The Liquor Issue in Europe.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 November 1922, Page 4

The Liquor Issue in Europe.

NOUWAY HKCAXTS. (Sydney Bulletin). The Acting Organising Secretary of the X.S.W. Alliance* wrote to the Sydney papers oil the publication last week, of a cablegram stating that Norway had turned down Prohibition alter a brief (and incidentally disastrous) experience of it. fie took the/ point that Xonvay had never enjoyed real Prohibition, “as the law only applied to alcoholic liquors containing more than 12 per cent, alcohol in the case c! nines'' (as ,i fact II percent, mis the correct figure), "and 2.1 per cent, in th*’ case of beers.” The queer conclusion drawn was that the Norwegians have thrown out Prohibition because they did not get enough of it. “Prohibition.” remarked the- Alliance ofli- ] ai.nl “is only a farce if it is not tip- j plied to all alcoholic- liquors,” Such a proposition discloses the illogicality of the irreconcilable Cold Tea .Merchant in a truly blinding light. There are wint-drinking districts in France I which are among the most temperate localities in the civilised world; and until the laws regulating the mn-iiufnc- ■ tore and sale of Calvados (or pear brandy) there existed French towns; and villages (Zola dealt with sonic of them in several of his hooks) which j were as druiikc n as the worst quarter . of a modern Glasgow slum. France, c Italy and the rest of the wine-drinking] countries are admittedly soberer than | say, New York State after two years of ' Prohibition: and brandy-drinking Nor-j way. which was France’s horrible ex- | ample of alcoholism in Zola's day. hast been made so abstemious by regula- j tiem that it has long ceased to he a j scandal. Norway, which has itisl de- j cided against prohibition, had all these, object-lessons to go on, and so had ! Sweden, when by a plebiscite taken' last August it decided to have nothing i to do with the Yankee panacea. The! plain reason, why Norway abandoned even the moderate form of Prohibition ! that it had experimented with. and why Sweden declined to touc h the policy, was n matter ol realising the absurdity of attempting to enforce the unenforceable. Both countries arc- peculiarly unfitted, in the geographical sense, for Prohibition; and after Norway had spent a colossal stun trying vainly to defeat the aims of German and Danish firewater and wood-alcohol smugglers, both people and Government came to the conclusion that it was better to thrive on cheap and wholesome spirits than be poisoned by means of vile and expensive ones.