STATE PUBLIC-HOUSES.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16038, 31 January 1920, Page 5

STATE PUBLIC-HOUSES.

CHEERFUL AS A MORGUE. (Special Correspondent Daily Mail). Carlisle to-day is an object-lesson in the liquor problem. New ideas find expression in an old frame. For nearly four years the State has controlled the drink traffic. With the exception of three hotels, every place of refreshment is owned and managed by the Liquor Control Board. The Board has made two local breweries do the work of four and has reduced 119 licenses to 69.

As nationalisation of the liquor traffic is accepted in many authoritative quarters as the only substitute for prohibition, this local experiment has an important bearing on the subject. If Blue-books were reliable guides the Carlisle experiment would seem a triumph for State control. Since the State acquired the public-houses drunkenness has decreased, assaults on the police have p radically ceased, and fights in the poor quarters have gone out of fashion. “WOMEN ONLY” BARS, Many of the public-houses' are a cross between a popular restaurant and a workmen’s institute. They are clean, healthy, and commodious, children are served with mid-day meals without fear of contamination from a drink atmosphere. There are bars set aside for women only; but no woman may have more than one drink.

But Carlisle is not altogether pleased. The State monopoly provides only one brew of beer and one brand of spirits. Neither prejudice nor preference is tolerated. And D.0.R.A., it is said, queens it behind the bars.

Under national control I find that the personality of the landlord, so characteristic of the English inn, disappears. He is not allowed to smoke during trade hours, and he is not permitted to entertain relatives or friends afterwards. Mine host becomes as much a cipher as a Post Office counter clerk. In the country, a few miles from Carlisle, is Rockcliffe village, where there used to be three public-houses. Now there is one, and that is more of a village reading-room. I found three gloomy countrymen sitting in a tiny, uninviting room sadly regarding a portrait of the late Sir Wilfred Lawson. In a larger room was a library of uninteresting books and a deserted bagatelle table. The place was as cheerful as a morgue. The intention had been to make a workmen’s club; the effect—a Sunday school with a license., _____