DRINK-AND WIT ILLUSIONS OF LIQUOR

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 7, 9 January 1915, Page 11

DRINK-AND WIT ILLUSIONS OF LIQUOR

A 'CANDID COMMENT. A writer in the London Statesman ;ives some indisputable common sense »n the popular eubject of "Drink." Che critic is not a Prohibitionist nor abitainer, apparently. He is a pleasant jhilosophical commentator. Here are some passages from the article: — Drink creates the conditions in "which uiy sort of oonvereatian eeems. good conversation, any sort of wit- seems good irit, any sort of company seems good jompony, and, it may be added, any »rt of drink seems good drink. That is why you will see drunken men listening patently to each other saying the same thing over and over again, and none of them «ver suspecting that his neighbour is » bore. It is no "wonder that for a long time man was .inclined 1 to regard the gift of strong drink as something peculiarly divine. It turned men from clods into gods. It made the village bore as eloquent a& Isocrates, as witty as Menander. But it is not only ihe dull that have beea made good company by liquor. There would have been no dulness, we may be cure, in the Mermaid Tavern, even if there had been nothing to be had but " stone ginger." Drink, however, makes "wit more companionable than do mineral waters. Wit, under liquor, becomes blind as Cupid. Teetotal wit ia keen and without mercy. GEORGE MEREDITH'S OPINION. There used to be an idea abroad that wine was » help to wit, because many men of genius drank wine, and drank it to excess. But it is not the men of genius but their admirers who hold this theory most firmly. George Meredith in his novels wrote more in praise of wine than any other author of his day. It was with all the more astonishment that, when his letters were published, one discovered how harsh a critic of wine he was. He wrote in May, 1887 : "I take it rarely. I think that the notion of drinking any kind of alcohol as a stimulant for intellectual work can have entered the minds of those only who snatch at the former that they may conceive a fictitious execution of the Utter. Stimulants may refresh, and may even temporarily comfort, the body after labour of brain ; they do not help it — not even in the lighter kinds of labour. They unseat the judgment, pervert vision. Productions cast off by the aid of the use of them, are but flashy, trashy stuff — or exhibitions of the prodigious in wildness or grotesque conceit, of the kind which Hoffmann's, Tales give, for example; he was one of the few at all eminent who wrote alter drinking. SchilleF, in a minor degree — nc-t to the advantage of hi» com.position. None of the great French or English." "THE RIGHT TO GET DRUNK. V The truth is, in the matter of drinking, the world of work has won the day. Drinking in the old style was possible only in a world of leisure. Aa one after another we are swept into the clutches | of the professions and trades, there is no room left for the drinker; he is mere* ]y an interesting survival. Sobriety has now a cash value ; it ia more in demand than the latest patent medicine.^ There was very nearly an industrial civil war a year or- two ago over the question , whether an engine-driver has the right ■to get drunk even when off duty. The i question was unfortunately left unsettled owing to the discovery that the particular engine-driver in regard to whom the trouble had arisen had all the time been sober. Even, so, however, each of us knows in hi» heart that the right to get drunk is to all intents and'porposesdead. MAN AND THE MACHINE. We are so largely a population in charge of dangerous machines that our neighbours will not allow us to risk their necks for the sake of an extra glass of whisky. The rich roan, it ia trne, can still depend on the brotherly sympathy of gome magistrates when he is accused, of driving hia motor at fantastic speeds or in fantastic curves under; the influence of Kqucr. Bnt for the poor man in the same condition the rights of man, as interpreted by enthusiasts, have-ceased to exist. WHAT TO DO? Is one to defend drinking, then, or to attack it? , Probably, . one will defend it against teetotalers, and attack it when its advocates ask one to regard the potman as a priest and the long, bar as the communion table. In one's Puritanical moments one is inolined to think that the man who cannot get enough stimulus from life without drinking confesses himself a failure. When one is of a milder philosophy, however, one wonders whether one had not better begin a new day with one of the positive rather than, the abstinent virtues.