Born in Pennsylvania; went to California soon afterward. On this state of facts one is called a Californian. In California attended a school in which the children wrote essays on the subject “What is the harm in a glass of wine?” When the campaign to pass a State Prohibition act was on, he helped to distribute leaflets, and even went on an expedition to San Francisco to serve as a watcher at the polls on election night. When he entered Stanford University he won fifty dollars in an oratorical contest under the auspices of the Intercollegiate Prohibition Association, by proving that Prohibition was inevitable. At that time he knew and believed more about Prohibition and the Liquor Evil than he has ever known or believed since.
Then the war came, and he went to France, where there was excellent tutelage in drinking. The Americans drank heavily, and the French drank well. He saw that there was good as well as evil in drink. This was a surprise and a shock to him. The news that America had gone dry was nevertheless very welcome when it came. It seemed such a fine and brave thing for his country to do. He never tired of explaining it to the incredulous French people. There was one fine old gentleman who seemed to be a perfect master of the art of life, who expostulated: “To forbid the wine! That I cannot understand. If you should forbid the wine in France, do you know what it would be? It would be the Revolution.”
He returned to America and took up his studies where he had left them. His work was in modern European history. He acted as Reference Librarian for the Hoover War Library, for which he had collected documentary materials while in Europe. He helped to write a book on The New Governments of Central Europe. From what he saw of Prohibition, it did not seem to be bearing out the prophesy he had made in his fifty-dollar Freshman speech on the subject. But he was busy with other things, and took only casual notice of affairs outside the campus. He married, got his Ph.D. and his job, and with this normal equipment of the beginning college instructor, went to New York to teach history at New York University. He wrote about War Guilt and that sort of thing.
In 1929 the Binkleys published a book called What is Right with Marriage, which paid them enough royalties to get them to Rome. There they were able to study drinking in the Italian style. Returning to America, he went to teach at Smith College, and after a year at that place, to Western Reserve University. And about this time he began to think remorsefully of the aid he had once given to the Prohibitionist cause, and the money he had accepted from their campaign fund. He felt that he should contribute to an intellectual conscience fund, to expiate the offence of having been so certain, upon such slight evidence, that Prohibition would be so excellent a thing for the country. That which he found hardest to forgive was the formulation of the problem of liquor control in such a way that rigidity and dogmatism were encouraged on both sides. This book is the expiatory offering.