P I WISH I COULDN'T GET IT."
[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR."]
Sra,—I visit regularly every Saturday night, from 8 p.m. until closing-time (in connexion with my voluntary work for the greatest Temperance Church in the world—the Salvation Army), a dozen or more public-houses in North London. I have been much struck with the number of women—especially young girls, often with their hair down their backs—in the public- houses. I have counted twenty-seven women in one small bar and thirty in another. But a more pitiable sight has been the number of children waiting on the doorsteps, in the lobbies and passages, for those inside drinking, who should be looking after them. I asked eighteen such children in one evening for whom they were waiting, and in each case received the same information- " Mother ! " I think the most striking plea for Prohibition I have ever heard was in the words said to me by a soldier's wife (they are quoted in Defeat or Victory?), "I wish I couldn't get
it/"—I am, Sir, &c., MURIEL CIARX. 33 Parkhill Road, South Hampstead, N.W. 3.
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