THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON.

Free Lance, Volume XIV, Issue 723, 9 May 1914, Page 6

THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON.

Police Prosecutions and the Profits '•■••: of Night Clubs. AMONG other things attributed to the tango is the increase in the number and lustre of the night clubs of London. The directors of on© such club were recently fined £700 for selling liquor to people illegally introduced ; and thie evidence given showed that the profits of the club amounted to £20,000 a year. In Great. Britain the rights of clubs have been jealously preserved. An association of private persons, for their own social aims- and entertainment, can occupy its own premises and dispense its own liquor, just as the proprietor of any other private house can. But when liquor is dispensed to folks ' outside the fellowship the magistrates" are severe. The morality of these night clubs need not be specially considered. Some of 'them are well conducted and in their manner reputable; others are merely the reisorts of raffs and demi-reps. There is little danger of the contamination of innocence,- because the innocent do not wander into night clubs. However that may be, so long as the clubs are well conducted and do not transgfess the law, no attempt can be made to suppress them. It ia the ill-conducted clubs that the London police are making a crusade against—the clubs whose mere existence "constitutes a grave public scandal." In New Zealand we.have no such places. The population is too small, for one

thing. For another, the trend of the law as it goes is to suppress clubs altogether.