"Traitorous Textbooks"

Low angry cries, then loud fervent exclamations rose in the Chamber of Deputies as peppery Socialist Edouard Barth took the rostrum and savagely exposed what he was pleased to call "the nefarious villainies of the French Anti-Alcoholic League."

"They have been drumming up children too young to know better," he cried, "mere babies of nine and ten, and into their little hands they put pens, and they guide the pens to make signatures, on what, my friends?--on a treacherous pledge as black as Hell itself that the little ones will no more drink the good wines of France!

With the Chamber absolutely in pandemonium Deputy Jean Hennessy, brandy tycoon, jumped up and shouted: "Henry IV, greatest of all the Bourbon Monarchs of France, was given wine in his nursing bottle!"

Greatly alarmed, fearful that the Cabinet might fall, Minister of Public Instruction Pierre Marraud leaped into the fray with a promise that his department would at least stamp out anti-wine propaganda in the schools. "I am from the wine country myself," shouted M. Marraud, "You may count on me!"

As the Chamber quieted he continued: "Any attempt to inculcate hostility to the glorious wines of France is more than deplorable and I, as a Minister and representative of the Government, disavow them. I am about to take steps either to ban the school manuals, into which such heretical doctrine has been allowed to creep, or to have the publishers amend them in such a way as to restore to wine drinking its true character in the eyes ot school children. Wine should be one ot our national glories."

Amid general satisfaction that the Government could be depended on, Messieurs les Deputes adjourned for dinner after good naturedly applauding an unidentified voice in the back of the Chamber which cried: "Remember Anatole Frances sage of sages Jerome Coignard! He said: 'One of the greatest pleasures in life is to be found in emptying one's glass under the arbor, while playfully teasing the short-skirted waitresses.' "

Originally the French Anti-Alcoholic League combatted not wine but spirits. But zeal for eliminating high-power drinks, to which most Frenchmen are opposed (in principle if not always in practice) has now spread to a campaign against wine (considered by the vast majority of Frenchmen a perfectly "natural," nourishing and beneficial drink).

A "traitorous textbook" into which aspersions against wine have "crept " according to Deputy Barthe, is The Natural Sciences, a work containing the statement: "Cognac in one-centigram doses can kill a large dog."

But cognac is a spirit, not a wine, and as Barthe pointed out, the internationally great French scientist Pasteur (inventor of milk pasteurization) said definitively: "Wine is the most healthy and hygienic ot beverages."

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