SANE DRINKING.

Hokitika Guardian, 5 June 1920, Page 4

SANE DRINKING.

(By Ferdinand I'uohy, who has been investigating Prohibition Methods for “The Daily Mail.” .

PARIS. After being buffeted aboiit. lor months in tho United States, a world of abnormality on this drink question, it 'is a relief indeed to come to a sane drinking land like France. France and wine—the words are al-

most synonymous, and Franco does not propose to emasculate her national and iiatural character by going overnight on to a diet of cold water. The most intel-

ligent, creative, and artistic people, perhaps, in the world, aiid its most intense'exponents of life, the French are quite efficient, too, when it conies to wars, and they really fail to see why they, supported by all the learning and tradition of the centuries, should pay more attention to this ice-water movement iii the youngest couiitry in the world than a father reserves for first efforts at reasoning oh the part of his Son and heir.

The flaw in “ Pussyfoot’s ” armour is that ho, and his, have never lived in-the real big world but lißve torn out statistics from one sordid side. How many, I wonder, of these “dry” gentlemen I latterly met in America — Messrs Cherriiigtoh, Anderson, Wheeler, Dinwiddie—have ever studied sound drinking in the Latin countries? The well they draw on for their propaganda is the public house, nude in its power for evil. Have any of them ever troubled to visit tho dark side of Paris and see how sensibly men and women, yqung and old, drink there? I did last night. Up, up vve went to the very top of Montmartre, dark and dreary these days of sombre lighting and early closing, and then entered, not an ordinary tourists’ haunt, but what across the Atlantic they would call “a low down hive.” ■' '

The company, workmen in corduroys; laundry girls, hatless and flushed wiu fun; an artist with whiskers creeping down his face ;in one corner an honest bourgeois with -his wife and child, and ourselves. As each new arrival entered,' lie or she stopped a moment by the bar, took a drink, and then passed oh, with a quip, to a table. The food was good, the wine was better. And all drank it—the workmen, the laundry girls, the artist, and the others. And everyone knew everybody else, and that wonderfully keen French ■intelligence found full play in wit and sparkling repartee and laughter, and life was enthroned here in this “low-down dive.” France drinks sanely. America drank insanely. In America men hustled their drinks down one after the other, raw spirit, determined to lose no time in getting drunk. 1 Saloons and bars abounded ; drinking came to be looked upon as a vice, and so became secretive and—worse.

Here in Paris you drink before all the world. And not standing up at bars. Only foreigners do that. You sit down either inside or outside your cafe, at any time of the day, and you order wliat you want—excepting spirits, which cun only be sold at certain fixed hours.

Business rnen and midinettes, wives up from the suburbs, and youths'just entering affairs—you see them all seated side by side at little tables. Sipping talking,’sipping, laughing, sipping, gesticulating. And never a soul do you see drunk. Later, at luncheon Or dinner, it is the same. Almost every table has its wine, from light golden Vouray, beloved by the ladies, to the rich red Vougeot, of reminiscence and contentment.

Prance without wine . . . would be like America without dollars.