But the ax of retrenchment was infinitely preferable to the sword of Damocles. Lords and ladies, "gentry" and common folk, prepared to make the best of it. Prohibition, mainly to enforce sobriety on the working classes, was considered by the Government, but not for long, for there was a mighty howl from the "trade" and from its bibulous votaries, who in England include both sexes, all classes and nearly every age. Restriction, not prohibition, was adopted as a compromise. In the "munition areas" the saloons were closed at the hours when, in former times, working men were most inclined to squander their wages on debilitating ale and alcohol. Everywhere a "No-drinks-before-10-A.-M." decree was promulgated, and, simultaneously, it became a misdemeanor for a restaurant, saloon, hotel, bar or even a private club to dispense liquor after ten o’clock at night. Clubland in Pall Mall, St. James’s and Piccadilly groaned, and there was gnashing of teeth among the "nuts" (young bloods) and the ladies of the chorus. But people found they had more money for bread and butter, potatoes, vegetables and meat, which were costing semi-famine prices as it was, and there were fewer besot wrecks of women in the Strand, and almost no intoxicated men in khaki. War manifestly had its blessings, too. One met unfamiliar people in the plebeian motor-buses, who at first wrapped their evening-coats exclusively and close around them, for contact with the common clay was still new and strange. It became positively fashionable to be a cheese-parer. You were no longer considered "bad form" if you went straight home from the theater, and confessed why. If my lady of Mayfair did not close up her house in South Audley Street or Park Lane altogether, to live in "chambers" or some cozy country cottage, which was also cheap, she at least shut up the drawing-rooms, dispensed with a maid or two, cut out the most expensive courses at her dinners, when she gave any at all, and didn’t mind if her guests turned up in day clothes.