Oh, for the spirit of our Allies in this land! If France wants to rouse the spirit of Verdun she strikes down her foe at home and puts absinthe away. If Russia wants to be great and free she stops this drink and orders out the Romanoffs. If Canada wants to give her utmost help to Britain she stops this drink from sea to sea. If Australia wants to make her soldiers fit she trains them in her Prohibition camps. If America wants to beat the whole world at making shells she drives drink from her workshops. If San Francisco has an earthquake she stops drink while she pulls herself together. If Liverpool has a dangerous strike she shuts up public-houses and keeps the city quiet. Oh, for a Government of Britain that will see what all the world can see! History will do justice to the part the Prohibition policy of the Allies has played in saving Europe, but a pamphlet has no room for these things. We can take only one or two great witnesses to the mighty achievements of our Prohibition Allies. Let us begin with France, and call our own Prime Minister to tell us what they did. Mr. Lloyd George: One afternoon we had to postpone our conference in Paris, and the French Minister of Finance said, “I have to go to the Chamber of Deputies, because I am proposing a bill to abolish absinthe.” Absinthe plays the same part in France that whisky plays in this country, and they abolished it by a majority of something like ten to one that afternoon. And how did Paris take this prohibition that men said would cause a revolution? Let us ask Mr. Philip Gibbs, whose splendid letters home have made his name a household word. Mr. Philip Gibbs: Absinthe was banned by a thunderstroke, and Parisians who had acquired the absinthe habit trembled in every limb at this judgment which would reduce them to physical and moral wrecks. But the edict was given and Paris obeyed, loyally and with resignation. And now we come to Russia, to these mighty Russian people who in the last year of vodka saved £6,000,000 or £7,000,000, and in the last full year of Prohibition saved £177,000,000. We will call our own Prime Minister again: Russia, knowing her deficiency, knowing how unprepared she was, said, “I must pull myself together. I am not going to be trampled upon, unready as I am. I will use all my resources.” What is the first thing she does? She stops drink. I was talking to M. Bark, the Russian Minister of Finance, and I asked, “What has been the result?” He said, “The productivity of labour, the amount of work which is put out by the workmen, has gone up between 30 and 50 per cent.” I said, “How do they stand it without their liquor?” and he replied, “Stand it? I have lost revenue over it up to £65,000,000 a year and we certainly cannot afford it, but if I proposed to put it back there would be a revolution in Russia.”