HOW NORWAY HAS GONE "DRY."

Dunstan Times, Issue 3136, 25 September 1922, Page 7

HOW NORWAY HAS GONE "DRY."

(By Dr Arthur Lynch.) Like moist sailors', ho was a jolly fellow, that Norwegian captain ; his broad shoulders and his innocent blue eyeformed an agreeable association, and Ik was as friendly as he was brave. We had not been acquainted half an hou; before he had told me a good deal of hi' history, how he had been torpedoed twice, how he loved the Allies, and how he detested sea. life He had left the sea! And he was in high spirits—because he was going back again. Ho had been sent for to bring a'new ship home. "Will you have a whisky and soda with me?" T said, as T poured out my mineral water—a great .thing in Norway, mineral water. My blue-eyed captain's face changed. Surprise and severity were both there. "Do you not know." said he witb emphasis, "that that i* not allowed here? .Norway is dry." I was explaining heavily that 1 did but joke, when the blue eye swam and rollicked. He twitched my elbow and marched off to his cabin. ' I followed. He locked the door. Then from an inside pocket he produced a bottle of whisky*, and sitting on his bed he held it before him and contemplated it. And then I began to see that the high spirits had not been caused altogether by his return to the seafaring life; be had already long looked on that bottlers forerunner while it was yellow. We pledged each other's health in the liquid; I not tasted whisky for twenty years. Such is one effect i f repressive laws. Thou my captain told me that prohibiion in Norway was a farce. Although Norway's trade was so bad that ships bail been held up for two years, and shipbuilding firms had gone bankrupt, yet one class of shipping was runniin; lor ail it was worth- smuggling. "Yesterday," he said, "I saw at Larvik a German racer that could do her forty knots an hour! What was she there for?" Tn reply to himself he took another, and ho told me all about smuggling. ft was as when a spring poet from London wandering the woods talks of the peaecfulness of nature, and then a real naturalists gives him a glimpse of the animal underworld. Smuggling is a trade, a sport, a splendid adventure. Moreover, it is profitable, although the smuggler sells his stuff at the rate of about 7s a pint of pure spirii. The Danes are emulating the Germans - , and the Norwegians favor both Meanwhile, with Norwegian trade going to the had, the Spanish and Portuguese Government, in retaliation for the ban on their wines, have Wi\ carrying on a veritable war of tariffs; the Norwegian Cabinet, alter living in a, condition of crisis For a long time. lias had to capitulate. It has now agreed to accept about a million pints of Spanish wine per annum. I did not learn all this from m\ blue-eyed captain, for he did not even know the name of his own Prime Minister. It is Blehr. or Blair, for Norway and Sweden contain man\ Scottish names derived from the old Covenanting time.-. That may account for the dry law.--, or perhaps equally well for the prevalence el' the whisky of the glon ; for after having investigated the matter from many sources I have been Forced to the conclusion that a stern prohibiting, highly moral law is one thing and a German "racer" another. In spite of his aversion to the Germans and his dislike of the sea. my blue-eyed captain well. "Yo Ill's again," were the words he used.