But if anything could make me take kindly to cocoa,
it would be the sentimental rubbish which is written about the
"manliness" of drinking alcohol. It is no more manly to drink
beer (not even if you call it good brown ale) than it is to drink
beef-tea. It may be more healthy; I know nothing about that, nor,
from the diversity of opinion expressed, do the doctors; it may
be cheaper, more thirst-quenching, anything you like. But it is a
thing the village idiot can do--and often does, without becoming
thereby the spiritual comrade of Robin Hood, King Harry the
Fifth, Drake, and all the other heroes who (if we are to believe
the Swill School) have made old England great on beer.
But to doubt the spiritual virtues of alcohol is not to be a
Prohibitionist. For my own sake I want neither England nor
America dry. Whether I want them dry for the sake of England and
America I cannot quite decide. But if I ever do come to a
decision, it will not be influenced by that other clich‚, which
is often trotted out complacently, as if it were something to
thank Heaven for. "You can't make people moral by Act of
Parliament." It is not a question of making them moral, but of
keeping them from alcohol. It may be a pity to do this, but it is
obviously possible, just as it is possible to keep them--that is
to say, the overwhelming majority of them--from opium. Nor shall
I be influenced by the argument that such prohibition is outside
the authority of a Government.
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