DRINKING IN FRANCE.

Evening Star, Issue 11725, 7 April 1902, Page 3

DRINKING IN FRANCE.

Fifty 3'ea.rs ago France was one of th« most temperate countries in the world. Today, according to a French statistician quoted by Sir P>rcreton, it stands at the head of European nations as the greatest consumer of alcohol under its various forms, the consumption per head being half as much again as in England or Germany, four times as much as in Norway (once the hardest drinking of peoples), and nearly seven times as much as 'in Canada. The causes assigned for so alarming a change are, paradoxically enough, the failure of the wine crop during several years after the invasion of the phylloxera, which proved the opportunity for distillers of all manners of noxious spirits; the growing practice of every wine-grower to have his own private distillery, with which no Government have yet felt strong enough to interfere; and the sale of spirits at the regimental cantines—as to which General Galliffet issued a timely prohibition. Hence, in little more than twenty-five years there has grown up a habit of perpetual " nipping," which is sapping the manhood, and in some cases the womanhood, of France.—'Times.'