13 MARCH 1920, Page 15

STATE PURCHASE OF THE LIQUOR TRADE. (To THE EDITOR OF

THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Mr. Talbot shows that the " drunk " convictions in England and Wales, comparing 1914 with 1918, deoreased 84.50 per cont., and in Carlisle within the same period the decrease was only 71 per cent. The comparison is not a fair one. Men were pouring out of the villages, provincial towns, and country- side, and into Carlisle. If Mr. Talbot would give us the " drunk " convictions in, say, Coventry or Woolwich for those two years, we should then have a true estimate of the result of the Carlisle experiment.—I am, Sir, he.,