ON 12 NOVEMBER 1918 the CCB held its 103rd meeting but its future was now uncertain. As a body established to ensure efficiency in wartime, the Board's continued existence was dependent upon the benefits of its work being appreciated in peacetime. Given the hostile reaction to some of the Board's measures in the previous two years, the task of demonstrating the Board's continued worth was onerous, yet was undertaken by its members keen on preserving the beneficial social reform which they believed had been implemented. This struggle, though, swiftly frustrated those who undertook it.

With the end of the war, the trade believed that an end should come to the ‘arbitrary’ regulation of their livelihood. As the Brewers’ Journal noted:

The trade believed it had weathered the temperance storm. Accordingly, with the coming of peace, the rationale for the continued existence of the Board was undermined. The electorate seemingly agreed as many pro-Temperance MPs lost their seat in the election of 1918, something which the Alliance News argued was ‘a real peril to the nation’. The burden of accusations against the CCB's work now carried greater credibility. If the Board were not now working for wartime efficiency what else could it be operating for other than the introduction of temperance principles? Unpopular, and with its continued existence questioned, the Board soldiered on.

The extension of the Board's powers for twelve months after the cessation of conflict, guaranteed by the legislation that created the CCB, allowed for the introduction of either a permanent body, or some form of permanent legislation. D'Abernon believed that continued temperance reform was imperative. He was proud of the achievements of the CCB and believed that it was ‘in the national interest that restrictions should be kept’.