The Pittsburgh Press (March 5, 1942)
I DARE SAY —
The shade of Carrie Nation
By Florence Fisher Parry
Here is an ad celebrating one of the world’s best known whiskies:
The Oldest Name in Scotch… It has seen Britain win over 100 naval battles…
Somehow the ad seemed to me a bit ill-timed. It invited some rather uncomfortable speculations… Hong Kong… Malaya… Singapore… Britain’s 100 naval victories of the past seem not to be serving her now.
Nor the implied assistance of her favorite Scotch whiskey.
Can it be that Great Britain needs another kind of stimulant?
And if Great Britain, America as well?
Some time ago, Clifford Odets, then not spoiled by success – wrote a play called Success Story. It was the story of two men. One was the heir to a big brokerage house, a gentleman and a playboy. The other was his office boy. At least at the beginning of the play, he was. At its end, he was the head of the firm while the gentleman-born was a first-class and eminently cultured bum in his employ.
Neither man was happy. In fact, the interloper committed suicide. It is usually like this, when social reversals occur. New orders come slow… they cannot be artificially induced.
But I remember one feature of the play. The gentleman-born was a man who had been trained to hold his liquor. That meant, of course, he had increased his tolerance for alcohol to a point so high that the obvious manifestations of drunkenness were seldom his to suffer.
The underling, on the other hand, was carefully abstemious. It was so highly important that he keep a clear head. He became master.
‘More or less’
I remember another work of fiction: Appointment in Samarra. It presented an unforgettable picture of country-club life in the typical American town, after the World War – during Prohibition. To this day, I never enter a country club of either city or town that I cannot see a replica, in more or less sharp focus, of that rendezvous near Scranton, Pa., where first-class Americans were holding their liquor like gentlemen… more or less.
I know that what I am about to write here will be unacceptable to many; it is a subject that is too much avoided, and for obvious reasons. There are great liquor interests whose revenues tie up directly with out government’s need for taxes. The industries which derive from alcohol and its successful distributions are performing magnificent services for this and other Allied countries. I should like to make it clear that this is not intended to be an attack upon the liquor industry, or indeed upon the dispensers of liquor. Nothing would be more narrow-minded and destructive than a blanket indictment of a major American industry.
But why hedge? We’re not hedging about having to do without other “luxuries” and “conveniences.” We don’t hedge about having to make sacrifices. We’re asked to do without a thousand items which only yesterday made the sum total of our easy existence. We’re asked to strip our very souls of the extremities of war. We are asked to give our blood; if need be our lives.
But what real, thorough, honest word has been spoken about our drinking?
Who has come out with a demand that we cut out cocktails for the duration?
Who has darted assert that business as usual has certainly been the formula at every bar in America, not only since the national emergency, but since Pearl Harbor?
Have you cut down?
How much have you cut down in your drinking, Mr. Average Citizen?
And if you HAVE been tapering off what motive has prompted you to your action? Is it really because you had made up your mind that you had to think and act with more clarity? Or just because you had to reduce your expenses all along the line? And if you are drinking less, hasn’t it been the last resort? Didn’t you trim down your other sails first, and let the alcohol curtailment come last?
I see no diminishing of drinking anywhere where drinking has been the order of the day. I see no change whatsoever in the drinking habits of Americans. I see no real effort on the part of any branch of our government to reduce the consumption of liquor except by the indirect expedient of added taxation. I see no evidence of a “shortage” except in the case of imported liquors.
The people of the colonial Empire left off their tea hour and whisky-and-soda LAST. There is little time for it now in Singapore and Hong Kong. Take their tea away from them, take their Scotch away from them, take their rank away from them, and what remains?
Shall we have a similar post-mortem over us? Take our cocktails away from us, take our tires away from us, take our plumbing away from us, and what remains?
Oh, the British stood up when the last challenge came. They proved themselves a great people when the bombs fell upon their homes and killed their wives and children, And we would prove ourselves a great people in the last great stand.
But last ditch character isn’t enough. It’s the stripping down BEFORE the plunge, not when we start to drown, that counts. The rose-colored glasses which the Great Fakir alcohol fits us out with, are of little use to us once we are submerged.