Absolute prohibition for the army in France would be well nigh impossible. It would mean that every inn and shop and railroad station and farmhouse would have to be classed as out of bounds. In fact prohibition could not be enforced unless our soldiers were ordered never to venture within four walls. Wine is to be had under every roof in France and you can get it also in not a few places where the roof has been shot to pieces. The French are interested in temperance just now. On many walls posters are exhibited showing a German soldier and a black bottle with the caption, "They are both the enemies of France," but when a Frenchman talks of temperance or prohibition or the abolition of the liquor traffic he never thinks of including wine or beer. The civil authorities of France would not be much use in helping the American army enforce a bone-dry order. They simply wouldn't understand it.
There was some excessive drinking when the army first came to France but it has been checked. A number of influences have made for discretion. One of the most potent is the opportunity for promotion in an army in the field. Officers have been quick to point this out to their men. One captain called his company together in the early days and said, "Some of the men in this company are going out and getting pinko, stinko, sloppy drunk. Any man who gets drunk goes in the guard house of course and more than that he will get no promotion from me. I'm going to pick my sergeants from the fellows that have got sense. You may notice that some of the men who drink are old soldiers. Don't take an example from that. Remember that's why they're old soldiers. There isn't any sense in blowing all your money in for booze. Now if I took my pay in a lump at the end of a month I could buy every café in this town and I could stay drunk for a year. That would be fine business, wouldn't it?"
"I guess maybe I exaggerated a little about the length of time I could stay drunk," the captain told me afterwards, "but do you know that talk seems to have done the trick."
One factor which worked for temperance was the French fashion of making drinking deliberate and social. When an American can be induced to sit down to his potion he is comparatively safe. These little village cafés did no harm after the first brief period when the American soldier had his fling and they served the good purpose of encouraging fraternization between doughboy and poilu.