COCKTAILS A MENACE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 846, 14 December 1929, Page 32

COCKTAILS A MENACE

“TURNING FRENCH INTO SET OF IMBECILES” DOCTORS ON WARPATH “No man or woman in his light senses will ever want to do without wine. It would not only mean depriving the body of its most puissant strength-builder, but it would be downright sacrilegious to refuse the Creator's most sublime gift to mankind. But it is a different matter with cocktails. They are rank poison, a social menace, and will make idiots out of the wisest of men.” This is the opinion of Professor Guillain, the famous Parisian neurologist, and member of the French Academy of Medicine, who is out on the warpath against all flip-cherry goblers, sidecars, egg-nogs, and manhattans (says a London exchange). Cocktails, said the professor, may seem to impart eloquence to the dumb, audacity to the timorous, and wit to the feeble-minded; in reality they are nothing but illusions. He said: “The use of cocktails, brought to us by America, is turning the sanest nation on earth into a set if imbeciles. When we drank wine we produced great philosophers and thinkers, poets and artists, soldiers and musicians, but now .that we have started to follow the abominable fashion set by trans-Atlantic women and men with corroded stomachs, we are heading for utter decay and decline. An American Peril “Cocktails are part of the great American peril. They lower national resistance, and make the elite of France pliable instruments in the hands of the Yankees, who are out to subjugate the world by peaceful means. Before another quarter of a century is over, the upper curst of French society will be perishing with cancer and epileptic fits if it survives the wild parties and reckless motordriving which are also outflows of cocktail drinking.” According to another famous medical man, Professor Sergent, it may become necessary to prohibit the use of cocktails in France, as it is habitforming, like narcotic drugs, and is making its victims chiefly among young women. "Go to any of our present-day fashionable cocktail parties, and you will be astonished at the

amount of nonsense that is spoken. Young ladies who have been educated under the most favourable circumstances, and who at school gave promise of brilliance and wisdom, are lolling about, talking incoherently, laughing hysterically, and acting foolishly, if not indecorously,” he says. “It may be funny to see the wife of an American millionaire hiccoughing like a recruiting sergeant on the sands of Deauville, but when a sweet young girl of 16 or 17 is afflicted that way it becomes distressing,” chimes in Paul Y'aki, the author and social critic. “The cocktail is a monster with phosphorescent eyes which has robbed our age of men like Rodin and Balzac, Victor Hugo and Picasso,” he goes on. “In ten years’ time the poor brains of our up-and-coming young men and women will be exhausted and worn out like overstrained motors. Humanity will fall into an insane frenzy that moves with the rhythm of jazz, and our fair France will become an easy prey to some new' world conqueror.” The war against the cocktail is not waged solely by medical men. French cooks are also up in arms. The mixture of liqueurs and whiskys is dulling the palates of the most noted gourmets, according to the cuisiniers, and before long the average cocktaildrinking Frenchman will not be able to distinguish betw'een a Touraine sauce and a swig of iodine. The universal conversion to cigarette smoking was bad enough. It gave genuine gourmetterie a hard blow'. But the cocktail is bound to destroy the effects of the finest culinary masterpieces. Cooks Praise Wine Wine, again, is praised by the books as a noble stimulant and appetiser. It increases man’s sensibilities to the finesse of cooking. But cocktails — well, the cooks do not know where to look for adjectives scurrilous enough to denounce them. Poison is only a mild word to express the extent of their indignation and condemnation. It simply is the devil’s own brew! In spite of cooks and neurologists, and social reformers, the cocktail goes on conquering the life of Paris and the smart seaside places. Five o’clock tea is something that w'ent by the board long ago, along with the hop skirts and red flannel underwear. Only timid little grandmothers dare to breathe the w'ord that was once considered fashionable in France. After that came the Porto-hour. This is also out of date now. Cocktails rule the roost from eleven in the morning, when the barmen dash into their white jackets, until the next dawn, with a special period between five and eight o’clock in the eveningdesignated as the cocktail hour, when consumption is doubled and trebled. Nothing can be done about it, it seems. Professor Sergent may say that it gives young women voices that croak like those of frogs, and mouths that look as hard and forbidding as a Scotsman’s purse. They go on drink because it is smart, and makes them gay.