Although I don't think that an academic listserv group is the place
for advice to first-year students facing a deadline for a term paper,
I do want to comment on the timing of United States national
prohibition in an international context.  In January 1997 the ATHG
and the American Historical Association co-sponsored a session on
prohibition in international perspective.  Two of the papers dealt
with prohibition in places with the governments did not have to worry
about voters: British West Africa and Tsarist Russia/the early Soviet
Union.  I presented the third paper which looked at England in the
very late 19th cent. and early 20th cent., years when prohibition was
in decline as a political issue there in contrast to its successes in
other parts of the English-speaking world.  For instance, the First
World War produced considerable change in the regulation of the
alcoholic drink trades in England and some of the changes (notably,
mid-afternoon closed hours for pubs) lasted until recent years.
There was much controversy over proposals, never adopted, for the
national government to purchase and operate the businesses of the
manufacture and sale of alcoholic drink.  Although there also were
proposals for prohibition during the duration of the war, they were
peripheral compared with the State Purchase controversy.  My point is
that the war by itself is not a sufficient explanation for national
prohibition in the USA.  One has to look at each
country's pre-war institutional, political, and socio-cultural
circumstances in combination with the new circumstances created by
the First World War.