CONFERENCES: Storm in a Wineglass

“Everywhere else in the world,” boasted a Frenchman last week, “people get drunk seldom, but in a spectacular way. In France we never get drunk; we’re just always slightly intoxicated.”

To remedy this situation, 300 delegates from 25 lands gathered in Paris last week for the 24th International Congress Against Alcoholism. Flower-hatted old teapots from English vicarages, prune-juice-quaffing prohibitionists representing teetotalers from Finland to Madagascar, they seemed to divide into two categories: 1) the All-Drys, mainly British and Scandinavian; 2) the Half-Wets, preponderantly French.

Is Alcohol Sin? The All-Drys opened up with a learned distillation of the theology of antialcoholism. “Drunkenness,” cried Belgian All-Dry Abbe Maas in summation, “is a mortal sin.” Then the medicine men got down to figures. In Sweden, said Gunnar Nelker, ten times as many alcoholics get divorces as nonalcoholics. The industrial accident rate in Germany, rumbled Professor Otto Graf, is three times as high among heavy drinkers as it is among abstainers. But it was the French Half-Wrets who proved to be the experts on alcoholism. “Instead of returning to his squalid home,” said Professor Charles Foulen, “the French worker lingers in the cafe in an atmosphere of artificial joy o . .” A colleague traced some of the consequences:

¶28% of mental cases among French men are caused by excessive drinking; ¶ France spends more on drink than on housing, health or education; ¶ France’s 588,000 bars outnumber its bakeries 12 to 1; the French claim that their bibbers include more alcoholics (22 per 1,000 adults) than any other nation in the world.*

Stunning as the facts were, to the French Half-Wets they were infinitely more potable than the drastic solution proposed by the British and Scandinavians: total abstinence. Tanned, fit Jean Borotra, onetime (1927 through 1932) tennis champion of France, told the congress that a glass of vin ordinaire with meals is just what the doctor should order. “You can’t change people’s habits,” Borotra concluded. “We can’t ask [the French] to give up the wine they love so much.”

Is Anti-Alcoholism Superhuman? “A sinister plot engineered by the wine industry,” frothed Briton Wilfred Winterton. Over fruit juice at a nearby cafe the Drys held a council of war, resolved to censure Borotra’s scandalous remarks. But the Half-Wets fought back. “They want to prevent us from drinking, smoking, even making love,” snorted Andre Mignot, secretary-general of France’s National Defense Committee Against Alcoholism. “We’re French. You can’t be an abstainer in France unless you’re a hero or a saint.”

The showdown came that afternoon when the delegates met at a reception at the Hotel de Ville. Most notable item served: champagne. Frothing like a bottle of Piper-Heidsieck ’37, a British Dry announced: “You don’t invite a vegetarian to dinner and then serve meat. You know, this wouldn’t happen in any other country.” With impeccable Gallic aplomb, the maitre d’hotel ushered the foaming Drys to a separate table set with walnut juice and other soft drinks. The Frenchmen stayed where they were, and before very long sent out for more champagne.

*The runners-up: Switzerland, 16 per 1,000 adults; Chile, 15; the U.S., 10; Australia, 6.7. Soberest of all: England, 2.8.