THE PROHIBITION PROBLEM.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."] Sia,--In your issue of February 24th you inserted a note in italics at the head of the first page of the paper, before the " News of the Week," with which the Spectator ordinarily begins. It dealt with the question of brewing in war time, to -which you have devoted so much space for a long time past. The following words were a part of it: " They [i.e., the Government] say : 'After the let of April we will allow the brewers to destroy only seventy per cent. of the foodstuffs they are accustomed to destroy in. the manufacture of intoxicants.'" I do not desire to discum the con- troversial and, in my opinion, much more than disputable assumptions implied in this sentence, with which your readers: must be—shall I say?—familiar by this lime. But I wish to point out that, as a matter, not of opinion, but of fact, the statement is not true. I do not merely mean that it is untrue if taken as an account of the policy announced by the Prime Minister on February 23rd. That was evidently not yet before you when you wrote the article on the subject which appeared in the same issue; and though many readers may have supposed, from its position, that this note was inserted at the last moment before publication and after knowledge of the speech, I do not press that point. I submit that the statement is not true even if written before the speech was delivered—not true, at any rate, in the sense in which forty-nine out of fifty of your readers would understand it. Almost every one, I think, would understand you to assert that the Government would allow the brewers after. April let to brew seventy per cent. of the beer they were brewing in normal times before the war. What are the facts as disclosed in Mr. Lloyd George's speech? He showed that in 1914 thirty-six million barrels were brewed,. that in 1916 the figure was reduced to twenty-six million, and that already in January of the present year it had been decided to reduce this amount to eighteen million. He then announced that the reduction must be carried kill further—viz., to ten million barrels as from April 1st. It is therefore clear that, quite apart from the new restrictions announced in the speech, your figure of seventy per cent, was seriously incorrect. Before Mr. Lloyd George spoke it had already been decided to reduce the output of beer from thirty-six million barrels to eighteen million, and eighteen million is fifty, not seventy, per cent, of thirty-six million. So that, without pressing the point of the new orders which will reduce the output as from April 1st to about twenty-seven per cent. instead of the seventy per cent. of your note, I submit that your words contained a very serious misstatement, affecting your whole argument. _ And, if I em right, I think you will admit that you owe some apology both to the brewers and to your readers.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Joao BAILEY.
• [We cannot admit that Mr. Bailey is right in saying that we made any misstatement in the note printed in the issue of our paper published and on sale on the Friday afternoon—i.e., before Mr. Lloyd George had spoken. We should have thought it was abundantly clear that when we used the words " they are accus- tomed to destroy " we meant are accustomed to destroy at the present time. If we had meant to convey the impression " as they were accustomed to destroy in 1914," we should have used the word ieere," not " are." We are of course sorry to have uninten-
tionally misled Mr. Bailey, but we may note that he appears to have been the only victim. No-one else has complained in spite of the microscopic zeal with which the supporters of the Trade rind our words. As to our figures and percentages being incorrect on other grounds, we can only say that we took them direct from official sources. If Mr. Bailey will look at our issue of January 27th and the Times of January 25th, he will see that we were using Lord Devonport's own words as regards the seventy per cent. Mr. Bailey must blame those who made the original announcement, not us, who merely copied it. We are very glad to have been able to afford Mr. Bailey room to make his point at length, but we cannot print further correspondence on this matter.—En. Spectator.]
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