Last week the Home Secretary received deputations pleading for and
against greater liberties than the present licensing laws allow for the consumption of intoxicants in Clubs. Those who on Friday, November 6th, urged on behalf of temperance bodies, that there was no need for extended hours and liberties, had the advantage of following a deputation whose case had been abominably presented. For the day before the plea for greater liberty was put by Sir Herbert Nield, a Middlesex Member 'of Parliament, with a crudity that amounted to insolence to a Secretary of State and greatly damaged the ease. He read a prepared statement, so that we cannot say how far he was personally to blame. It could only be inter- preted as a threat that unless members of Clubs could hav6 greater choice of what and when to drink, they would, if Unionists, desert all their political principles and presumably transfer their support to those whose policies they professed to condemn as harmful to the nation. We are surprised that Sir William Joynson-Ilicks did not ask the deputation whether they approved of their leader's words and dismiss them if they assented. Not all the Clubs concerned . were Unionist Clubs, and politics go ill with Club-membership. Clubs ought to be, and in many eases are, pleasant places of great social value, and they do not deserve condemnation as "drink shops " that evade the restrictions of public- houses. The deputation did its best to condemn them.
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