Foreign News: Milk Is for Cats

The headlines were clear enough, but unbelievable: MENDÈS ATTACKS LIQUOR, PREMIER WANTS TOILERS TO DRINK WATER, GOVERNMENT TO ENFORCE REGULATIONS AGAINST ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION.

In a nation that ranks as No. 1 in both the manufacture and consumption of alcoholic beverages, that spends 10% of its national income on liquor, supports one bar for every 68 men, women and children, doles out half a liter of wine every day to its soldiers, the whole thing sounded like some wild practical joke. Diminutive, dynamic Premier Pierre Mendès-France had tilted his lance successfully at many a sturdy French windmill, but this—name of a dog, it was like asking a cat to give up milk.

Decrees for Drunks. The fact was, however, that milk-drinking Mendès, who has little use for wine, was not kidding. Many of the liquor reforms he advocated last week went into immediate effect as government decrees. In one swoop, he ordered all bars to stop selling hard liquor between the hours of 5 and 10 a.m., when most French laborers take their morning eye-opener. One day each week the bars must shut down completely. No new bars are to be opened near schools or barracks.

The home-brewing of head-splitting Calvados (applejack) in Normandy was to be sharply curtailed. Alcoholic contents of wine-based apéritifs were cut, and liquor advertising was to be strictly limited in the future. Besides all this, Mendès planned to ask Parliament for legislation raising liquor taxes and imposing stiff penalties (up to a year in prison) for public drunkenness.

When Mendès himself appeared at the recent Radical-Socialist Party congress, drinking a glass of milk and urging all of the delegates “to do the same thing,” he was greeted with roars of laughter. By last week the laughter was abating. Liquor interests, thirsty workmen, café owners, bartenders, home-brewers and, indeed, most of France’s hard-drinking population, were mobilizing to combat the threat to their national pastime. They form a large bloc: one Frenchman in seven is involved in the making of wine; alcohol is France’s largest industry, grossing some 675 billion francs a year. But the Premier could point to statistics, too: alcoholism is costing his nation almost that much in cold cash alone: some 40% of French accidents are attributable to alcohol; alcoholism accounts indirectly for 40% of the national death rate; and the cure and care of alcoholics alone costs the French government some 150 billion francs every year.

The Slow Kill. Thanks to government reforms over the past few years, the nation that produced Louis Pasteur has got around to pasteurizing the milk in most French cities, and tap water is reasonably pure if a little flat. Frenchmen, if they will, could find plenty of other beverages to drink. Most of them, however, will probably continue to incline to the opinion that milk is for cats, water for crops.

In many French bars a sign—thoughtfully provided by a national prohibition society —warns: “Alcohol kills slowly.” The local bartender generally appends his own answer: “We don’t care. We’re in no hurry.”