neration that is always claiming to be
candid and courageous. In the second aspect, it is utterly unworthy
of a generation that claims to keep itself fit by tennis and golf and
all sorts of athletics. What are these athletes worth if, after all
their athletics, they cannot scratch up such a thing as a natural
appetite? Most of my own work is, I will not venture to say,
literary, but at least sedentary. I never do anything except walk
about and throw clubs and javelins in the garden. But I never require
anything to give me an appetite for a meal. I never yet needed a tot
of rum to help me to go over the top and face the mortal perils of
luncheon.

Quite rationally considered, there has been a decline and
degradation in these things. First came the old drinking days which
are always described as much more healthy. In those days men worked
or played, hunted or herded or ploughed or fished, or even, in their
rude way, wrote or spoke, if only expressing the simple minds of
Socrates or Shakespeare, and _then_ got reasonably drunk in the
evening when their work was done. We find the first step of the
degradation, when men do not drink when their work is done, but drink
in order to do their work. Workmen used to wait in queues outside the
factories of forty years ago, to drink nips of neat whisky to enable
them to face life in the progressive and scientific factory. But at
least it may be admitted that life in the factory was something that
it took some courage to face. These men felt they had to take an
anaesthetic before they could face pain. What are we to say of those
who have to take an anaesthetic before they can face pleasure? What
of those, who when faced with the terrors of mayonnaise eggs or
sardines, can only utter a faint cry for brandy? What of those who
have to be drugged, maddened, inspired and intoxicated to the point
of partaking of meals, like the Assassins to the point of committing
murders? If, as they say, the use of the drug means the increase of
the dose, where will it stop, and at what precise point of frenzy and
delusion will a healthy grown-up man be ready to rush headlong upon a
cutlet or make a dash for death or glory at a ham-sandwich? This is
obviously the most abject stage of all; worse than that of the man
who drinks for the sake of work, and much worse than that of the man
who drinks for t