(1) We may dismiss at once the suggestion that alcoholic liquors are
drunk for the pleasantness of their taste or for their food value.
To some slight extent these factors enter in; but neither is important.
The taste for them is for most men an acquired taste; and with so many
other delicious drinks to be had, especially in recent years, drinks
that are far less expensive and without their poisonous effects, it
is safe to say that the mere taste of them would not go far toward
explaining the lure they have for men. As to their food value, there
are those who justify themselves on the score of the nutrition they
are getting from their wine or beer. But careful experiments have shown
that the food value of alcohol is slight; and certainly, for nutrition
received, these are among the most expensive foods, to be ranked with
caviar and pate de foie gras. Beer is the most nutritious of the
alcoholic drinks; but the same amount of money spent on bread would
give about thirty times the nutrition, and a more all-round nutrition
at that. Alcoholic liquors as food are, as has been said, like
gunpowder as fuel very costly and very dangerous. [Footnote: See H.
S. Williams, Alcohol, p. 133; H. S. Warner, Social Welfare and
the Liquor Problem, p. 80, and bibliography, p. 95.]

(2) A much commoner plea for drinking rests upon its sociability. But
this is a matter of convention which can readily enough be altered.
There is nothing inherently more sociable in the drinking of wine than
in the drinking of grape-juice, or coffee, or chocolate, or tea.
Indeed, one may well ask why the chief social bond between men should
consist in drinking liquids side by side! Games and sports, in which
wit is pitted against wit, or which bring men together in happy
cooperation, together with the great resource of conversation, are
more socially binding than any drinks. There will, indeed, be a temporary
social hardship for many abstainers until the custom is generally