LIQUOR IN WAR-TIME SIR,—It is true, as Mr. R. C.
Chance states in your last issue, that the British people will respond to any reasonable war-time restrictions, but they would resent the setting up of a Liquor Control Board, as Mr. Chance advocates, as an implication that excessive drinking was hampering the prosecution of the war, and that some of the follies of the last war were being repeated.
All the measures which Mr. Chance enumerates are now in opera- tion except the No-Treating Order, which caused more irritation, con- tempt and law evasion than any decree made in the last war, and no rational political party would support its re-imposition. Spirits and beer are rationed by excessive prices beyond the means of thousands of people, and excessive restriction, at a period when drunkenness is further declining, would, as in the last war, lead to serious industrial unrest. There are few chinks in the present licensing law in its defence against such drunkenness as occurred in the last war, and the indomitable purpose and calm resolution of our people will make a more valuable contribution to speedy victory than any measures which would regiment them as irresponsible and dissolute.
Pendower, Trelawney Road, Bristol. W. H. WORSNOP.
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