Frantic Victualers

Stealthy Belgians posted up in major European cities last week this amazing poster, three feet high and adorned with the Belgian tricolor:

Tourists--Don't visit Belgium, the land of prohibition and innumerable vexations, with taxes on hotel rooms, visitors' tax and other bothersome regulations.

Tourists--Four months' prison for having a bottle of spirits on you!

In Brussels the indomitable tradesmen of the Belgian Licensed Victualers' Association calmly announced that they had had 100,000 posters printed and secretly distributed throughout Europe. Their purpose: to force the Belgian Parliament to lift the ban forbidding a licensed victualer to sell spirits or even keep a bottle in the house in case of illness. ''That prohibition is ruining our business." declared a spokesman for the Association. 'If we are to be ruined let all Belgium suffer too! If we can entirely eliminate the tourist trade Parliament is responsible."

In Belgium most tourists find prices attractively cheap, seldom notice the peculiarities of Belgium's liquor control system which drives many a native frantic. Only in the case of Belgians returning home do Belgian customs men search mercilessly for smuggled bottles.

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