[To the Editor of the - Srzer.wroa.] SIR,—The opportunity of making a
distinguished Editor happy for so small a sum as six shillings must not be missed. Therefore I have just bong ht one dozen Copies of the current Spectator. But if, instead of giving them away, I proceeded to read through all the twelve from beginning to end, surely I should becoinp no less stupefied than your supposititious purchaser and consumer of a dozen bottles of whisky a week.
I grant there are persons (probably not one per cent. of our population) who drink excessively, to their own and their country's hurt. Your policy is to treat this tiny minority .(which should be restrained and reformed on other lines) as the predominant factor, thereby plaguing the sober majority with bureaucratic "management." • Britain has not only over-drinkers but also has over-readers. The vice of these intemperate consumers of newsprint and fiction may not leap to the eye, as does the vice of drunkenness. But it is there. Too much fiction-reading makes life seem drab and slow : too much reading about crime often tempts to imitation ; too much about other men's adventures induces a reaction of indolence ; and the excessive absorption of • others' opinions (even the Spectator's) ends in many citizens having no opinions of their own. All this, however, would not justify an extension of the Carlisle experiment so as to control the editors, reporters, newsagents, and booksellers of that unlucky city. Yet these editors, &c., are all working for profit as well as for the public good.—! am, Sir, &c., ERNEST B. RL'THERFORD. Wine and Spirit Trade Defence Fund, • 17 Harp Lane, Great Tower Street, London, E.C. 3.
Ma. Arrrnua SHERWELL, defending our use of the term -" drink trade," to which Sir Ernest Rutherford took exception, writes :—" The Drink Trade is a familiar and well-established phrase and by no means designedly opprobrious. I have ,heard it used, quite innocently, on the Unionist benches in the House of Commons, and it has been used also by repre- sentatives of the Trade itself. One of the latter, I remember, used it in the pages of the Fortnightly Review, which can no more be described as a type of 'lower-grade journalism' than can the Spectator."
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