As a second question Mr. Agg-Gardner asks if we "consider
such a programme to be quite consistent with the principles of practical statesmanship or of common fairness." We are delighted to have the opportunity of saying that we do, most emphatically. To tell the nation that we must save what we have hitherto been spending upon drink, and at the same time must give up a pleasure of the senses which, though it may be legitimate enough in peace time, bemuses us for the stern work of training for war or Preparing munitions essential to the war, is, in our opinion, the height of practical statesmanship.. It is, indeed, on practical, and not on sentimental or even moral, grounds that we recommend it. It is as a war measure, and therefore a measure of expediency, that we urge it so .ationgly upon our countrymen. If we may venture to say so, to ask us whether we think our proposal "is consistent with common fairness" was a slip in so able a dialectician as Mr. Agg-Gardner. No one thinks of himself as not possessed of " common faimesa." Unlees we believed that the suggestion was fair, indeed scrupulously 'fair, we should not have dreamt of urging it.
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