But it is the licensed house which never had much of a history, which has nothing interesting to preserve, whose justification for existence is solely on account of its use to the community as a house of call, that so often requires alteration. The new inn, moreover, the building itself, erected here in the twentieth century for the accommodation of modern people, must be as suitable for its purpose as the old coaching-house was for the stiff, befuddled travellers who, a hundred years ago, alighted from the “Royal Mail” or “Eclipse” for a much-needed night’s repose on their journey to London. It is plain that people use the roads to-day quite as much for pleasure as business. The railway takes the business man from one end of England to the other, faster, cheaper, and more comfortably than even the motor-car has yet achieved on the turnpike. Relaxation from work means for many thousands a journey by road, and it is in making suitable preparation for those who take their pleasure in this way that the new inn should devote at least half of its energies. The time may not be ripe in England for the adoption of the café system of the Continent. Perhaps the climate is somewhat against it. But some improvements, which a study of the French and German methods would suggest, might easily be taken in hand. The argument of the old teetotaller, not always expressed, perhaps, but certainly present, was that the more uncomfortable and disreputable the public-house the less temptation there would be to go into it. One can understand the point of view as with an effort one can realise the horror of the Puritans for anything in the form of an image in a Church. But people do not want nowadays to use the inn as a place in which to get drunk; a drunken man, to say nothing of a drunken woman, is a universal object of pity and scorn. What is demanded is a wholesome, clean and pleasant place in which to have something to eat and drink without being told by anyone, publican or teetotaller, what form the refreshment shall take.