Previous to the invention of the still by the Arabian chemists man could not get drunk as quickly as he wanted to because his liquors were limited to what the yeast plant could stand without intoxication.  When the alcoholic content of wine or beer rose to seventeen per cent. at the most the process of fermentation stopped because the yeast plants got drunk and quit “working.”  That meant that a man confined to ordinary wine or beer had to drink ten or twenty quarts of water to get one quart of the stuff he was after, and he had no liking for water.

So the chemist helped him out of this difficulty and got him into worse trouble by distilling the wine.  The more volatile part that came over first contained the flavor and most of the alcohol.  In this way he could get liquors like brandy and whisky, rum and gin, containing from thirty to eighty per cent. of alcohol.  This was the origin of the modern liquor problem.  The wine of the ancients was strong enough to knock out Noah and put the companions of Socrates under the table, but it was not until distilled liquors came in that alcoholism became chronic, epidemic and ruinous to whole populations.

But the chemist later tried to undo the ruin he had quite inadvertently wrought by introducing alcohol into the world.  One of his most successful measures was the production of cheap and pure sugar which, as we have seen, has become a large factor in the dietary of civilized countries.  As a country sobers up it takes to sugar as a “self-starter” to provide the energy needed for the strenuous life.  A five o’clock candy is a better restorative than a five o’clock highball or even a five o’clock tea, for it is a true nutrient instead of a mere stimulant.  It is a matter of common observation that those who like sweets usually do not like alcohol.  Women, for instance, are apt to eat candy but do not commonly take to alcoholic beverages.  Look around you at a banquet table and you will generally find that those who turn down their wine glasses generally take two lumps in their demi-tasses.  We often hear it said that whenever a candy store opens up a saloon in the same block closes up.  Our grandmothers used to warn their daughters:  “Don’t marry a man who does not want sugar in his tea.  He is likely to take to drink.”  So, young man, when next you give a box of candy to your best girl and she offers you some, don’t decline it.  Eat it and pretend to like it, at least, for it is quite possible that she looked into a physiology and is trying you out.  You never can tell what girls are up to.

In the army and navy ration the same change has taken place as in the popular dietary.  The ration of rum has been mostly replaced by an equivalent amount of candy or marmalade.  Instead of the tippling trooper of former days we have “the chocolate soldier.”  No previous war in history has been fought so largely on sugar and so little on alcohol as the last one.  When the war reduced the supply