This, it is suggested, is the policy which the trade
would prefer, though it is added that the Scottish distillers would prefer very heavy taxation of spirits to prohibition. No doubt they would; but we venture to say it is a question, not of what the trade would prefer, but what is the beet way of
dealing with the great problem of the hour—the better and quicker production of munitions of war. To have advertised the need for drastic action so strongly as the Government have advertised it through the speeches and actions of the two Ministers most nearly concerned, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for War—Lord Kitchener, it should be noted, was the first man in the country to follow the King's lead as regards private pro- hibition—and then, to use Sir Thomas Browne'e phrase, "to eonclude in a moist relentment" of small beer and shorter hours, can only be described as a tragic farce.
