Honesty: The Second-best Policy?

THE FOREWORD to the 1939 Big Book, toward the end, reads much like the Preamble to AA as we hear it at most meetings today--including the statement that "the only for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking." When and why the word "honest" was dropped, I've not yet pinpointed. But I suspect that some of the early AAs found, as I have in recent years, that dishonesty and self-delusion were side effects of alcohol; they often tainted the desire to stop drinking, and did not wear off the moment one decided to put the cork in the bottle. It might have been decided, in composing our membership Tradition, that making honesty an initial requirement might put some off.