IMPROVING HOTELS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, 22 August 1912, Page 24

IMPROVING HOTELS.

CONTINENTAL CAFE SYSTEM SUGGESTED. Bishop Crossley took a leading part in a temperance meeting held in Auckland this month which carried some regulations to request the Prime Minister to introduce legislation to further penalise the Licensed Trade. It was, however, gratifying to note that His Lordship was strongly opposed to a number of remarks by rabid prohibitionists, ,and declared himself not an abolitionist, but a reformer, in regard to the Trade. He advocated the abolition of private bars, and was opposed to intoxicating liquor being supplied in private rooms in licensed houses save lodgers; but the Prelate’s most original proposal was 'embodied in a resolution worded thus —

‘•That a public bar shall mean one room only, in any licensed premises, opening immediately to a . street, highway, public place, or public thoroughfare, wherein the public may enter and purchase liquors, and that the said bar be not obscured by muffled glass or otherwise, but be visible from the street.”

In speaking to the motion, a number of “reformers” advocated the introduction into this country of the Continental ideas of French cafes and German beer-gardens, but we fear any such schemes will take a long time to materialise in New Zealand. It is, however, gratifying to know that there are a considerable number of influential Churchmen and citizens who are now fully convinced that the Licensed Trade is a public convenience and a necessity. Such people are tolerant enough to look at the Liquor Question squarely in the face and not allow their minds to become warped by the rabid and senseless tirades of extremists. From open-minded people there is always some hope of their taking a reasonable view of problems, and if reforms can be carried out licensed victuallers could look to leading men like Bishop Crossley for influential flelp, because h.e would, give his countenance rather to changed conditions, which would improve the Trade rather than work for its abolition.

There can be no question but that the cause. of the improved publichouse is steadily gaining ground. Bills, with the object of encouraging, if not actually compelling, improvements in this connection, have been introduced into the British Parliament. A Society has been formed in England for the purpose of agitating for the adoption of the Continental cafe system. The public generally is beginning to realise that it will be not only possible but positively pleasant, under changed conditions, to take a drink in public without violating civic ethics or abandoning one’s selfrespect. In a recent “Weekly Despatch,” Sir Laurence Gomme, Clerk to the London County Council, wrote with authority upon the necessity for transforming “the individual secrecy

of the public-house” into “the comradeship of the cafe,” and his advocacy is supported by Sir George Alexander and a correspondent of our contemporary who signed himself “Globe-Trotter.” But while all clear-thinking and unprejudiced persons must believe that life in the cities would be immensely benefited by these reforms, there is another class of people who will offer to the proposals their most strenuous opposition. They would deal with public-houses as Socialism would deal with the House of Lords —not by mending but by ending them. There' are social drawbacks, says Sir Laurence Gomme, to entering and coming out of the public-house. These drawbacks should not exist. Sir George Alexander declares that the publichouse should be a place suitable for use by a man’s family as well as the man himself. The test of the custom of using licensed premises is submitted in the question—is it a custom in which our women-folk can participate with us? And “Globe-Trot-ter,” advancing from the moral to the material aspect of the subject, points out that the new kind of refreshment house would attract many people who never go into a public-

house, and the loss sustained by the decrease of the present excessive drinking would be more than counterbalanced by the increase in the number of customers. Here, then, are the three outstanding advantages to be derived from the recommended reform in our licensed surroundings. It will provide public-houses which men can enter without stealth and leave without apology; places where men can spend their leisure unashamed in the company of their families; premises that will be resorted to by that great class of persons who hitherto have never adventured within licensed precincts. But such an innovation is counter to every principle and zealous aspiration of the rabid anti-liquor fanatics — it would be the death-blow and pass-ing-bell of all their most cherished ambitions. For the past five decades they have not only proclaimed the infamy of all places of alcoholic refreshment, but they have done their level best to render public-houses as degrading as they have declared them to be. Every kind of innocent recreation has been forbidden on licensed premises; every attempt at comfort and attractiveness has been doggedly resisted; until the taint of a public-house has grown so noxious in the dainty minds of a super-deli-cate Government that children, by Act of Parliament, are debarred from entering them.

It seems to us that in their desire to break away from the present state of things, the advocates of Continental methods are over-inclined to extol the system to which they would attain, at the expense of the conditions that at present exist. Improvements are necessary, possible and commendable, and in time they will materialise, but even when the law permits the Continental cafe to replace the many-partitioned public-

e, we doubt whether the habit of taking one’s meals in the open-air will become greatly popular in this country. It is quite possible to be enthusiastic about the establishment of the light, airy, comfortable cafe that is advocated, and one may even rejoice at the prospect of being able to give a lady friend refreshment without asking her to lean up against a bar to imbibe it, but to describe the pubhouse as the “most unlovely, most detestable of features of social life,” is not good sense. The public-house is what temperance “reformers” have made it. If public-house reformers can induce Parliament to permit it to be improved, well and good, but until that time, it is as well to remember that it is serving an impera-

tive need of the public. Other public conveniences have been improved out of recognition during the last score years; it is certainly time that licensed premises were allowed to come into line.