TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE GREAT OPPORTUNITY.

DEVOUTLY do we trust that the rumours current as to the intentions of the Cabinet in dealing with the liquor problem are ill-founded. If they are true, then the Government have missed a great opportunity—the greatest, perhaps, that any Government ever had for improving the moral, the physique, and the industrial efficiency of the nation at the most momentous crisis in our history. The rumours are to the effect that the Govern- ment have definitely rejected all proposals for general prohibition, and that the most they will do will be to prohibit the use of spirits during the war, lower the standard of alcohol allowed in beer, and in certain areas further restrict the sale of intoxicants. In other words, the Government are alleged to be contemplating meeting the crisis with half-measures. These half-measures are no doubt of considerable importance in themselves, but in our opinion they are inadequate for dealing with the peril of the moment. Yet they are likely to cause almost as much dissatisfaction and opposition as would the full measure of general prohibition for which we ask and shall continue to ask.

We have spoken of the great opportunity which apparently the Government have not imagination or courage enough to grasp. What is this opportunity ? It is of a double character. In the first place, it is the opportunity to increase the efficiency of labour—and not merely of hand labour but of all forms of labour throughout the country—by the suspension of the use of a drug which by its nature tends to slow down human effort and decrease activity of mind and body. At the moment we want no anodynes, no narcotics, no sedatives. Even if these things are useful in peace time—which, of course, is an arguable point—we do not need them now. We want the maximum of effort, and we want it not merely in the direct manufacture of munitions of war, but in every phase of activity in the national life, for indirectly all such activities are tending to help us in the struggle. A better output in the production of food, of boots, of cloth, of cottons, of metals, of hardware ; in the work of the builder, the carpenter, and the mason—all will go to maintain the national fabric which is now exposed to the appalling strain of the war. To speak, as Lord Hugh Cecil does in his letter to the Times of Thursday, as if we had only to deal with a hundred thousand workers is a capital error. We have got to array the whole nation for the most strenuous of conflicts, and the nation will be infinitely better arrayed for that struggle on a temperance than on an alcohol basis. By letting the nation partially drug itself with alcohol we are not giving the ship of State that maxi- mum pressure of steam which the occasion demands. Next, what makes the occasion actual and immediate is the fact that at the moment a very large portion of the wage-earning population has obtained, and we are sin- cerely glad that it has obtained, a considerably higher remuneration than it has ever done before. That per ae is all to the good. But unfortunately, though not unnaturally, this extra margin is not going in savings or in extra food, but very largely in an increased consumption of alcohol by the worker. The strain of extra-hard work, Fes a sudden increase of earnings, has proved in many cases a temptation which is irresistible. We have alluded elsewhere to the economic opportunity afforded by tem- porary prohibition. We will only say here that what the nation needs on this aide when it is spending as it is spending now is to take in sail. But this it cannot do better or more easily than by ceasing to spend money upon liquor. Very few people, we think, and certainly no doctors, will be found to say that alcohol is, speaking generally, anything but a luxury or a drug. It may con- ceivably increase people's happiness, but it is not a necessary form of feed, and no one if deprived of it, apart perhaps from a few invalids, is going to die or to suffer in health. The balance in the matter of health, indeed, is wholly in the other direetion. The hundred and fifty million pounds or so which is spent in drink every year in this country could be saved without any one being a penny the worse for it. Take specific CABO.

There are thousands of working men's homes in which 7s. or Ss. a week is now expended in alcoholic liquor. If that expenditure were to cease for a year or nine months, and the money were put into the bank against a rainy day, can it be doubted that the position of the families in question would be immensely improved ?

Though we admit that we are only asking for prohibition during the war, and that we should not have asked for it but for the war, we are not afraid of saying that an enormous moral advantage, apart from the increase of war efficiency, will follow from temporary general prohibition. If such prohibition takes place, the nation as a whole will unquestionably restart its normal habits as regards the use of intoxicants on a higher level. Millions of men and women will not only have found that they can get on quite well without alcohol, but that they are a great deal better off in bodily and mental health owing to their abandonment of intoxicants even in a moderate form. They will realize that what they thought was a necessary is not necessary, and that there are other forms of expenditure on pleasure which are very much more to their taste and advantage than those drawn from the beer-barrel or the whisky-bottle. It is one of the commonest of individual experiences to find that a temporary prohibition caused by some accident has taught a useful lesson. A man spends a holiday in some mountain district where he cannot get easily the liquor to which he is accustomed, and he therefore decides to be teetotal during that holiday. Again, out of a desire for experiment, he tries what effect a month's self-imposed abstinence will have upon him. Or, owing to an illness, the doctor orders him to take nothing alcoholic for a fixed period. In instances such as these he finds he has gained a new strength, and, even though he takes no pledge or makes no formal renunciation, he knows throughout the rest of his life that he can get on perfectly well without intoxicants, and can save money into the bargain. The war has given an opportunity to the nation to try such an experiment for a year, or whatever may be the duration of the war. Depend upon it, if it is taken, and if the nation adopts the policy of temporary prohibition, it will as a whole learn the lesson which so many individuals have learnt accidentally—the lesson that it is quite possible to do without stimulants, or, at any rate, to use them in a much more restricted way than before. One does not need to be a fanatical teetotaler to see the immense advantage of such a result. Here indeed the nation has a chance for action which may never occur again. If the Government have not vision enough to see this, they will utterly have failed to read the hearts of the nation and the signs of the times.

Another and more specific ground for prohibition may be noted, though it is one which people do not as a rule care to face, since to do so is, we admit, eminently dis- agreeable. Besides the injury done to the industrial efficiency of the nation by over-expenditure in drink on the part of a considerable section of those engaged in the manufacture of munitions of war, there is the great harm which over-indulgence in alcohol is doing to two classes of the community which we must all specially desire at this moment to free from temptation. First, there is the Army. Though our new levies are, all things considered, wonderfully temperate, there is undoubtedly a residuum, large in numbers, though relatively small compared with the vast bodies of men with the colours, which has of late suffered greatly from the evils of drink. The i

Army is well provided for n every way, and especially in what we may call" pocket-money." Our young soldiers are well clothed and well fed, and beyond that have, as a rule, at least is. a day, and sometimes Is. 6d. a day, to spend as they choose. Far too much of this at the present moment finds its way into the public-house, with a consequent reduction of the efficiency of the soldier. No one can doubt that, if the soldier had not the appalling number of opportunities which he now has for drinking, the Army as a whole would gain enormously. The drink difficulty, as was pointed out in a letter in our columns last week, follows the soldier from the barracks to the hospital. Any one who has had to do with Army con- valescents knows what a constant preoccupation it is to those who are responsible for the convalescents' condition to prevent them in their weakened state from falling a prey to alcoholic indulgence.

Closely connected with this Army problem is the problem

of the increased drinking amongst the wives of our soldiers. Happily the wives and dependants of soldiers are generously provided for during this war. That is exactly as it should be. Unfortunately, however, the good that should have been done by such ample provision is often lost owing to the greatly increased consumption of alcohol by certain of the wives and families in question. Here it is of course only a matter of a minority, and a small minority, but when one is dealing with millions— and we are dealing with millions now—a ten per cent. minority may mean thousands upon thousands of people who are adversely affected. Here again, no one can doubt that it would be an enormous gain to the nation if we could feel that none of the money placed at the disposal of the wives of our soldiers could go in expenditure which at the best is useless and which may be morally harmful. To put the matter with brutal plainness, we do not want the publicans and the manufacturers of intoxicants to take the heavy toll which they are now taking of the allowances to soldiers' families.

There is, in our opinion, only one reason which would justify the Government in refusing to take the opportunity offered them to let the nation realize how very well it can get on without intoxicants. If it could be shown that the resistance to prohibition would set the nation by the ears, bring about violent conflict of opinion, and necessitate an enforcement of the law so stringent that it would cause, if not actual civil disturbance, at any rate a sense of wrong and injury in a very large portion of the nation, the Government might well be excused for hesitating. We believe, however, nay, we will go further and say that we are certain, that the Government would run no risk of this kind if they would have the courage to come forward with the policy of complete prohibition—the policy of which Mr. Lloyd George, to his very great credit, has made himself the spokesman and leader. If prohibition, coupled with proper compensation for the manufacturers and retailers of intoxicants, is adopted for the period of the war, the country will not merely submit as readily and as cheerfully as it has submitted to all the minor inconveniences imposed by the Defence of the Realm Act, but it will, we believe, as a whole feel intense relief and gratitude at so strong a lead being given. There are thousands of men who, though they habitually take alcohol in consider- able quantities, yet know in their hearts that they get very little good, and in most cases much harm, out of that expenditure. Yet they find it impossible to break the habit of a lifetime and to separate and place themselves apart from the rest of their fellows. If, however, everybody who is not under doctors' orders has to put down his glass, they will be perfectly. willing, and in a sense glad, to do so. In such matters what our new psychologists call "suggestion "plays a very great part, and there is no suggestion stronger than that of an Act of Parliament, provided it is backed, as it would be, by a great moral impulse.

It is a commonplace that the best way to popularize a new creed or a new religious sect is to ask from those who adhere to it some act of signal self-sacrifice. To require the nation to acquiesce in the self-sacrifice of the abandonment of liquor will, we are convinced, not make men harden their hearts to resistance, but incline them to co-operation. If they are told by the Govern- ment, as only an Act of Parliament can tell them, that it is necessary for the nation to prohibit the sale of intoxicants during the war, some ninety per cent, of

the British people will not make any resistance or feel aggrieved in the matter. They will find in prohibition a moral stimulant and the direction which they require.

On the other hand, partial prohibition—that is, the pro- hibition of spirits alone—though of course it would do some good, would largely, or indeed wholly, deprive the measure of the virtue of self-sacrifice and renunciation which would come from total prohibition acquiesced in by all.

The moderate whisky-drinker will want to know why the

stigma should be placed upon the liquor which he prefers and preference given to beer. Others, again, will be quick

to see in the half-measure an admission that the abandon- • nient of all intoxicants is not considered a sacrifice which the nation need make during the war, and will merely hold that the Government are adopting a fad or fashion in dealing with the drink habit. As a war measure total -prohibition holds the field.

If, then, it is not too late, we would implore the Govern- ment to reconsider their refusal to sanction prohibition. If they persist in the policy of half-measures so widely attributed to them, we can predict what will surely happen. The agitation for prohibition will continue, and at the same time the trade will very naturally demand compen- sation for the new, though ineffective, restrictions. Between the two stools the Government will, we do not say fall, but will suffer a loss of prestige which it is most undesirable that they should suffer while the war lasts. Let them take one side boldly and have faith to remember that courage is in moments of crisis a. far better servant than fear.