2
THE ALCOHOL PROBLEM
of sale of alcoholic liquors cannot be allowed to remain
indefinitely in their present unsatisfactory state. If
we make no move on our own initiative, we may be
compelled to do so sooner or later as the result of
pressure from outside. If, as is confidently stated
by many temperance advocates, the adoption of
complete prohibition causes a striking improvement in
the health, happiness and efficiency of the inhabitants
of a country, and we find that so far as concerns
industrial efficiency we are really being beaten in the
competition for world trade by a rival nation which
has adopted it, we may be driven, in a panic, to in-
troduce extreme and unsuitable measures which have
to be subsequently withdrawn. If, on the other hand,
by a careful study of the progress of reform move-
ments in other countries we are sufficiently alert to
recognise in what respects they are successful and
wherein they fail, and to apply this information to our
own country, we may save ourselves a vast amount
of wasted energy and disappointment.
We want to foresee, so far as we can, the stage which
the alcohol problem will reach in 50 or 100 years’ time,
and by suitable legislative and other means to attain it
with the minimum of friction and misdirected effort.
We are not at all likely to avoid every pitfall, but each
one that we can avoid will be so much to the good.
The primary difficulty lies in the intelligent anticipation
of the future course of the alcohol problem, as it
concerns ourselves and other civilised countries, and
in this book I have discussed the various directions
in which progress is being made, and have endeavoured
to assess their relative degrees of importance in the
removal or reduction of the evils associated with the