One thing, which reduces us; if not exactly to gloom, at any rate to extreme exaspera~ tion is the difficulty of obtaining the brands of cigarettes and tobacco Londoners want. There is nothing in which man is so conservative as in his smoking tastes and to have to put up with something different from what he is accustomed to is worse than an air raid, In London one can usually get' what one wants, though oddly enough the big shops are often much worse stocked than the little, There is a tiny lock-up shop, floor space perhaps 6ft by 4{tt,, kept by a dried-up little old man who appears able to produce whatever one asks for as from Fortunatus's purse, whereas two quite large shops 50 yds. fon each side of him cannot muster above two or three of the more ignoble kinds of smokes, probably with cork tips. But in the provinces matters are far worse; in fact Mr. 'Nunn, Member for Newcastle (who has keen interest in China) and some other. 'Members are to make a row in the Commons' about it, A manufacturer states that in the first place the tobacco firms may only draw 90 per cent. of their usual supplies; and secondly many more people are smoking now and smoking much more than in peace times. The Board of Trade adopting the usual ostrich attitude insists that there is no real shortage of tobacco, which merely confirms the general belief that officials know nothing No doubt the trouble lies in our old enemy, difficulty of distribution. But if the Government don't want to lose the war they will really have to do something about it.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.