unities than
of communities with the religion and civilisation of Belfast. It said
that if we would "cross the border" into Scotland, we should find out
our mistake. Now, not only have I crossed the border, but I have had
considerable difficulty in crossing the road in a Scotch town on a
festive evening. Men were literally lying like piled-up corpses in the
gutters, and from broken bottles whisky was pouring down the drains. I
am not likely, therefore, to attribute a total and arid abstinence to
the whole of industrial Scotland. But I never said that drinking was a
mark rather of the Catholic countries. I said that _moderate_ drinking
was a mark rather of the Catholic countries. In other words, I say of
the common type of Continental citizen, not that he is the only person
who is drinking, but that he is the only person who knows how to
drink. Doubtless gin is as much a feature of Hoxton as beer is a
feature of Munich. But who is the connoisseur who prefers the gin of
Hoxton to the beer of Munich? Doubtless the Protestant Scotch ask for
"Scotch," as the men of Burgundy ask for Burgundy. But do we find them
lying in heaps on each side of the road when we walk through a
Burgundian village? Do we find the French peasant ready to let
Burgundy escape down a drain-pipe? Now this one point, on which I
accept _The Nation's_ challenge, can be exactly paralleled on almost
every point by which we test a civilisation. It does not matter
whether we are for alcohol or against it. On either argument Glasgow
is more objectionable than Rouen. The French abstainer makes less
fuss; the French drinker gives less offence. It is so with property,
with war, with everything. I can understand a teetotaler being
horrified, on his principles, at Italian wine-drinking. I simply
cannot believe he could be _more_ horrified at it than at Hoxton
gin-drinking. I can understand a Pacifist, with his special scruples,
disliking the militarism of Belfort. I flatly deny that he can dislike
it _more_ than the militarism of Berlin. I can understand a good
Socialist hating the petty cares of the distributed peasant property.
I deny that any good Socialist can hate them _more_ than he hates the
large cares of Rockefeller. That is the unique tragedy of the
plutocratic state to-day; it has _no_ successes to hold up against the
failures it alleges to exist in Latin or other methods. You can (if
you are well out of his reach) call the Irish rustic debased and
super