POLITICS AND DRINK.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—Lady Astor originally said that "the monopoly we call the ' Trade ' has organized itself politically" and that it subsidizes " person% in local or national politics." Her elucidation of this charge is that "members of the licensed trade" subscribe to "political funds" where a person or party opposes the temperance movement, and that "many withhold this financial subsidy" if the party or its candidates "threaten drink profits." That is surely a different thing. Can it fairly be contended that "the very existence of straight politics in England" is endangered if a brewer, or anyone else, withdraws his subscription to a Conservative association on its adoption of a candidate pledged to ruin him ?
In complaining of brewers withdrawing advertisements from a newspaper which supports the temperance cause, "so reducing its income," Lady Astor, I think, forgets that she previously described such advertisements as "merely lures to drink." To pay a newspaper for printing lures to drink in one column while in another it was purporting to lead its waders away from drink would be a transaction
which, I feel sure, she could not, on reflection, approve from any point of view.
I am afraid I cannot offer to obtain for Lady Astor, as she suggests, the subscription lists of three societies described by her as "think-financed." I do not subscribe to any of them and before she mentioned their names was not aware of their
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