e of Wales in a speech delivered
at the Guildhall to the first Parliament which met without an
Opposition, remained in use for a number of years afterwards.

I do not regard that as a statement of more than the truth; and I do not
think it would be easy to overrate, either the value of the period or
the excellence of the response to the demand it made upon them. The only
dissatisfied folk were the publicans and the theatre and music-hall
lessees. The special journals which represented the interests of this
class--caterers for public amusement and public dissipation--were full
of covert raillery against what they called the new Puritanism. Their
raillery was no more than covert, however; the spirit of the time was
too strong to permit more than that, and I do not think it produced any
effect worth mentioning.

Here again our difficulties proved real blessings in disguise. The
burden of invasion taxation was heavy; all classes felt the monetary
pinch of it, apart altogether from the humiliation of the German
occupation; and this helped very materially in the development of common
sense ideals regarding economy and simple living. Not for nothing had
John Crondall called the Canadian preachers the mouthpiece of the hour.
One saw very plainly, in every walk of life, a steadily growing love of
sobriety. The thing was perhaps most immediately noticeable in the
matter of the liquor traffic. Throughout the country, those
public-houses and hotels which were in reality only drinking-shops were
being closed up by the score, or converted into other sorts of business
premises, for lack of custom in their old misery-breeding trade. The
consumption of spirits, and of all the more expensive wines, decreased
enormously. It is true there was a slight increase in the consumption of
cider, and the falling off of beer sales was slight. But this was
because a large number of people, who had been in the habit of taking
far less wholesome and more costly beverages, now made use of both beer
and cider. It was not at all evidence that the consumption of alcohol
among the poorer classes maintained its old level. The sales of gin,
for example, fell to less than half the amounts used in the years
before the invasion.

And this was no more than one aspect of the great national progress
toward realization of the ideals of Duty and simple living. Extravagance
of every sort became, not merely unpopular, but hated and despised, as
evidence of