eliot's technique that make it possible to understand at least some of the resistance to his poetry when it first started to come out. J. C. Squire's review of The Waste Land is well enough known: ‘a grunt would serve equally well’. And, as Mrs Leavis has pointed out, George Gordon's inaugural lecture as Professor of Poetry at Oxford was little more than a series of gibes at Eliot as representative of the ‘moderns’. Still, these men were not fools. Granted that their reaction was a mistaken one, ought we not to enquire how exactly the mistake came about?