THE MADNESS OF THE MEATLESS.

Observer, Volume XL, Issue 11, 15 November 1919, Page 24

THE MADNESS OF THE MEATLESS.

(By EDGAR WALLACE.)

THERE is one serious aspect of the Prohibition Campaign to which sufficient attention has not been paid. And let me say that personally I have nothing against such a campaign. It is about time that the temperance movement was put on a livelier foundation. It has been too long in the hands of burial societies. Almost every temperance organisation I know is founded on the assumption that a teetotaler will die penniless, that there will not be enough money in the family to give him a decent funeral. And so the first, the principal feature of the secret societies bound together . to fight Al Cohol, Esq., is a burial fund. Of course, you get music for your funeral—even a temperance band discourses music—but you're much too dead to enjoy it. And so, as I say, I welcome the new movement conducted by men who are putting the pep into pepsin. But—this is the main question—-to whither will prohibition lead us? We know that when a type departs from its natural habits that type passes rapidly through stages of deterioration to extinction. You may say that it is not natural that man should drink whisky and the like. But really, who is in a position to be dogmatic on the subject? The Teetotal Lion. Civilisation might not be what it is if it were not for the sturdy drinking habits of our gallant and guzzling forebears. The lion drinks water, and is in consequence a poor defenceless creature at the mercy of beer-drinking mankind. To hold up the foolish habits of the lower animals for admiration is absurd. Animals can get on without firewater, but they can also get on without motor-'buscs and fountain pens. If drinking is unnatural, so are wheels. Nothing in nature goes on wheels. But the curse, of abstinence from drink is that it leads, to vegetarianism, and vegetarianism is a vicious form of insanity. I believe I am right in saying that most vegetarians are teetotallers. There may be some special kind of tipple affected by vegetarians, and I have a dim recollection of reading in a vegetarian cookery book (why not eat vegetables raw —giraffes do not cook the trees they eat?) a recipe for an exhilarating cabbage cup or something of the sort, which went like this:— Take of the hard hearts of three cauliflowers a handful, grate six walnuts, and slice a parsnip. Boil the cauliflower in milk, adding a teacupful of mangel juice. When boiling add the walnuts and a sprinkling of parsley. Strain and set aside to cool. This will be found an exhilarating drink for a hot day. Result of Nut Diet. They have proved in New York that prohibition leads to a falling-off in the consumption of meat. Even the sale of lobsters is affected to such an extent that the price of lobsters has fallen 50 per cent. I have never met a vegetarian yet who was not queer. We know that 40 per cent, of the conscientious objectors lived on nuts (this, with other startling statements in this, article, is a fact), and we know, too, that the vegetarian movement is closely connected with every freakish cran-ky-ism to which humanity is prone. Vegetarians are automatically antivaccinationists and anti-vivisection-ists. They are the people who wander loose in sandalled feet and never wear hats in any weather, I am told that all petitions against the execution of our murderers obtain their first signatures in restaurants affected by vegetarians. And I trace their eccentricities of dress and rea-

soning not to their unwholesome diet, but to the unnatural detestation of alcohol which brought them to the consumption of carrots. Driven to Drink. It is possible for a man or woman to remain normal arid vegetarian only so long as he or she drinks largely of intoxicants. The less meat you eat the stronger must be your potion. Russia ia vegetarian—the peasants do not eat meat once a month. Whilst she had plenty of vodka to drink Russia was a great country. She would, of course, have conquered and overrun Europe if she had developed the practice of meat eating, but even as it was, she was a formidable power. Then, in a weak moment the Czar ukased vodka out of existence. He was playing into the hands of the meat-eating The empire tumbled to pieces, the poor cabbage-fed peasantry, deprived of the assistance of right-thinking which vodka supplied, went mad, as all habitual vegetarians go sooner or later, with results which we all deplore. If you show me an abstemious nation I will show you a weak and a vicious nation. In China there is little drinking, and. the people live on rice and dope—and what do we see? Four hundred millions of human beings helpless to resist the encroachments of their meat-eating, whisky-drinking rivals—Japan grew great when her people cooked their rice with flesh. Hopeless! We keep India in subjugation — and India, for all the pretty things that the bureaucracy say, is governed like a conquered country—because its people are vegetarian and total abstainers. Prohibition and vegetarianism are twin brothers —pallid and spineless. They are the instruments of national emasculation and degeneracy. You cannot be a vegetarian and a patriot, because one of the first baneful effects of cabbage-juice is to create the .illusion of universal equality. Vegetarianism destroys all faith in your fellows, all sense of decency, all enterprise. A man may open his world-oyster with a sword, never with a nutcracker.