. Formerly his drunkenness was limited by certain hours;
now his drunkenness was {114} continuous while his store lasted. And
he took care it lasted. If the streets were partially cleansed, the
children were impregnated as never before by the atmosphere of alcohol,
and the women were taught to share in the drunken orgy. To-day the
claim is made that, at last, the consumption of alcohol is on the
decline. When four millions of men are with the colours, fighting
across the seas, it would be indeed marvellous if there was not a
decline in the sale of alcohol at home!

IV

If some of the steps taken by the Central Control Board cannot commend
themselves to temperance reformers, there have been other policies
initiated by them which are undoubtedly in the right direction. The
prohibition of the sale of ardent spirits within certain areas has
inaugurated a new and beneficial national policy. The time may not be
yet come for a total prohibition of alcohol throughout the country.
{115} Those who know anything of the intolerable conditions under which
men and women live in the crowded, noisome tenements of our great
cities, realise that these people must have some way of escape from
their miserable environment. Total prohibition is the ideal to be kept
steadily in view, but before that ideal can be realised the people must
be prepared for it. The only way to prepare for the ideal is by a
reconstruction of the social order. New and sanitary housing for the
poor must precede the policy of total prohibition. But the time is
fully ripe for a prohibition of ardent spirits during the war and
during the period of demobilisation. And it is on this policy that the
Board have launched forth. In the district of Annan and in wide
stretches of the north of Scotland the sale of spirits is now
prohibited. In a recent visit paid to the Hebrides, I found among the
people a spirit of thankfulness that they have at last been delivered
from a great evil. Drunkenness has vanished among them. {116} A new
era of prosperity has been inaugurated.

This policy, which has been made effective in the places where it has
been put in force, ought to be at once applied generally. It is
grotesque to endeavour to promote sobriety in patches, shut in by
geographical boundaries. It has not been applied in the places which
need it most. In the common lodging-houses and farmed-out houses of
the Grassmarket and West Port of Edinburgh there wer