"TIME, PLEASE."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 170, 20 July 1935, Page 13

"TIME, PLEASE."

LONDON'S CLOSING HOURS.

WHERE THE CONTINENT GAINS.

(Special.—By Air Mail.)

LONDON, June 22

The British public is not satisfied with a law, which closes hotels at 10.30 or 11 p.m. As in Australia and New Zealand, the Great War brought about these earlier closing hour*?, <but ever since it ended there has been an agitation foi longer hours. During Jubilee Week there was a general extension, and this proved so popular that a campaign has been started to bring England more in line with the Continent.

Sir Francis Towle, wlio is not only responsible for tlie Dorchester and other leading London hotels, but has also just been elected president of the International Hotel Alliance, in which 27 nations are represented, said: "It is not that the hotels and restaurants want to sell more drink, but that they want to sell the present amount under more pleasant conditions. At present we are allowed an extension one night a week by which drinks can bo taken with meals up to 2 a.m. The increase in the amount of drink eokl during the extra period does not amount to a shilling a head, but the extension does get rid of unpleasant spectacle of guests lacing told that they must finish their drinks quickly. "People do not really want to stay up late. The study of physical fitness is now too general for that. On the extension night it is found that most of the guests have left by 1 a.m. But it has a bad psychological effect on foreign visitors when they see themselves and their hosts being treated like children. It irritates them and gives them something about wliieli they talk with a good deal of exaggeration and impatience when they return to their own country."