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Introduction |
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at the top of their voices, what man is there would not join in ? Why cannot they sing :
" Come pass the ginger-pop around And let us wet our noses; It is the finest nectar found
Since Noah or since Moses— With my iddly-ow : ti-rumpity-dow, Since Noah or since Moses! "
at a P.S.A. with Mr. Arthur Henderson booming in with a stentorian bass, and Mr. Philip Snowden with a ringing tenor ? On the day that they do . . . ten million converts will flock to their cause.
But alas ! the teetotallers have triumphed ! If they have not altogether succeeded in putting down beer (in their sense of the term), they have at least succeeded in throwing a blight over our songs. If we have not become sober, we have become sad—and that is something ! Mr. Chesterton has to ask plaintively who will write us a drinking song, and, upon getting no replies, has to set to work himself. But, though writing some glorious verses in his attempt, he has on the whole failed through his inability to forget the earnest face of the Puritan, whose pale disgust is like a skeleton at his feast. He too is the victim of his environment. How can he sing the songs of Zion beside the waters of Babylon ? Beer, to him, has ceased to be merely beer—but has become the touchstone of economics, politics, and philosophy—so that the whole of our modern contempt for the poor can be set against the drinking of one honest half-pint. |
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13 |
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