For more than forty years the doctrines of total abstinence have been preached in this country. Young men have been told that whatever would intoxicate should be shunned as a poison; and with this terrible announcement ringing in their ears, they have stepped into the nearest saloon and tested the poison in the shape of a cocktail. The Neal Dows and Murphys and Oliver Cotters have given their theory a fair trial; and the result is--what? That, making due allowance for the increase in population, there is to-day three times the amount of drunkenness in the United States that there was forty years ago. This stubborn fact would seem to knock the bottom out of the total abstinence theory. Evidently we are on the wrong track to suppress drunkenness. In Germany, everybody drinks beer and Rhine wine; yet Germany is freer from the evil of intoxication than any country in the world. In France, claret flows as freely as water; and yet you rarely see a Frenchman drunk. In the United States, nobody is supposed to drink anything, and the rates of drunkenness are alarming. Now it is Hogan's theory that if light wines and lager beer were made the common beverages of the people, there would be a steady decrease in drunkenness. Instead of attempting to prove to men that a glass of wine is as bad as a dose of poison, show them that a glass of wine is infinitely better than a glass of whisky, and you will carry conviction with your argument. Let beer gardens and wine rooms be made respectable, as they are on the continent of Europe. Let a man be able to take his wife and family into these places, and not be obliged to stand behind a screen and guzzle down the adulterated stuff in company with sots and ruffians. It is fair to assume that men will go on drinking in the future as they have done in the past. Stimulus is a natural craving of the system, especially where life is run on the high-pressure principle which it is in this country. Let us not undertake the impossible task of shutting off this stimulus--of preventing men from drinking altogether--but rather let us seek to make the beverages comparatively harmless.