2 JUNE 1917, Page 3

The problem of the miner and his beer has been

during the past week exercising the minds of newspaper writers and readers—the immediate cause of this perturbation of spirit being a letter by a working collier, Mr. Meadows, who, it appears, won seventy tons of coal in nine shifts, and who declares that this feat could not possibly have been performed except on beer. Se-greatly moved was the Daily Mail by this disclosure of the intimate connexion between intoxicants and the fire on the hearth and in the kitohener that it went very near to proclaiming a kind of Holy War with " No Beer : No Coal " inscribed on the banners of the faithful. It ended an impassioned " leader " on the subject by darkly hinting that " some good might be done by the appointment of just one more Controller, let us say a Fad Controller."