SOBER RUSSIA.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 20 May 1915, Page 6

SOBER RUSSIA.

A REGENERATED PEOPLE

For three months after the sale of vodka was forbidden in Russia, says the New York Outlook, restaurants of the first class arid social clubs in cities and towns were allowed to serve wine and beer with meals, and even in some cases to sell these beverages by the ease.

As far as one can judge from the Russian newspapers drunkenness in the towns, although greatly reduced, ha& not been wholly prevented. Substitutes tor,*vodka in the shape of wood alcohol, denatured alcohol, cologne spirits, and varnish have been used mure or less extensively by confirmed inebriates; socalled "wines," made of berry juice, burnt sugar, and denatured alcohol, have been obtainable at 20c. a bottle, and fermented or distilled liquors of various kinds have been illegally manufactured in small quantities a?id secretly sold. During the three autumn months of 1914 the police arrested intoxicated persons on the streets of Petrograd every day, and the number ot such arrests often exceeded 100. Between Ist August and 14th December the number of persons treated for acute alcoholic poisoning in a single Petrograd hospital (the Obukhovski) was 1000, and the forgery of physicians' prescriptions for alcoholic liquors or preparations became so common that druggists were finally forbidden to fill such prescriptions . without first verifying them by telephone. ' to In the country, however—that is, in the peasant villages—the state of affairs seems to be quite different. There •the drinking of intoxicants has almost wholly ceased, partly because it is more difficult to get denatured alcohol and bJ per ;cent. "wine" in the country than it is in. the towns, and partly because the peasants regard the war*very seriously, and have cleansed themselves of the sin of drunkenness, just as a muzhik who is about to die puts on a clean white shirt. Sobriety, in the stress of peril arid under the shadow of death has come to be regarded as a moral and religious duty. Even the peasant women talk more about prohibition than, they do about the war, and P<wS??i Nt chlldren ask their mothers, Will papa always be as he is now?"