6 JANUARY 1917, Page 19

[To THE EDITOR 07 THE " SPECTATOR."]

SIR,,—You may care to publish the following passage from a letter I have recently received. Good luck to you in your "Down Glasses" campaign !—I am, Sir, &c., J. C. F.

"Dem Ma. —,—I dare say you will have seen and been inter- ested in the recent manifesto of the shipbuilders, &c., and the men's reply thereto concerning Prohibition. I came up here with is fairly open mind on the question, but I have no doubt now Prohibition cannot come one moment too soon. I have seen more drunken men, and women too, up here and in Glasgow, where I have to go occasionally, in the short time I have been up here than I have seen in England from end to end in ten years. That may seem like a very sweeping statement, and you may think it

exaggerated. Honestly and sincerely, it could not be exaggerated. Last Wednesday I had to go to Glasgow on business, and I witnessed two sights unprecedented in my whole experience. (1) Outside a liquor shop in -- Street I saw people standing, three and four deep, fifty yards long, waiting to be served with liquor. I watched them for more than ten minutes, and the crowd grew rather than diminished. (2) Further up the street a still longer procession was waiting. At the shop door a Commissionaire was regulating the traffic, and at its tail, which was always being added to, was a big Glasgow policeman keeping them in order. They were of all ages and kinds. This crowd, which I saw three times during three- quarters of an hour, must have been between 300 and 400 strong, A shopkeeper opposite assured me it was a daily sight between 19 and 21 and that they did not ` care a tin-tack for any one.' Here, on Saturday nights, about nine, the streets are nearly impassable with men and women all the worse for drink. Quite literally and exactly I have never witnessed anything like it anywhere."