means "Is the place dry?" When such a question is asked and the
answer is "It's wet," there is a deep groan all around the table.

I understand that when the recent disarmament conference met at
Washington just as the members were going to sit down at the table
Monsieur Briand said to President Harding, "How dry is the United
States, anyway?" And the whole assembly talked about it for half an
hour. That was why the first newspaper bulletins merely said,
"Conference exchanges credentials."

As a discoverer of England I therefore made it one of my chief
cares to try to obtain accurate information of this topic. I was
well aware that immediately on my return to Canada the first question
I would be asked would be "Is England going dry?" I realised that
in any report I might make to the National Geographical Society or
to the Political Science Association, the members of these bodies,
being scholars, would want accurate information about the price of
whiskey, the percentage of alcohol, and the hours of opening and
closing the saloons.

My first impression on the subject was, I must say, one of severe
moral shock. Landing in England after spending the summer in Ontario,
it seemed a terrible thing to see people openly drinking on an
English train. On an Ontario train, as everybody knows, there is
no way of taking a drink except by climbing up on
the roof, lying flat on one's stomach, and taking a suck out of a
flask. But in England in any dining car one actually sees a waiter
approach a person dining and say, "Beer, sir, or wine?" This is
done in broad daylight with no apparent sense of criminality or
moral shame. Appalling though it sounds, bottled ale is openly sold