When all we heard about prohibition in Scotland wag to the effect that an effort to make dry the northern end of the larger British island was in progress oF contemplation, the reports seemer too absurd for belief by even the most hopeful of drys, says the "New York Times." At any rate, it seemed go to anybody who ever hag seen, or even read about, Scotch habits, and especially- about what was to be observed of a Saturday night in the streets of Glasgow and Edinburgh. Scotland is, or at any rate it was, practically unthinkable as a land of abstinence, or even of temperance, and mental pictures of those Saturday nights, with their roaring thousands of drunken men and women roaming up and down, as wet outside from the inevitable drizzle as inside from the inevitable potations of strong waters, remain to render it difficult even now to believe that there is any chance of getting the Scotch to vote either the abolition or the restriction of al-coolie indulgence.
But Scotland must have changed. That the prohibitionists there, native and imported, have started a fight which is far from being a for-Join hope is made more than probable by the latest despatches. For in these there is disclosed plainly that the distillers and brewers are scared—that they are spending a lot of money in defensive operations. They would not be frightened if there were not reason for fear, they being at least as wise as their enemies say they are wicked, and they are not filling the land with/ wet eloquence, wet statistics and wet warnings merely for the fun of the thing. Evidently the thing is not at all funny to them, and, as they take Scotch prohibition seriously, the rest of us must do so too.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.