OCR Text |
Show ENGLISH OPEN FIGHT ON BOOZE I "Educational" Campaign Does Not Seem to Be Worrying Drinkers By NORMAN II. MATSON, Special Oorrcsondent of Tho Stand-' artl-l'vainincr. (Copyright, 192J. by Tho Standard-' Examiner.) LONDON. June I. During the remainder re-mainder of this year the English churches are to be engaged In pirdln up their loins for a large scale at- , tack on boo7o in 1923. The campaign is to be "largely educational " The Immedlato objective Is a measure f local option "as the straight road t. a solution of the drink difficulty"; I Sentiment for stricter regulation of the booao traffic, and for complete j prohibition, is undoubtedly growlngl stronger, although the wet press do-1 I Clares that the appeal of the Wes-leyan Wes-leyan church for co-operation for ill othor churches was an admission of i moral and financial failure of the for-j mer's dry ampalgn, i The significant facts are these: All i j through the winter the YVosleyan com- mittee held big. successful temperance, meetings In all parts of the country The biggest halls obtainable were ! used and they were nearly always j packed to the doors. Something like half a million publications were eold. i The financial appeal was for 12M00 to be collected through a period of five years. In only elrrht months $60.- j 000 has been collected. OBJECTS OP C VMPAlGN. The request fur co-operation has been welcomed by the temperance committee of each of the country's 1 fourteen principal religious denominations denomina-tions The main objects of the campaign, according to the Reverend Henry Carter, Car-ter, secretary of tho Wealeyan committee, com-mittee, will he to present the modern I . E : i.. .1 ut ... .1,.1 .. rally local support to the agreed legislative leg-islative program of tho council of Churches, concentrating particularly on local option and to appeal especially espe-cially to women to exercise thedr citizenship citi-zenship against the drink evil. The attempt will be to educate, not to dictate. dic-tate. To convince, not to coerce The i legislative side of the campaign will concentrate on four points of reform no sale of Intoxicating liquor to persons per-sons under 18 years of age; local option op-tion for England and Wales, no sale of liquor on Sundays, and clubs sup- plying drinks to be licensed. BEGINS IN WALES. Tho campaign begins In south Wales In tho fall, ' for the way is clear there for an early effort." This looks! like the pounding In of the opening I wedge: but the drinkers are not I worrying noticeably no moro than I did they in the I'nlted States along about 1915. The cool manner In which Thillp I H. Rosenbach of Philadelphia bid : $70,000 for the famous Daniel flrat-j flrat-j follo-Shakespearo at the sale of the ; Burdet-Coutts library astonished Ion-1 Ion-1 don, including many British experts But Rosenbach, who Is bringing bai k to "Little Old America" (as the press parodied a little Wryly) the host treasures treas-ures of the famous collection. Including Includ-ing Dickens' manuscripts and the Gogarth Garrlck chair Is not worried. wor-ried. Ho is confident that there can be no future slump In the rare book market, for the simple reason that one after another famous collections ar-coing ar-coing into museums and public libraries li-braries at the deaths of the collectors. Rare books, he thinks, must inevitably inevit-ably become scarcer and so moro sal- able. The sale of the 600 unpublished j Dickens letters, quotations from which appeared In this column some weeks ago, to O. R. Barrett, a Chicago law- , yer, raises an Interesting point as to th" copyrlcbt They pmhably could I not be published In England without the consent of the Baroness Burdet- Conlt's executors, but there Is no ob- , Bt84 le to their publication In the liilted States. Dickens, it will be r -membered. started the long fight j against the book pirates of Amerli i. the successful end of which Is only) now In sight. Rosenbach bought a less fino copy of the same edition as the Daniel folio for $27,000, and a copy of the "poems' of 1640 for $7,000. America Amer-ica now has more Shakespeare first editions than has England It is safe to say. perhaps, that there are 79 of the plays In America and 70 In England Eng-land Of a total of 301 copies of second sec-ond and other quartos before 1623, more than half aro also in the United States. London movie houses continue to contend with bad business. If any ot the blame may be put to tho fact that English pictures made In America Amer-ica for exhibition hero are not English Eng-lish enough and contain amusing and disillusioning mistakes In their exteriors exter-iors this la to be remedied, for both Goldwyn and Lasky are here with plans for shooting English exteriors In England, and no doubt others have similar plans. But one wonders whv English exhibitors will show films that are obviously mado to appeal to only American audiences Tho other day I witnessed one of tho saddest spectacles Imaginable. An American film of a "comic" ball game being unreeled before the wondering eyes of a British audience. Tho signals failing, fail-ing, the catcher dispatched an A. D T with a telegram to tho pitcher, the batter going elaborately to sleepa-h. man next .'. i, : - in sajHfl iu'idSJfl -teal third !cmH HUH I H I I . I 1I& |