The Times of Monday publishes a letter from Sir Robert
Anderson on the danger of a rapid growth of low-class drinking-clubs under the licensing legislation of the Govern- ment. At Scotland Yard Sir Robert Anderson had to decide year after year what licenses should be opposed by the police, and he adds that his estimate of the drink curse is such that he would be willing to "condone the confiscation element in the Bill" if he thought that it would achieve the results expected from it. But police inspection is impracticable in clubs, and it will be worse than useless to extinguish public- houses if for the extinction of evely one low-class clubs— homes of drinking and gambling—spring up like mushrooms. A public-house, Sir Robert Anderson reminds his readers, is at least public, whereas a club is private, and must remain so unless there is to be one law for the rich and another for the poor. It is not to be supposed that the police will be empowered to enter reputable clubs to see whether the members can walk across the floor steadily, or say "literary criticism "; and a close supervision of the smaller clubs will be similarly impossible. Supervision, indeed, is conceivable only under a drastic code which would bring the clubs as strictly under control as public-houses are now. And apparently the Government have nothing of that sort in contemplation.
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