13 JANUARY 1917, Page 3

Granted that the consumption of liquor is a luxury and

not a necessary, its elimination at the cost of seventeen millions a year would be cheap indeed. It would set free some hundred and sixty millions of purchasing-power. However, we do not expect or ask for. Prohibition after the war. We merely desire to free the State from the Trade monopoly. But why then, it will be said, should the Temperance people interest themselves in your Purchase proposals ? They should interest themselves in them because Purchase is the quickest way to reduction in the hours of sale and in the number of public-houses—the two points in which the Temperance Party has always been interested.