and closed in the morning. The ancient idea was that a wayside
public house was a place of sustenance and comfort, a human need that
might be wanted any hour. It was in the same class with the life boat
or the emergency ambulance. Under the old common law the innkeeper must
supply meat and drink at any hour. If he was asleep the traveller might
wake him. And in those days meat and drink were regarded in the same
light. Note how great the change is. In modern life in England there is
nothing that you dare wake up a man for except gasoline. The mere fact
that you need a drink is no longer held to entitle you to break his
rest.

In London especially one feels the full force of the "closing"
regulations. The bars open and shut at intervals like daisies blinking
at the sun. And like the flowers at evening they close their petals with
the darkness. In London they have already adopted the deadly phrases of
the prohibitionist, such as "alcohol" and "liquor traffic" and so on:
and already the "sale of spirits" stops absolutely at about eleven
o'clock at night.

This means that after theatre hours London is a "city of dreadful
night." The people from the theatre scuttle to their homes. The lights
are extinguished in the windows. The streets darken. Only a belated taxi
still moves. At midnight the place is deserted. At 1 A.M., the lingering
footfalls echo in the empty street. Here and there a restaurant in
a fashionable street makes a poor pretence of keeping open for after
theatre suppers. Odd people, the shivering wrecks of theatre parties,
are huddled here and there. A gloomy waiter lays a sardine on the
table. The guests charge their glasses with Perrier Water, Lithia Water,
Citrate of Magnesia, or Bromo Seltzer. They eat the sardine and vanish
into the night. Not even Oshkosh, Wisconsin, or Middlebury, Vermont, is
quieter than is the night life of London. It may no doubt seem a wise
thing to go to bed early.

But it is a terrible thing to go to bed early by Act of Parliament.

All of which means that the people of England are not facing the
prohibition question fairly and squarely. If they see no harm in
"consuming alcohol" they ought to say so and let their code of
regulations reflect the fact. But the "closing" and "regulating" and
"squeezing" of the "liquor traffic", without any outspoken protest,
means letting the whole case go by default. Under these circumstances
an organised and active minority can always win and i