" DOWN GLASSES."
ITo TEE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—An engineer, a young relative of my own, employing about forty men mainly upon naval work on the East Coast, told me he had occasion to take a leading hand to a job inland. In his works district drink is controlled, and the man in question, although in ordinary times a heavy drinker, had been doing regular and excel- lent work. After leaving the railway station and turning into the country village wherein the job lay, the man at the first public- house abruptly left his employer's side. In about ten minutes he returned, raised and elated. "—," said his employer reproachfully, "you're at it again. Can't you stop it at least in war time, and stick to your work?" The man pulled himself together, and looking his employer straight in the face replied : " When the drink's there I canna pass it," and, very earnestly, " It would be a God's help tae me, an' mair than me, if thae places were a' shut doun."
A builder's labourer whom I have known for many years in our own West Country, a good soul and steady worker when off his occasional drinking bouts, rejoined his old regiment when war broke out. He has been twice sent home wounded, the last time so seriously that he was discharged, unfit for either service or home work. He was given an order to e. country-house Conva- lescent Home. In three weeks' time, however, he turned up again. I said: " Hullo, I thought you were at —." "I left there on Monday, Sir," he replied. " I made a mistake." He had been given leave, he told me, to go to a neighbouring town for the day. There he had foregathered with a chum on furlough, adjourned to a public-house, put in an off and on day's drinking, and in the evening long past the hour of leave found himself at the door of the Home—incapable. He had been offered another chance, but, as he said, "They'd trusted me, an' I had na played the game, an' I had ne. the face tae stay on." I said : " Look here, I'm not a teetotal man, as you know, but as man to man, tell me what you think about Prohibition, closing the public-houses, and stopping all drink." " Well, Sir," he answered, " I wadna like it mysel'; but," and again the East Coast phrasing, " it would be a God-send tae me, onywayt" These are but two instances among many of decent good fellows, steady and reliable workmen when the drink is out.—I am, Sir, &o., 'Wellington Chambers, Ayr, N.B. JAMES A. Mosses.
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