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-The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Fiddlers, by Arthur Mee

-

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most

-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 

-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of

-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 

-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have

-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.

-

-

-

-

-Title: The Fiddlers

-       Drink in the Witness Box 

-

-

-Author: Arthur Mee

-

-

-

-Release Date: December 15, 2016  [eBook #53733]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: UTF-8

-

-

-***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIDDLERS***

-

-

-E-text prepared by MWS, ellinora, and the Online Distributed Proofreading

-Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by

-Internet Archive (https://archive.org)

-

-

-

-Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this

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-      or

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-

-      Images of the original pages are available through

-      Internet Archive. See

-      https://archive.org/details/fiddlersdrinkinw00meea

-

-

-Transcriber’s note:

-

-      Italic text is represented by underscores surrounding the

-      _italic text_.

-

-      Bold text is represented by equal signs surrounding the

-      =bold text=.

-

-      Small capitals have been converted to ALL CAPITALS.

-

-

-

-

-

-THE FIDDLERS

-

-Drink in the Witness Box

-

-by

-

-ARTHUR MEE

-

-

-    _If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and

-       those that are ready to be slain;

-    If thou sayest, “Behold, we knew it not;” doth not he that

-       pondereth the heart consider it?

-    And shall not He render to every man according to his works?_

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-Published by Morgan & Scott, Ltd

-12 Paternoster Buildings, London, E. C. 4

-

-First Hundred Thousand       May 15, 1917

-Second Hundred Thousand      June 1, 1917

-

-Reprinted in the United States by

-The American Issue Publishing Company

-Westerville, Ohio

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-[Illustration:

-

-                        DRINK LEADING FAMINE IN

-

-  The Drink Trade gave Germany her greatest weapon in the war by helping

-  to make the bread famine.

-

-  It was the wilful destruction of 4,800,000 tons of food, depriving the

-  nation of her reserves, that led to the appalling gravity of the

-  submarine menace.]

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-[Illustration:

-

-                Drink, What did You do in the Great War?

-

-              This impressive picture of Britannia is from

-               the splendid 1916 issue of Bibby’s Annual]

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-[Illustration:

-

-        THE ALLIES AND PROHIBITION—STOPPING DRINK TO WIN THE WAR

-

-     The Drink Map before the War and on the 1000th day of the War

-

-               CANADA—Prohibition almost from Sea to Sea

-               FRANCE—Total Prohibition of Absinthe

-               RUSSIA—Prohibition Everywhere

-               BRITAIN—120,000 Drink shops open daily]

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                            The Wages of Sin

-

-

-The time has come when it should be said that those responsible for our

-country now stand on the very threshold of eternal glory or eternal

-shame. They play and palter with the greatest enemy force outside

-Berlin. The news from Vimy Ridge comes to a land whose rulers quail

-before a foe within the gate.

-

-Not for one hour has the full strength of Britain been turned against

-her enemies. From the first day of the war, while our mighty Allies have

-been striking down this foe within their gates, Britain has let this

-trade stalk through her streets, serving the Kaiser’s purposes, and

-paying the Government £1,000,000 a week for the right to do it.

-

-She has let this trade destroy our food and bring us to the verge of

-famine; she has let it keep back guns and shells and hold up ships; she

-has let it waste our people’s wealth in hundreds of millions of pounds;

-she has let it put its callous brake on the merciful Red Cross; she has

-let it jeopardize the unity and safety of the Empire—for it may yet be

-found, as Dr. Stuart Holden has so finely said, that the links that bind

-the Pax Britannica are solvable in that great chemist’s solvent,

-alcohol.

-

-The witnesses are too great to number; we can only call a few. There is

-no room for all those witnesses whose evidence is in the House of

-Commons Return 220 (1915), showing the part drink played in the great

-shell famine, in delaying ships and guns, and imperiling the Army and

-the Fleet.

-

-But the indictment is heavy. I charge this trade with the crime the King

-laid at its door two years ago, the crime of prolonging the war; and the

-witnesses are here at the bar of the people. The verdict is with them,

-and the judgment is with those who rule.

-

-_The wages of sin is death: What are the wages of those who fail in an

-hour like this?_

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                          Fiddling to Disaster

-

-  We are not going to lose the war through the submarines if we all

-  behave like reasonable human beings who want to save their country

-  from disaster, privation and distress.

-

-                                                  _The Prime Minister_

-

-

-_What are we to say of a Government that plays with war and drink and

-famine while these brave words are ringing in our ears?_

-

-If the situation is so desperate that we must all go short of food, it

-is desperate enough for the Government to be in earnest. But what are

-the plain facts? No reasonable man who knows them can say that the

-Government is in earnest.

-

-It is not denied by anybody who knows the facts that drink has been the

-greatest hindrance of the war. There is not a doubt that it has

-prolonged the war for months and cost us countless lives. It is the duty

-of the Government to face a dangerous thing like this; it is its duty to

-pursue the war with a single eye to the speediest possible victory. But

-the records of our war Governments in dealing with drink have been

-records of fiddling and failure, and we stand in the third year of the

-war with a Government fiddling still.

-

-One thing will be perfectly clear if disaster and famine come. It will

-be known to all the world that the Government knew the facts in time to

-save us. We are in the war because we would not listen in times of

-peace. We are in the third year of the war because we would not listen

-in the first. We are faced with famine because we would not listen in

-times of plenty, when drink was breaking down our food reserves. And we

-are drifting now, nearer to disaster every day, because the Government

-surrenders to the enemy worse than Germany.

-

-It does not matter where you look, or when; the evidence of the fiddling

-is everywhere about you. Take the week before the Prime Minister’s grave

-speech about submarines—ending May 19.

-

-  _Submarines destroyed 27 British cargoes, mostly over 1600 tons._

-

-  =Brewers destroyed 27 British food cargoes, totaling 9000 tons.=

-

-  _The granaries of Canada were crammed with wheat waiting for British

-  ships, but there were no ships to bring this people’s food._

-

-  =The rum quay at London Docks was crammed with casks of rum to last

-  till 1920, but a ship arrived with 1000 Casks more.=

-

-  _A woman was fined £5 for destroying a quartern loaf._

-

-  =Brewers were fined nothing for destroying millions of loaves.=

-

-  _Poor people waited in queues to buy sugar in London._

-

-  =Cartloads of sugar were destroyed in London breweries.=

-

-And so we might go on, looking on this picture and on that till the mind

-almost reels with the solemn farce. The Prime Minister has suggested

-that the farce does not end because those who demand its end cannot make

-up their mind. It is the Government that cannot make up its mind.

-

-  It tells Parliament that no more rum is to be imported, and goes on

-  importing rum for years ahead.

-

-  It forbids the use of spirits less than three years old, and reduces

-  the three years to 18 months.

-

-  It restricts beer to 10,000,000 barrels, and tells us one day that

-  it is all-inclusive, and the next day that the Army Council can

-  order as much extra beer as it likes.

-

-  It issues a report saying that hops are not food, and gives up

-  hundreds of thousands of feet to shipping them; 23,000 cubic feet

-  the other week.

-

-  It tells us that not an inch of shipping is wasted, and wastes

-  shipping on bringing brewers’ vats from America and taking gin to

-  Africa.

-

-  It tells us that the Drink Trade gave up its distilleries

-  patriotically, and leaves us to discover that it was made the

-  subject of a bargain by which bread was being destroyed for whisky

-  as late as May this year.

-

-It is quite clear that the Government is desperately in need of a

-scapegoat, and desperately in need of a defense. Prohibition Russia is

-not mightily impressed with our drinking; serious Canadians are asking

-how long they are to sacrifice their manhood to our brewers; America is

-asking already why she should go short of bread in order that England

-may drink more beer.

-

-A Government must clearly say something in view of these things, and it

-has put its defense in the care of one of the sanest and cleverest men

-in the United Kingdom, Mr. Kennedy Jones. If Mr. Jones does not make out

-a case for it, there is no case to make. What does he say?

-

-1. _We are told that only five per cent. of malt can be mixed with flour

-for bread._

-

-All over the country this explanation is supposed to satisfy those

-simple, honest people who know little about percentages but ask plain

-questions at Food Economy meetings. It is preposterous nonsense. If we

-have 200,000 tons of malted barley, what on earth does it matter whether

-we mix it at fifty, or five, or two per cent., so long as we do mix it?

-_It adds 200,000 tons to our bread in any case._ This talk of five per

-cent., puzzling to people who think it means that only one-twentieth of

-this malted barley can be used, is pitiful evidence, surely, of the

-straits to which the Food Controller’s Defense Department is reduced.

-

-2. _We are told that the barley destroyed for beer would give the nation

-only ten days’ bread._

-

-It would actually last us a fortnight. Drink, which has taken a quartern

-loaf from every British cupboard in every week of the war, is taking

-still a quartern loaf a month from every cupboard, and the desperate

-appeals of Mr. Kennedy Jones will be more effective in saving crumbs

-when he can tell us that he has stopped this monstrous destruction of

-over 1,000 tons of grain a day.

-

-3. _We are told that our munition workers are dependent on beer._

-

-It is an astounding slander. However true it may be of Governments, it

-is not true of our workmen. For four months the workman has been the

-scapegoat of this Government in its surrender to this trade, and we are

-asked at last to believe that these men who saved us from the Shell

-Famine are willing to drink us into a Bread Famine. Does the Government

-never pause to ask how millions of munition workers in America and

-Canada and the United Kingdom manage without beer? Does nobody in the

-Government know that the greatest steel furnaces in America are under

-total Prohibition, and that two million American railwaymen are subject

-to instant dismissal if they touch drink while on duty? Has the

-Government not read its own report of the Royal Society Committee which

-had this point in mind six months ago, and told us, on the highest

-authority in this country, that soldiers march better and keep fitter

-without alcohol; that men do more work on less energy without alcohol;

-and that “the records of American industrial experience are significant

-in showing a better output when no alcohol is taken by the workmen”?

-

-4. _We are told we need this trade for yeast._

-

-We need not bother overmuch about that. Industrial alcohol will give us

-all we want, and there is no need to carry on this dangerous trade for

-the sake of yeast. We do not need a single ounce of brewer’s yeast, and

-we can do without distiller’s yeast as well by setting up a thousandth

-part of the machinery we have set up in the last two years. Or, while we

-must have yeast, we need about 30,000 tons a year for the whole United

-Kingdom, and since the prohibition of hops in June last year _we have

-given enough shipping to hops every fortnight to bring in enough yeast

-for a year_. A Government with shipping to spare like that, with room on

-its ships for mountains of hops, for enormous brewers’ vats, and for rum

-for 1921, can find room for 100 tons a day of the people’s bread. It is

-a monstrous perversion of the facts to suggest that we must maintain

-this food-destroying trade, with all its hideous tragedy and ruin, in

-order to make bread.

-

-It cannot be said that a Government with such desperate excuses is in

-earnest. We do not wonder that a great American farmers’ paper, with no

-axe to grind except that it is sane and patriotic and believes in the

-war, is asking plain questions as America prepares her Prohibition Army,

-her Prohibition Navy, and stops the destruction of grain for drink in

-order to enter the war at full strength.

-

-Let the Food Controller, the Prime Minister, and every responsible

-citizen of the United Kingdom read this—it is from the most influential

-flour-milling paper in the world, the “North Western Miller,” published

-in Minneapolis:

-

-“=Since the United States will be called upon to make food sacrifices on

-behalf of the Allies, it is certainly in order to call to account the

-stewardship of Great Britain in regard to food supplies. Ordinarily

-America would have no right to demand such an account, but Americans are

-now asked to deny themselves that Britain may have sufficient.=

-

-“=Britain has not seen fit to prohibit the use of cereals in the

-manufacture of drink, notwithstanding that the world’s food supply was

-obviously short. Are Americans required to forego a part of their

-accustomed ration of bread in order that their British Allies can

-continue to have a plentiful supply of beer and whisky? If not, then

-Britain should lose no time in putting its house in order, quitting the

-drink to add to the common store of food upon which the safety of all

-the Allies depends.=

-

-“=The food supply for the Allies is no longer a purely local

-proposition, to be used as a football in British politics; it deeply

-concerns the people of the United States, who are certainly not called

-upon to deny themselves bread in order that Britain shall have drink.=”

-

-What is the Government’s answer to this? “We owe a very considerable

-debt of gratitude to the great American people for the effective

-assistance they are rendering us,” says the Prime Minister. _Is this the

-way we pay them back?_ It is an ugly question for our great Ally to have

-to raise as she comes into the war, flinging her Prohibition Navy in to

-smash the drink-made menace of the submarine. It is unthinkable that the

-Government can read these bitter words unmoved, or can leave this stain

-on our history in the face of all these questionings.

-

-There is another question, too, that comes across the Atlantic. What is

-the Government going to do with the soldiers of America’s Prohibition

-Army, and the sailors of America’s Prohibition Navy, when they come over

-here? Are they to be broken in their thousands, made useless and

-degraded as thousands of men from Prohibition Canada have been, by the

-enemy that traps them before they reach the war?

-

-They are questions for the Government and the nation, and they must be

-answered in the interests of the nation, and not to please the trade

-that helps the Germans every day. We cannot afford to pay the appalling

-price the future will demand unless our fiddlers change their tune.

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                  The Drink Trade and Our War Services

-

-

-=It is not possible to measure the strain the Drink Traffic has imposed

-on our war services.=

-

-The Food Controller’s Organization, with its great offices and staffs,

-would not have been needed had we saved the food destroyed by drink.

-

-Rationing already involves 1,200 committees, and may mean 50,000

-officials and 50,000,000 tickets weekly. It could all be avoided.

-Prohibition would save more bread without food controlling than all the

-food controlling can save without Prohibition.

-

-The National Service, with its network of officials, its costly

-advertising, its absorption of paper and printing, could all have been

-avoided under Prohibition. About 200,000 men have enrolled, but

-Prohibition would give us twice that man-power any day.

-

-The strain on a host of men and women looking after soldiers’ children

-neglected through drink, soldiers’ wives spending allowances on drink,

-is incalculable.

-

-The strain on war charities and the strain on the police arising from

-drink are both very great.

-

-The strain of drink on doctors, nurses, and hospitals is beyond belief.

-Prohibition would set free for the Red Cross thousands who waste their

-time on the great drink trail.

-

-The strain on transport is seen in the long lines of wagons drawn by

-strong horses carting beer to public-houses. This year alone the

-handling of drink must equal the lifting of at least 9,000,000 tons, and

-the barrels of beer would fill nearly all the railway wagons in the

-kingdom. As to ships, drink materials during the war have used up 60

-ships of 5,000 tons working all the time.

-

-On Lord Milner’s estimate of 19 barrels to the truck it would require

-4,500,000 railway trucks to carry the 17,000,000 tons of beer

-manufactured in the United Kingdom during the war.

-

-=It can be proved from official figures that the weight of drink-stuff

-carried about since war began has been equal to the weight of solid

-material carried by the Navy to all our fighting fronts.=

-

-It is a crying shame that the strength of Britain should be destroyed

-like this in such an hour as this.

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                  The War-Work of the Food Destroyers

-

-

-There are hundreds of great Food Destructors in the United Kingdom. The

-man-power at their service, spread over our breweries and distilleries,

-numbers hundreds of thousands of men; their capital is hundreds of

-millions. This is a summary of the work they did in the first 1,000 days

-of the war:

-

-=They sacrificed 4,400,000 tons of grain and 340,000 tons of sugar,

-enough to ration the whole United Kingdom with bread for 43 weeks and

-sugar for 33 weeks.=

-

-=They took from every kitchen cupboard in the land 600 pounds of bread

-and 76 pounds of sugar.=

-

-=They destroyed bread and sugar to last every child under fifteen for

-every day of the war.=

-

-=They took from our people over £512,000,000.=

-

-=They used up labour and transport for lifting over 50,000,000 tons. By

-sea they used up 60 ships of 5,000 tons; by rail their raw materials and

-the finished products would make up a train long enough to reach nearly

-round the world.=

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                 The Food Now Being Destroyed for Beer

-

-

-Look at the actual facts about beer alone. We will ignore distilling, as

-it gives us munitions and yeast. Had the Government tried to solve the

-yeast question it could have solved it easily in these three years; it

-would have had no more trouble with that problem than Russia and Canada

-and America have had. But as the Government is still investigating the

-yeast question, we will confine our figures to beer.

-

-=Brewers are destroying 450,000 4-lb. loaves a day.=

-

-=This year’s food destruction for beer alone will equal five weeks’

-bread rations and four weeks’ sugar rations for the whole United

-Kingdom.=

-

-=We have seven critical weeks in this summer, and this year’s

-destruction of food would carry us through.=

-

-=Beer alone is taking 10 pounds of sugar a year from every kitchen

-cupboard, and an ounce of sugar a day from every soldier.=

-

-That is what drink is doing at this moment with the shadow of famine

-creeping on.

-

- “_He who withholdeth the corn the people shall curse him._” Proverbs.

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                          The Shadow of Famine

-

-

-The Government came into office with the food shortage in sight; it was

-its first duty to build up the great reserve of food we might have had

-now in our granaries if the drink trade had not destroyed it. We could

-have laughed at submarines, for our barns would have been filled to

-overflowing, and we could have lived in comfort for a year if no ship

-reached us.

-

-Let us see how much food drink has destroyed during the war. We will

-take it from August 4, 1914, to April 30, 1917. It is 999 days of the

-war. The grain and sugar destroyed for drink have been:

-

-               Grain                      4,400,000 tons

-               Sugar (for beer alone)       340,000 tons

-

-[Illustration:

-

-  How Canada sees it—A Canadian cartoon of the callous destruction of

-    bread for beer and whisky]

-

-It is not easy to realize what this means, but it will help us if we

-think of one or two examples.

-

-=The biggest thing ever set up on earth is the Great Pyramid. It is

-80,000,000 cubic feet. The food destroyed by drink during the war would

-make two Great Pyramids, each bigger than the Pyramid of Egypt.=

-

-=The longest British railway is the Great Western; it is over 3,000

-miles, but it would not hold the food destroyed by drink since war

-began. If every inch of it were crammed with wagons, the Great Western

-Railway would need hundreds of miles more line to hold the train-loads

-of food destroyed.=

-

-=There are about 750,000 railway wagons in the United Kingdom, but if

-the Drink Trade had them all they would not hold the food it has

-destroyed.=

-

-=There are about 30,000 engines on our British railways, and if the food

-destroyed were made up in trains of 125 tons apiece, all our engines

-would not pull them; we should still want 10,000 more.=

-

-So vast is this incredible quantity of food destroyed by an enemy trade

-while famine has been coming on. We should have saved it all if

-Parliament had followed the King, and it would have given the whole

-United Kingdom its flour rations for nearly a year. Take it at its

-minimum scientific human food value, and on the basis of our rations in

-May, 1917, it would have given us:

-

-             Flour for the whole United Kingdom    43 weeks

-             Sugar for the whole United Kingdom    33 weeks

-

-Our three war Governments, confronted with the increasing certainty of

-at least a three-years’ war, have allowed the Drink Trade to destroy

-this vast reserve of food.

-

-The full toll of this trade upon our scanty food supply, growing shorter

-and shorter while the queues outside our food shops grow longer and

-longer, is staggering indeed, even now with drink about three-quarters

-stopped. We must remember that it makes no difference that the barley

-has been malted; it is still good human food, and every ounce of it

-should be mixed with grain for making bread. Let us remember, also, that

-_brewer’s sugar is a good pure sugar_, the objection to it being largely

-the objection most of us have to standard bread—its colour. Malt or

-sugar, every ounce a brewer destroys is food stolen from the people. Let

-us take expert opinion on the subject.

-

-

-                    The Food Value of Brewer’s Sugar

-

-  We do not, of course, use this dark sugar when white sugar is cheap

-  and easily procurable, but during the war we have used it for

-  coffee, cocoa, and tea; and for puddings where colour did not

-  matter. We have used it a good deal in our bakeries for chocolate

-  goods, where colour again does not matter. It is a good, pure sugar,

-  and the colour is the principal drawback.

-

-                          _Letter to Arthur Mee from a London caterer_

-

-

-                    The Food Value of Brewer’s Malt

-

-  Malt flour can be used to make excellent cake with 50 per cent.

-  wheat flour. It is sweet and pleasant to taste without the need of

-  any sugar. Good scones can be made with 25 per cent. of malt flour.

-  Its use in bread made with yeast causes too much fermentation in the

-  bread, but it has no effect on baking-powder. The Food Controller’s

-  Department is aware of the practicability of using malt flour, but

-  the sale is restricted in order to limit its use for making beer.

-  Brewers and maltsters are too patriotic to wish to use for beer what

-  could be applied to food in case of a serious shortage, and the

-  large stocks of barley and malt can supplement the supply of wheat

-  flour.

-

-                 _Letter from a Brewer in the “Times,” April 11, 1917_

-

-Yet we have seen our Government holding up sugar for brewers; we have

-seen our Food Controller refuse to release a caterer’s sugar unless it

-were sold to a brewer; we have seen a Government short of food-ships

-bringing in brewers’ vats and casks of rum; and we see the Government

-still holding up this malt that would feed a people asking for more

-bread.

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                          The Tunes They Play

-

-

-Strange tunes we hear the fiddlers play, but their music does not charm

-away the troubles of a famine-threatened land. From morning till night

-the prayer of the people rises, “Give us this day our daily bread,” but

-the heart of Downing Street is hardened, and the nation’s bread goes day

-by day to the destroyer.

-

-But all the time we see the measure of the courage of our rulers on the

-hoardings in the streets. We know their posters by heart.

-

-_Defeat the enemy’s attempt to starve you_, by—not by stopping the

-destruction of food, but by joining the National Service, and probably

-helping to pick hops. There was a man in a co-operative store who

-volunteered for National Service, and last month he received

-instructions _to leave the grocery store and take up duty in a brewery_.

-

-_Sow your window-boxes and plant your back gardens_—and Mr. Prothero

-will see that the soil of a million back gardens is wasted on hops.

-

-_We have not enough food to last till the harvest_—why not go out and

-catch rabbits, asks Lord Devonport—and sit and wait for sparrows?

-

-_We must save every pound of bread we can to get over our critical

-weeks_—not by saving the quartern loaf that beer is taking every month

-from every British cupboard now, but by going hungry so that drinkers

-may not thirst.

-

-_We must not eat more than our share, on our honour_—but the man across

-the table can eat his share of bread and drink somebody else’s too.

-

-_We must eat less and eat slowly_—so that brewers may waste more and

-waste quickly.

-

-_We must keep back famine_—but not by using malt, says Captain Bathurst:

-that would cost three times as much as letting famine come. _But why not

-keep the malt till bread is as dear as gold?_

-

-_Let all heads of households abstain from using grain except in bread_,

-says the King’s Proclamation. But let the brewers waste 8,000 tons a day

-for beer, says the Government.

-

-_God speed the plough and the woman who drives it_—yes, and God help the

-woman who drives the plough to feed the brewer while her little ones cry

-for bread.

-

-_Let us fine £5 whoever wastes a loaf_, says the Food Controller—but

-not, of course, the brewers who waste 450,000 quartern loaves a day.

-

-Hops are no use as food to anybody, says the Board of Trade Scientific

-Committee. “_Then let us grow only half as many_,” said Mr. Prothero.

-

-Mr. Lloyd George says Mr. Prothero is working “in a continuous rattle of

-mocking laughter and gibes.” Yes, it is the mocking laughter of a nation

-that is not really amused by sights like this. The nation does not like

-to see the bread rations of 70,000 men in France cut down while the

-Drink Trade is destroying every week bread enough to last these men a

-year. It does not like to see the Government sending letters out to

-managers of factory canteens, begging them to be careful of bread, while

-food flows through our beer canteens like a river running to waste. It

-does not like to see Y. M. C. A. canteens denied supplies of sugar while

-barrels of beer are stacked in great piles outside. It does not like the

-calling up of discharged soldiers while thousands of strong men are

-working hard all day destroying food or carting beer about the streets;

-and it does net like the tragic comedies of Captain Bathurst, who warns

-us that it really may become necessary in the national interest—and

-then, perhaps, he drops his voice to break it very gently—it really may

-become necessary, if these cake shops are not very careful, _to

-whitewash the lower part of their windows_.

-

-Oh, these fiddlers! And now we have a new idea from the Food Control

-Department; it is a coloured poster of a Union Jack and a big loaf on

-it, and “Waste not, Want not,” printed in big type. It was being printed

-on the day the Prime Minister told the nation that America had found it

-is no use waving a neutral flag in the teeth of a shark. It is an

-eloquent and true saying, but it is also true, that it is no use waving

-platitudes from copybooks in the teeth of a wolf at the door. The Prime

-Minister says he is taking no chances. Let us be quite sure. We once had

-a Government of which men said its motto was “Wait and See.” _Are we

-better off, or are we worse, with a Government that Sees and Waits?_

-

-But there is no end to the fiddling. With Food Controllers who hold up

-food for Food Destroyers; with Food Economy Handbooks that cry out loud

-to save the crumbs but have no word to say about the tons we fling away;

-with a Prime Minister praying for window-boxes and a Board of

-Agriculture consecrating hopfields, we need not be surprised if the

-nation is not mightily impressed.

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                         How the Allies Did It

-

-

-All the world knows, except, apparently, the world that goes round at

-Westminster, how Prohibition has helped the Allies.

-

-_With the Shell Famine at its height—largely made by Drink—the

-Prohibition Army on the East held up the enemy while Britain fought the

-Drink Trade for her shells._

-

-_With the Bread Famine looming in sight—largely made by Drink—the

-Prohibition Navy from the West flings in her power against the

-submarines._

-

-Oh, for the spirit of our Allies in this land! If France wants to rouse

-the spirit of Verdun she strikes down her foe at home and puts absinthe

-away. If Russia wants to be great and free she stops this drink and

-orders out the Romanoffs. If Canada wants to give her utmost help to

-Britain she stops this drink from sea to sea. If Australia wants to make

-her soldiers fit she trains them in her Prohibition camps. If America

-wants to beat the whole world at making shells she drives drink from her

-workshops. If San Francisco has an earthquake she stops drink while she

-pulls herself together. If Liverpool has a dangerous strike she shuts up

-public-houses and keeps the city quiet. Oh, for a Government of Britain

-that will see what all the world can see!

-

-History will do justice to the part the Prohibition policy of the Allies

-has played in saving Europe, but a pamphlet has no room for these

-things. We can take only one or two great witnesses to the mighty

-achievements of our Prohibition Allies. Let us begin with France, and

-call our own Prime Minister to tell us what they did. Mr. Lloyd George:

-

-  One afternoon we had to postpone our conference in Paris, and the

-  French Minister of Finance said, “I have to go to the Chamber of

-  Deputies, because I am proposing a bill to abolish absinthe.”

-  Absinthe plays the same part in France that whisky plays in this

-  country, and they abolished it by a majority of something like ten

-  to one that afternoon.

-

-And how did Paris take this prohibition that men said would cause a

-revolution? Let us ask Mr. Philip Gibbs, whose splendid letters home

-have made his name a household word. Mr. Philip Gibbs:

-

-  Absinthe was banned by a thunderstroke, and Parisians who had

-  acquired the absinthe habit trembled in every limb at this judgment

-  which would reduce them to physical and moral wrecks. But the edict

-  was given and Paris obeyed, loyally and with resignation.

-

-And now we come to Russia, to these mighty Russian people who in the

-last year of vodka saved £6,000,000 or £7,000,000, and in the last full

-year of Prohibition saved £177,000,000. We will call our own Prime

-Minister again:

-

-  Russia, knowing her deficiency, knowing how unprepared she was,

-  said, “I must pull myself together. I am not going to be trampled

-  upon, unready as I am. I will use all my resources.” What is the

-  first thing she does? She stops drink.

-

-  I was talking to M. Bark, the Russian Minister of Finance, and I

-  asked, “What has been the result?” He said, “The productivity of

-  labour, the amount of work which is put out by the workmen, has gone

-  up between 30 and 50 per cent.”

-

-  I said, “How do they stand it without their liquor?” and he replied,

-  “Stand it? I have lost revenue over it up to £65,000,000 a year and

-  we certainly cannot afford it, but if I proposed to put it back

-  there would be a revolution in Russia.”

-

-How completely teetotal Russia became we read long ago in the _Daily

-Mail_, to which Mr. Hamilton Fyfe sent this message from Petrograd:

-

-  Try to imagine all the publichouses in the British Isles closed; all

-  the restaurants putting away their wine cards and offering nothing

-  stronger than cider or ginger ale. That is the state of things in

-  Russia. Strange it seems indeed, yet there is one thing stranger.

-  Nobody makes any audible complaint.

-

-Everywhere in Russia it was the same: a nation was made sober by Act of

-Parliament.

-

-  “Without a murmur of protest,” said the Moscow correspondent of the

-  _Times_, “the most drunken city in Europe was transformed into a

-  temple of sobriety, and we felt that if Russia could thus conquer

-  herself in a night, there was indeed nothing that might not be

-  accomplished.” And two years later, when the revolution came, we

-  read in the _Times_ this note from Odessa: “Perfect tranquillity

-  continues to prevail here, although for the moment Odessa is

-  practically without police. The satisfactory absence of crime may

-  largely be attributed to the sealing up of spirituous liquors.”

-

-We need not be afraid of Drinkless Revolutions.

-

-But the truth about Russia is almost too incredible to believe, for it

-is Prohibition that made the revolution possible; it was stopping drink

-that set 170,000,000 people free. We will let a business correspondent

-of the _Times_ give evidence; here is what he said on April 21, 1917:

-

-  In one respect it must be said that the Reactionaries saw clearly.

-  They always claimed that the Tsar had ruined himself by decreeing

-  the abolition of vodka. None but a sober people could have carried

-  out the Russian Revolution.

-

-  The police were, on the other hand, the victims of drink. They had

-  seized the vodka at the order of the Government, and had kept

-  plentiful supplies for themselves. Thus the Revolution was in part a

-  struggle between drunken reaction and sober citizens. Sobriety

-  triumphed.

-

-The Russian people will not bow down and tie their hands to the thrones

-of Europe: do we wonder if they scorn our quailing before this trade?

-

-Free Russia flings off the dynastic yoke: do we wonder Prohibition

-Russia is not much impressed by a nation with a Drink Trade round its

-neck?

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                           The Soldier’s Home

-

-

-The things that will be told against this trade when all the truth is

-known will break the heart of those who read. It is well for us that we

-cannot know the full truth now; the burden would be too grievous to be

-borne in days like these. But if you will go into your street, or will

-talk of these things with the next man you meet from one of our pitiful

-slums, or will pick up one of those local papers that still have space

-to print the truth, you will find the evidence close about you.

-

-We are the guardians of our soldiers’ homes; we are the trustees of the

-hope and happiness of their little children; but we let this drink

-trade, that takes our people’s food out of their cupboards, turn that

-food into the means of death, and sow ruin and destruction through the

-land.

-

-But we will call the witnesses to these drink-ruined soldiers’ homes,

-these homes that the enemy worse than Germany has shattered and broken

-while our men have been fighting for your home and mine. We will call a

-few here and there, knowing that for every one called are hundreds more

-that can be called, and that beyond all these that are known there is in

-this little land a countless host of tragedies as secret as the grave.

-

-  A Tooting soldier whose wife had sent him loving letters to the

-  trenches came back to surprise her after 18 months. He found another

-  man in possession of his home and a new baby; and, overcome by the

-  discovery, he gave way to drink and killed himself.

-

-                               _Records of Balham Coroner, March 1916_

-

-  A soldier who had left a comfortable home behind returned from the

-  Front to find it ruined, with not a bed to lie on, his children

-  never sent to school, his wife all the time in publichouses. “I wish

-  I had been shot in the trenches,” he said when he arrived.

-

-                     _Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 10, 1915_

-

-  Outside a publichouse in Liverpool a man was dragging home his

-  drunken wife, the mother of eleven children. They rolled over and

-  over on the ground, the drunken women violently resisting the

-  maddened man. Then came up the eldest son, home from the Front, with

-  five wounds in his body.

-

-                            _Facts in “Liverpool Post,” March 2, 1917_

-

-  A soldier came back to his home in London to find his wife drinking

-  his money away, harbouring another man; one of his children cruelly

-  neglected and the other in its grave, perished from neglect; and a

-  drunken carman’s baby about to be born in his home.

-

-                                 _Facts in Shaftesbury Society Report_

-

-  A Lance-Corporal heard in the trenches of his wife’s misconduct. His

-  commanding officer wrote to make inquiries, and the soldier wrote to

-  the Chief Constable a pitiful letter: “What have I to look forward

-  to at the end of the war?” he said. “Nothing, only sorrow. I never

-  get a letter to know how my loving son is getting on; I think it

-  will drive me mad.”

-

-  He came home, opened the door of his house, threw his kit on the

-  floor, and declared that he would kill his wife. He put a razor on

-  the table, and his little boy hid it in a cupboard, but a week later

-  this boy of 12 went home and found his father and mother lying on

-  the floor, the father drunk, the mother dead. The soldier, drowning

-  his misery in drink, had strangled his wife. Rousing himself beside

-  her, he said, as the police found them, “Kiss me, Sally. Aye, but

-  tha are poorly.”

-

-  He had been the best of fathers, said the little boy; the best of

-  soldiers, said his commanding officer; and the judge declared that

-  such a man, with such a character, ought not to be with criminals.

-

-                         _Record of Huddersfield Assizes, Autumn 1916_

-

-  A soldier asked a London magistrate if he could draw the allowance

-  instead of his wife, who was in prison for drunkenness and was

-  neglecting his four children. The magistrate said the only thing was

-  to send the children to the workhouse.

-

-  The Soldier: “So I am to be a soldier for my King and country while

-  my children go to the workhouse?” The Magistrate: “That is so,

-  because you have a drunken wife. I am sorry for you.”

-

-                                 _Facts in “Sunday Herald,” June 1916_

-

-  A seaman gunner, who had been torpedoed and had fought in the

-  trenches, arrived home to find his wife, in his own words, “filthy

-  drunk,” and his children utterly deplorable. He reclothed them, but

-  his wife pawned the clothes, though she had £7 a month. He took his

-  children away, but a crowd of women interfered with him, and the

-  police were powerless against the mob.

-

-                     _Facts in “Western Daily Mercury,” July 23, 1915_

-

-  A soldier just back from the Front was found in the street weeping

-  bitterly on discovering that his wife was in gaol through drink, and

-  his child, through her neglect, had been burned.

-

-                               _Statement by Marchioness of Waterford_

-

-  A soldier came home from the Front to find that drink had ruined his

-  home, and his children were being cared for by Glasgow Parish

-  Council. “Hour after hour we sit on this council,” says the

-  chairman, “listening to case after case, and the cause is

-  drunkenness, drunkenness, drunkenness. There are 2300 children under

-  the council, and two thousand of them have parents living.” “Our raw

-  material is the finished product of the public-house,” says one of

-  these workers.

-

-                                      _Facts from Glasgow Councillors_

-

-  A motor mechanic at the Front, hearing that his wife, hitherto a

-  sober woman, had given way to drink, obtained leave to come home. He

-  found his wife, very drunk, struggling home with the help of the

-  railings in the street, and neighbours described her horrible life

-  with other soldiers. The husband obtained a separation for the sake

-  of his children, and went back to France.

-

-                       _Full facts in “Kent Messenger,” July 31, 1915_

-

-  A young soldier came from the trenches to spend Christmas in his

-  home in Sheffield—a teetotal home before the war. He found that his

-  wife had given way to drink, had deserted one child and disappeared

-  with the other, and that a baby was to be born which was not his.

-

-                                           _Facts known to the Author_

-

-  A miner fighting at the Front came home to find his wife at a

-  publichouse, his home filthy, and his children cruelly neglected. He

-  was heartbroken. His young wife frequently left the house from

-  tea-time till midnight, and in order to keep the children from the

-  fire she had burned them severely with a piece of iron. A

-  respectable-looking woman, the mother pleaded for a chance, and was

-  led from the dock sobbing bitterly.

-

-                 _Facts in “Sheffield Independent,” February 21, 1917_

-

-  A young Yorkshire miner enlisted and left his wife, hitherto sober,

-  with three children. She took to drink, neglected the home, and is

-  now a dipsomaniac, with two children not her husband’s.

-

-                                           _Facts known to the Author_

-

-  A soldier came home ill from France, hurried from Waterloo to his

-  home, and found the door locked. He knocked, and his little boy’s

-  voice came—“Is that you, mother, and are you drunk?” Hearing his

-  father’s voice the excited lad opened the door. “Where’s mother?”

-  asked his father. “Mother?” said the boy; “she’s drinking. She comes

-  home drunk night after night now and knocks the kids about. She

-  daren’t hit _me_; I’m fair strong, dad; but the other.... And as for

-  baby, she never does nothing for her. I and Freddy takes turns, but

-  I dunno what to give her to eat sometimes.”

-

-  Midnight passed before the mother appeared, helplessly drunk. “Did

-  you expect me to sit at home weeping for you?” she said. The next

-  morning, broken with tears, she promised to mend her ways. The

-  soldier went into hospital, and there he had a letter from his boy.

-  This is part of it:

-

-  “Dear Dad, I write to let you know mother is going on awful. She has

-  took all Fred and Timmy’s clothes to the pawnshop, and she hit

-  Selina on Saturday with the toasterfork and cut her face. She cried

-  all night, it hurt her so. She is drunk every night and some nights

-  dussent come back at all. She daren’t hit me, but I am getting

-  afraid about baby. We are all very hungry and miserable.”

-

-  The soldier got leave, found his wife had disappeared, and, finding

-  charity for his four little ones, he left his ruined home and went

-  back to the hospital.

-

-                                   _Facts in possession of the Author_

-

-  A working-man at Gravesend went to the Front, leaving behind a wife

-  and three children, the baby lately born. His wife started drinking

-  away her allowance, neglected her home, and, full of remorse and

-  shame for the disgrace she had brought on the man who was in the

-  trenches, she hanged herself. The man came home to find waiting for

-  him three motherless children, and one of the most pathetic letters

-  a man has ever had to read.

-

-                                  _Records of Gravesend Coroner, 1916_

-

-

-                          Mothers and Children

-

-It is easy to understand the pitiful appeal of 500 women out of Holloway

-Prison who begged the Duchess of Bedford to help to close all

-public-houses during the war. They know in their hearts of tragedies

-such as these, in which mothers and children die while the fathers fight

-and the Drink Trade goes on merrily.

-

-  A soldier’s wife in Sunderland drew £12 arrears of Army pay, and she

-  and her mother began to drink it away. She drew her pay on Friday,

-  was carried home drunk on Saturday, gave birth to twins on Sunday

-  morning, and died on Sunday night. The twins died a week or two

-  after, and a week or two after that the soldier came home from the

-  trenches to find his family in the grave.

-

-                                    _Facts in Sunderland papers, 1917_

-

-  Two women went drinking in Chester on a Sunday night, a soldier’s

-  mother and a soldier’s wife. They had five whiskies each, and fell

-  drunk in the street. One slept all night on a sofa, and the other

-  lay on the floor, shouting and swearing. Her husband propped her up

-  with a mat, and for hours she lay shrieking. In the morning she was

-  dead. The publican was fined £5.

-

-                     _Facts in “Chester Chronicle,” February 17, 1917_

-

-  The wife of a Yorkshire soldier was drowned while drunk at

-  Sheffield. She started drinking with another soldier’s wife

-  disappeared with a drunken man, and her death was a mystery.

-

-                    _Facts in “Sheffield Independent,” April 26, 1916_

-

-  At an inquest on the bodies of a soldier’s twin children, both dead

-  from chronic wasting, it was stated that the mother had 34_s._ a

-  week, and both she and her husband drank. The mother had had four

-  children in fifteen months, and all were dead.

-

-                          _Records of Battersea Coroner, October 1915_

-

-  In one street in London where there were one day four convictions

-  for drunkenness, a woman carried a sick baby into a public house. As

-  she stood at the bar the little baby died, but the mother went on

-  drinking, with the dead child in her arms.

-

-                             _Records of Charity Organisation Society_

-

-  The wife of a highly-esteemed sergeant-major fighting in France was

-  found lying drunk. Her four children, shockingly neglected, were put

-  in a home, but she took them out, went on drinking, and received

-  soldiers at her house. In a few weeks her husband heard in the

-  trenches that his wife had died from drinking.

-

-                          _Records of West Surrey Coroner, March 1917_

-

-  A soldier left three children at home. He had been earning £1 a

-  week, but his wife received 32_s._ 6_d._ a week. She drank it away,

-  neglected the children, and died in an asylum while her husband was

-  in France.

-

-                                          _Records of Claybury Asylum_

-

-  The little child of a soldier in France died in Guy’s Hospital from

-  burns. The mother said she could not buy a fireguard. While she was

-  absent the baby was burned, and the mother, returning in a drunken

-  state carrying a can of beer, said, “A good job!”

-

-                         _Records of Southwark Coroner, December 1915_

-

-  A soldier’s widow with six children, an Army pension of 30_s._ a

-  week, and her eldest boy’s wages of 30_s._, drinks every night with

-  a married man who has a respectable, clean, and sober wife with

-  eight children and a ninth lately born—born prematurely as a result

-  of her husband’s beating her. The child bore the marks of his

-  violence, and died in two months.

-

-                                      _Records of Shaftesbury Society_

-

-  The young wife of a soldier was brought from prison to be tried for

-  manslaughter of her baby, who had died in the infirmary from

-  neglect. She spent her time in the publichouses, and laughed when

-  the children were taken to the infirmary. She went out one day to

-  fetch a bottle of whisky and as she drank with a neighbour she said

-  she knew the baby would die. The doctor said the child’s skin was

-  hanging in folds on the bones.

-

-                           _Facts in the “Observer,” January 23, 1916_

-

-  A soldier’s wife drank continuously while her child wasted away,

-  left the tiny baby alone in the house while she went for beer, and a

-  policeman found her lying drunk across the dead child’s body.

-

-                         _Records of Barnsley Coroner, November, 1916_

-

-  The mother of two children whose father was fighting in France gave

-  way to drink in his absence, neglected her children and left them in

-  grave moral danger, and committed suicide.

-

-                                           _Records of an Orphan Home_

-

-  A soldier’s baby starved slowly to death as the mother drank away

-  his pay, and while the child lay in its coffin the mother was out

-  drinking.

-

-                             _West Bromwich Police Records, June 1915_

-

-  A munition worker at Newcastle was grievously upset by the drinking

-  habits of his wife. The police left a summons for her and she

-  disappeared. Two days later her body was found in the Tyne. The man

-  broke down at the inquest, saying, between his sobs: “She was such a

-  good wife to me for 20 years, and reared a good family before she

-  took to drink.”

-

-                           _Records of Newcastle Coroner, Summer 1916_

-

-  The wife of a corporation workman at Sheffield, home from the

-  trenches with six gunshot wounds and three pieces of shell in his

-  body, found that his wife had given way to drink and starved her

-  five children. She was sent to prison for six months.

-

-                       _Police Records of Sheffield, November 3, 1915_

-

-  A soldier’s wife who had spent the greater part of £100 Army money

-  in drink was sent to prison for neglecting her children. Almost

-  everything in the house was pawned, including the children’s

-  clothes; and the woman began to drink at five o’clock in the

-  morning, and went on drinking all day.

-

-                     _Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 10, 1915_

-

-  A soldier’s wife in Monmouthshire, with £3 9_s._ a week, was found

-  sodden with drink, while the soldier’s eight children were in rags

-  starving by day and huddling up in one bed by night.

-

-                       _Facts in “Westminster Gazette,” July 22, 1916_

-

-  A smart tidy woman in a London suburb, whose husband is fighting in

-  Mesopotamia, has £2 10_s._ 6_d._ a week. She used to love her

-  children and had a happy home, but she drinks away her Army pay,

-  lives with a married man who has six children, and has become a

-  drunken slattern. The other wife is beaten and neglected, and the

-  soldier’s children have gone to the workhouse.

-

-                                      _Records of Shaftesbury Society_

-

-  The four children of a soldier in Dublin were found hungry and

-  shivering with cold while the mother was drinking. Several times she

-  had let her baby fall while reeling with it in the street.

-

-                  _Facts in “Dublin Evening Herald,” October 20, 1916_

-

-  At the trial of a soldier’s wife for drinking and neglecting seven

-  children, it was stated that a child of eleven was left in charge of

-  a baby a fortnight old while the mother was drinking. At night all

-  the children were heard screaming. The house was in utter darkness,

-  and there was an escape of gas. Some men went in and turned off the

-  gas, and at last the mother came stumbling out of a publichouse

-  across the road.

-

-                        _Facts in “Sheffield Star,” November 25, 1915_

-

-  “Your husband is fighting for his country, and his children have the

-  right to be protected,” said the Chairman of the Chesterfield Bench

-  to a soldier’s wife. Her children were found starving while she was

-  drinking, and one day the little boy of three was found crouching

-  naked inside the fender, trying to get warm. The police described

-  the house as foul from top to bottom, with a heap of horrible rags

-  for a bed, and a food cupboard that made the house unendurable when

-  the door was opened.

-

-                      _Facts in “Yorkshire Telegraph,” March 24, 1916_

-

-  The wife of a missing soldier was sent to prison at Chesterfield for

-  neglecting three children between 13 years and 16 weeks old. She had

-  gone astray through drink, and the youngest child, born under

-  terrible conditions, was not her husband’s. It was found lying on a

-  filthy bed, and its drunken mother, to satisfy its pangs of hunger,

-  had given it pennyworths of laudanum. Eleven people slept in two

-  foul bedrooms.

-

-                        _Chesterfield Police Records, October 9, 1916_

-

-  Five hundred children of soldiers are being cared for in the great

-  Homes founded by Mr. Quarrier in Scotland, and most of them are

-  there because of drinking mothers.

-

-                                                    _Facts in Reports_

-

-  A soldier’s wife at Biggleswade spent her allowance on drink and

-  left her three children locked up in the house for days at a time.

-

-                 _Police Court Records of Biggleswade, September 1915_

-

-  A soldier’s wife was found reeling in the streets of Dublin with a

-  baby in her arms. At her home were found four other children,

-  cruelly neglected.

-

-                             _Facts in “Dublin Mail,” August 16, 1916_

-

-  Nineteen hundred children of soldiers have come into the care of the

-  N.S.P.C.C., mainly through drink, since the war began.

-

-                                           _Records of the N.S.P.C.C._

-

-

-                            The Ruined Wives

-

-Who does not remember the terrible rush for the last drop of drink when

-Prohibition seemed to be coming with the New Year? Long queues of women

-besieged the whisky shops in Glasgow. There were women of all ages, said

-the _Daily Mail_, tottering in grey hairs, young wives with babies in

-their arms, and men of the loafer type. “There was not a respectable

-citizen,” says the _Mail_, “who did not deplore this discreditable

-scene, but the remarks of passers-by provoked only torrents of insult.”

-The promise of the new year and the new Government, alas, was not

-fulfilled, and now in place of Drink Queues we have Food Queues. Let us

-see what drink is doing among our soldiers’ wives:

-

-  Of 3000 soldiers’ wives being cared for in South London, 2000 are

-  splendid, while 1000 are sinking daily to lower and lower levels

-  through drink.

-

-                                      _Records of Shaftesbury Society_

-

-  A soldier’s wife, with a separation allowance of 32_s._ 6_d._ a

-  week, drank most of it away, ruined her home, neglected her

-  children, and became a lunatic.

-

-                                          _Records of Claybury Asylum_

-

-  A young soldier’s wife, hitherto “quite an elegant type,” is rapidly

-  becoming a drunkard. Women hitherto sober have not the courage to

-  keep from women’s drinking parties, and young girls come out of

-  factories and go to publichouses in little groups.

-

-                             _Records of Charity Organisation Society_

-

-  Outside a public house in Dublin 15 small children were crying in

-  the cold, waiting for their mothers. Ninety-four drunken women came

-  out in 25 minutes. There were ten drunken soldiers, and two girls of

-  15 were thrown into the street hopelessly drunk.

-

-                              _Facts in “Irish Times,” April 20, 1915_

-

-  In Dundee over 170 wives of soldiers gave way to drink last year,

-  and cruelly neglected their homes.

-

-                                       _Records of the N. S. P. C. C._

-

-  A soldier in the trenches received a letter from his little boy,

-  which he sent to London with a pitiful appeal for help.

-

-  “Kindly do what you can for me and the well-being and welfare of my

-  four beautiful children,” the poor soldier wrote. “I am enclosing a

-  fearful letter I have received from my poor little lad, 14-1/2, the

-  first and only letter I have received from him. Sir, I shall be most

-  anxiously awaiting your reply, for this letter is the greatest blow

-  I have ever received.”

-

-  This is the little boy’s letter:

-

-    Dear Dad: Just a line to let you know how everything is at home.

-    Mother is drunk for a fortnight and sober for a week for months

-    and months. I’ve stuck it now for seven months, and can’t stick

-    it any longer. I tried to get into the Navy and passed all the

-    tests, but mother would not sign the papers, for which I am

-    sorry. If mum would sign I could go away to Portsmouth on

-    Thursday, but she will not. At the present moment she is half

-    drunk and keeps jawing me so that I could knife meself. I’ve

-    lost my new job because mum would not wake me in the morning,

-    and nothing for breakfast, and had to get mine and the

-    children’s tea at tea-time. It pains me to write like this, but

-    I can’t help it. I now seek your advice as to what to do. I hope

-    _you_ will enjoy Xmas, although there is not much hope for us. I

-    now conclude with fondest love, X. Your heartbroken Son, Leslie.

-

-  A stream of nearly 15,000 men and women poured into 58 publichouses

-  in Birmingham in less than four hours; over 6,000 were women. Into

-  one house the people streamed at nearly 500 an hour.

-

-                          _Facts in “Review of Reviews,” October 1915_

-

-  For months some wives of soldiers and sailors in Scotland were never

-  really sober. “We have done our best,” says a worker among them,

-  “going to their homes and doing all in our power, but it beats us.”

-  In 23 families, with 178 children born, 61 were dead.

-

-                     _Facts told to Secretary for Scotland, July 1916_

-

-               Will some Member of Parliament please ask

-

-=whether the ships that have brought in food for destruction by the

-drink trade could not have brought in a large proportion of the

-3,500,000 tons of wheat now waiting for ships in Australia and the

-2,000,000 tons waiting in Canada?=

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                          The Roll of the Dead

-

-

-No more pitiful record of the war is there than that unnumbered roll of

-men lured from our armies by this liquor trade, and cast into

-dishonoured graves. We can take only a few of them.

-

-  A number of soldiers at Ormskirk came into camp drunk on Christmas

-  night. A request for quiet led to a fight, and one of the men was

-  struck two blows and was dead the next morning.

-

-                            _Facts in “Daily Mail,” December 28, 1915_

-

-  A Liverpool soldier, drinking continuously, had overstayed his

-  leave, and in a quarrel about this he stabbed his brother dead.

-

-                        _Facts in “Liverpool Courier,” April 20, 1917_

-

-  A soldier invalided from France, having recovered from his wounds,

-  gave way to drink, assaulted an officer, and hanged himself in his

-  prison cell.

-

-                               _Facts in “Daily News,” April 11, 1916_

-

-  A young lieutenant shot himself in an hotel near Trafalgar Square,

-  and among the documents read at the inquest was a letter striking

-  him off his battalion for drinking and gross carelessness.

-

-                        _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” October 27, 1916_

-

-  A captain in the Army ruined by drink, with a fine record of

-  military service, started drinking on his way to a shooting range in

-  London, and in a struggle he shot a detective dead.

-

-                           _Facts in “Daily News,” September 20, 1915_

-

-  In the Scottish Express, between Doncaster and Selby, a drunken

-  corporal of the Coldstream Guards was showing his rifle to a friend

-  when it went off, the bullet killing a munitions works director in

-  the next compartment, and narrowly escaping a lady in the

-  compartment beyond. The corporal had in his pocket a bottle of

-  whisky, which was freely handed round.

-

-                             _Facts in “Daily News,” December 3, 1915_

-

-  A soldier who had been drinking heavily was placed in the guard

-  room, and died after a night of groaning, evidently as the result of

-  a fall.

-

-                       _Records of Greenwich Coroner, January 1, 1915_

-

-  A young soldier arriving from India on Christmas morning was

-  arrested three days later, after a drunken fight in which a man was

-  killed.

-

-                       _Westminster Police Records, December 28, 1914_

-

-  A soldier spent a day’s leave in Manchester, ate and drank very

-  heavily, and was found dead the next morning from choking.

-

-                    _Records of Manchester Coroner, December 28, 1914_

-

-  A soldier home on leave was found drunk with his wife. They had been

-  throwing pots at one another, and on Christmas morning the woman was

-  found dead with a wound in her head.

-

-                        _Records of Oldham Coroner, December 24, 1914_

-

-  Three gunners had four drinks each of rum, and at midnight lay down

-  to sleep in a garden at Lee, where one was found dying from alcohol.

-

-                             _Facts in Local Papers at Lee, June 1915_

-

-  A soldier died from alcohol in a house where drink was unlawfully

-  sold.

-

-                       _Facts in “Manchester Guardian,” April 8, 1915_

-

-  A private in the Welsh Fusiliers died from alcohol, cold and

-  exposure. He left a publichouse with a 4_s._ bottle of whisky, and

-  was found dead on the roadside next morning, with the bottle almost

-  empty.

-

-                               _Facts in “Daily News,” April 13, 1915_

-

-  An old man who was said to be in a drunken condition was wounded in

-  a fall with a soldier from Gallipoli, and died a few days after.

-

-                             _Facts in “Daily Mail,” January 17, 1916_

-

-  An elderly man, seeing a drunken soldier lying in the street, went

-  to his assistance, and was killed in a disturbance that followed.

-

-                      _Record of Yorkshire Assizes, November 21, 1916_

-

-  A soldier was found drowned in the Trent. He was described as a good

-  man at his work, but not steady, and had been drinking.

-

-                        _Facts in “Newark Advertiser,” August 4, 1915_

-

-  A terrible disturbance occurred in a camp at Portland Reservoir

-  after the closing of the canteen one Sunday night. A large number of

-  men who had been drinking created a disturbance, in which bricks and

-  stones were used, a tent collapsed, and the officers were called to

-  quell the riot. The captain, drawing his revolver, rushed with two

-  lieutenants into a hut where men were shouting and struggling, but

-  appeals had no effect—the men “did not appear to hear or recognize

-  their officers,” and one man raised his rifle and took aim at them.

-  At least fifty shots were fired, and a young corporal fired many

-  shots through the window into the darkness. In the morning a soldier

-  was found dead. Nobody knew who shot him, but the corporal thought

-  he must have done.

-

-                              _Records of Dorset Assizes, Spring 1915_

-

-               Will some Member of Parliament please ask

-

-=whether it is true that more food is being destroyed each week in

-breweries and distilleries than by submarines?=

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                            The New Drinkers

-

-

-“_No complaints have reached the War Office of youths who were total

-abstainers having become confirmed drunkards since enlistment._”

-

-So we are told in the House of Commons. The records of the War Office

-are clearly incomplete, and the information from the camps may here be

-supplemented by unchallengeable witnesses of what happens in the

-horrible drink canteens run by the Army Council.

-

-  A soldier who was wounded at La Bassée, a total abstainer until

-  then, was sentenced at the Old Bailey for killing his uncle while

-  drunk. He was a newsvendor, aged 21, and had no memory of the

-  tragedy in which he killed his uncle at a Christmas party.

-

-                        _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” January 13, 1916_

-

-  A private in the Royal Scots Fusileers, aged 17, was charged with

-  murdering a bugler boy, aged 16, in his regiment. The private became

-  mad drunk in the camp canteen, went back to his hut, locked himself

-  in and fired two shots, one of which entered another hut and killed

-  the bugler. “Was there no one with power to say how much drink

-  should be given?” asked the judge, and an officer said there was no

-  one. “Then it was high time power was given to the commanding

-  officer,” said the judge. “Was there to be no restraining hand to

-  prevent young boys from fuddling themselves in canteens?”

-

-                             _Facts in the “Times,” November 21, 1916_

-

-  An old man sat in a tram in great distress. He had lost his boy at

-  the Front. When he joined the Army he had never tasted alcohol, but

-  when he came home on leave to see his mother he was drunk every

-  night. He was drunk the night he went away, and in three days he was

-  dead. “The last we saw of him,” said the poor old man between his

-  sobs, “was his going away drunk, and his mother, who is

-  old-fashioned in her faith, cannot get it out of her mind that no

-  drunkard can enter the Kingdom of God.”

-

-                                    _Facts told by Dr. Norman Maclean_

-

-  Many young officers, called upon to share the wine bill at mess,

-  naturally say, “If I have to pay I may as well drink my share,” and

-  one man accounted for ten glasses of champagne. On a Guest night in

-  his mess several more “were under the table.”

-

-                        _Facts in “Dublin Daily Express,” April 1916._

-

-  A boy got his V.C., and came home wounded. The publican in his

-  street sounded his praises in the taproom, where they subscribed to

-  the bar for 120 pints for him when he arrived. He came home and

-  began to drink it, and was nearly dead with it before he was

-  rescued.

-

-                                  _Facts related by Bishop of Lincoln_

-

-  When the Scottish Horse Brigade were at Perth whisky was literally

-  forced down the men, and they were inundated with floods of bad

-  women.

-

-                                 _Brigadier-General Lord Tullibardine_

-

-  A teetotal household had two boys in an officers’ training camp, and

-  they gave pitiable accounts of drinking. Boys from school had a

-  drunken sergeant put over them, and a canteen in the midst of them.

-  “Our boys never saw drink before,” one father wrote.

-

-                                 _From a letter to Dr. Norman Maclean_

-

-  A boy of 17, discharged from the Navy, spent 8_s._ one night on beer

-  and rum, and created a disturbance in a workshop at Sheffield.

-

-                        _Facts in “Sheffield Star,” November 11, 1916_

-

-  Mr. Justice Atkin, charging the Grand Jury at Bristol, said that in

-  nearly every case where a soldier was tried in the Western Circuit

-  the defence was drink. One lad of 18 was treated to eight pints of

-  beer in two hours, and did not know what happened. That sort of

-  thing, said the judge, must seriously impair the efficiency of the

-  troops when sent to the Front.

-

-                              _Record of Bristol Assizes, Autumn 1914_

-

-  Two boys, 15 and 17, were fined for being drunk in munition works.

-  One was discovered just in time to save him from carrying molten

-  liquid.

-

-                            _Birmingham Munitions Tribunal, Dec. 1916_

-

-  “A boy joined the Royal Navy as a carpenter, living in barracks and

-  working on shore. Every day he was given ‘grog’ for his rations,

-  although he never asked for it and never took it.”

-

-                                       _Facts in letter to the Author_

-

-Such are the tragedies of boys handed over in our camps to drink and its

-temptations. What of the girls in our munition shops? They have learned

-to drink in thousands since the war began—respectable girls leaving home

-to go into munitions, respectable young wives alone at home. With no

-restraining hand upon them, with new companionships and pocket-money

-flowing freely, it is not surprising the temptation should be too strong

-for them. We can take only one or two cases.

-

-  The girl-wife of a Cardiff seaman died in the street from exposure

-  after drinking in publichouses with other girls.

-

-                    _Records of Pontypridd Coroner, December 27, 1916_

-

-  A publican at Lincoln was fined £5 for allowing children to be drunk

-  on his premises. Ruth Onyon, 14, and Rose Herrick, 16, were found in

-  his house with a soldier. They had been in five houses and had ten

-  drinks each and reached home helplessly drunk.

-

-                 _Facts in “Sheffield Daily Telegraph,” Sept. 1, 1916_

-

-  A number of cartridge workers were summoned for taking drink into a

-  munition works. One young woman was led to the surgery drunk at

-  half-past four in the morning; another was discharged because she

-  could not stand. Sixteen girls subscribed for four bottles of wine

-  and whisky.

-

-                 _Records of Leeds Munitions Tribunal, April 28, 1916_

-

-  Two girls of 16 and 17 were fined for being helplessly drunk in an

-  explosive works, the magistrates pointing out that their conduct

-  imperilled the lives of other workers.

-

-                _Records of Coventry Munitions Tribunal July 24, 1916_

-

-  The men and girls at a large armament works drank all night. Girls

-  would lurch into the dormitory dead drunk at 2 a. m.; one lady was

-  up till 4 a. m. letting in drunken girls. As a result of drunkenness

-  there was an explosion at these works, two men being killed and six

-  injured.

-

-                                 _Facts in “Spectator,” Jan. 20, 1917_

-

-  A Dublin publichouse was found full of girls and soldiers, all

-  drunk. Three drunken girls were taken away by six soldiers.

-

-                              _Facts in “Irish Times,” April 20, 1916_

-

-  In half an hour 367 girls entered Birmingham publichouses, scores

-  under 18. Stout and beer were chiefly drunk, but whisky and water

-  also, and some port wine. Ten young girls were quite drunk.

-

-                                    _Facts in “Birmingham Daily Post”_

-

-               Will some Member of Parliament please ask,

-

-=in view of the fact that American soldiers are not to touch alcohol,

-what arrangements the Government proposes to make for them in this

-country?=

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                          Back to the Homeland

-

-

-Everywhere we hope and pray for peace, for the day when the men will

-come home; but we may dread the day if the men come home to drink and

-its temptations. The sudden release of millions of men, the certain

-reaction after the terrible stress of these three years, is fearful to

-contemplate with the door of the tap-room open. There would be an end of

-civilization itself for days and weeks and months, and for many a town

-at home the Peace would be worse than the War.

-

-We owe it to these men to listen to the warning of the Prison

-Commissioners who printed these words in their report last year:

-

-=When war is succeeded by peace there will come a time of trial for

-those who have never turned their backs to a bodily enemy. With the

-passing of military discipline our brave fellows will be tempted to

-forget the hardships and miseries of the trenches in a burst of

-uncontrolled pleasure and license, and, if trade be bad and work

-difficult to obtain, the lapse may, if not checked, become a step on a

-downward career.=

-

-It is not imagination merely. Judges, coroners, police, and all who face

-the crime and misery of life, know well the bitter things that happen

-when men come home without restraint. There are witnesses innumerable.

-Let us hear a few of them.

-

-  A captain in the Royal Flying Corps drove a motor-car through

-  London, knocked a man down, drove on, and ignored the police, who

-  eventually mounted the footboard and found the officer drunk.

-

-                             _Bow Street Police Records, June 3, 1916_

-

-  A lance-corporal on Chesterfield station was so drunk that he walked

-  off the platform and fell on the line as a passenger train came up.

-

-                           _Chesterfield Police Records, June 2, 1915_

-

-  A corporal of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, leaving the

-  Front with 150 rounds of ammunition and his service rifle, came out

-  drunk into the streets of West Ham and began firing his rifle.

-

-                           _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” July 10, 1915_

-

-  A soldier who had received a cartridge from his son at the Front,

-  put it in his rifle, and while drunk fired it in the streets of

-  Manchester.

-

-                         _Manchester Police Records, January 27, 1915_

-

-  In the early hours of the morning two unarmed soldiers were fired at

-  in Woolwich by a drunken soldier, who chased them for a long

-  distance, firing shots all the time, until he was arrested.

-

-                            _Facts in “Alliance News,” February, 1915_

-

-  Drunkenness among soldiers and sailors is appalling. Unoffending

-  travellers are delayed by drunken sentries. Sailors landing after

-  weeks of arduous toil in the North Sea find it easy to get so drunk

-  that some are drowned, some die from exposure, and many return to

-  their ships in a condition of helpless inebriety.

-

-                              _Facts in “Inverness Courier,” May 1915_

-

-  Two drunken soldiers entered the parish church at Codford, set fire

-  to the vestry, threw down the altar cross and candlestick, broke a

-  stained-glass window, and tore leaves out of a Bible 200 years old.

-

-                           _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” April 3, 1916_

-

-  A drunken soldier at Cannock was imprisoned for drawing his bayonet

-  in the streets. “If I meet a policeman I will murder the dog,” he

-  said, and, meeting one, he threatened to cut off his head.

-

-                               _Police Records at Cannock, March 1916_

-

-  400 soldiers tried to get a drunken man from the police in Grantham.

-

-                              _Facts in “Grimsby News,” July 30, 1915_

-

-  A drunken sergeant was found forcibly detaining a girl at Hornsey.

-  On the police interfering, the drunken soldier drew his bayonet.

-

-                            _Facts in “Daily News,” September 7, 1916_

-

-  Three splendid-looking fellows, minesweepers, were traveling on the

-  Highland Railway. “All were married men,” said a fellow passenger,

-  “happy and proud of their homes, and they spoke with ache still in

-  their hearts something of their lives and work. Well, these men

-  succumbed during the journey. A change of trains was their

-  opportunity, and I left them in a nearly helpless condition.”

-

-                             _Facts in “The Spectator,” April 8, 1916_

-

-  A lady visited a soldier’s wife and found her at home with all her

-  clothes in pawn. Her husband and brother had both been home from the

-  Front, and in one week had spent £8 on drink.

-

-                     _Facts in the “Cork Constitution,” Dec. 10, 1915_

-

-  A labourer, home from tunnelling work at the Front, was fined 13_s._

-  for drunkenness on his 33rd appearance, having spent £45 in seven

-  days.

-

-                                _Facts in “Daily News,” Oct. 11, 1916_

-

-  A disabled soldier was selling papers in Kingsway, London. He was

-  proud of his military record and the character his colonel gave him.

-  He was trying to compound for a pension; he thought he would settle

-  for £50. “Mind you,” said he “there is not a better character in

-  London than mine, and I shall get the £50. Then I shall have a

-  month’s booze.” “What, with that fine character of yours?” a

-  gentleman said to him. “Yes,” said the man, “when I came home, and

-  could leave the hospital, there was £50 due to me, and I had a

-  regular booze.”

-

-                                           _Facts known to the Author_

-

-  A soldier with twelve years’ clean record in the Army was sentenced

-  for felony after being made drunk by his friends.

-

-                        _Police Records of Southport, January 9, 1915_

-

-No Government has ever received more warnings than the three war

-Governments have received concerning drink. There is no room for them

-here, but we may call a few witnesses such as cannot be ignored by a

-nation looking forward to the day when millions of men will be home

-again.

-

-  A house in Westminster reeked with filth and drink and drunken

-  overseas soldiers, “and it would be better,” said the Crown

-  Solicitor, “if power were given to the police to sweep such places

-  off the earth.”

-

-                               _Westminster Police Records, Aug. 1916_

-

-  A sapper seaman was found dead at the quay. Another seaman said his

-  friend had seven drinks. They left the publichouse arm-in-arm, and

-  went to the quay. There he saw a corporal, who was boatswain for the

-  night, and was drunk. Leaving the sapper, he got the corporal into

-  the boat, and went back for his friend, but the sapper had

-  disappeared.

-

-  The lieutenant: “The deceased was one of the quietest boys who had

-  ever been on the ship, and one of the best oarsmen. The whole

-  trouble was that it was pay day.”

-

-  The Coroner: “Prohibition during the war would be a blessing to all.

-  It seems to be a very rotten state of affairs.”

-

-  The foreman: “Drink.”

-

-  The lieutenant: “Prohibition would be the best thing.”

-

-  The Coroner: “This poor man, unfortunately, is one of many.”

-

-                   _Facts in “Western Daily Mercury,” January 8, 1917_

-

-  A publican at Dover was fined £20 for selling a bottle of whisky to

-  a sailor. The Admiral said drink undermined the efficiency of the

-  patrol vessels, and those who supplied it directly assisted the

-  enemy, and might be the cause of the loss of very many lives.

-

-                            _Police Records of Dover, October 6, 1916_

-

-  A private in the Northumberland Fusiliers, aged 23, was charged with

-  burglary while drunk. His father and three brothers were in the

-  Army. He took part in the battle of Loos, was wounded at Salonika,

-  and was recommended for distinction for helping to save a wounded

-  officer.

-

-  During the whole of Christmas leave he was drinking, made drunk by

-  his friends who were probably proud of his having held part of a

-  trench against a German bombing party. His captain described him as

-  a good soldier in peace, and brave in action—a man whose disgrace

-  would be felt by the regiment.

-

-  Mr. Justice Rowlatt said everyone was hoping for the time when

-  millions of brave men would come home after facing incredible

-  dangers, and we must look forward almost with terror to having these

-  men exposed to drink and its temptations. What would be the state of

-  the country in such a case unless we could make a clean sweep of

-  drink? We should have to face this question over and over again, and

-  the sooner we faced it the better.

-

-                        _Records of Derbyshire Assizes, February 1917_

-

-  Whoever allowed soldiers or sailors to drink to excess, said the

-  Mayor of Tynemouth, should be tried by court-martial for treason. He

-  would be recreant in his duty to God, to himself, and to the

-  citizens, if he did not call attention to the brutalising of so many

-  townspeople and the callous conduct of the “waster” element in the

-  drink trade. He had no quarrel with those who conducted their

-  business properly.

-

-                           _Facts in Tynemouth papers, February, 1915_

-

-  The Aldershot command appealed for the closing of half the

-  publichouses, to save the men from temptation when the troops are

-  demobilised and return with their pockets full of money.

-

-                       _Record of Workingham Licensing Sessions, 1917_

-

-  The _Army and Navy Gazette_, in an article disapproving of the

-  Prohibition Campaign, issues a terrible warning which should be

-  printed on the door of the room in which the Army Council meets.

-  These are its words:

-

-  “It is on record that towards the end of the siege of Sebastopol rum

-  was made too regular an issue, with the result that almost every

-  soldier who survived to return home became a drunkard.”

-

-The siege of Sebastopol lasted less than a year, and that is the work of

-the rum issue for a few months. If rum does that in months, what will it

-do in years?

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                          Into the Firing Line

-

-

-Lord Kitchener is dead, but there are two things that are with us

-still—that rare little note that he gave to his men as they went out,

-warning them of drink; and that infamous note sent out by a drink firm

-in London, begging our people to send out drink to our men. They can

-guarantee it right up to the firing line, they say, and even when our

-shells could not get there through drink, drink seems to have found its

-way. It can get on to transports when the Ministry of Munitions is

-waiting urgently for shipping space; it can commandeer our vans and

-horses and trains when these mean life or death to us; it seems to get

-past any regulation; it goes about with the power of a king, doing its

-work where it will.

-

-  It is regrettable that our troops at the Front cannot get more

-  British Beer.

-

-                          Managing Director of Allsopps, July 14, 1916

-

-  Dear Sir, In answer to your inquiry, the only limitation in the size

-  of cases consigned to officers in the Expeditionary Force is that

-  they must not exceed 1 cwt.

-

-  We can guarantee delivery right into the front trenches. The cases

-  are handed over at Southampton to the Military Forwarding Officer,

-  and the A.S.C. see them right through. We are shipping hundreds of

-  cases weekly. Yours faithfully,

-

-                        _Letter from a Wine and Spirit firm in London_

-

-So drink finds its way to the front, to weaken our troops, with all

-their matchless heroism. Let us call the witnesses who have seen the

-work it does.

-

-  Soldiers at the front, tried for drunkenness, have declared that

-  they have received drink from home. Men sometimes receive flasks in

-  the trenches. They are exhausted, the stimulant revives them for a

-  minute or two, and the harm is done. “And then (says Col. Crozier)

-  they get about two years’ hard labour.”

-

-      _Letter from Colonel Crozier, commanding 9th Royal Irish Rifles_

-

-  As a result of a Court-martial investigating charges of excessive

-  drinking among the officers of a regiment at the Front, the Army

-  Council removed the commanding officer from his post.

-

-                                     _Records of Court-martials, 1916_

-

-  In the torrid climate of Mesopotamia, in defiance of all military

-  medical history, rum was issued to the men instead of food and

-  sterile water, and the presence of cholera, dysentery and other

-  diseases, was attributed to this by Sir Victor Horsley. “Our gross

-  failures and stupidity,” he said, “are in my opinion due to whisky

-  affecting the intellectual organs and clearness of our leaders. They

-  do not realise that alcohol in small doses acts as a brake on the

-  brain.”

-

-             _Facts in a letter from Sir Victor Horsley, May 13, 1916_

-

-[Illustration: THE JUNKER’S LITTLE BROTHER]

-

-  Battalion Headquarters—colonel and chaplain present. Enter Adjutant:

-  “The rum ration is due tonight, sir; am I to distribute it?” The

-  colonel (nobly and in a voice audible all over the trench): “No!

-  Damn the rum! To hell with the rum!”

-

-                     _Chaplain’s letter in “Alliance News,” June 1916_

-

-  At a court-martial in Newcastle, a sergeant-major, charged with

-  misappropriating funds of the sergeant’s mess, pleaded that during

-  this period a resolution of the mess had come into effect, providing

-  free drinks during Christmas and the New Year.

-

-                               _Facts in “Daily News,” April 17, 1916_

-

-  “In the Flying Services one has seen more than one good man go to

-  the dogs through drink, or become fat and flabby and useless through

-  just the excess of alcohol which falls short of taking to drink in

-  the usual acceptance of the term. More men take to drink because of

-  the ‘have another’ custom than because they like or need alcohol,

-  and simple Prohibition would stop all this nonsense straight away.

-  This kindly note is not the outpouring of a teetotal fanatic, for I

-  suppose I have paid in my time rather more than my share of the

-  nation’s drink-bill; it is merely a perfectly sound argument in

-  favour of increasing the nation’s efficiency at the expense of its

-  chief bad habit.”

-

-                                       _The Editor of “The Aeroplane”_

-

-  A lieutenant in the trenches, knowing that the rum ration made him

-  cold, threw his rum on the ground. His captain saw him, and

-  threatened to report him. “You do, sir,” said the lieutenant, “and I

-  will report you for being drunk on duty.”

-

-                                   _Facts in possession of the Author_

-

-  A seaman serving on a ship in Cork Harbour died from alcohol. Found

-  drunk and unknown, he was put on a stretcher and died.

-

-                      _Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 9, 1915_

-

-  “Over three-quarters of the court-martials I have had anything to do

-  with are due directly or indirectly to drunkenness. Many thousands

-  of competent N.C.O.s and soldiers have been punished, and become

-  useless to the nation during their punishment, as a result of drink.

-

-  “I have never been a teetotaler, and have rather opposed the radical

-  temperance agitation, but am now changing my views as I see our

-  success over here hampered and our progress towards victory retarded

-  so obviously by drink.”

-

-       _Letter from a Lieut.-Colonel at the Front, seen by the Author_

-

-  The captain of a British merchant ship, drunk on the bridge, ordered

-  his chief gunner to fire 50 rounds of shell at nothing. The gunner

-  fired four rounds to appease him. Going through the Mediterranean,

-  the drunken captain ordered his gunner to fire at a British hospital

-  ship, and the incident led to a struggle for life, which ended in

-  the captain’s being put in irons, tried, and sentenced to five

-  years’ penal servitude.

-

-                   _Record of Devon Assizes, Exeter, February 2, 1917_

-

-  An officer was left in charge of a British ship. Mad with drink, he

-  went among the men and shot one dead. He is now in an asylum.

-

-                                      _Case reported to the Admiralty_

-

-  The crew of a Dutch ship arriving in the Tyne was placed under a

-  naval guard after a drunken riot in which three were killed.

-

-                           _Facts in “Daily News,” September 14, 1915_

-

-  The captain of a Norwegian barque mysteriously disappeared, and the

-  vessel arrived in port from the North Sea. The mate, who had been

-  drinking heavily, was seen, with a hammer in his hand, with the

-  captain in a corner, bleeding from wounds about the head.

-

-                                _Facts in “Daily News,” April 8, 1916_

-

-  A seaman ashore in Glasgow, “wild with drink and passion,” was

-  terribly wounded in a quarrel in a public-house, and died the same

-  night. A youth of 19 was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude.

-

-                          _Records of Edinburgh High Court, Dec. 1916_

-

-  A barge-loader at West India Docks died from alcohol, and three

-  other men were removed in an ambulance after drinking rum.

-

-                             _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” May 9, 1916_

-

-  Orders were given on a steamer for the boats to be swung out in

-  readiness for submarines. The first and second officer, having been

-  drinking, could not do their duty.

-

-                   _Records of Liverpool Marine Board, April 13, 1917_

-

-  The jury returned a verdict of murder against a youth of 19 who,

-  after drinking one night, went on to his ship and killed the second

-  officer.

-

-                             _Records of Hull Coroner, April 24, 1917_

-

-  A drunken captain in command of a drifter landed with an armed party

-  on the Isle of Man. He posted the men on the quay, and gave them

-  orders to allow no one to pass. Declaring he would shoot every

-  person who came within reach, he fired twice, and threatened to kill

-  two police officers.

-

-                                   _Facts in “Times,” October 6, 1916_

-

-Such is the work of drink wherever it finds a soldier to entrap—the

-drink the Navy carries free from Southampton to the trenches; and from

-America comes the news, as this page is being written, that the Army and

-the Navy of our Western Ally, like the Army and the Navy of our Eastern

-Ally, are to be under Total Prohibition.

-

-               Will some Member of Parliament please ask

-

-=how much bread is destroyed each week to make beer for German

-internment camps in this country?=

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                        Drink and the Red Cross

-

-

-If the full story could ever be told of the national tragedy of drink

-and the war there would be no more ghastly chapter than that which would

-tell how drink fought the Red Cross; how, without pity, it hindered the

-work of mercy that is the general consolation of the world in days like

-these.

-

-We are coming to a famine not only in food, but in doctors. The

-death-roll has been heavy beyond all parallel; the strain on the medical

-services has been almost too great to be borne, and we look anxiously

-round to know where the doctors and nurses will come from. With

-Prohibition the problem would be largely solved, for the ordinary burden

-of life would be largely lifted from our doctors and hospitals, and

-thousands of men and women would be free to give themselves to the war

-instead of mending up and patching up the sordid effects of drink. A

-rich brewer gave a donation for extending a hospital. “Ah! but we should

-not have to extend if he would shut up his public-houses,” said a

-doctor.

-

-It is easy to see how drink is telling all the time against our doctors,

-our nurses, and our hospitals everywhere. Let us call a few witnesses.

-

-  Somebody gave a glass of neat whisky to two wounded men at a garden

-  party in Tottenham. Both were drunk when the brake came to take them

-  home, and one died on the way.

-

-                   _Facts in “Sheffield Telegraph,” September 3, 1915_

-

-  Three wounded soldiers at Oxford were overcome by four bottles of

-  rum smuggled into the hospital by visitors, and one of the men died.

-

-                             _Records of Oxford Coroner, January 1916_

-

-  A wounded soldier asked for two hours’ leave, came back in four

-  hours drunk with whisky, and died after a terrible night in the

-  hospital.

-

-                                               _Facts in “Daily Mail”_

-

-  Two limbless soldiers were found helplessly drunk on the pavement at

-  Brighton. A publican was fined £20.

-

-                       _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” November 25, 1916_

-

-  A wounded soldier, mentioned in despatches, was charged with causing

-  the death of a soldier with whom he had been drinking. Reeling under

-  a heavy blow, the injured man was helped to bed, but when the bugle

-  sounded in the morning he was dead.

-

-                            _Facts in “Daily Mail,” December 21, 1915_

-

-  A soldier, aged 29, with a gunshot wound in his arm, died from

-  alcohol at Oxford. One Sunday night he and two other wounded

-  soldiers consumed four bottles of rum brought into the hospital.

-

-                         _Records of Oxford Coroner, January 10, 1916_

-

-  Three soldiers in hospital uniform were found lying helplessly drunk

-  on the tramlines of Sheffield. Two were back from the Dardanelles.

-

-                            _Facts in “Sheffield Star,” March 2, 1916_

-

-  Seamen on a ship bringing wounded to England from Boulogne were so

-  drunk that they interfered with the stretcher bearers, and one fell

-  across a wounded soldier lying on deck.

-

-                         _Police Records of Southampton, May 14, 1915_

-

-  There was a paralysed and helpless man who was found hopelessly

-  drunk in hospital after his friends had visited him.

-

-                    _Statement by Lieut.-Col. Sir Alfred Pearce Gould_

-

-  An officer who has trained hundreds of men for the ambulance corps

-  declared that a large percentage of wounded are in a very nervous

-  condition, in which alcohol means collapse and almost certain death.

-

-                                              _Quoted in “Daily Mail”_

-

-  Lying helpless at a London station, moaning on the ground in drunken

-  delirium, was a lad in hospital blue who had, in truth, been wounded

-  by his friends. Drink was taking him again through the worst of his

-  experiences, and his mental pain was pitiable to see.

-

-                                 _Facts in the “Globe,” January, 1917_

-

-  Two drunken soldiers from Gallipoli made what a doctor described as

-  the most savage attack he ever saw on a civilian. They held a young

-  man’s head against a wall and pounded him unmercifully.

-

-                              _Facts in “Daily News,” August 19, 1916_

-

-  A party of soldiers were seriously injured in a struggle to arrest a

-  drunken private at Pontefract. The publican called on the men in his

-  taproom to rescue the private, but the sergeants drove them off.

-

-                              _Facts in “Daily News,” October 5, 1914_

-

-  A sergeant of a Welsh regiment, invited to drink by friends in

-  Waterloo Road, was picked up as he lay senseless, his pulse beating

-  feebly, his eyes wide open, and his body starving with cold.

-

-                            _Facts in “Daily News,” February 14, 1916_

-

-  A drunken man rushed from a publichouse and kicked a soldier

-  unconscious. The military police, chasing the man, were stoned. Four

-  soldiers were injured, one having his head cut open, and the

-  military were ordered to clear the place with fixed bayonets.

-

-                              _Facts in “Daily News,” August 11, 1915_

-

-  The medical officer in charge of the Mental Block of a large

-  military hospital said to the Colonel: “I have the worst job of all,

-  and it is through Drink, Drink, Drink! Men recover fairly soon from

-  shell shock, but officers, especially the younger ones, who

-  habitually take wines and spirits, are subject to relapses every few

-  days. It is awful!”

-

-                  _Facts in “National Temperance Quarterly,” May 1917_

-

-  Of the thirty war hospitals in Hertfordshire, with 8000 men passing

-  through them in the first thirty months of the war, there is not one

-  that has not had trouble with drink.

-

-                                           _Facts known to the Author_

-

-  A doctor from a Canadian hospital said a large percentage of their

-  troops had had to be sent back to Canada rendered permanently insane

-  through the action of alcohol.

-

-                             _Facts in “Daily News,” October 31, 1916_

-

-One terrible truth remains to be told of the crime of drink against the

-Red Cross. The most blessed thing in all the world today is alcohol, for

-it makes chloroform and ether, which soothe the pain of men. We cannot

-get enough of either of these consoling drugs, yet we go on wasting

-precious food to make more alcohol _to add to the sum of misery and

-pain_.

-

-               Will some Member of Parliament please ask

-

-=whether the bread ration applies equally to all; or if it may be

-exceeded if the excess is drunk instead of being eaten?=

-

-                                  and

-

-=how many brewers’ vats have been imported this year on ships which had

-no room for urgent munitions of war?=

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                     Stabbing the Army in the Back

-

-

-All the world is learning now that the drink trade is the great

-confederate of venereal disease. It leads a man into temptation,

-destroys his power of resistance, and retards his chances of recovery.

-

-We can never know the truth about the extent of this disease, about the

-way in which the liquor trade, by breaking down tens of thousands of our

-men, has stabbed the Army in the back. But the number of soldiers

-incapacitated by this disease through drink is enormously greater than

-the number incapacitated by the most subtle or dramatic stroke devised

-by the German staff.

-

-The lost man-power of the Army through this disease must be equal to the

-whole of the original British Expeditionary Force. The Government has

-given us figures for the Army at home last year, and they are 43 per

-1,000—or over 100,000 cases for an army of 2,500,000 men. There were

-7,000 cases in one Canadian camp alone.

-

-Here are the black facts revealed in a debate in Parliament on April 23,

-1917, when two distinguished Army officers, speaking with great

-restraint, sought to open the eyes of the nation to this plague fostered

-in our camps by drink:

-

-  “During the war we have had admitted into the hospitals of England

-  over 70,000 cases of gonorrhœa, over 20,000 cases of syphilis, and

-  over 6000 cases of another disease somewhat similar. I am quite

-  openly prepared to state that of these 20,000 cases of syphilis you

-  do not get much work out of them under two and a half years. I know

-  from what I have seen of the modern conditions of this War that you

-  may absolutely wipe them out, except for a few handfuls.

-

-  “When you come to the great mass of casualties under this head ...

-  the figures mean that you have =a Division constantly out of

-  action=. If you have anything like 70,000 men enfeebled, you find

-  that you suffer to that extent also. It is not only that you lose

-  the men, and not only the men who are partially cured are suffering

-  for many months to come, but their chances of recovery from wounds

-  are not nearly so good.

-

-  “I know of a hospital for venereal cases which it was found

-  necessary to expand from its normal accommodation for 500 or 600 up

-  to 2,000 cases, and they are continually full. It is a British

-  hospital in France. A figure I should like to submit to challenge is

-  that during the course of the war between 40,000 and 50,000 cases of

-  syphilis have passed through our hospitals in France. When you come

-  to gonorrhœa, the figure given me which covers that is between

-  150,000 and 200,000 cases.”

-

-                         _Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917_

-

-  “Every Canadian soldier who comes to this country arrives here not

-  only a first-class specimen of a fine soldier, but as clean-limbed

-  and as clean a man as the Creator Himself could create. The fact

-  that in one only of the three Canadian camps in this country 7,000

-  of these clean Canadian boys went through the hospital for venereal

-  disease in fourteen months is not only a great discredit to any

-  Government in this country but has an effect in Canada which I can

-  assure the House does not make for a better feeling with the Home

-  Country, and does not make for what we all desire—Imperial Unity.”

-

-           _Colonel Sir Hamar Greenwood in Parliament, April 23, 1917_

-

-Those are unchallenged statements made in the House of Commons itself;

-they stand as a terrible indictment of this disease, and it is not to be

-denied that this evil could never have reached its present frightful

-proportions if Parliament had followed the King. Let us look at a few

-examples of the ravages of this vice allied so closely to the

-public-house.

-

-  It is not possible to tell the whole truth about drink; the language

-  in which it must be written would be offensive in a civilised

-  country. It must be said, simply, that soldiers in England have been

-  court-martialled for having been influenced by drink to commit

-  unspeakable offences against animals.

-

-                                  _Facts in Records of Court-Martials_

-

-  A special constable in a harlot-haunted district in London describes

-  how these harpies carry off lonely soldiers to their rooms, make

-  them drunk, and finally innoculate them, as likely as not, with

-  disease. Is it not possible to hold in check these women who prey

-  upon and poison our soldiers? asks Sir Conan Doyle.

-

-                                               _Letter in the “Times”_

-

-  One of the hot-beds of venereal disease to which drink leads our

-  soldiers, was kept by an Austrian woman in Lambeth, who was

-  receiving 15_s._ a week from the Austrian Government in April 1916,

-  and used to lure our soldiers when weakened by drink. All the men

-  seen to enter this house were either soldiers or sailors.

-

-                                           _Police Records of Lambeth_

-

-  A soldier from the Front with £18 was taken by a married woman to

-  her home, where he was found after a drunken bout with eight women,

-  all drunk. The woman’s children were terribly neglected.

-

-                     _Police Records of St. Helens, November 30, 1915_

-

-  If you describe the Waterloo Road and the back streets as an open

-  sewer you will be somewhere near the truth. Not a day goes by

-  without bringing some soldier who has been waylaid.

-

-                             _Facts in the “Times,” February 22, 1917_

-

-  A soldier came from the Front to go home to Scotland. He got drunk

-  near Waterloo, losing all his money and his railway pass. He spent

-  his leave living on charity, and returned to the Front without

-  having been near either his home or his friends.

-

-                            _Facts in “Daily News,” February 14, 1916_

-

-Here is the official proof of the relation of the drink trade to this

-traffic in disease. It is from the Report of the Royal Commission:

-

-  Abundant evidence was given as to the intimate relation between

-  alcohol and venereal diseases.

-

-  Alcohol renders a man liable to yield to temptations which he might

-  otherwise resist, and aggravates the disease by diminishing the

-  resistance of the individual.

-

-  Alcoholism makes latent syphilis and gonorrhœa active.

-

-  Our evidence tends to show that the communication in disease is

-  frequently due to indulgence in intoxicants, and there is no doubt

-  that the growth of temperance among the population would help to

-  bring about an amelioration of the very serious conditions which our

-  enquiry has revealed.

-

-  We desire, therefore, to place on record our opinion that action

-  should be taken without delay.

-

-               Will some Member of Parliament please ask

-

-=if, in view of Lord D’Abernon’s statement that Prohibition has failed

-in Canada, the Government will issue the figures showing the decrease of

-crime and the increase of wealth?=

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                       The Price the Empire Pays

-

-

-It is a bitter irony that while the men of the Empire have come to

-France to fight the enemy of mankind, this foe within our gates has

-struck a blow at the British Empire that generations will not heal. How

-many Empire men this private trade has slain we do not know, but we know

-beyond all challenge that it has weakened the bonds that bind our

-Dominions to the Motherland. This trade that throttles us at home can

-pull the Empire down, and it has started well. It has struck its blow at

-Canada.

-

-Let us look at the plain facts which in other days than these would have

-caused a storm of anger that Parliament could not have ignored. Canada

-has followed the King; arming herself with her full powers, flinging

-herself upon her enemies with her utmost strength, she has swept drink

-out of Canada almost from sea to sea. But even before she did this

-Canada saw that alcohol must go from her camps if her men were to be fit

-to fight for England, and long before the Prohibition wave swept across

-the country, the Canadian Government removed all alcohol from the

-training camps. It was the deliberate choice of a Government and its

-people, and from that day to this there has been no reason for regret.

-

-So the young manhood of Canada, rallying to the flag, was guarded from

-alcohol. She poured out her men in hundreds of thousands; they came to

-us from Prohibition camps; they came in Prohibition ships, and even here

-this trade that has us in its grip was not allowed at first in the

-Canadian camps; the only condition that Canada made—a condition implied

-but clearly understood—was properly regarded and obeyed.

-

-We respected the desire of Canada, and kept her soldiers free from drink

-in their own camps. But a soldier cannot keep in camp, and in the

-villages around the Drink Trade waits in every street. The military

-authorities were willing for the Canadian Government to have their way

-inside the camps, but drink was free outside, and in these public-houses

-there was sown the seed that may one day break this Empire. The Drink

-Trade was so rampant outside the Canadian camps that Prohibition inside

-was almost in vain. We had to decide between breaking the word of the

-Canadian Government to its people or dealing with this trade as Canada

-herself has done; as Russia has done; as France and America are doing.

-It was the Empire or the drink traffic, and the drink traffic won, as it

-always wins with us.

-

-It came about in October, down on Salisbury Plain. During one week-end a

-number of Canadian troops gave way to drinking in villages around the

-camps, and it was then that the grave decision was come to that the

-drink trade should be allowed to set up its horrible canteens in every

-Canadian camp. The change was made at the request of a British General,

-and we have the assurance of the Prime Minister of Canada that the

-approval of the Canadian Government was neither obtained nor asked. In

-handing the Canadian Army over to the drink canteens, in deliberately

-reversing the policy of the Canadian Government and its people, there

-was no consultation with Canada.

-

-It is important to remember that this decision, fraught with tragic and

-far-reaching consequences for the Empire, was a pure and simple English

-act. We may imagine the Canadian view from the remark of a Canadian

-General, who said, “I know drink is a hindrance, but I can do very

-little, because in military circles in this country drunkenness is not

-considered a very serious offense.”

-

-It would have been surprising if there had not poured in upon our

-Government a stream of protests, and from all parts of the Dominions

-they came. The Dominion of Canada, giving freely to the Motherland

-450,000 boys and men, was moved to passionate indignation that England

-should scorn her love for them, should ignore the pleadings of their

-mothers and sisters, and should put in their way the temptations from

-which they were saved at home. Canada does not want our drink trade; she

-lives side by side with the United States, she sees that great country

-building up its future free from drink, and she sees America, splendid

-ally in war, as a mighty rival in peace.

-

-And Canada is ready for the Reconstruction. She has followed the

-Prohibition lead of the United States, and already she has ceased to be

-a borrowing country. The very first year of Prohibition has seen this

-young Dominion, for the first time in her history, financially

-self-sustaining. Crime is disappearing; social gatherings are held in

-her gaols; she has set up vast munition workshops, and instead of

-borrowing money for her own support she has made hundreds of millions’

-worth of munitions for which this country need not pay until the war is

-over, and then need never pay at all for the munitions the Canadians

-have used. Canada is in deadly earliest. She kept her men away from

-drink to make them fit; she has swept it away to make a clean country

-for those who go back.

-

-And what is England’s contribution to this Imperial Reconstruction? _We

-have scorned it all._ The Prime Minister has said that this drink trade

-is so horrible that it is worth this horrible war to settle with it, yet

-we have sacrificed the love of Canada on our brewers’ altar. We can

-believe the Canadian who declares his profound conviction that but for

-this Canada would have sent us 100,000 more recruits; we can believe it

-is true that where responsible Canadians meet together in these days the

-talk is of how long the tie will last unbroken that binds the daughter

-to the Motherland. We can understand the passion that lies behind the

-resolutions that come to Downing Street from Nova Scotia; we know the

-depth of the yearning of those 64,000 mothers and wives of Toronto who

-signed that great petition to the Government of Canada begging it in the

-name of God to intervene.

-

-We can understand it all; but let us call the witnesses, and let us see

-the price the Dominion pays for our quailing before this Kaiser’s trade.

-

-

-                       Those Who Will Not Go Back

-

-It is the great consolation of Canada that, though their sons may fall

-before this tempter’s trade in Britain, they will go back to a Canada

-free from drink. But some will never go back, and they are not on the

-Roll of Honour. They have been destroyed by the enemy within our gate,

-this trade that traps men on their way to France and digs their graves.

-

-  A young Canadian who had never tasted alcohol came from a

-  Prohibition camp in Canada, came to England on a Prohibition ship,

-  and was put in a camp with a drink canteen. He started drinking and

-  contracted venereal disease. Ordered home as unfit, in fear and

-  shame he sought a friend’s advice about the girl he was to marry.

-  “You can never marry her,” said his friend, and that night in his

-  hut the young Canadian blew out his brains.

-

-                                   _Facts in possession of the Author_

-

-  A young Canadian officer was sent home disgraced. Sodden with

-  alcohol, he left the train and shot a railway clerk dead.

-

-                _Facts in Montreal “Weekly Witness,” October 24, 1916_

-

-  A Russian soldier in the Canadian forces, described as a clean,

-  soldierly man, with a splendid character from his officer, was

-  charged with the murder of a Canadian private who tried to separate

-  two quarrelling soldiers in a bar. The prisoner had drunk much

-  whisky and remembered nothing of his crime, and was sentenced to

-  twelve months’ hard labour for manslaughter. The judge hoped he

-  might be used as a soldier _in the Russian Army_.

-

-                          _Record of Hampshire Assizes, February 1916_

-

-  A man from Prohibition Russia enlisted in Prohibition Canada, and

-  came to England. He spent 9_s._ on drink one day, and that night he

-  crept from his bed and killed his corporal at Witley Camp.

-

-                          _Police Records of Godalming, February 1917_

-

-  A Canadian soldier, aged 26, after a publichouse quarrel with

-  another soldier, was found dying on the pavement in Hastings. His

-  throat had been cut, and he died on entering the hospital. The other

-  soldier was charged with murder, and sentenced to 15 years.

-

-                              _Record of Hastings Assizes, March 1917_

-

-  A young Canadian soldier, aged 20, died from alcohol while in

-  training at Witley. He had a bottle of stout followed by nine or ten

-  “double-headers” of neat whisky in about two hours. He was carried

-  back to camp, laid unconscious on his bed, and died.

-

-                          _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” March 22, 1917_

-

-  A Canadian lieutenant was tried for the murder of a canteen

-  sergeant. They arrived together at a house at Grayshott, where the

-  lieutenant asked for some strong drink and took a bottle of whisky

-  and two glasses. The sergeant was afterwards found dead in the

-  cellar, and the lieutenant carried the body into the stable.

-

-                         _Records of Grayshott Coroner, December 1915_

-

-  A man leaving a publichouse in company with a woman, with whom he

-  had been drinking, met a Canadian soldier not far from Charing

-  Cross. The soldier spoke, and the man struck him. The soldier was

-  carried to the hospital, where he died soon afterwards from a wound

-  two inches deep, caused by a knife.

-

-                       _Police Records of Bow Street, January 1, 1917_

-

-  The wife of a gunner in the South African Heavy Artillery died at

-  Bexhill from alcohol. The soldier said he bought 12 bottles of stout

-  and 12 bottles of beer, one of whisky, and one of port, which they

-  drank between Saturday night and Monday night.

-

-                           _Records of Bexhill Coroner, December 1915_

-

-  A soldier from Toronto, having been drinking away his pay in a

-  Carlisle publichouse, with another Canadian soldier and some married

-  women, failed to appear the next morning, and was found dead on a

-  footpath with a bottle of whisky in his pocket

-

-                         _Records of Carlisle Coroner, April 14, 1917_

-

-  A Canadian soldier, having drawn £20 from the Canadian office,

-  visited several publichouses, and was killed in a scuffle in London.

-

-                             _Facts in “Daily News,” December 2, 1916_

-

-

-                   The Men From the Prohibition Camps

-

-Again and again we have seen the peculiar temptations of drink among

-Canadians. Officers, chief-constables, chaplains, newspapers, the men

-themselves, have all borne witness that to these men from Prohibition

-Canada the sudden temptations of our drink trade come with terrible

-power, and often they fall not knowing. The finest manhood of the Empire

-our tap-rooms and canteens destroy, not in isolated cases, but in a host

-we dare not number.

-

-Of the soldiers who first came over from Canada, says a great Canadian

-paper, many were emigrants from England, not yet securely planted in

-Canada, and for their sakes especially drink should have been withheld

-from them. Of the larger number of Canadian troops that followed them,

-many were youths who had never known drink, and they were taken from

-home at the most social and reckless age, to face drink with all the

-temptations induced by the nervous strain, the hardships and social

-abandon of the camp and the trench, and the free pocket-money when on

-leave.

-

-  In an officers’ mess of two double companies of Canadians only one

-  officer drank on his arrival in a canteen camp in England; within

-  three months there was not an abstainer in the mess.

-

-         _Facts told at Society for Study of Inebriety, Jan. 10, 1916_

-

-  These men come mostly from districts in Canada where intoxicants are

-  prohibited by law, and many of them, being young lads, who perhaps

-  have never tasted liquor before their arrival, fall easy victims.

-

-                                        _Chief Constable of Godalming_

-

-  Overseas soldiers come to our hospitals astonishingly cheerful and

-  fit in a general sense, and wonderfully receptive to treatment. Only

-  three per thousand die in our great hospitals. This is largely due

-  to the hardy life of the men and the fact that they are removed from

-  the danger of taking too much alcohol. The home troops have a much

-  higher mortality, partly because their use of alcohol diminishes

-  their chances. Re-admissions are largely due to drink on furlough.

-

-          _Major Maclean, M.D., of the Third Western General Hospital_

-

-  A Canadian soldier, who had been wounded at the Front, was taken to

-  a house by women and left alone drunk. An officer gave him an

-  excellent character, and said he was on his way back to Canada.

-  These men experience temptations here (he said) that they would not

-  find in Canada, and there was too much of this going on.

-

-                          _Hastings Police Records, February 19, 1917_

-

-  I heard a sad account of the havoc of the wet canteen and a private

-  in a Canadian A.M.C. told us of a lad of 17 who is made so drunk

-  that there is rarely a night when he has not to be helped up to bed.

-  One of the soldiers here told me of his son in Canada being anxious

-  to join up, but after seeing the condition of things over here he

-  was doing all he could to discourage his son.

-

-                                                _Letter to the Author_

-

-  The Canadians in most cases are entirely lost when they arrive in

-  this country, and are much more liable to the temptation which is

-  thrown in their way, but when you give a figure such as this—that in

-  one camp during last year, and two months of the previous year,

-  there were 7,000 cases—it seems to me that it is about time we

-  realised the magnitude of the evil. I do not know what has happened

-  to them, except that I imagine a large number have gone back to

-  Canada, and have not been able to play the part they had hoped to

-  play.

-

-                         _Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917_

-

-

-                          In Camp and On Leave

-

-Everywhere we find the trail of drink among Canadians—in camp and on

-leave.

-

-  A Canadian corporal, wounded in the Battle of Ypres, was found

-  terribly drunk after being missing all day from hospital. Confronted

-  with the surgeon after violent acts of insubordination, the corporal

-  broke down and cried like a child.

-

-                          _Facts in “Western Mail,” February 18, 1916_

-

-  In the first weeks of the war 42 Canadian soldiers disgraced

-  themselves, by excessive drinking, insubordination, and disorderly

-  conduct, to such an extent that they had to be sent back to Canada.

-

-                       _Facts in “Canadian Pioneer,” December 4, 1914_

-

-  A Canadian soldier, helplessly drunk, was seen at King’s Cross

-  station eating, tearing, and crumpling up £1 notes, and would have

-  lost about fifteen pounds but for kindly help from passers by.

-

-                      _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” September 28, 1916_

-

-  A gunner from Montreal, missing from camp for several days, drank

-  himself delirious, and cut his throat with a razor.

-

-                       _Facts in “Canadian Pioneer,” December 4, 1914_

-

-  A Canadian soldier spent £70 in three weeks on drink and bad

-  characters.

-

-                               _Facts in “Daily Mail” August 10, 1915_

-

-  A Sergeant-Major from Canada declared that he had lost 20 per cent.

-  of the men of his battery through venereal disease. They had a

-  little drink, and were captured by the swarm of bad women at

-  Folkestone.

-

-                                           _Facts in Letter to Author_

-

-  A woman was imprisoned for placing young children in moral danger.

-  Every night the girls brought soldiers home, and colonial soldiers

-  were frequently so drunk that they were carried in.

-

-                   _Records of Central Criminal Court, April 25, 1917_

-

-

-                       The Rising Storm in Canada

-

-  =The thing cannot be justified. It is the blackest tragedy of this

-  whole war that, in fighting for freedom in Europe, the free sons of

-  the British breed have to face this war-time record of waste at

-  home, with its inevitable toll of debauchery and crime.=

-

-                                        _Editorial in “Toronto Globe”_

-

-While this book was being written one of the greatest meetings ever held

-in Manchester was cheering a Canadian in khaki who declared that he was

-not going hungry while brewers were destroying food, and he went on to

-say, this soldier and sportsman well-known in the Dominion:

-

-  “Great numbers of our men never saw France. Canadian boys cried

-  because they had not munitions. England reeled and beer flowed like

-  water while thousands of our boys went down into their graves. We

-  will never forget it in Canada.”

-

-We may be sure Canada will not forget. She will not forget her dead: she

-will not forget that the Drink Traffic she has swept away at home struck

-down her sons in the land for which they fought. “We must know who is to

-blame,” says a Canadian paper; “we presume they will have no objection

-to have their names placarded before the country, that every mother may

-know.” Col. Sir Hamar Greenwood, M. P., has lately returned from Canada,

-and this is what he tells us:

-

-  “I met many fathers and mothers whose boys had been sent back to

-  Canada debilitated and ruined for life because they had been

-  enmeshed by harpies, and again and again these parents have said to

-  me, ‘We do not mind our boys dying on the field of battle for old

-  England, but to think that we sent our sons to England to come back

-  to us ruined in health, and a disgrace to us, to them, and to the

-  country, is something the Home Country should never ask us to

-  bear.’”

-

-  _Letter from a Solicitor in Ontario to the Author_:

-

-  I wonder if the advocates of the drink traffic in Britain appreciate

-  the contempt in which they are held in Canada. Before the war I had

-  a class of ten young men. Every one of them is now at the Front, and

-  one writes that when I told them of the drink conditions in England

-  he did not believe half of it; now he says I did not tell him half.

-  Letters from our Canadian soldiers are appearing in our papers, and

-  they are all amazed at the drinking habits of Britain.

-

-  _From a Resolution received by Mr. Lloyd George from the Social

-  Service Council of Nova Scotia_:

-

-  That we, representing the social, moral, and spiritual forces of

-  this part of the British Empire, who have proved our loyalty by the

-  thousands of men this small province has sent overseas, do record

-  our most earnest protest against Britain’s inaction in this matter,

-  which we are sure must result in longer and increased suffering for

-  the men we have sent to help her win the war; and do most

-  insistently plead with the British Government and the British

-  Parliament that they at once exercise the power vested in them to

-  strike the blow that will dispose of this enemy at home, and so give

-  mighty reinforcement to those who are bleeding and dying for Britain

-  and human liberties on the battlefields abroad.

-

-  _Sermon by Dr. Flanders in London, Ontario, Feb. 25, 1917_:

-

-  Canada has the right to make this demand on the Motherland from the

-  simple standpoint of political economics. That we might put the

-  Dominion into the best possible shape to give the utmost of our

-  strength in men and munitions, we have an almost Dominion-wide

-  Prohibition, and no intelligent person will deny that our

-  contributions to the war from the first have been multiplied and

-  intensified by that action. Why should little Johnnie Canuck abolish

-  drink that he might conserve his manhood and material resources in

-  the interest of the Empire’s war, and big John Bull refuse to

-  abolish the traffic to the great waste of his material resources and

-  the undoing of his efficiency?

-

-  _A public man with three soldier sons wrote to the Toronto Globe_:

-

-  Canada, for efficiency in war, casts out the drink evil. Is it too

-  much to expect Britain, in fairness, to do the same? Is it not a

-  mockery for the British Isles to face our common struggle with this

-  palsy in her frame?

-

-  Here is the bitter pill, the embittering thought for many a Canadian

-  parent. Let me be a type. Three of my sons are in khaki. I gave them

-  a father’s blessing when they enlisted. But this thought strains,

-  most of all, the ties of my loyalty to the cause—to see my sons

-  fight and fall for a Britain that at home is saddled by distillery

-  interests, and misguided by a Press silent as the grave on this

-  entrenched evil. Why should our sons go from a country where booze

-  is banished to spend months on the way to the trenches in England,

-  where the vices of the liquor traffic are legalised?

-

-  _We see the spirit of Canada in those great words of the Premier of

-  Ontario, Mr. Hearst, speaking of the giving up of drink_:

-

-  In this day of national peril, in this day when the future of the

-  British Empire, the freedom of the world, and the blessings of

-  democratic government hang in the balance, if I should fail to

-  listen to what I believe to be the call of duty, if I should neglect

-  to take every action that in my judgment will help to conserve the

-  financial strength and power and manhood of this province for the

-  great struggle in which we are engaged, I would be a traitor to my

-  country, a traitor to my own conscience, and unworthy of the brave

-  sons of Canada that are fighting, bleeding and dying for freedom and

-  for us.

-

-  _A letter from one of the most eminent public men in Canada_:

-

-  “British Canada is intensely loyal to the Empire and the Allied

-  Cause, but at present recruiting is almost at an end. Why? Partly

-  because of considerable dissatisfaction with many of the conditions

-  which prevail. Suffering, wounds, death, are expected as inevitable

-  in war, but the evil influences, the lavish temptations of liquor

-  and bad women which sweep down upon our boys in England, are not

-  felt to be necessary, and the hearts of multitudes of Canadian

-  parents are hot with indignation at the apparent indifference of the

-  authorities to the moral welfare of our troops.”

-

-  _Captain John MacNeill, with the Canadian troops in France_:

-

-  “I say to you solemnly, if England should lose this war because of

-  drink, or if England should unnecessarily prolong the war with great

-  sacrifice of life in her effort to protect drink, or even if England

-  should win the war in spite of drink, you will have put upon the

-  bonds of Empire such a strain as they have never known before, and

-  such a strain as we cannot promise they will be able to survive.”

-

-  _From the petition presented to the Prime Minister of Canada, signed

-  by 64,000 mothers and wives in Toronto_:

-

-  1. That Mothers and Wives of Canada in giving their sons and

-  husbands for King and Empire, asked and received from your Minister

-  of Militia this only assurance that, in sending them into the ranks,

-  we were not hereby irrevocably thrusting them into the temptation of

-  Strong Drink.

-

-  2. We appreciated from the depths of our hearts, your action in

-  abolishing the Wet Canteen from the Canadian Militia. We believe the

-  Wet Canteen established in the ranks of the front to be a double

-  danger, robbing our King of the success in arms which in these days

-  comes only to the brave heart that is controlled by a clear head,

-  and robbing us and our Canada of the Manhood which we gave into our

-  Empire’s keeping.

-

-  3. We do not believe that the King will refuse the aid of Canada’s

-  sons; nor that he will appreciate your patriotic efforts the less,

-  if you keep faith with us and make known to His Majesty, his

-  Ministers and Commanders, that our boys are sent forth on the one

-  condition that the dispensing of intoxicating liquors shall be

-  prohibited in the ranks.

-

-  _From a Sermon preached in Ontario, February 25, 1917_:

-

-  “Thank God, if any of our Canadian soldiers return to us with the

-  drink habit formed and raging, we can welcome them to a land nearly

-  purged of the liquor traffic, where they may have a chance to

-  recover their manhood.”

-

-  _Letter on the effects of Prohibition, from a business man in

-  Ontario, published in the “Spectator:”_

-

-  “Men I have known for years to be regular promenading tanks have

-  given it up, and are starting a decent life again. The Police Court

-  is empty. England should try it. It would be, after the first heavy

-  initial loss, the best thing that ever struck the nation. I cursed

-  these temperance guys as hard as any, but all the same it cannot

-  blind you from the truth.”

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                     Your Share in the Food Crisis

-

-

-         The Food and Money Wasted on Drink in Our Great Towns

-

-           ESTIMATED FROM AUGUST 1914 TO APRIL 1917 INCLUSIVE

-                       by GEORGE B. WILSON, B.A.,

-                  Compiler of the National Drink Bill

-

-   ───────────────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────┬──────────────

-                          │ Drink Bill  │ Grain Lost  │Sugar in Beer

-   ───────────────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼──────────────

-                          │             │    Tons     │     lb.

-   United Kingdom         │ £510,000,000│    4,400,000│   762,000,000

-   London                 │  £83,000,000│      693,000│   120,000,000

-   Edinburgh              │   £3,200,000│       31,000│     5,300,000

-   Dublin                 │   £2,600,000│       29,000│     5,000,000

-   Glasgow                │  £10,500,000│      101,000│    17,400,000

-   Manchester and Salford │  £11,000,000│       92,000│    15,900,000

-   Birmingham             │   £9,900,000│       82,000│    14,200,000

-   Liverpool              │   £8,800,000│       73,000│    12,600,000

-   Sheffield              │   £5,400,000│       45,000│     7,800,000

-   Leeds                  │   £5,300,000│       44,000│     7,600,000

-   Bristol                │   £4,200,000│       35,000│     6,000,000

-   West Ham               │   £3,400,000│       28,000│     4,900,000

-   Bradford               │   £3,300,000│       28,000│     4,800,000

-   Hull                   │   £3,300,000│       27,000│     4,700,000

-   Newcastle              │   £3,100,000│       26,000│     4,500,000

-   Nottingham             │   £3,100,000│       26,000│     4,500,000

-   Portsmouth             │   £2,800,000│       23,000│     4,400,000

-   Stoke                  │   £2,800,000│       23,000│     4,000,000

-   Leicester              │   £2,700,000│       22,000│     3,800,000

-   Cardiff                │   £2,100,000│       18,000│     3,100,000

-   Bolton                 │   £2,100,000│       18,000│     3,000,000

-   Croydon                │   £2,100,000│       17,000│     3,000,000

-   Sunderland             │   £1,700,000│       14,000│     2,500,000

-   Oldham                 │   £1,700,000│       14,000│     2,500,000

-   Birkenhead             │   £1,600,000│       13,000│     2,200,000

-   Blackburn              │   £1,500,000│       13,000│     2,200,000

-   Brighton               │   £1,500,000│       13,000│     2,200,000

-   Plymouth               │   £1,500,000│       12,000│     2,100,000

-   Derby                  │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,100,000

-   Middlesbrough          │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,100,000

-   Stockport              │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,100,000

-   Norwich                │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,100,000

-   Southampton            │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,000,000

-   Swansea                │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,000,000

-   Gateshead              │   £1,400,000│       11,000│     2,000,000

-   Preston                │   £1,400,000│       11,000│     1,900,000

-   Coventry               │   £1,300,000│       11,000│     1,900,000

-   Huddersfield           │   £1,300,000│       10,000│     1,800,000

-   Halifax                │   £1,200,000│       10,000│     1,700,000

-   ───────────────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────┴──────────────

-

-

-                             PLAY THE GAME

-

-           There is one week’s bread in      18 pints of beer

-           There is one week’s sugar in      16 pints of beer

-

-  The man who drinks 3 pints a day drinks another man’s rations.

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                 THE FOOD PYRAMIDS DESTROYED FOR DRINK

-

-

-[Illustration:

-

-  The Great Pyramid of Egypt, the biggest construction in stone ever

-    made by the hands of man—80,000,000 cubic feet of masonry]

-

-[Illustration:

-

-  The Great Pyramids of Food, the biggest wilful destruction of food

-    ever known—180,000,000 cubic feet of food destroyed for the Drink

-    Trade during the war]

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                      How the Brewer Gets Our Food

-

-

-THE MEN WHO BRING IT

-

-It is easy to talk of a mine-sweeper. I wish the whole nation could

-understand what these men are doing. They are feeding the whole

-population, battling with the elements as well as with the enemy,

-battling with dangers overhead and dangers under the sea. The

-mine-sweeper is like the soldier daily over the parapet—he carries his

-life in his hand.

-

-                                          _First Lord of the Admiralty._

-

-

-THE PEOPLE WHO WAIT FOR IT

-

-A London caterer ordered a quantity of sugar from the Philippines. The

-mine-sweepers cleared the way for it and it reached the docks. The

-caterer sent for it, and was informed that it could only be delivered if

-it was for a brewer.

-

-A provincial caterer ordered sugar _and paid for it_, but was told by

-the Food Controller that it could only be released if _it was sold to a

-brewer_.

-

-A working man was discussing rations with his minister in the street.

-“It is very hard,” he said, “to keep to your rations when you have five

-strapping lads, but we are going to try it.” Then a drunken man lurched

-past. The workman pulled himself together, and said, in great passion:

-“I tell you what it is, sir, I am not going to let my boys starve as

-long as there is food to make beer for men like that.”

-

-

-THE PRICE WE PAY FOR IT

-

-Immense quantities of food are used for beer and spirits. All this grain

-is lost for food purposes. _If this grain were available for food, the

-prices of bread and meat would be lowered._

-

-                                                _War Savings Committee._

-

-

-THE POOR WHO SUFFER FOR IT

-

-“Rationing bread could not be undertaken without grave risk to the

-health of the poor.”

-

-                                                 _Capt. Bathurst, M. P._

-

-                   By what right does the Government

-

-use our mine-sweepers to bring in food for brewers to destroy? allow

-brewers to increase the cost of living for every household? and allow

-the willful destruction of food supplies to imperil the health of the

-poor?

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                       The Way for the Government

-

-

-We do not want to be amused by fiddlers while our heroes fight and die.

-

-What are the things we see? We see the Government silent in the presence

-of what the greatest paper in our greatest overseas Dominion calls “the

-blackest tragedy of the war.” We see a trade which the King declared to

-be prolonging the war in the crisis of 1915, prolonging it still in the

-crisis of 1917. We see our Prime Minister, who has declared this trade

-to be worse than Germany, allowing it to have its way. We see our Prime

-Minister, who has said we cannot settle with Germany until we have

-settled with drink, fearing to settle with drink. Then are we not to

-settle with Germany, and are we to surrender to the greatest enemy of

-the three?

-

-There is one clear way before the Government; it is the only way of

-straightness and patriotism and honour. It is to wind up this enemy

-trade and move from our path the greatest hindrance to the winning of

-the war. It is to take our side honourably with our great Allies, to

-bring to an end the shameful isolation of Great Britain in the drink map

-of the great free countries that appears on the back of this book.

-

-It is the sign of weakness everywhere that it seeks a scapegoat for its

-sins, and we hear the everlasting talk of Labour. But it will not do. It

-is time these slanders on our workmen ceased.

-

-If the Government is afraid of the working man, let it say so, or let it

-try him. If it is afraid of temperance people, let it rally them to its

-side as one man on the platform where they meet. If it is afraid of the

-Drink Trade, then the time has come to say so, for we who send out our

-millions to fight a foreign foe are not going to starve for bread

-through fear of enemies within our gate. The Prime Minister gave the

-Army its munitions; the Army will use them in vain unless the munitions

-of life come into our homes.

-

-Working men are tired of men who fool with food and liberty. They do not

-object to any equal sacrifice: they believe in the democratic policy of

-the King, who based Prohibition, not on class distinction as the

-Government did by closing tap-rooms 15 hours a day and leaving cellars

-and Parliamentary bars open always, but on the principle of the King’s

-own words that “no difference shall be made, so far as his Majesty is

-concerned, between the treatment of the rich and poor in this respect.”

-Let the Government follow the King, and the people will follow the

-Government.

-

-In the highest interests of the nation and the war let this be said as

-plain as words can make it—_that there is no body of temperance opinion

-anywhere standing in the way of Prohibition_, but that the united moral

-forces of the nation would rally to the Government instantly on an act

-of a few words such as this:

-

-=That the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages be totally

-prohibited in the United Kingdom for the period of the war and

-demobilization, and that a committee be appointed to deal with all the

-private and public interests concerned; and that it be resolved upon,

-here and now, that reconstruction be accompanied by universal local

-option.=

-

-There would be no opposition the Government need count to a proposal

-like that.

-

-[Illustration: TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION LABEL WESTERVILLE O.]

-

-

-

-

-      *      *      *      *      *      *

-

-

-

-

-Transcriber’s note:

-

-Obvious typographical and punctuation errors were corrected.

-

-Inconsistencies in hyphenation were retained.

-

-

-

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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 53733 ***
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 53733-h.htm or 53733-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/53733/53733-h/53733-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/53733/53733-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      https://archive.org/details/fiddlersdrinkinw00meea
+
+
+Transcriber’s note:
+
+      Italic text is represented by underscores surrounding the
+      _italic text_.
+
+      Bold text is represented by equal signs surrounding the
+      =bold text=.
+
+      Small capitals have been converted to ALL CAPITALS.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FIDDLERS
+
+Drink in the Witness Box
+
+by
+
+ARTHUR MEE
+
+
+    _If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and
+       those that are ready to be slain;
+    If thou sayest, “Behold, we knew it not;” doth not he that
+       pondereth the heart consider it?
+    And shall not He render to every man according to his works?_
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Published by Morgan & Scott, Ltd
+12 Paternoster Buildings, London, E. C. 4
+
+First Hundred Thousand       May 15, 1917
+Second Hundred Thousand      June 1, 1917
+
+Reprinted in the United States by
+The American Issue Publishing Company
+Westerville, Ohio
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+[Illustration:
+
+                        DRINK LEADING FAMINE IN
+
+  The Drink Trade gave Germany her greatest weapon in the war by helping
+  to make the bread famine.
+
+  It was the wilful destruction of 4,800,000 tons of food, depriving the
+  nation of her reserves, that led to the appalling gravity of the
+  submarine menace.]
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+[Illustration:
+
+                Drink, What did You do in the Great War?
+
+              This impressive picture of Britannia is from
+               the splendid 1916 issue of Bibby’s Annual]
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+[Illustration:
+
+        THE ALLIES AND PROHIBITION—STOPPING DRINK TO WIN THE WAR
+
+     The Drink Map before the War and on the 1000th day of the War
+
+               CANADA—Prohibition almost from Sea to Sea
+               FRANCE—Total Prohibition of Absinthe
+               RUSSIA—Prohibition Everywhere
+               BRITAIN—120,000 Drink shops open daily]
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                            The Wages of Sin
+
+
+The time has come when it should be said that those responsible for our
+country now stand on the very threshold of eternal glory or eternal
+shame. They play and palter with the greatest enemy force outside
+Berlin. The news from Vimy Ridge comes to a land whose rulers quail
+before a foe within the gate.
+
+Not for one hour has the full strength of Britain been turned against
+her enemies. From the first day of the war, while our mighty Allies have
+been striking down this foe within their gates, Britain has let this
+trade stalk through her streets, serving the Kaiser’s purposes, and
+paying the Government £1,000,000 a week for the right to do it.
+
+She has let this trade destroy our food and bring us to the verge of
+famine; she has let it keep back guns and shells and hold up ships; she
+has let it waste our people’s wealth in hundreds of millions of pounds;
+she has let it put its callous brake on the merciful Red Cross; she has
+let it jeopardize the unity and safety of the Empire—for it may yet be
+found, as Dr. Stuart Holden has so finely said, that the links that bind
+the Pax Britannica are solvable in that great chemist’s solvent,
+alcohol.
+
+The witnesses are too great to number; we can only call a few. There is
+no room for all those witnesses whose evidence is in the House of
+Commons Return 220 (1915), showing the part drink played in the great
+shell famine, in delaying ships and guns, and imperiling the Army and
+the Fleet.
+
+But the indictment is heavy. I charge this trade with the crime the King
+laid at its door two years ago, the crime of prolonging the war; and the
+witnesses are here at the bar of the people. The verdict is with them,
+and the judgment is with those who rule.
+
+_The wages of sin is death: What are the wages of those who fail in an
+hour like this?_
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          Fiddling to Disaster
+
+  We are not going to lose the war through the submarines if we all
+  behave like reasonable human beings who want to save their country
+  from disaster, privation and distress.
+
+                                                  _The Prime Minister_
+
+
+_What are we to say of a Government that plays with war and drink and
+famine while these brave words are ringing in our ears?_
+
+If the situation is so desperate that we must all go short of food, it
+is desperate enough for the Government to be in earnest. But what are
+the plain facts? No reasonable man who knows them can say that the
+Government is in earnest.
+
+It is not denied by anybody who knows the facts that drink has been the
+greatest hindrance of the war. There is not a doubt that it has
+prolonged the war for months and cost us countless lives. It is the duty
+of the Government to face a dangerous thing like this; it is its duty to
+pursue the war with a single eye to the speediest possible victory. But
+the records of our war Governments in dealing with drink have been
+records of fiddling and failure, and we stand in the third year of the
+war with a Government fiddling still.
+
+One thing will be perfectly clear if disaster and famine come. It will
+be known to all the world that the Government knew the facts in time to
+save us. We are in the war because we would not listen in times of
+peace. We are in the third year of the war because we would not listen
+in the first. We are faced with famine because we would not listen in
+times of plenty, when drink was breaking down our food reserves. And we
+are drifting now, nearer to disaster every day, because the Government
+surrenders to the enemy worse than Germany.
+
+It does not matter where you look, or when; the evidence of the fiddling
+is everywhere about you. Take the week before the Prime Minister’s grave
+speech about submarines—ending May 19.
+
+  _Submarines destroyed 27 British cargoes, mostly over 1600 tons._
+
+  =Brewers destroyed 27 British food cargoes, totaling 9000 tons.=
+
+  _The granaries of Canada were crammed with wheat waiting for British
+  ships, but there were no ships to bring this people’s food._
+
+  =The rum quay at London Docks was crammed with casks of rum to last
+  till 1920, but a ship arrived with 1000 Casks more.=
+
+  _A woman was fined £5 for destroying a quartern loaf._
+
+  =Brewers were fined nothing for destroying millions of loaves.=
+
+  _Poor people waited in queues to buy sugar in London._
+
+  =Cartloads of sugar were destroyed in London breweries.=
+
+And so we might go on, looking on this picture and on that till the mind
+almost reels with the solemn farce. The Prime Minister has suggested
+that the farce does not end because those who demand its end cannot make
+up their mind. It is the Government that cannot make up its mind.
+
+  It tells Parliament that no more rum is to be imported, and goes on
+  importing rum for years ahead.
+
+  It forbids the use of spirits less than three years old, and reduces
+  the three years to 18 months.
+
+  It restricts beer to 10,000,000 barrels, and tells us one day that
+  it is all-inclusive, and the next day that the Army Council can
+  order as much extra beer as it likes.
+
+  It issues a report saying that hops are not food, and gives up
+  hundreds of thousands of feet to shipping them; 23,000 cubic feet
+  the other week.
+
+  It tells us that not an inch of shipping is wasted, and wastes
+  shipping on bringing brewers’ vats from America and taking gin to
+  Africa.
+
+  It tells us that the Drink Trade gave up its distilleries
+  patriotically, and leaves us to discover that it was made the
+  subject of a bargain by which bread was being destroyed for whisky
+  as late as May this year.
+
+It is quite clear that the Government is desperately in need of a
+scapegoat, and desperately in need of a defense. Prohibition Russia is
+not mightily impressed with our drinking; serious Canadians are asking
+how long they are to sacrifice their manhood to our brewers; America is
+asking already why she should go short of bread in order that England
+may drink more beer.
+
+A Government must clearly say something in view of these things, and it
+has put its defense in the care of one of the sanest and cleverest men
+in the United Kingdom, Mr. Kennedy Jones. If Mr. Jones does not make out
+a case for it, there is no case to make. What does he say?
+
+1. _We are told that only five per cent. of malt can be mixed with flour
+for bread._
+
+All over the country this explanation is supposed to satisfy those
+simple, honest people who know little about percentages but ask plain
+questions at Food Economy meetings. It is preposterous nonsense. If we
+have 200,000 tons of malted barley, what on earth does it matter whether
+we mix it at fifty, or five, or two per cent., so long as we do mix it?
+_It adds 200,000 tons to our bread in any case._ This talk of five per
+cent., puzzling to people who think it means that only one-twentieth of
+this malted barley can be used, is pitiful evidence, surely, of the
+straits to which the Food Controller’s Defense Department is reduced.
+
+2. _We are told that the barley destroyed for beer would give the nation
+only ten days’ bread._
+
+It would actually last us a fortnight. Drink, which has taken a quartern
+loaf from every British cupboard in every week of the war, is taking
+still a quartern loaf a month from every cupboard, and the desperate
+appeals of Mr. Kennedy Jones will be more effective in saving crumbs
+when he can tell us that he has stopped this monstrous destruction of
+over 1,000 tons of grain a day.
+
+3. _We are told that our munition workers are dependent on beer._
+
+It is an astounding slander. However true it may be of Governments, it
+is not true of our workmen. For four months the workman has been the
+scapegoat of this Government in its surrender to this trade, and we are
+asked at last to believe that these men who saved us from the Shell
+Famine are willing to drink us into a Bread Famine. Does the Government
+never pause to ask how millions of munition workers in America and
+Canada and the United Kingdom manage without beer? Does nobody in the
+Government know that the greatest steel furnaces in America are under
+total Prohibition, and that two million American railwaymen are subject
+to instant dismissal if they touch drink while on duty? Has the
+Government not read its own report of the Royal Society Committee which
+had this point in mind six months ago, and told us, on the highest
+authority in this country, that soldiers march better and keep fitter
+without alcohol; that men do more work on less energy without alcohol;
+and that “the records of American industrial experience are significant
+in showing a better output when no alcohol is taken by the workmen”?
+
+4. _We are told we need this trade for yeast._
+
+We need not bother overmuch about that. Industrial alcohol will give us
+all we want, and there is no need to carry on this dangerous trade for
+the sake of yeast. We do not need a single ounce of brewer’s yeast, and
+we can do without distiller’s yeast as well by setting up a thousandth
+part of the machinery we have set up in the last two years. Or, while we
+must have yeast, we need about 30,000 tons a year for the whole United
+Kingdom, and since the prohibition of hops in June last year _we have
+given enough shipping to hops every fortnight to bring in enough yeast
+for a year_. A Government with shipping to spare like that, with room on
+its ships for mountains of hops, for enormous brewers’ vats, and for rum
+for 1921, can find room for 100 tons a day of the people’s bread. It is
+a monstrous perversion of the facts to suggest that we must maintain
+this food-destroying trade, with all its hideous tragedy and ruin, in
+order to make bread.
+
+It cannot be said that a Government with such desperate excuses is in
+earnest. We do not wonder that a great American farmers’ paper, with no
+axe to grind except that it is sane and patriotic and believes in the
+war, is asking plain questions as America prepares her Prohibition Army,
+her Prohibition Navy, and stops the destruction of grain for drink in
+order to enter the war at full strength.
+
+Let the Food Controller, the Prime Minister, and every responsible
+citizen of the United Kingdom read this—it is from the most influential
+flour-milling paper in the world, the “North Western Miller,” published
+in Minneapolis:
+
+“=Since the United States will be called upon to make food sacrifices on
+behalf of the Allies, it is certainly in order to call to account the
+stewardship of Great Britain in regard to food supplies. Ordinarily
+America would have no right to demand such an account, but Americans are
+now asked to deny themselves that Britain may have sufficient.=
+
+“=Britain has not seen fit to prohibit the use of cereals in the
+manufacture of drink, notwithstanding that the world’s food supply was
+obviously short. Are Americans required to forego a part of their
+accustomed ration of bread in order that their British Allies can
+continue to have a plentiful supply of beer and whisky? If not, then
+Britain should lose no time in putting its house in order, quitting the
+drink to add to the common store of food upon which the safety of all
+the Allies depends.=
+
+“=The food supply for the Allies is no longer a purely local
+proposition, to be used as a football in British politics; it deeply
+concerns the people of the United States, who are certainly not called
+upon to deny themselves bread in order that Britain shall have drink.=”
+
+What is the Government’s answer to this? “We owe a very considerable
+debt of gratitude to the great American people for the effective
+assistance they are rendering us,” says the Prime Minister. _Is this the
+way we pay them back?_ It is an ugly question for our great Ally to have
+to raise as she comes into the war, flinging her Prohibition Navy in to
+smash the drink-made menace of the submarine. It is unthinkable that the
+Government can read these bitter words unmoved, or can leave this stain
+on our history in the face of all these questionings.
+
+There is another question, too, that comes across the Atlantic. What is
+the Government going to do with the soldiers of America’s Prohibition
+Army, and the sailors of America’s Prohibition Navy, when they come over
+here? Are they to be broken in their thousands, made useless and
+degraded as thousands of men from Prohibition Canada have been, by the
+enemy that traps them before they reach the war?
+
+They are questions for the Government and the nation, and they must be
+answered in the interests of the nation, and not to please the trade
+that helps the Germans every day. We cannot afford to pay the appalling
+price the future will demand unless our fiddlers change their tune.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                  The Drink Trade and Our War Services
+
+
+=It is not possible to measure the strain the Drink Traffic has imposed
+on our war services.=
+
+The Food Controller’s Organization, with its great offices and staffs,
+would not have been needed had we saved the food destroyed by drink.
+
+Rationing already involves 1,200 committees, and may mean 50,000
+officials and 50,000,000 tickets weekly. It could all be avoided.
+Prohibition would save more bread without food controlling than all the
+food controlling can save without Prohibition.
+
+The National Service, with its network of officials, its costly
+advertising, its absorption of paper and printing, could all have been
+avoided under Prohibition. About 200,000 men have enrolled, but
+Prohibition would give us twice that man-power any day.
+
+The strain on a host of men and women looking after soldiers’ children
+neglected through drink, soldiers’ wives spending allowances on drink,
+is incalculable.
+
+The strain on war charities and the strain on the police arising from
+drink are both very great.
+
+The strain of drink on doctors, nurses, and hospitals is beyond belief.
+Prohibition would set free for the Red Cross thousands who waste their
+time on the great drink trail.
+
+The strain on transport is seen in the long lines of wagons drawn by
+strong horses carting beer to public-houses. This year alone the
+handling of drink must equal the lifting of at least 9,000,000 tons, and
+the barrels of beer would fill nearly all the railway wagons in the
+kingdom. As to ships, drink materials during the war have used up 60
+ships of 5,000 tons working all the time.
+
+On Lord Milner’s estimate of 19 barrels to the truck it would require
+4,500,000 railway trucks to carry the 17,000,000 tons of beer
+manufactured in the United Kingdom during the war.
+
+=It can be proved from official figures that the weight of drink-stuff
+carried about since war began has been equal to the weight of solid
+material carried by the Navy to all our fighting fronts.=
+
+It is a crying shame that the strength of Britain should be destroyed
+like this in such an hour as this.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                  The War-Work of the Food Destroyers
+
+
+There are hundreds of great Food Destructors in the United Kingdom. The
+man-power at their service, spread over our breweries and distilleries,
+numbers hundreds of thousands of men; their capital is hundreds of
+millions. This is a summary of the work they did in the first 1,000 days
+of the war:
+
+=They sacrificed 4,400,000 tons of grain and 340,000 tons of sugar,
+enough to ration the whole United Kingdom with bread for 43 weeks and
+sugar for 33 weeks.=
+
+=They took from every kitchen cupboard in the land 600 pounds of bread
+and 76 pounds of sugar.=
+
+=They destroyed bread and sugar to last every child under fifteen for
+every day of the war.=
+
+=They took from our people over £512,000,000.=
+
+=They used up labour and transport for lifting over 50,000,000 tons. By
+sea they used up 60 ships of 5,000 tons; by rail their raw materials and
+the finished products would make up a train long enough to reach nearly
+round the world.=
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                 The Food Now Being Destroyed for Beer
+
+
+Look at the actual facts about beer alone. We will ignore distilling, as
+it gives us munitions and yeast. Had the Government tried to solve the
+yeast question it could have solved it easily in these three years; it
+would have had no more trouble with that problem than Russia and Canada
+and America have had. But as the Government is still investigating the
+yeast question, we will confine our figures to beer.
+
+=Brewers are destroying 450,000 4-lb. loaves a day.=
+
+=This year’s food destruction for beer alone will equal five weeks’
+bread rations and four weeks’ sugar rations for the whole United
+Kingdom.=
+
+=We have seven critical weeks in this summer, and this year’s
+destruction of food would carry us through.=
+
+=Beer alone is taking 10 pounds of sugar a year from every kitchen
+cupboard, and an ounce of sugar a day from every soldier.=
+
+That is what drink is doing at this moment with the shadow of famine
+creeping on.
+
+ “_He who withholdeth the corn the people shall curse him._” Proverbs.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          The Shadow of Famine
+
+
+The Government came into office with the food shortage in sight; it was
+its first duty to build up the great reserve of food we might have had
+now in our granaries if the drink trade had not destroyed it. We could
+have laughed at submarines, for our barns would have been filled to
+overflowing, and we could have lived in comfort for a year if no ship
+reached us.
+
+Let us see how much food drink has destroyed during the war. We will
+take it from August 4, 1914, to April 30, 1917. It is 999 days of the
+war. The grain and sugar destroyed for drink have been:
+
+               Grain                      4,400,000 tons
+               Sugar (for beer alone)       340,000 tons
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  How Canada sees it—A Canadian cartoon of the callous destruction of
+    bread for beer and whisky]
+
+It is not easy to realize what this means, but it will help us if we
+think of one or two examples.
+
+=The biggest thing ever set up on earth is the Great Pyramid. It is
+80,000,000 cubic feet. The food destroyed by drink during the war would
+make two Great Pyramids, each bigger than the Pyramid of Egypt.=
+
+=The longest British railway is the Great Western; it is over 3,000
+miles, but it would not hold the food destroyed by drink since war
+began. If every inch of it were crammed with wagons, the Great Western
+Railway would need hundreds of miles more line to hold the train-loads
+of food destroyed.=
+
+=There are about 750,000 railway wagons in the United Kingdom, but if
+the Drink Trade had them all they would not hold the food it has
+destroyed.=
+
+=There are about 30,000 engines on our British railways, and if the food
+destroyed were made up in trains of 125 tons apiece, all our engines
+would not pull them; we should still want 10,000 more.=
+
+So vast is this incredible quantity of food destroyed by an enemy trade
+while famine has been coming on. We should have saved it all if
+Parliament had followed the King, and it would have given the whole
+United Kingdom its flour rations for nearly a year. Take it at its
+minimum scientific human food value, and on the basis of our rations in
+May, 1917, it would have given us:
+
+             Flour for the whole United Kingdom    43 weeks
+             Sugar for the whole United Kingdom    33 weeks
+
+Our three war Governments, confronted with the increasing certainty of
+at least a three-years’ war, have allowed the Drink Trade to destroy
+this vast reserve of food.
+
+The full toll of this trade upon our scanty food supply, growing shorter
+and shorter while the queues outside our food shops grow longer and
+longer, is staggering indeed, even now with drink about three-quarters
+stopped. We must remember that it makes no difference that the barley
+has been malted; it is still good human food, and every ounce of it
+should be mixed with grain for making bread. Let us remember, also, that
+_brewer’s sugar is a good pure sugar_, the objection to it being largely
+the objection most of us have to standard bread—its colour. Malt or
+sugar, every ounce a brewer destroys is food stolen from the people. Let
+us take expert opinion on the subject.
+
+
+                    The Food Value of Brewer’s Sugar
+
+  We do not, of course, use this dark sugar when white sugar is cheap
+  and easily procurable, but during the war we have used it for
+  coffee, cocoa, and tea; and for puddings where colour did not
+  matter. We have used it a good deal in our bakeries for chocolate
+  goods, where colour again does not matter. It is a good, pure sugar,
+  and the colour is the principal drawback.
+
+                          _Letter to Arthur Mee from a London caterer_
+
+
+                    The Food Value of Brewer’s Malt
+
+  Malt flour can be used to make excellent cake with 50 per cent.
+  wheat flour. It is sweet and pleasant to taste without the need of
+  any sugar. Good scones can be made with 25 per cent. of malt flour.
+  Its use in bread made with yeast causes too much fermentation in the
+  bread, but it has no effect on baking-powder. The Food Controller’s
+  Department is aware of the practicability of using malt flour, but
+  the sale is restricted in order to limit its use for making beer.
+  Brewers and maltsters are too patriotic to wish to use for beer what
+  could be applied to food in case of a serious shortage, and the
+  large stocks of barley and malt can supplement the supply of wheat
+  flour.
+
+                 _Letter from a Brewer in the “Times,” April 11, 1917_
+
+Yet we have seen our Government holding up sugar for brewers; we have
+seen our Food Controller refuse to release a caterer’s sugar unless it
+were sold to a brewer; we have seen a Government short of food-ships
+bringing in brewers’ vats and casks of rum; and we see the Government
+still holding up this malt that would feed a people asking for more
+bread.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          The Tunes They Play
+
+
+Strange tunes we hear the fiddlers play, but their music does not charm
+away the troubles of a famine-threatened land. From morning till night
+the prayer of the people rises, “Give us this day our daily bread,” but
+the heart of Downing Street is hardened, and the nation’s bread goes day
+by day to the destroyer.
+
+But all the time we see the measure of the courage of our rulers on the
+hoardings in the streets. We know their posters by heart.
+
+_Defeat the enemy’s attempt to starve you_, by—not by stopping the
+destruction of food, but by joining the National Service, and probably
+helping to pick hops. There was a man in a co-operative store who
+volunteered for National Service, and last month he received
+instructions _to leave the grocery store and take up duty in a brewery_.
+
+_Sow your window-boxes and plant your back gardens_—and Mr. Prothero
+will see that the soil of a million back gardens is wasted on hops.
+
+_We have not enough food to last till the harvest_—why not go out and
+catch rabbits, asks Lord Devonport—and sit and wait for sparrows?
+
+_We must save every pound of bread we can to get over our critical
+weeks_—not by saving the quartern loaf that beer is taking every month
+from every British cupboard now, but by going hungry so that drinkers
+may not thirst.
+
+_We must not eat more than our share, on our honour_—but the man across
+the table can eat his share of bread and drink somebody else’s too.
+
+_We must eat less and eat slowly_—so that brewers may waste more and
+waste quickly.
+
+_We must keep back famine_—but not by using malt, says Captain Bathurst:
+that would cost three times as much as letting famine come. _But why not
+keep the malt till bread is as dear as gold?_
+
+_Let all heads of households abstain from using grain except in bread_,
+says the King’s Proclamation. But let the brewers waste 8,000 tons a day
+for beer, says the Government.
+
+_God speed the plough and the woman who drives it_—yes, and God help the
+woman who drives the plough to feed the brewer while her little ones cry
+for bread.
+
+_Let us fine £5 whoever wastes a loaf_, says the Food Controller—but
+not, of course, the brewers who waste 450,000 quartern loaves a day.
+
+Hops are no use as food to anybody, says the Board of Trade Scientific
+Committee. “_Then let us grow only half as many_,” said Mr. Prothero.
+
+Mr. Lloyd George says Mr. Prothero is working “in a continuous rattle of
+mocking laughter and gibes.” Yes, it is the mocking laughter of a nation
+that is not really amused by sights like this. The nation does not like
+to see the bread rations of 70,000 men in France cut down while the
+Drink Trade is destroying every week bread enough to last these men a
+year. It does not like to see the Government sending letters out to
+managers of factory canteens, begging them to be careful of bread, while
+food flows through our beer canteens like a river running to waste. It
+does not like to see Y. M. C. A. canteens denied supplies of sugar while
+barrels of beer are stacked in great piles outside. It does not like the
+calling up of discharged soldiers while thousands of strong men are
+working hard all day destroying food or carting beer about the streets;
+and it does net like the tragic comedies of Captain Bathurst, who warns
+us that it really may become necessary in the national interest—and
+then, perhaps, he drops his voice to break it very gently—it really may
+become necessary, if these cake shops are not very careful, _to
+whitewash the lower part of their windows_.
+
+Oh, these fiddlers! And now we have a new idea from the Food Control
+Department; it is a coloured poster of a Union Jack and a big loaf on
+it, and “Waste not, Want not,” printed in big type. It was being printed
+on the day the Prime Minister told the nation that America had found it
+is no use waving a neutral flag in the teeth of a shark. It is an
+eloquent and true saying, but it is also true, that it is no use waving
+platitudes from copybooks in the teeth of a wolf at the door. The Prime
+Minister says he is taking no chances. Let us be quite sure. We once had
+a Government of which men said its motto was “Wait and See.” _Are we
+better off, or are we worse, with a Government that Sees and Waits?_
+
+But there is no end to the fiddling. With Food Controllers who hold up
+food for Food Destroyers; with Food Economy Handbooks that cry out loud
+to save the crumbs but have no word to say about the tons we fling away;
+with a Prime Minister praying for window-boxes and a Board of
+Agriculture consecrating hopfields, we need not be surprised if the
+nation is not mightily impressed.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                         How the Allies Did It
+
+
+All the world knows, except, apparently, the world that goes round at
+Westminster, how Prohibition has helped the Allies.
+
+_With the Shell Famine at its height—largely made by Drink—the
+Prohibition Army on the East held up the enemy while Britain fought the
+Drink Trade for her shells._
+
+_With the Bread Famine looming in sight—largely made by Drink—the
+Prohibition Navy from the West flings in her power against the
+submarines._
+
+Oh, for the spirit of our Allies in this land! If France wants to rouse
+the spirit of Verdun she strikes down her foe at home and puts absinthe
+away. If Russia wants to be great and free she stops this drink and
+orders out the Romanoffs. If Canada wants to give her utmost help to
+Britain she stops this drink from sea to sea. If Australia wants to make
+her soldiers fit she trains them in her Prohibition camps. If America
+wants to beat the whole world at making shells she drives drink from her
+workshops. If San Francisco has an earthquake she stops drink while she
+pulls herself together. If Liverpool has a dangerous strike she shuts up
+public-houses and keeps the city quiet. Oh, for a Government of Britain
+that will see what all the world can see!
+
+History will do justice to the part the Prohibition policy of the Allies
+has played in saving Europe, but a pamphlet has no room for these
+things. We can take only one or two great witnesses to the mighty
+achievements of our Prohibition Allies. Let us begin with France, and
+call our own Prime Minister to tell us what they did. Mr. Lloyd George:
+
+  One afternoon we had to postpone our conference in Paris, and the
+  French Minister of Finance said, “I have to go to the Chamber of
+  Deputies, because I am proposing a bill to abolish absinthe.”
+  Absinthe plays the same part in France that whisky plays in this
+  country, and they abolished it by a majority of something like ten
+  to one that afternoon.
+
+And how did Paris take this prohibition that men said would cause a
+revolution? Let us ask Mr. Philip Gibbs, whose splendid letters home
+have made his name a household word. Mr. Philip Gibbs:
+
+  Absinthe was banned by a thunderstroke, and Parisians who had
+  acquired the absinthe habit trembled in every limb at this judgment
+  which would reduce them to physical and moral wrecks. But the edict
+  was given and Paris obeyed, loyally and with resignation.
+
+And now we come to Russia, to these mighty Russian people who in the
+last year of vodka saved £6,000,000 or £7,000,000, and in the last full
+year of Prohibition saved £177,000,000. We will call our own Prime
+Minister again:
+
+  Russia, knowing her deficiency, knowing how unprepared she was,
+  said, “I must pull myself together. I am not going to be trampled
+  upon, unready as I am. I will use all my resources.” What is the
+  first thing she does? She stops drink.
+
+  I was talking to M. Bark, the Russian Minister of Finance, and I
+  asked, “What has been the result?” He said, “The productivity of
+  labour, the amount of work which is put out by the workmen, has gone
+  up between 30 and 50 per cent.”
+
+  I said, “How do they stand it without their liquor?” and he replied,
+  “Stand it? I have lost revenue over it up to £65,000,000 a year and
+  we certainly cannot afford it, but if I proposed to put it back
+  there would be a revolution in Russia.”
+
+How completely teetotal Russia became we read long ago in the _Daily
+Mail_, to which Mr. Hamilton Fyfe sent this message from Petrograd:
+
+  Try to imagine all the publichouses in the British Isles closed; all
+  the restaurants putting away their wine cards and offering nothing
+  stronger than cider or ginger ale. That is the state of things in
+  Russia. Strange it seems indeed, yet there is one thing stranger.
+  Nobody makes any audible complaint.
+
+Everywhere in Russia it was the same: a nation was made sober by Act of
+Parliament.
+
+  “Without a murmur of protest,” said the Moscow correspondent of the
+  _Times_, “the most drunken city in Europe was transformed into a
+  temple of sobriety, and we felt that if Russia could thus conquer
+  herself in a night, there was indeed nothing that might not be
+  accomplished.” And two years later, when the revolution came, we
+  read in the _Times_ this note from Odessa: “Perfect tranquillity
+  continues to prevail here, although for the moment Odessa is
+  practically without police. The satisfactory absence of crime may
+  largely be attributed to the sealing up of spirituous liquors.”
+
+We need not be afraid of Drinkless Revolutions.
+
+But the truth about Russia is almost too incredible to believe, for it
+is Prohibition that made the revolution possible; it was stopping drink
+that set 170,000,000 people free. We will let a business correspondent
+of the _Times_ give evidence; here is what he said on April 21, 1917:
+
+  In one respect it must be said that the Reactionaries saw clearly.
+  They always claimed that the Tsar had ruined himself by decreeing
+  the abolition of vodka. None but a sober people could have carried
+  out the Russian Revolution.
+
+  The police were, on the other hand, the victims of drink. They had
+  seized the vodka at the order of the Government, and had kept
+  plentiful supplies for themselves. Thus the Revolution was in part a
+  struggle between drunken reaction and sober citizens. Sobriety
+  triumphed.
+
+The Russian people will not bow down and tie their hands to the thrones
+of Europe: do we wonder if they scorn our quailing before this trade?
+
+Free Russia flings off the dynastic yoke: do we wonder Prohibition
+Russia is not much impressed by a nation with a Drink Trade round its
+neck?
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                           The Soldier’s Home
+
+
+The things that will be told against this trade when all the truth is
+known will break the heart of those who read. It is well for us that we
+cannot know the full truth now; the burden would be too grievous to be
+borne in days like these. But if you will go into your street, or will
+talk of these things with the next man you meet from one of our pitiful
+slums, or will pick up one of those local papers that still have space
+to print the truth, you will find the evidence close about you.
+
+We are the guardians of our soldiers’ homes; we are the trustees of the
+hope and happiness of their little children; but we let this drink
+trade, that takes our people’s food out of their cupboards, turn that
+food into the means of death, and sow ruin and destruction through the
+land.
+
+But we will call the witnesses to these drink-ruined soldiers’ homes,
+these homes that the enemy worse than Germany has shattered and broken
+while our men have been fighting for your home and mine. We will call a
+few here and there, knowing that for every one called are hundreds more
+that can be called, and that beyond all these that are known there is in
+this little land a countless host of tragedies as secret as the grave.
+
+  A Tooting soldier whose wife had sent him loving letters to the
+  trenches came back to surprise her after 18 months. He found another
+  man in possession of his home and a new baby; and, overcome by the
+  discovery, he gave way to drink and killed himself.
+
+                               _Records of Balham Coroner, March 1916_
+
+  A soldier who had left a comfortable home behind returned from the
+  Front to find it ruined, with not a bed to lie on, his children
+  never sent to school, his wife all the time in publichouses. “I wish
+  I had been shot in the trenches,” he said when he arrived.
+
+                     _Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 10, 1915_
+
+  Outside a publichouse in Liverpool a man was dragging home his
+  drunken wife, the mother of eleven children. They rolled over and
+  over on the ground, the drunken women violently resisting the
+  maddened man. Then came up the eldest son, home from the Front, with
+  five wounds in his body.
+
+                            _Facts in “Liverpool Post,” March 2, 1917_
+
+  A soldier came back to his home in London to find his wife drinking
+  his money away, harbouring another man; one of his children cruelly
+  neglected and the other in its grave, perished from neglect; and a
+  drunken carman’s baby about to be born in his home.
+
+                                 _Facts in Shaftesbury Society Report_
+
+  A Lance-Corporal heard in the trenches of his wife’s misconduct. His
+  commanding officer wrote to make inquiries, and the soldier wrote to
+  the Chief Constable a pitiful letter: “What have I to look forward
+  to at the end of the war?” he said. “Nothing, only sorrow. I never
+  get a letter to know how my loving son is getting on; I think it
+  will drive me mad.”
+
+  He came home, opened the door of his house, threw his kit on the
+  floor, and declared that he would kill his wife. He put a razor on
+  the table, and his little boy hid it in a cupboard, but a week later
+  this boy of 12 went home and found his father and mother lying on
+  the floor, the father drunk, the mother dead. The soldier, drowning
+  his misery in drink, had strangled his wife. Rousing himself beside
+  her, he said, as the police found them, “Kiss me, Sally. Aye, but
+  tha are poorly.”
+
+  He had been the best of fathers, said the little boy; the best of
+  soldiers, said his commanding officer; and the judge declared that
+  such a man, with such a character, ought not to be with criminals.
+
+                         _Record of Huddersfield Assizes, Autumn 1916_
+
+  A soldier asked a London magistrate if he could draw the allowance
+  instead of his wife, who was in prison for drunkenness and was
+  neglecting his four children. The magistrate said the only thing was
+  to send the children to the workhouse.
+
+  The Soldier: “So I am to be a soldier for my King and country while
+  my children go to the workhouse?” The Magistrate: “That is so,
+  because you have a drunken wife. I am sorry for you.”
+
+                                 _Facts in “Sunday Herald,” June 1916_
+
+  A seaman gunner, who had been torpedoed and had fought in the
+  trenches, arrived home to find his wife, in his own words, “filthy
+  drunk,” and his children utterly deplorable. He reclothed them, but
+  his wife pawned the clothes, though she had £7 a month. He took his
+  children away, but a crowd of women interfered with him, and the
+  police were powerless against the mob.
+
+                     _Facts in “Western Daily Mercury,” July 23, 1915_
+
+  A soldier just back from the Front was found in the street weeping
+  bitterly on discovering that his wife was in gaol through drink, and
+  his child, through her neglect, had been burned.
+
+                               _Statement by Marchioness of Waterford_
+
+  A soldier came home from the Front to find that drink had ruined his
+  home, and his children were being cared for by Glasgow Parish
+  Council. “Hour after hour we sit on this council,” says the
+  chairman, “listening to case after case, and the cause is
+  drunkenness, drunkenness, drunkenness. There are 2300 children under
+  the council, and two thousand of them have parents living.” “Our raw
+  material is the finished product of the public-house,” says one of
+  these workers.
+
+                                      _Facts from Glasgow Councillors_
+
+  A motor mechanic at the Front, hearing that his wife, hitherto a
+  sober woman, had given way to drink, obtained leave to come home. He
+  found his wife, very drunk, struggling home with the help of the
+  railings in the street, and neighbours described her horrible life
+  with other soldiers. The husband obtained a separation for the sake
+  of his children, and went back to France.
+
+                       _Full facts in “Kent Messenger,” July 31, 1915_
+
+  A young soldier came from the trenches to spend Christmas in his
+  home in Sheffield—a teetotal home before the war. He found that his
+  wife had given way to drink, had deserted one child and disappeared
+  with the other, and that a baby was to be born which was not his.
+
+                                           _Facts known to the Author_
+
+  A miner fighting at the Front came home to find his wife at a
+  publichouse, his home filthy, and his children cruelly neglected. He
+  was heartbroken. His young wife frequently left the house from
+  tea-time till midnight, and in order to keep the children from the
+  fire she had burned them severely with a piece of iron. A
+  respectable-looking woman, the mother pleaded for a chance, and was
+  led from the dock sobbing bitterly.
+
+                 _Facts in “Sheffield Independent,” February 21, 1917_
+
+  A young Yorkshire miner enlisted and left his wife, hitherto sober,
+  with three children. She took to drink, neglected the home, and is
+  now a dipsomaniac, with two children not her husband’s.
+
+                                           _Facts known to the Author_
+
+  A soldier came home ill from France, hurried from Waterloo to his
+  home, and found the door locked. He knocked, and his little boy’s
+  voice came—“Is that you, mother, and are you drunk?” Hearing his
+  father’s voice the excited lad opened the door. “Where’s mother?”
+  asked his father. “Mother?” said the boy; “she’s drinking. She comes
+  home drunk night after night now and knocks the kids about. She
+  daren’t hit _me_; I’m fair strong, dad; but the other.... And as for
+  baby, she never does nothing for her. I and Freddy takes turns, but
+  I dunno what to give her to eat sometimes.”
+
+  Midnight passed before the mother appeared, helplessly drunk. “Did
+  you expect me to sit at home weeping for you?” she said. The next
+  morning, broken with tears, she promised to mend her ways. The
+  soldier went into hospital, and there he had a letter from his boy.
+  This is part of it:
+
+  “Dear Dad, I write to let you know mother is going on awful. She has
+  took all Fred and Timmy’s clothes to the pawnshop, and she hit
+  Selina on Saturday with the toasterfork and cut her face. She cried
+  all night, it hurt her so. She is drunk every night and some nights
+  dussent come back at all. She daren’t hit me, but I am getting
+  afraid about baby. We are all very hungry and miserable.”
+
+  The soldier got leave, found his wife had disappeared, and, finding
+  charity for his four little ones, he left his ruined home and went
+  back to the hospital.
+
+                                   _Facts in possession of the Author_
+
+  A working-man at Gravesend went to the Front, leaving behind a wife
+  and three children, the baby lately born. His wife started drinking
+  away her allowance, neglected her home, and, full of remorse and
+  shame for the disgrace she had brought on the man who was in the
+  trenches, she hanged herself. The man came home to find waiting for
+  him three motherless children, and one of the most pathetic letters
+  a man has ever had to read.
+
+                                  _Records of Gravesend Coroner, 1916_
+
+
+                          Mothers and Children
+
+It is easy to understand the pitiful appeal of 500 women out of Holloway
+Prison who begged the Duchess of Bedford to help to close all
+public-houses during the war. They know in their hearts of tragedies
+such as these, in which mothers and children die while the fathers fight
+and the Drink Trade goes on merrily.
+
+  A soldier’s wife in Sunderland drew £12 arrears of Army pay, and she
+  and her mother began to drink it away. She drew her pay on Friday,
+  was carried home drunk on Saturday, gave birth to twins on Sunday
+  morning, and died on Sunday night. The twins died a week or two
+  after, and a week or two after that the soldier came home from the
+  trenches to find his family in the grave.
+
+                                    _Facts in Sunderland papers, 1917_
+
+  Two women went drinking in Chester on a Sunday night, a soldier’s
+  mother and a soldier’s wife. They had five whiskies each, and fell
+  drunk in the street. One slept all night on a sofa, and the other
+  lay on the floor, shouting and swearing. Her husband propped her up
+  with a mat, and for hours she lay shrieking. In the morning she was
+  dead. The publican was fined £5.
+
+                     _Facts in “Chester Chronicle,” February 17, 1917_
+
+  The wife of a Yorkshire soldier was drowned while drunk at
+  Sheffield. She started drinking with another soldier’s wife
+  disappeared with a drunken man, and her death was a mystery.
+
+                    _Facts in “Sheffield Independent,” April 26, 1916_
+
+  At an inquest on the bodies of a soldier’s twin children, both dead
+  from chronic wasting, it was stated that the mother had 34_s._ a
+  week, and both she and her husband drank. The mother had had four
+  children in fifteen months, and all were dead.
+
+                          _Records of Battersea Coroner, October 1915_
+
+  In one street in London where there were one day four convictions
+  for drunkenness, a woman carried a sick baby into a public house. As
+  she stood at the bar the little baby died, but the mother went on
+  drinking, with the dead child in her arms.
+
+                             _Records of Charity Organisation Society_
+
+  The wife of a highly-esteemed sergeant-major fighting in France was
+  found lying drunk. Her four children, shockingly neglected, were put
+  in a home, but she took them out, went on drinking, and received
+  soldiers at her house. In a few weeks her husband heard in the
+  trenches that his wife had died from drinking.
+
+                          _Records of West Surrey Coroner, March 1917_
+
+  A soldier left three children at home. He had been earning £1 a
+  week, but his wife received 32_s._ 6_d._ a week. She drank it away,
+  neglected the children, and died in an asylum while her husband was
+  in France.
+
+                                          _Records of Claybury Asylum_
+
+  The little child of a soldier in France died in Guy’s Hospital from
+  burns. The mother said she could not buy a fireguard. While she was
+  absent the baby was burned, and the mother, returning in a drunken
+  state carrying a can of beer, said, “A good job!”
+
+                         _Records of Southwark Coroner, December 1915_
+
+  A soldier’s widow with six children, an Army pension of 30_s._ a
+  week, and her eldest boy’s wages of 30_s._, drinks every night with
+  a married man who has a respectable, clean, and sober wife with
+  eight children and a ninth lately born—born prematurely as a result
+  of her husband’s beating her. The child bore the marks of his
+  violence, and died in two months.
+
+                                      _Records of Shaftesbury Society_
+
+  The young wife of a soldier was brought from prison to be tried for
+  manslaughter of her baby, who had died in the infirmary from
+  neglect. She spent her time in the publichouses, and laughed when
+  the children were taken to the infirmary. She went out one day to
+  fetch a bottle of whisky and as she drank with a neighbour she said
+  she knew the baby would die. The doctor said the child’s skin was
+  hanging in folds on the bones.
+
+                           _Facts in the “Observer,” January 23, 1916_
+
+  A soldier’s wife drank continuously while her child wasted away,
+  left the tiny baby alone in the house while she went for beer, and a
+  policeman found her lying drunk across the dead child’s body.
+
+                         _Records of Barnsley Coroner, November, 1916_
+
+  The mother of two children whose father was fighting in France gave
+  way to drink in his absence, neglected her children and left them in
+  grave moral danger, and committed suicide.
+
+                                           _Records of an Orphan Home_
+
+  A soldier’s baby starved slowly to death as the mother drank away
+  his pay, and while the child lay in its coffin the mother was out
+  drinking.
+
+                             _West Bromwich Police Records, June 1915_
+
+  A munition worker at Newcastle was grievously upset by the drinking
+  habits of his wife. The police left a summons for her and she
+  disappeared. Two days later her body was found in the Tyne. The man
+  broke down at the inquest, saying, between his sobs: “She was such a
+  good wife to me for 20 years, and reared a good family before she
+  took to drink.”
+
+                           _Records of Newcastle Coroner, Summer 1916_
+
+  The wife of a corporation workman at Sheffield, home from the
+  trenches with six gunshot wounds and three pieces of shell in his
+  body, found that his wife had given way to drink and starved her
+  five children. She was sent to prison for six months.
+
+                       _Police Records of Sheffield, November 3, 1915_
+
+  A soldier’s wife who had spent the greater part of £100 Army money
+  in drink was sent to prison for neglecting her children. Almost
+  everything in the house was pawned, including the children’s
+  clothes; and the woman began to drink at five o’clock in the
+  morning, and went on drinking all day.
+
+                     _Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 10, 1915_
+
+  A soldier’s wife in Monmouthshire, with £3 9_s._ a week, was found
+  sodden with drink, while the soldier’s eight children were in rags
+  starving by day and huddling up in one bed by night.
+
+                       _Facts in “Westminster Gazette,” July 22, 1916_
+
+  A smart tidy woman in a London suburb, whose husband is fighting in
+  Mesopotamia, has £2 10_s._ 6_d._ a week. She used to love her
+  children and had a happy home, but she drinks away her Army pay,
+  lives with a married man who has six children, and has become a
+  drunken slattern. The other wife is beaten and neglected, and the
+  soldier’s children have gone to the workhouse.
+
+                                      _Records of Shaftesbury Society_
+
+  The four children of a soldier in Dublin were found hungry and
+  shivering with cold while the mother was drinking. Several times she
+  had let her baby fall while reeling with it in the street.
+
+                  _Facts in “Dublin Evening Herald,” October 20, 1916_
+
+  At the trial of a soldier’s wife for drinking and neglecting seven
+  children, it was stated that a child of eleven was left in charge of
+  a baby a fortnight old while the mother was drinking. At night all
+  the children were heard screaming. The house was in utter darkness,
+  and there was an escape of gas. Some men went in and turned off the
+  gas, and at last the mother came stumbling out of a publichouse
+  across the road.
+
+                        _Facts in “Sheffield Star,” November 25, 1915_
+
+  “Your husband is fighting for his country, and his children have the
+  right to be protected,” said the Chairman of the Chesterfield Bench
+  to a soldier’s wife. Her children were found starving while she was
+  drinking, and one day the little boy of three was found crouching
+  naked inside the fender, trying to get warm. The police described
+  the house as foul from top to bottom, with a heap of horrible rags
+  for a bed, and a food cupboard that made the house unendurable when
+  the door was opened.
+
+                      _Facts in “Yorkshire Telegraph,” March 24, 1916_
+
+  The wife of a missing soldier was sent to prison at Chesterfield for
+  neglecting three children between 13 years and 16 weeks old. She had
+  gone astray through drink, and the youngest child, born under
+  terrible conditions, was not her husband’s. It was found lying on a
+  filthy bed, and its drunken mother, to satisfy its pangs of hunger,
+  had given it pennyworths of laudanum. Eleven people slept in two
+  foul bedrooms.
+
+                        _Chesterfield Police Records, October 9, 1916_
+
+  Five hundred children of soldiers are being cared for in the great
+  Homes founded by Mr. Quarrier in Scotland, and most of them are
+  there because of drinking mothers.
+
+                                                    _Facts in Reports_
+
+  A soldier’s wife at Biggleswade spent her allowance on drink and
+  left her three children locked up in the house for days at a time.
+
+                 _Police Court Records of Biggleswade, September 1915_
+
+  A soldier’s wife was found reeling in the streets of Dublin with a
+  baby in her arms. At her home were found four other children,
+  cruelly neglected.
+
+                             _Facts in “Dublin Mail,” August 16, 1916_
+
+  Nineteen hundred children of soldiers have come into the care of the
+  N.S.P.C.C., mainly through drink, since the war began.
+
+                                           _Records of the N.S.P.C.C._
+
+
+                            The Ruined Wives
+
+Who does not remember the terrible rush for the last drop of drink when
+Prohibition seemed to be coming with the New Year? Long queues of women
+besieged the whisky shops in Glasgow. There were women of all ages, said
+the _Daily Mail_, tottering in grey hairs, young wives with babies in
+their arms, and men of the loafer type. “There was not a respectable
+citizen,” says the _Mail_, “who did not deplore this discreditable
+scene, but the remarks of passers-by provoked only torrents of insult.”
+The promise of the new year and the new Government, alas, was not
+fulfilled, and now in place of Drink Queues we have Food Queues. Let us
+see what drink is doing among our soldiers’ wives:
+
+  Of 3000 soldiers’ wives being cared for in South London, 2000 are
+  splendid, while 1000 are sinking daily to lower and lower levels
+  through drink.
+
+                                      _Records of Shaftesbury Society_
+
+  A soldier’s wife, with a separation allowance of 32_s._ 6_d._ a
+  week, drank most of it away, ruined her home, neglected her
+  children, and became a lunatic.
+
+                                          _Records of Claybury Asylum_
+
+  A young soldier’s wife, hitherto “quite an elegant type,” is rapidly
+  becoming a drunkard. Women hitherto sober have not the courage to
+  keep from women’s drinking parties, and young girls come out of
+  factories and go to publichouses in little groups.
+
+                             _Records of Charity Organisation Society_
+
+  Outside a public house in Dublin 15 small children were crying in
+  the cold, waiting for their mothers. Ninety-four drunken women came
+  out in 25 minutes. There were ten drunken soldiers, and two girls of
+  15 were thrown into the street hopelessly drunk.
+
+                              _Facts in “Irish Times,” April 20, 1915_
+
+  In Dundee over 170 wives of soldiers gave way to drink last year,
+  and cruelly neglected their homes.
+
+                                       _Records of the N. S. P. C. C._
+
+  A soldier in the trenches received a letter from his little boy,
+  which he sent to London with a pitiful appeal for help.
+
+  “Kindly do what you can for me and the well-being and welfare of my
+  four beautiful children,” the poor soldier wrote. “I am enclosing a
+  fearful letter I have received from my poor little lad, 14-1/2, the
+  first and only letter I have received from him. Sir, I shall be most
+  anxiously awaiting your reply, for this letter is the greatest blow
+  I have ever received.”
+
+  This is the little boy’s letter:
+
+    Dear Dad: Just a line to let you know how everything is at home.
+    Mother is drunk for a fortnight and sober for a week for months
+    and months. I’ve stuck it now for seven months, and can’t stick
+    it any longer. I tried to get into the Navy and passed all the
+    tests, but mother would not sign the papers, for which I am
+    sorry. If mum would sign I could go away to Portsmouth on
+    Thursday, but she will not. At the present moment she is half
+    drunk and keeps jawing me so that I could knife meself. I’ve
+    lost my new job because mum would not wake me in the morning,
+    and nothing for breakfast, and had to get mine and the
+    children’s tea at tea-time. It pains me to write like this, but
+    I can’t help it. I now seek your advice as to what to do. I hope
+    _you_ will enjoy Xmas, although there is not much hope for us. I
+    now conclude with fondest love, X. Your heartbroken Son, Leslie.
+
+  A stream of nearly 15,000 men and women poured into 58 publichouses
+  in Birmingham in less than four hours; over 6,000 were women. Into
+  one house the people streamed at nearly 500 an hour.
+
+                          _Facts in “Review of Reviews,” October 1915_
+
+  For months some wives of soldiers and sailors in Scotland were never
+  really sober. “We have done our best,” says a worker among them,
+  “going to their homes and doing all in our power, but it beats us.”
+  In 23 families, with 178 children born, 61 were dead.
+
+                     _Facts told to Secretary for Scotland, July 1916_
+
+               Will some Member of Parliament please ask
+
+=whether the ships that have brought in food for destruction by the
+drink trade could not have brought in a large proportion of the
+3,500,000 tons of wheat now waiting for ships in Australia and the
+2,000,000 tons waiting in Canada?=
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          The Roll of the Dead
+
+
+No more pitiful record of the war is there than that unnumbered roll of
+men lured from our armies by this liquor trade, and cast into
+dishonoured graves. We can take only a few of them.
+
+  A number of soldiers at Ormskirk came into camp drunk on Christmas
+  night. A request for quiet led to a fight, and one of the men was
+  struck two blows and was dead the next morning.
+
+                            _Facts in “Daily Mail,” December 28, 1915_
+
+  A Liverpool soldier, drinking continuously, had overstayed his
+  leave, and in a quarrel about this he stabbed his brother dead.
+
+                        _Facts in “Liverpool Courier,” April 20, 1917_
+
+  A soldier invalided from France, having recovered from his wounds,
+  gave way to drink, assaulted an officer, and hanged himself in his
+  prison cell.
+
+                               _Facts in “Daily News,” April 11, 1916_
+
+  A young lieutenant shot himself in an hotel near Trafalgar Square,
+  and among the documents read at the inquest was a letter striking
+  him off his battalion for drinking and gross carelessness.
+
+                        _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” October 27, 1916_
+
+  A captain in the Army ruined by drink, with a fine record of
+  military service, started drinking on his way to a shooting range in
+  London, and in a struggle he shot a detective dead.
+
+                           _Facts in “Daily News,” September 20, 1915_
+
+  In the Scottish Express, between Doncaster and Selby, a drunken
+  corporal of the Coldstream Guards was showing his rifle to a friend
+  when it went off, the bullet killing a munitions works director in
+  the next compartment, and narrowly escaping a lady in the
+  compartment beyond. The corporal had in his pocket a bottle of
+  whisky, which was freely handed round.
+
+                             _Facts in “Daily News,” December 3, 1915_
+
+  A soldier who had been drinking heavily was placed in the guard
+  room, and died after a night of groaning, evidently as the result of
+  a fall.
+
+                       _Records of Greenwich Coroner, January 1, 1915_
+
+  A young soldier arriving from India on Christmas morning was
+  arrested three days later, after a drunken fight in which a man was
+  killed.
+
+                       _Westminster Police Records, December 28, 1914_
+
+  A soldier spent a day’s leave in Manchester, ate and drank very
+  heavily, and was found dead the next morning from choking.
+
+                    _Records of Manchester Coroner, December 28, 1914_
+
+  A soldier home on leave was found drunk with his wife. They had been
+  throwing pots at one another, and on Christmas morning the woman was
+  found dead with a wound in her head.
+
+                        _Records of Oldham Coroner, December 24, 1914_
+
+  Three gunners had four drinks each of rum, and at midnight lay down
+  to sleep in a garden at Lee, where one was found dying from alcohol.
+
+                             _Facts in Local Papers at Lee, June 1915_
+
+  A soldier died from alcohol in a house where drink was unlawfully
+  sold.
+
+                       _Facts in “Manchester Guardian,” April 8, 1915_
+
+  A private in the Welsh Fusiliers died from alcohol, cold and
+  exposure. He left a publichouse with a 4_s._ bottle of whisky, and
+  was found dead on the roadside next morning, with the bottle almost
+  empty.
+
+                               _Facts in “Daily News,” April 13, 1915_
+
+  An old man who was said to be in a drunken condition was wounded in
+  a fall with a soldier from Gallipoli, and died a few days after.
+
+                             _Facts in “Daily Mail,” January 17, 1916_
+
+  An elderly man, seeing a drunken soldier lying in the street, went
+  to his assistance, and was killed in a disturbance that followed.
+
+                      _Record of Yorkshire Assizes, November 21, 1916_
+
+  A soldier was found drowned in the Trent. He was described as a good
+  man at his work, but not steady, and had been drinking.
+
+                        _Facts in “Newark Advertiser,” August 4, 1915_
+
+  A terrible disturbance occurred in a camp at Portland Reservoir
+  after the closing of the canteen one Sunday night. A large number of
+  men who had been drinking created a disturbance, in which bricks and
+  stones were used, a tent collapsed, and the officers were called to
+  quell the riot. The captain, drawing his revolver, rushed with two
+  lieutenants into a hut where men were shouting and struggling, but
+  appeals had no effect—the men “did not appear to hear or recognize
+  their officers,” and one man raised his rifle and took aim at them.
+  At least fifty shots were fired, and a young corporal fired many
+  shots through the window into the darkness. In the morning a soldier
+  was found dead. Nobody knew who shot him, but the corporal thought
+  he must have done.
+
+                              _Records of Dorset Assizes, Spring 1915_
+
+               Will some Member of Parliament please ask
+
+=whether it is true that more food is being destroyed each week in
+breweries and distilleries than by submarines?=
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                            The New Drinkers
+
+
+“_No complaints have reached the War Office of youths who were total
+abstainers having become confirmed drunkards since enlistment._”
+
+So we are told in the House of Commons. The records of the War Office
+are clearly incomplete, and the information from the camps may here be
+supplemented by unchallengeable witnesses of what happens in the
+horrible drink canteens run by the Army Council.
+
+  A soldier who was wounded at La Bassée, a total abstainer until
+  then, was sentenced at the Old Bailey for killing his uncle while
+  drunk. He was a newsvendor, aged 21, and had no memory of the
+  tragedy in which he killed his uncle at a Christmas party.
+
+                        _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” January 13, 1916_
+
+  A private in the Royal Scots Fusileers, aged 17, was charged with
+  murdering a bugler boy, aged 16, in his regiment. The private became
+  mad drunk in the camp canteen, went back to his hut, locked himself
+  in and fired two shots, one of which entered another hut and killed
+  the bugler. “Was there no one with power to say how much drink
+  should be given?” asked the judge, and an officer said there was no
+  one. “Then it was high time power was given to the commanding
+  officer,” said the judge. “Was there to be no restraining hand to
+  prevent young boys from fuddling themselves in canteens?”
+
+                             _Facts in the “Times,” November 21, 1916_
+
+  An old man sat in a tram in great distress. He had lost his boy at
+  the Front. When he joined the Army he had never tasted alcohol, but
+  when he came home on leave to see his mother he was drunk every
+  night. He was drunk the night he went away, and in three days he was
+  dead. “The last we saw of him,” said the poor old man between his
+  sobs, “was his going away drunk, and his mother, who is
+  old-fashioned in her faith, cannot get it out of her mind that no
+  drunkard can enter the Kingdom of God.”
+
+                                    _Facts told by Dr. Norman Maclean_
+
+  Many young officers, called upon to share the wine bill at mess,
+  naturally say, “If I have to pay I may as well drink my share,” and
+  one man accounted for ten glasses of champagne. On a Guest night in
+  his mess several more “were under the table.”
+
+                        _Facts in “Dublin Daily Express,” April 1916._
+
+  A boy got his V.C., and came home wounded. The publican in his
+  street sounded his praises in the taproom, where they subscribed to
+  the bar for 120 pints for him when he arrived. He came home and
+  began to drink it, and was nearly dead with it before he was
+  rescued.
+
+                                  _Facts related by Bishop of Lincoln_
+
+  When the Scottish Horse Brigade were at Perth whisky was literally
+  forced down the men, and they were inundated with floods of bad
+  women.
+
+                                 _Brigadier-General Lord Tullibardine_
+
+  A teetotal household had two boys in an officers’ training camp, and
+  they gave pitiable accounts of drinking. Boys from school had a
+  drunken sergeant put over them, and a canteen in the midst of them.
+  “Our boys never saw drink before,” one father wrote.
+
+                                 _From a letter to Dr. Norman Maclean_
+
+  A boy of 17, discharged from the Navy, spent 8_s._ one night on beer
+  and rum, and created a disturbance in a workshop at Sheffield.
+
+                        _Facts in “Sheffield Star,” November 11, 1916_
+
+  Mr. Justice Atkin, charging the Grand Jury at Bristol, said that in
+  nearly every case where a soldier was tried in the Western Circuit
+  the defence was drink. One lad of 18 was treated to eight pints of
+  beer in two hours, and did not know what happened. That sort of
+  thing, said the judge, must seriously impair the efficiency of the
+  troops when sent to the Front.
+
+                              _Record of Bristol Assizes, Autumn 1914_
+
+  Two boys, 15 and 17, were fined for being drunk in munition works.
+  One was discovered just in time to save him from carrying molten
+  liquid.
+
+                            _Birmingham Munitions Tribunal, Dec. 1916_
+
+  “A boy joined the Royal Navy as a carpenter, living in barracks and
+  working on shore. Every day he was given ‘grog’ for his rations,
+  although he never asked for it and never took it.”
+
+                                       _Facts in letter to the Author_
+
+Such are the tragedies of boys handed over in our camps to drink and its
+temptations. What of the girls in our munition shops? They have learned
+to drink in thousands since the war began—respectable girls leaving home
+to go into munitions, respectable young wives alone at home. With no
+restraining hand upon them, with new companionships and pocket-money
+flowing freely, it is not surprising the temptation should be too strong
+for them. We can take only one or two cases.
+
+  The girl-wife of a Cardiff seaman died in the street from exposure
+  after drinking in publichouses with other girls.
+
+                    _Records of Pontypridd Coroner, December 27, 1916_
+
+  A publican at Lincoln was fined £5 for allowing children to be drunk
+  on his premises. Ruth Onyon, 14, and Rose Herrick, 16, were found in
+  his house with a soldier. They had been in five houses and had ten
+  drinks each and reached home helplessly drunk.
+
+                 _Facts in “Sheffield Daily Telegraph,” Sept. 1, 1916_
+
+  A number of cartridge workers were summoned for taking drink into a
+  munition works. One young woman was led to the surgery drunk at
+  half-past four in the morning; another was discharged because she
+  could not stand. Sixteen girls subscribed for four bottles of wine
+  and whisky.
+
+                 _Records of Leeds Munitions Tribunal, April 28, 1916_
+
+  Two girls of 16 and 17 were fined for being helplessly drunk in an
+  explosive works, the magistrates pointing out that their conduct
+  imperilled the lives of other workers.
+
+                _Records of Coventry Munitions Tribunal July 24, 1916_
+
+  The men and girls at a large armament works drank all night. Girls
+  would lurch into the dormitory dead drunk at 2 a. m.; one lady was
+  up till 4 a. m. letting in drunken girls. As a result of drunkenness
+  there was an explosion at these works, two men being killed and six
+  injured.
+
+                                 _Facts in “Spectator,” Jan. 20, 1917_
+
+  A Dublin publichouse was found full of girls and soldiers, all
+  drunk. Three drunken girls were taken away by six soldiers.
+
+                              _Facts in “Irish Times,” April 20, 1916_
+
+  In half an hour 367 girls entered Birmingham publichouses, scores
+  under 18. Stout and beer were chiefly drunk, but whisky and water
+  also, and some port wine. Ten young girls were quite drunk.
+
+                                    _Facts in “Birmingham Daily Post”_
+
+               Will some Member of Parliament please ask,
+
+=in view of the fact that American soldiers are not to touch alcohol,
+what arrangements the Government proposes to make for them in this
+country?=
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          Back to the Homeland
+
+
+Everywhere we hope and pray for peace, for the day when the men will
+come home; but we may dread the day if the men come home to drink and
+its temptations. The sudden release of millions of men, the certain
+reaction after the terrible stress of these three years, is fearful to
+contemplate with the door of the tap-room open. There would be an end of
+civilization itself for days and weeks and months, and for many a town
+at home the Peace would be worse than the War.
+
+We owe it to these men to listen to the warning of the Prison
+Commissioners who printed these words in their report last year:
+
+=When war is succeeded by peace there will come a time of trial for
+those who have never turned their backs to a bodily enemy. With the
+passing of military discipline our brave fellows will be tempted to
+forget the hardships and miseries of the trenches in a burst of
+uncontrolled pleasure and license, and, if trade be bad and work
+difficult to obtain, the lapse may, if not checked, become a step on a
+downward career.=
+
+It is not imagination merely. Judges, coroners, police, and all who face
+the crime and misery of life, know well the bitter things that happen
+when men come home without restraint. There are witnesses innumerable.
+Let us hear a few of them.
+
+  A captain in the Royal Flying Corps drove a motor-car through
+  London, knocked a man down, drove on, and ignored the police, who
+  eventually mounted the footboard and found the officer drunk.
+
+                             _Bow Street Police Records, June 3, 1916_
+
+  A lance-corporal on Chesterfield station was so drunk that he walked
+  off the platform and fell on the line as a passenger train came up.
+
+                           _Chesterfield Police Records, June 2, 1915_
+
+  A corporal of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, leaving the
+  Front with 150 rounds of ammunition and his service rifle, came out
+  drunk into the streets of West Ham and began firing his rifle.
+
+                           _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” July 10, 1915_
+
+  A soldier who had received a cartridge from his son at the Front,
+  put it in his rifle, and while drunk fired it in the streets of
+  Manchester.
+
+                         _Manchester Police Records, January 27, 1915_
+
+  In the early hours of the morning two unarmed soldiers were fired at
+  in Woolwich by a drunken soldier, who chased them for a long
+  distance, firing shots all the time, until he was arrested.
+
+                            _Facts in “Alliance News,” February, 1915_
+
+  Drunkenness among soldiers and sailors is appalling. Unoffending
+  travellers are delayed by drunken sentries. Sailors landing after
+  weeks of arduous toil in the North Sea find it easy to get so drunk
+  that some are drowned, some die from exposure, and many return to
+  their ships in a condition of helpless inebriety.
+
+                              _Facts in “Inverness Courier,” May 1915_
+
+  Two drunken soldiers entered the parish church at Codford, set fire
+  to the vestry, threw down the altar cross and candlestick, broke a
+  stained-glass window, and tore leaves out of a Bible 200 years old.
+
+                           _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” April 3, 1916_
+
+  A drunken soldier at Cannock was imprisoned for drawing his bayonet
+  in the streets. “If I meet a policeman I will murder the dog,” he
+  said, and, meeting one, he threatened to cut off his head.
+
+                               _Police Records at Cannock, March 1916_
+
+  400 soldiers tried to get a drunken man from the police in Grantham.
+
+                              _Facts in “Grimsby News,” July 30, 1915_
+
+  A drunken sergeant was found forcibly detaining a girl at Hornsey.
+  On the police interfering, the drunken soldier drew his bayonet.
+
+                            _Facts in “Daily News,” September 7, 1916_
+
+  Three splendid-looking fellows, minesweepers, were traveling on the
+  Highland Railway. “All were married men,” said a fellow passenger,
+  “happy and proud of their homes, and they spoke with ache still in
+  their hearts something of their lives and work. Well, these men
+  succumbed during the journey. A change of trains was their
+  opportunity, and I left them in a nearly helpless condition.”
+
+                             _Facts in “The Spectator,” April 8, 1916_
+
+  A lady visited a soldier’s wife and found her at home with all her
+  clothes in pawn. Her husband and brother had both been home from the
+  Front, and in one week had spent £8 on drink.
+
+                     _Facts in the “Cork Constitution,” Dec. 10, 1915_
+
+  A labourer, home from tunnelling work at the Front, was fined 13_s._
+  for drunkenness on his 33rd appearance, having spent £45 in seven
+  days.
+
+                                _Facts in “Daily News,” Oct. 11, 1916_
+
+  A disabled soldier was selling papers in Kingsway, London. He was
+  proud of his military record and the character his colonel gave him.
+  He was trying to compound for a pension; he thought he would settle
+  for £50. “Mind you,” said he “there is not a better character in
+  London than mine, and I shall get the £50. Then I shall have a
+  month’s booze.” “What, with that fine character of yours?” a
+  gentleman said to him. “Yes,” said the man, “when I came home, and
+  could leave the hospital, there was £50 due to me, and I had a
+  regular booze.”
+
+                                           _Facts known to the Author_
+
+  A soldier with twelve years’ clean record in the Army was sentenced
+  for felony after being made drunk by his friends.
+
+                        _Police Records of Southport, January 9, 1915_
+
+No Government has ever received more warnings than the three war
+Governments have received concerning drink. There is no room for them
+here, but we may call a few witnesses such as cannot be ignored by a
+nation looking forward to the day when millions of men will be home
+again.
+
+  A house in Westminster reeked with filth and drink and drunken
+  overseas soldiers, “and it would be better,” said the Crown
+  Solicitor, “if power were given to the police to sweep such places
+  off the earth.”
+
+                               _Westminster Police Records, Aug. 1916_
+
+  A sapper seaman was found dead at the quay. Another seaman said his
+  friend had seven drinks. They left the publichouse arm-in-arm, and
+  went to the quay. There he saw a corporal, who was boatswain for the
+  night, and was drunk. Leaving the sapper, he got the corporal into
+  the boat, and went back for his friend, but the sapper had
+  disappeared.
+
+  The lieutenant: “The deceased was one of the quietest boys who had
+  ever been on the ship, and one of the best oarsmen. The whole
+  trouble was that it was pay day.”
+
+  The Coroner: “Prohibition during the war would be a blessing to all.
+  It seems to be a very rotten state of affairs.”
+
+  The foreman: “Drink.”
+
+  The lieutenant: “Prohibition would be the best thing.”
+
+  The Coroner: “This poor man, unfortunately, is one of many.”
+
+                   _Facts in “Western Daily Mercury,” January 8, 1917_
+
+  A publican at Dover was fined £20 for selling a bottle of whisky to
+  a sailor. The Admiral said drink undermined the efficiency of the
+  patrol vessels, and those who supplied it directly assisted the
+  enemy, and might be the cause of the loss of very many lives.
+
+                            _Police Records of Dover, October 6, 1916_
+
+  A private in the Northumberland Fusiliers, aged 23, was charged with
+  burglary while drunk. His father and three brothers were in the
+  Army. He took part in the battle of Loos, was wounded at Salonika,
+  and was recommended for distinction for helping to save a wounded
+  officer.
+
+  During the whole of Christmas leave he was drinking, made drunk by
+  his friends who were probably proud of his having held part of a
+  trench against a German bombing party. His captain described him as
+  a good soldier in peace, and brave in action—a man whose disgrace
+  would be felt by the regiment.
+
+  Mr. Justice Rowlatt said everyone was hoping for the time when
+  millions of brave men would come home after facing incredible
+  dangers, and we must look forward almost with terror to having these
+  men exposed to drink and its temptations. What would be the state of
+  the country in such a case unless we could make a clean sweep of
+  drink? We should have to face this question over and over again, and
+  the sooner we faced it the better.
+
+                        _Records of Derbyshire Assizes, February 1917_
+
+  Whoever allowed soldiers or sailors to drink to excess, said the
+  Mayor of Tynemouth, should be tried by court-martial for treason. He
+  would be recreant in his duty to God, to himself, and to the
+  citizens, if he did not call attention to the brutalising of so many
+  townspeople and the callous conduct of the “waster” element in the
+  drink trade. He had no quarrel with those who conducted their
+  business properly.
+
+                           _Facts in Tynemouth papers, February, 1915_
+
+  The Aldershot command appealed for the closing of half the
+  publichouses, to save the men from temptation when the troops are
+  demobilised and return with their pockets full of money.
+
+                       _Record of Workingham Licensing Sessions, 1917_
+
+  The _Army and Navy Gazette_, in an article disapproving of the
+  Prohibition Campaign, issues a terrible warning which should be
+  printed on the door of the room in which the Army Council meets.
+  These are its words:
+
+  “It is on record that towards the end of the siege of Sebastopol rum
+  was made too regular an issue, with the result that almost every
+  soldier who survived to return home became a drunkard.”
+
+The siege of Sebastopol lasted less than a year, and that is the work of
+the rum issue for a few months. If rum does that in months, what will it
+do in years?
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          Into the Firing Line
+
+
+Lord Kitchener is dead, but there are two things that are with us
+still—that rare little note that he gave to his men as they went out,
+warning them of drink; and that infamous note sent out by a drink firm
+in London, begging our people to send out drink to our men. They can
+guarantee it right up to the firing line, they say, and even when our
+shells could not get there through drink, drink seems to have found its
+way. It can get on to transports when the Ministry of Munitions is
+waiting urgently for shipping space; it can commandeer our vans and
+horses and trains when these mean life or death to us; it seems to get
+past any regulation; it goes about with the power of a king, doing its
+work where it will.
+
+  It is regrettable that our troops at the Front cannot get more
+  British Beer.
+
+                          Managing Director of Allsopps, July 14, 1916
+
+  Dear Sir, In answer to your inquiry, the only limitation in the size
+  of cases consigned to officers in the Expeditionary Force is that
+  they must not exceed 1 cwt.
+
+  We can guarantee delivery right into the front trenches. The cases
+  are handed over at Southampton to the Military Forwarding Officer,
+  and the A.S.C. see them right through. We are shipping hundreds of
+  cases weekly. Yours faithfully,
+
+                        _Letter from a Wine and Spirit firm in London_
+
+So drink finds its way to the front, to weaken our troops, with all
+their matchless heroism. Let us call the witnesses who have seen the
+work it does.
+
+  Soldiers at the front, tried for drunkenness, have declared that
+  they have received drink from home. Men sometimes receive flasks in
+  the trenches. They are exhausted, the stimulant revives them for a
+  minute or two, and the harm is done. “And then (says Col. Crozier)
+  they get about two years’ hard labour.”
+
+      _Letter from Colonel Crozier, commanding 9th Royal Irish Rifles_
+
+  As a result of a Court-martial investigating charges of excessive
+  drinking among the officers of a regiment at the Front, the Army
+  Council removed the commanding officer from his post.
+
+                                     _Records of Court-martials, 1916_
+
+  In the torrid climate of Mesopotamia, in defiance of all military
+  medical history, rum was issued to the men instead of food and
+  sterile water, and the presence of cholera, dysentery and other
+  diseases, was attributed to this by Sir Victor Horsley. “Our gross
+  failures and stupidity,” he said, “are in my opinion due to whisky
+  affecting the intellectual organs and clearness of our leaders. They
+  do not realise that alcohol in small doses acts as a brake on the
+  brain.”
+
+             _Facts in a letter from Sir Victor Horsley, May 13, 1916_
+
+[Illustration: THE JUNKER’S LITTLE BROTHER]
+
+  Battalion Headquarters—colonel and chaplain present. Enter Adjutant:
+  “The rum ration is due tonight, sir; am I to distribute it?” The
+  colonel (nobly and in a voice audible all over the trench): “No!
+  Damn the rum! To hell with the rum!”
+
+                     _Chaplain’s letter in “Alliance News,” June 1916_
+
+  At a court-martial in Newcastle, a sergeant-major, charged with
+  misappropriating funds of the sergeant’s mess, pleaded that during
+  this period a resolution of the mess had come into effect, providing
+  free drinks during Christmas and the New Year.
+
+                               _Facts in “Daily News,” April 17, 1916_
+
+  “In the Flying Services one has seen more than one good man go to
+  the dogs through drink, or become fat and flabby and useless through
+  just the excess of alcohol which falls short of taking to drink in
+  the usual acceptance of the term. More men take to drink because of
+  the ‘have another’ custom than because they like or need alcohol,
+  and simple Prohibition would stop all this nonsense straight away.
+  This kindly note is not the outpouring of a teetotal fanatic, for I
+  suppose I have paid in my time rather more than my share of the
+  nation’s drink-bill; it is merely a perfectly sound argument in
+  favour of increasing the nation’s efficiency at the expense of its
+  chief bad habit.”
+
+                                       _The Editor of “The Aeroplane”_
+
+  A lieutenant in the trenches, knowing that the rum ration made him
+  cold, threw his rum on the ground. His captain saw him, and
+  threatened to report him. “You do, sir,” said the lieutenant, “and I
+  will report you for being drunk on duty.”
+
+                                   _Facts in possession of the Author_
+
+  A seaman serving on a ship in Cork Harbour died from alcohol. Found
+  drunk and unknown, he was put on a stretcher and died.
+
+                      _Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 9, 1915_
+
+  “Over three-quarters of the court-martials I have had anything to do
+  with are due directly or indirectly to drunkenness. Many thousands
+  of competent N.C.O.s and soldiers have been punished, and become
+  useless to the nation during their punishment, as a result of drink.
+
+  “I have never been a teetotaler, and have rather opposed the radical
+  temperance agitation, but am now changing my views as I see our
+  success over here hampered and our progress towards victory retarded
+  so obviously by drink.”
+
+       _Letter from a Lieut.-Colonel at the Front, seen by the Author_
+
+  The captain of a British merchant ship, drunk on the bridge, ordered
+  his chief gunner to fire 50 rounds of shell at nothing. The gunner
+  fired four rounds to appease him. Going through the Mediterranean,
+  the drunken captain ordered his gunner to fire at a British hospital
+  ship, and the incident led to a struggle for life, which ended in
+  the captain’s being put in irons, tried, and sentenced to five
+  years’ penal servitude.
+
+                   _Record of Devon Assizes, Exeter, February 2, 1917_
+
+  An officer was left in charge of a British ship. Mad with drink, he
+  went among the men and shot one dead. He is now in an asylum.
+
+                                      _Case reported to the Admiralty_
+
+  The crew of a Dutch ship arriving in the Tyne was placed under a
+  naval guard after a drunken riot in which three were killed.
+
+                           _Facts in “Daily News,” September 14, 1915_
+
+  The captain of a Norwegian barque mysteriously disappeared, and the
+  vessel arrived in port from the North Sea. The mate, who had been
+  drinking heavily, was seen, with a hammer in his hand, with the
+  captain in a corner, bleeding from wounds about the head.
+
+                                _Facts in “Daily News,” April 8, 1916_
+
+  A seaman ashore in Glasgow, “wild with drink and passion,” was
+  terribly wounded in a quarrel in a public-house, and died the same
+  night. A youth of 19 was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude.
+
+                          _Records of Edinburgh High Court, Dec. 1916_
+
+  A barge-loader at West India Docks died from alcohol, and three
+  other men were removed in an ambulance after drinking rum.
+
+                             _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” May 9, 1916_
+
+  Orders were given on a steamer for the boats to be swung out in
+  readiness for submarines. The first and second officer, having been
+  drinking, could not do their duty.
+
+                   _Records of Liverpool Marine Board, April 13, 1917_
+
+  The jury returned a verdict of murder against a youth of 19 who,
+  after drinking one night, went on to his ship and killed the second
+  officer.
+
+                             _Records of Hull Coroner, April 24, 1917_
+
+  A drunken captain in command of a drifter landed with an armed party
+  on the Isle of Man. He posted the men on the quay, and gave them
+  orders to allow no one to pass. Declaring he would shoot every
+  person who came within reach, he fired twice, and threatened to kill
+  two police officers.
+
+                                   _Facts in “Times,” October 6, 1916_
+
+Such is the work of drink wherever it finds a soldier to entrap—the
+drink the Navy carries free from Southampton to the trenches; and from
+America comes the news, as this page is being written, that the Army and
+the Navy of our Western Ally, like the Army and the Navy of our Eastern
+Ally, are to be under Total Prohibition.
+
+               Will some Member of Parliament please ask
+
+=how much bread is destroyed each week to make beer for German
+internment camps in this country?=
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                        Drink and the Red Cross
+
+
+If the full story could ever be told of the national tragedy of drink
+and the war there would be no more ghastly chapter than that which would
+tell how drink fought the Red Cross; how, without pity, it hindered the
+work of mercy that is the general consolation of the world in days like
+these.
+
+We are coming to a famine not only in food, but in doctors. The
+death-roll has been heavy beyond all parallel; the strain on the medical
+services has been almost too great to be borne, and we look anxiously
+round to know where the doctors and nurses will come from. With
+Prohibition the problem would be largely solved, for the ordinary burden
+of life would be largely lifted from our doctors and hospitals, and
+thousands of men and women would be free to give themselves to the war
+instead of mending up and patching up the sordid effects of drink. A
+rich brewer gave a donation for extending a hospital. “Ah! but we should
+not have to extend if he would shut up his public-houses,” said a
+doctor.
+
+It is easy to see how drink is telling all the time against our doctors,
+our nurses, and our hospitals everywhere. Let us call a few witnesses.
+
+  Somebody gave a glass of neat whisky to two wounded men at a garden
+  party in Tottenham. Both were drunk when the brake came to take them
+  home, and one died on the way.
+
+                   _Facts in “Sheffield Telegraph,” September 3, 1915_
+
+  Three wounded soldiers at Oxford were overcome by four bottles of
+  rum smuggled into the hospital by visitors, and one of the men died.
+
+                             _Records of Oxford Coroner, January 1916_
+
+  A wounded soldier asked for two hours’ leave, came back in four
+  hours drunk with whisky, and died after a terrible night in the
+  hospital.
+
+                                               _Facts in “Daily Mail”_
+
+  Two limbless soldiers were found helplessly drunk on the pavement at
+  Brighton. A publican was fined £20.
+
+                       _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” November 25, 1916_
+
+  A wounded soldier, mentioned in despatches, was charged with causing
+  the death of a soldier with whom he had been drinking. Reeling under
+  a heavy blow, the injured man was helped to bed, but when the bugle
+  sounded in the morning he was dead.
+
+                            _Facts in “Daily Mail,” December 21, 1915_
+
+  A soldier, aged 29, with a gunshot wound in his arm, died from
+  alcohol at Oxford. One Sunday night he and two other wounded
+  soldiers consumed four bottles of rum brought into the hospital.
+
+                         _Records of Oxford Coroner, January 10, 1916_
+
+  Three soldiers in hospital uniform were found lying helplessly drunk
+  on the tramlines of Sheffield. Two were back from the Dardanelles.
+
+                            _Facts in “Sheffield Star,” March 2, 1916_
+
+  Seamen on a ship bringing wounded to England from Boulogne were so
+  drunk that they interfered with the stretcher bearers, and one fell
+  across a wounded soldier lying on deck.
+
+                         _Police Records of Southampton, May 14, 1915_
+
+  There was a paralysed and helpless man who was found hopelessly
+  drunk in hospital after his friends had visited him.
+
+                    _Statement by Lieut.-Col. Sir Alfred Pearce Gould_
+
+  An officer who has trained hundreds of men for the ambulance corps
+  declared that a large percentage of wounded are in a very nervous
+  condition, in which alcohol means collapse and almost certain death.
+
+                                              _Quoted in “Daily Mail”_
+
+  Lying helpless at a London station, moaning on the ground in drunken
+  delirium, was a lad in hospital blue who had, in truth, been wounded
+  by his friends. Drink was taking him again through the worst of his
+  experiences, and his mental pain was pitiable to see.
+
+                                 _Facts in the “Globe,” January, 1917_
+
+  Two drunken soldiers from Gallipoli made what a doctor described as
+  the most savage attack he ever saw on a civilian. They held a young
+  man’s head against a wall and pounded him unmercifully.
+
+                              _Facts in “Daily News,” August 19, 1916_
+
+  A party of soldiers were seriously injured in a struggle to arrest a
+  drunken private at Pontefract. The publican called on the men in his
+  taproom to rescue the private, but the sergeants drove them off.
+
+                              _Facts in “Daily News,” October 5, 1914_
+
+  A sergeant of a Welsh regiment, invited to drink by friends in
+  Waterloo Road, was picked up as he lay senseless, his pulse beating
+  feebly, his eyes wide open, and his body starving with cold.
+
+                            _Facts in “Daily News,” February 14, 1916_
+
+  A drunken man rushed from a publichouse and kicked a soldier
+  unconscious. The military police, chasing the man, were stoned. Four
+  soldiers were injured, one having his head cut open, and the
+  military were ordered to clear the place with fixed bayonets.
+
+                              _Facts in “Daily News,” August 11, 1915_
+
+  The medical officer in charge of the Mental Block of a large
+  military hospital said to the Colonel: “I have the worst job of all,
+  and it is through Drink, Drink, Drink! Men recover fairly soon from
+  shell shock, but officers, especially the younger ones, who
+  habitually take wines and spirits, are subject to relapses every few
+  days. It is awful!”
+
+                  _Facts in “National Temperance Quarterly,” May 1917_
+
+  Of the thirty war hospitals in Hertfordshire, with 8000 men passing
+  through them in the first thirty months of the war, there is not one
+  that has not had trouble with drink.
+
+                                           _Facts known to the Author_
+
+  A doctor from a Canadian hospital said a large percentage of their
+  troops had had to be sent back to Canada rendered permanently insane
+  through the action of alcohol.
+
+                             _Facts in “Daily News,” October 31, 1916_
+
+One terrible truth remains to be told of the crime of drink against the
+Red Cross. The most blessed thing in all the world today is alcohol, for
+it makes chloroform and ether, which soothe the pain of men. We cannot
+get enough of either of these consoling drugs, yet we go on wasting
+precious food to make more alcohol _to add to the sum of misery and
+pain_.
+
+               Will some Member of Parliament please ask
+
+=whether the bread ration applies equally to all; or if it may be
+exceeded if the excess is drunk instead of being eaten?=
+
+                                  and
+
+=how many brewers’ vats have been imported this year on ships which had
+no room for urgent munitions of war?=
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                     Stabbing the Army in the Back
+
+
+All the world is learning now that the drink trade is the great
+confederate of venereal disease. It leads a man into temptation,
+destroys his power of resistance, and retards his chances of recovery.
+
+We can never know the truth about the extent of this disease, about the
+way in which the liquor trade, by breaking down tens of thousands of our
+men, has stabbed the Army in the back. But the number of soldiers
+incapacitated by this disease through drink is enormously greater than
+the number incapacitated by the most subtle or dramatic stroke devised
+by the German staff.
+
+The lost man-power of the Army through this disease must be equal to the
+whole of the original British Expeditionary Force. The Government has
+given us figures for the Army at home last year, and they are 43 per
+1,000—or over 100,000 cases for an army of 2,500,000 men. There were
+7,000 cases in one Canadian camp alone.
+
+Here are the black facts revealed in a debate in Parliament on April 23,
+1917, when two distinguished Army officers, speaking with great
+restraint, sought to open the eyes of the nation to this plague fostered
+in our camps by drink:
+
+  “During the war we have had admitted into the hospitals of England
+  over 70,000 cases of gonorrhœa, over 20,000 cases of syphilis, and
+  over 6000 cases of another disease somewhat similar. I am quite
+  openly prepared to state that of these 20,000 cases of syphilis you
+  do not get much work out of them under two and a half years. I know
+  from what I have seen of the modern conditions of this War that you
+  may absolutely wipe them out, except for a few handfuls.
+
+  “When you come to the great mass of casualties under this head ...
+  the figures mean that you have =a Division constantly out of
+  action=. If you have anything like 70,000 men enfeebled, you find
+  that you suffer to that extent also. It is not only that you lose
+  the men, and not only the men who are partially cured are suffering
+  for many months to come, but their chances of recovery from wounds
+  are not nearly so good.
+
+  “I know of a hospital for venereal cases which it was found
+  necessary to expand from its normal accommodation for 500 or 600 up
+  to 2,000 cases, and they are continually full. It is a British
+  hospital in France. A figure I should like to submit to challenge is
+  that during the course of the war between 40,000 and 50,000 cases of
+  syphilis have passed through our hospitals in France. When you come
+  to gonorrhœa, the figure given me which covers that is between
+  150,000 and 200,000 cases.”
+
+                         _Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917_
+
+  “Every Canadian soldier who comes to this country arrives here not
+  only a first-class specimen of a fine soldier, but as clean-limbed
+  and as clean a man as the Creator Himself could create. The fact
+  that in one only of the three Canadian camps in this country 7,000
+  of these clean Canadian boys went through the hospital for venereal
+  disease in fourteen months is not only a great discredit to any
+  Government in this country but has an effect in Canada which I can
+  assure the House does not make for a better feeling with the Home
+  Country, and does not make for what we all desire—Imperial Unity.”
+
+           _Colonel Sir Hamar Greenwood in Parliament, April 23, 1917_
+
+Those are unchallenged statements made in the House of Commons itself;
+they stand as a terrible indictment of this disease, and it is not to be
+denied that this evil could never have reached its present frightful
+proportions if Parliament had followed the King. Let us look at a few
+examples of the ravages of this vice allied so closely to the
+public-house.
+
+  It is not possible to tell the whole truth about drink; the language
+  in which it must be written would be offensive in a civilised
+  country. It must be said, simply, that soldiers in England have been
+  court-martialled for having been influenced by drink to commit
+  unspeakable offences against animals.
+
+                                  _Facts in Records of Court-Martials_
+
+  A special constable in a harlot-haunted district in London describes
+  how these harpies carry off lonely soldiers to their rooms, make
+  them drunk, and finally innoculate them, as likely as not, with
+  disease. Is it not possible to hold in check these women who prey
+  upon and poison our soldiers? asks Sir Conan Doyle.
+
+                                               _Letter in the “Times”_
+
+  One of the hot-beds of venereal disease to which drink leads our
+  soldiers, was kept by an Austrian woman in Lambeth, who was
+  receiving 15_s._ a week from the Austrian Government in April 1916,
+  and used to lure our soldiers when weakened by drink. All the men
+  seen to enter this house were either soldiers or sailors.
+
+                                           _Police Records of Lambeth_
+
+  A soldier from the Front with £18 was taken by a married woman to
+  her home, where he was found after a drunken bout with eight women,
+  all drunk. The woman’s children were terribly neglected.
+
+                     _Police Records of St. Helens, November 30, 1915_
+
+  If you describe the Waterloo Road and the back streets as an open
+  sewer you will be somewhere near the truth. Not a day goes by
+  without bringing some soldier who has been waylaid.
+
+                             _Facts in the “Times,” February 22, 1917_
+
+  A soldier came from the Front to go home to Scotland. He got drunk
+  near Waterloo, losing all his money and his railway pass. He spent
+  his leave living on charity, and returned to the Front without
+  having been near either his home or his friends.
+
+                            _Facts in “Daily News,” February 14, 1916_
+
+Here is the official proof of the relation of the drink trade to this
+traffic in disease. It is from the Report of the Royal Commission:
+
+  Abundant evidence was given as to the intimate relation between
+  alcohol and venereal diseases.
+
+  Alcohol renders a man liable to yield to temptations which he might
+  otherwise resist, and aggravates the disease by diminishing the
+  resistance of the individual.
+
+  Alcoholism makes latent syphilis and gonorrhœa active.
+
+  Our evidence tends to show that the communication in disease is
+  frequently due to indulgence in intoxicants, and there is no doubt
+  that the growth of temperance among the population would help to
+  bring about an amelioration of the very serious conditions which our
+  enquiry has revealed.
+
+  We desire, therefore, to place on record our opinion that action
+  should be taken without delay.
+
+               Will some Member of Parliament please ask
+
+=if, in view of Lord D’Abernon’s statement that Prohibition has failed
+in Canada, the Government will issue the figures showing the decrease of
+crime and the increase of wealth?=
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                       The Price the Empire Pays
+
+
+It is a bitter irony that while the men of the Empire have come to
+France to fight the enemy of mankind, this foe within our gates has
+struck a blow at the British Empire that generations will not heal. How
+many Empire men this private trade has slain we do not know, but we know
+beyond all challenge that it has weakened the bonds that bind our
+Dominions to the Motherland. This trade that throttles us at home can
+pull the Empire down, and it has started well. It has struck its blow at
+Canada.
+
+Let us look at the plain facts which in other days than these would have
+caused a storm of anger that Parliament could not have ignored. Canada
+has followed the King; arming herself with her full powers, flinging
+herself upon her enemies with her utmost strength, she has swept drink
+out of Canada almost from sea to sea. But even before she did this
+Canada saw that alcohol must go from her camps if her men were to be fit
+to fight for England, and long before the Prohibition wave swept across
+the country, the Canadian Government removed all alcohol from the
+training camps. It was the deliberate choice of a Government and its
+people, and from that day to this there has been no reason for regret.
+
+So the young manhood of Canada, rallying to the flag, was guarded from
+alcohol. She poured out her men in hundreds of thousands; they came to
+us from Prohibition camps; they came in Prohibition ships, and even here
+this trade that has us in its grip was not allowed at first in the
+Canadian camps; the only condition that Canada made—a condition implied
+but clearly understood—was properly regarded and obeyed.
+
+We respected the desire of Canada, and kept her soldiers free from drink
+in their own camps. But a soldier cannot keep in camp, and in the
+villages around the Drink Trade waits in every street. The military
+authorities were willing for the Canadian Government to have their way
+inside the camps, but drink was free outside, and in these public-houses
+there was sown the seed that may one day break this Empire. The Drink
+Trade was so rampant outside the Canadian camps that Prohibition inside
+was almost in vain. We had to decide between breaking the word of the
+Canadian Government to its people or dealing with this trade as Canada
+herself has done; as Russia has done; as France and America are doing.
+It was the Empire or the drink traffic, and the drink traffic won, as it
+always wins with us.
+
+It came about in October, down on Salisbury Plain. During one week-end a
+number of Canadian troops gave way to drinking in villages around the
+camps, and it was then that the grave decision was come to that the
+drink trade should be allowed to set up its horrible canteens in every
+Canadian camp. The change was made at the request of a British General,
+and we have the assurance of the Prime Minister of Canada that the
+approval of the Canadian Government was neither obtained nor asked. In
+handing the Canadian Army over to the drink canteens, in deliberately
+reversing the policy of the Canadian Government and its people, there
+was no consultation with Canada.
+
+It is important to remember that this decision, fraught with tragic and
+far-reaching consequences for the Empire, was a pure and simple English
+act. We may imagine the Canadian view from the remark of a Canadian
+General, who said, “I know drink is a hindrance, but I can do very
+little, because in military circles in this country drunkenness is not
+considered a very serious offense.”
+
+It would have been surprising if there had not poured in upon our
+Government a stream of protests, and from all parts of the Dominions
+they came. The Dominion of Canada, giving freely to the Motherland
+450,000 boys and men, was moved to passionate indignation that England
+should scorn her love for them, should ignore the pleadings of their
+mothers and sisters, and should put in their way the temptations from
+which they were saved at home. Canada does not want our drink trade; she
+lives side by side with the United States, she sees that great country
+building up its future free from drink, and she sees America, splendid
+ally in war, as a mighty rival in peace.
+
+And Canada is ready for the Reconstruction. She has followed the
+Prohibition lead of the United States, and already she has ceased to be
+a borrowing country. The very first year of Prohibition has seen this
+young Dominion, for the first time in her history, financially
+self-sustaining. Crime is disappearing; social gatherings are held in
+her gaols; she has set up vast munition workshops, and instead of
+borrowing money for her own support she has made hundreds of millions’
+worth of munitions for which this country need not pay until the war is
+over, and then need never pay at all for the munitions the Canadians
+have used. Canada is in deadly earliest. She kept her men away from
+drink to make them fit; she has swept it away to make a clean country
+for those who go back.
+
+And what is England’s contribution to this Imperial Reconstruction? _We
+have scorned it all._ The Prime Minister has said that this drink trade
+is so horrible that it is worth this horrible war to settle with it, yet
+we have sacrificed the love of Canada on our brewers’ altar. We can
+believe the Canadian who declares his profound conviction that but for
+this Canada would have sent us 100,000 more recruits; we can believe it
+is true that where responsible Canadians meet together in these days the
+talk is of how long the tie will last unbroken that binds the daughter
+to the Motherland. We can understand the passion that lies behind the
+resolutions that come to Downing Street from Nova Scotia; we know the
+depth of the yearning of those 64,000 mothers and wives of Toronto who
+signed that great petition to the Government of Canada begging it in the
+name of God to intervene.
+
+We can understand it all; but let us call the witnesses, and let us see
+the price the Dominion pays for our quailing before this Kaiser’s trade.
+
+
+                       Those Who Will Not Go Back
+
+It is the great consolation of Canada that, though their sons may fall
+before this tempter’s trade in Britain, they will go back to a Canada
+free from drink. But some will never go back, and they are not on the
+Roll of Honour. They have been destroyed by the enemy within our gate,
+this trade that traps men on their way to France and digs their graves.
+
+  A young Canadian who had never tasted alcohol came from a
+  Prohibition camp in Canada, came to England on a Prohibition ship,
+  and was put in a camp with a drink canteen. He started drinking and
+  contracted venereal disease. Ordered home as unfit, in fear and
+  shame he sought a friend’s advice about the girl he was to marry.
+  “You can never marry her,” said his friend, and that night in his
+  hut the young Canadian blew out his brains.
+
+                                   _Facts in possession of the Author_
+
+  A young Canadian officer was sent home disgraced. Sodden with
+  alcohol, he left the train and shot a railway clerk dead.
+
+                _Facts in Montreal “Weekly Witness,” October 24, 1916_
+
+  A Russian soldier in the Canadian forces, described as a clean,
+  soldierly man, with a splendid character from his officer, was
+  charged with the murder of a Canadian private who tried to separate
+  two quarrelling soldiers in a bar. The prisoner had drunk much
+  whisky and remembered nothing of his crime, and was sentenced to
+  twelve months’ hard labour for manslaughter. The judge hoped he
+  might be used as a soldier _in the Russian Army_.
+
+                          _Record of Hampshire Assizes, February 1916_
+
+  A man from Prohibition Russia enlisted in Prohibition Canada, and
+  came to England. He spent 9_s._ on drink one day, and that night he
+  crept from his bed and killed his corporal at Witley Camp.
+
+                          _Police Records of Godalming, February 1917_
+
+  A Canadian soldier, aged 26, after a publichouse quarrel with
+  another soldier, was found dying on the pavement in Hastings. His
+  throat had been cut, and he died on entering the hospital. The other
+  soldier was charged with murder, and sentenced to 15 years.
+
+                              _Record of Hastings Assizes, March 1917_
+
+  A young Canadian soldier, aged 20, died from alcohol while in
+  training at Witley. He had a bottle of stout followed by nine or ten
+  “double-headers” of neat whisky in about two hours. He was carried
+  back to camp, laid unconscious on his bed, and died.
+
+                          _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” March 22, 1917_
+
+  A Canadian lieutenant was tried for the murder of a canteen
+  sergeant. They arrived together at a house at Grayshott, where the
+  lieutenant asked for some strong drink and took a bottle of whisky
+  and two glasses. The sergeant was afterwards found dead in the
+  cellar, and the lieutenant carried the body into the stable.
+
+                         _Records of Grayshott Coroner, December 1915_
+
+  A man leaving a publichouse in company with a woman, with whom he
+  had been drinking, met a Canadian soldier not far from Charing
+  Cross. The soldier spoke, and the man struck him. The soldier was
+  carried to the hospital, where he died soon afterwards from a wound
+  two inches deep, caused by a knife.
+
+                       _Police Records of Bow Street, January 1, 1917_
+
+  The wife of a gunner in the South African Heavy Artillery died at
+  Bexhill from alcohol. The soldier said he bought 12 bottles of stout
+  and 12 bottles of beer, one of whisky, and one of port, which they
+  drank between Saturday night and Monday night.
+
+                           _Records of Bexhill Coroner, December 1915_
+
+  A soldier from Toronto, having been drinking away his pay in a
+  Carlisle publichouse, with another Canadian soldier and some married
+  women, failed to appear the next morning, and was found dead on a
+  footpath with a bottle of whisky in his pocket
+
+                         _Records of Carlisle Coroner, April 14, 1917_
+
+  A Canadian soldier, having drawn £20 from the Canadian office,
+  visited several publichouses, and was killed in a scuffle in London.
+
+                             _Facts in “Daily News,” December 2, 1916_
+
+
+                   The Men From the Prohibition Camps
+
+Again and again we have seen the peculiar temptations of drink among
+Canadians. Officers, chief-constables, chaplains, newspapers, the men
+themselves, have all borne witness that to these men from Prohibition
+Canada the sudden temptations of our drink trade come with terrible
+power, and often they fall not knowing. The finest manhood of the Empire
+our tap-rooms and canteens destroy, not in isolated cases, but in a host
+we dare not number.
+
+Of the soldiers who first came over from Canada, says a great Canadian
+paper, many were emigrants from England, not yet securely planted in
+Canada, and for their sakes especially drink should have been withheld
+from them. Of the larger number of Canadian troops that followed them,
+many were youths who had never known drink, and they were taken from
+home at the most social and reckless age, to face drink with all the
+temptations induced by the nervous strain, the hardships and social
+abandon of the camp and the trench, and the free pocket-money when on
+leave.
+
+  In an officers’ mess of two double companies of Canadians only one
+  officer drank on his arrival in a canteen camp in England; within
+  three months there was not an abstainer in the mess.
+
+         _Facts told at Society for Study of Inebriety, Jan. 10, 1916_
+
+  These men come mostly from districts in Canada where intoxicants are
+  prohibited by law, and many of them, being young lads, who perhaps
+  have never tasted liquor before their arrival, fall easy victims.
+
+                                        _Chief Constable of Godalming_
+
+  Overseas soldiers come to our hospitals astonishingly cheerful and
+  fit in a general sense, and wonderfully receptive to treatment. Only
+  three per thousand die in our great hospitals. This is largely due
+  to the hardy life of the men and the fact that they are removed from
+  the danger of taking too much alcohol. The home troops have a much
+  higher mortality, partly because their use of alcohol diminishes
+  their chances. Re-admissions are largely due to drink on furlough.
+
+          _Major Maclean, M.D., of the Third Western General Hospital_
+
+  A Canadian soldier, who had been wounded at the Front, was taken to
+  a house by women and left alone drunk. An officer gave him an
+  excellent character, and said he was on his way back to Canada.
+  These men experience temptations here (he said) that they would not
+  find in Canada, and there was too much of this going on.
+
+                          _Hastings Police Records, February 19, 1917_
+
+  I heard a sad account of the havoc of the wet canteen and a private
+  in a Canadian A.M.C. told us of a lad of 17 who is made so drunk
+  that there is rarely a night when he has not to be helped up to bed.
+  One of the soldiers here told me of his son in Canada being anxious
+  to join up, but after seeing the condition of things over here he
+  was doing all he could to discourage his son.
+
+                                                _Letter to the Author_
+
+  The Canadians in most cases are entirely lost when they arrive in
+  this country, and are much more liable to the temptation which is
+  thrown in their way, but when you give a figure such as this—that in
+  one camp during last year, and two months of the previous year,
+  there were 7,000 cases—it seems to me that it is about time we
+  realised the magnitude of the evil. I do not know what has happened
+  to them, except that I imagine a large number have gone back to
+  Canada, and have not been able to play the part they had hoped to
+  play.
+
+                         _Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917_
+
+
+                          In Camp and On Leave
+
+Everywhere we find the trail of drink among Canadians—in camp and on
+leave.
+
+  A Canadian corporal, wounded in the Battle of Ypres, was found
+  terribly drunk after being missing all day from hospital. Confronted
+  with the surgeon after violent acts of insubordination, the corporal
+  broke down and cried like a child.
+
+                          _Facts in “Western Mail,” February 18, 1916_
+
+  In the first weeks of the war 42 Canadian soldiers disgraced
+  themselves, by excessive drinking, insubordination, and disorderly
+  conduct, to such an extent that they had to be sent back to Canada.
+
+                       _Facts in “Canadian Pioneer,” December 4, 1914_
+
+  A Canadian soldier, helplessly drunk, was seen at King’s Cross
+  station eating, tearing, and crumpling up £1 notes, and would have
+  lost about fifteen pounds but for kindly help from passers by.
+
+                      _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” September 28, 1916_
+
+  A gunner from Montreal, missing from camp for several days, drank
+  himself delirious, and cut his throat with a razor.
+
+                       _Facts in “Canadian Pioneer,” December 4, 1914_
+
+  A Canadian soldier spent £70 in three weeks on drink and bad
+  characters.
+
+                               _Facts in “Daily Mail” August 10, 1915_
+
+  A Sergeant-Major from Canada declared that he had lost 20 per cent.
+  of the men of his battery through venereal disease. They had a
+  little drink, and were captured by the swarm of bad women at
+  Folkestone.
+
+                                           _Facts in Letter to Author_
+
+  A woman was imprisoned for placing young children in moral danger.
+  Every night the girls brought soldiers home, and colonial soldiers
+  were frequently so drunk that they were carried in.
+
+                   _Records of Central Criminal Court, April 25, 1917_
+
+
+                       The Rising Storm in Canada
+
+  =The thing cannot be justified. It is the blackest tragedy of this
+  whole war that, in fighting for freedom in Europe, the free sons of
+  the British breed have to face this war-time record of waste at
+  home, with its inevitable toll of debauchery and crime.=
+
+                                        _Editorial in “Toronto Globe”_
+
+While this book was being written one of the greatest meetings ever held
+in Manchester was cheering a Canadian in khaki who declared that he was
+not going hungry while brewers were destroying food, and he went on to
+say, this soldier and sportsman well-known in the Dominion:
+
+  “Great numbers of our men never saw France. Canadian boys cried
+  because they had not munitions. England reeled and beer flowed like
+  water while thousands of our boys went down into their graves. We
+  will never forget it in Canada.”
+
+We may be sure Canada will not forget. She will not forget her dead: she
+will not forget that the Drink Traffic she has swept away at home struck
+down her sons in the land for which they fought. “We must know who is to
+blame,” says a Canadian paper; “we presume they will have no objection
+to have their names placarded before the country, that every mother may
+know.” Col. Sir Hamar Greenwood, M. P., has lately returned from Canada,
+and this is what he tells us:
+
+  “I met many fathers and mothers whose boys had been sent back to
+  Canada debilitated and ruined for life because they had been
+  enmeshed by harpies, and again and again these parents have said to
+  me, ‘We do not mind our boys dying on the field of battle for old
+  England, but to think that we sent our sons to England to come back
+  to us ruined in health, and a disgrace to us, to them, and to the
+  country, is something the Home Country should never ask us to
+  bear.’”
+
+  _Letter from a Solicitor in Ontario to the Author_:
+
+  I wonder if the advocates of the drink traffic in Britain appreciate
+  the contempt in which they are held in Canada. Before the war I had
+  a class of ten young men. Every one of them is now at the Front, and
+  one writes that when I told them of the drink conditions in England
+  he did not believe half of it; now he says I did not tell him half.
+  Letters from our Canadian soldiers are appearing in our papers, and
+  they are all amazed at the drinking habits of Britain.
+
+  _From a Resolution received by Mr. Lloyd George from the Social
+  Service Council of Nova Scotia_:
+
+  That we, representing the social, moral, and spiritual forces of
+  this part of the British Empire, who have proved our loyalty by the
+  thousands of men this small province has sent overseas, do record
+  our most earnest protest against Britain’s inaction in this matter,
+  which we are sure must result in longer and increased suffering for
+  the men we have sent to help her win the war; and do most
+  insistently plead with the British Government and the British
+  Parliament that they at once exercise the power vested in them to
+  strike the blow that will dispose of this enemy at home, and so give
+  mighty reinforcement to those who are bleeding and dying for Britain
+  and human liberties on the battlefields abroad.
+
+  _Sermon by Dr. Flanders in London, Ontario, Feb. 25, 1917_:
+
+  Canada has the right to make this demand on the Motherland from the
+  simple standpoint of political economics. That we might put the
+  Dominion into the best possible shape to give the utmost of our
+  strength in men and munitions, we have an almost Dominion-wide
+  Prohibition, and no intelligent person will deny that our
+  contributions to the war from the first have been multiplied and
+  intensified by that action. Why should little Johnnie Canuck abolish
+  drink that he might conserve his manhood and material resources in
+  the interest of the Empire’s war, and big John Bull refuse to
+  abolish the traffic to the great waste of his material resources and
+  the undoing of his efficiency?
+
+  _A public man with three soldier sons wrote to the Toronto Globe_:
+
+  Canada, for efficiency in war, casts out the drink evil. Is it too
+  much to expect Britain, in fairness, to do the same? Is it not a
+  mockery for the British Isles to face our common struggle with this
+  palsy in her frame?
+
+  Here is the bitter pill, the embittering thought for many a Canadian
+  parent. Let me be a type. Three of my sons are in khaki. I gave them
+  a father’s blessing when they enlisted. But this thought strains,
+  most of all, the ties of my loyalty to the cause—to see my sons
+  fight and fall for a Britain that at home is saddled by distillery
+  interests, and misguided by a Press silent as the grave on this
+  entrenched evil. Why should our sons go from a country where booze
+  is banished to spend months on the way to the trenches in England,
+  where the vices of the liquor traffic are legalised?
+
+  _We see the spirit of Canada in those great words of the Premier of
+  Ontario, Mr. Hearst, speaking of the giving up of drink_:
+
+  In this day of national peril, in this day when the future of the
+  British Empire, the freedom of the world, and the blessings of
+  democratic government hang in the balance, if I should fail to
+  listen to what I believe to be the call of duty, if I should neglect
+  to take every action that in my judgment will help to conserve the
+  financial strength and power and manhood of this province for the
+  great struggle in which we are engaged, I would be a traitor to my
+  country, a traitor to my own conscience, and unworthy of the brave
+  sons of Canada that are fighting, bleeding and dying for freedom and
+  for us.
+
+  _A letter from one of the most eminent public men in Canada_:
+
+  “British Canada is intensely loyal to the Empire and the Allied
+  Cause, but at present recruiting is almost at an end. Why? Partly
+  because of considerable dissatisfaction with many of the conditions
+  which prevail. Suffering, wounds, death, are expected as inevitable
+  in war, but the evil influences, the lavish temptations of liquor
+  and bad women which sweep down upon our boys in England, are not
+  felt to be necessary, and the hearts of multitudes of Canadian
+  parents are hot with indignation at the apparent indifference of the
+  authorities to the moral welfare of our troops.”
+
+  _Captain John MacNeill, with the Canadian troops in France_:
+
+  “I say to you solemnly, if England should lose this war because of
+  drink, or if England should unnecessarily prolong the war with great
+  sacrifice of life in her effort to protect drink, or even if England
+  should win the war in spite of drink, you will have put upon the
+  bonds of Empire such a strain as they have never known before, and
+  such a strain as we cannot promise they will be able to survive.”
+
+  _From the petition presented to the Prime Minister of Canada, signed
+  by 64,000 mothers and wives in Toronto_:
+
+  1. That Mothers and Wives of Canada in giving their sons and
+  husbands for King and Empire, asked and received from your Minister
+  of Militia this only assurance that, in sending them into the ranks,
+  we were not hereby irrevocably thrusting them into the temptation of
+  Strong Drink.
+
+  2. We appreciated from the depths of our hearts, your action in
+  abolishing the Wet Canteen from the Canadian Militia. We believe the
+  Wet Canteen established in the ranks of the front to be a double
+  danger, robbing our King of the success in arms which in these days
+  comes only to the brave heart that is controlled by a clear head,
+  and robbing us and our Canada of the Manhood which we gave into our
+  Empire’s keeping.
+
+  3. We do not believe that the King will refuse the aid of Canada’s
+  sons; nor that he will appreciate your patriotic efforts the less,
+  if you keep faith with us and make known to His Majesty, his
+  Ministers and Commanders, that our boys are sent forth on the one
+  condition that the dispensing of intoxicating liquors shall be
+  prohibited in the ranks.
+
+  _From a Sermon preached in Ontario, February 25, 1917_:
+
+  “Thank God, if any of our Canadian soldiers return to us with the
+  drink habit formed and raging, we can welcome them to a land nearly
+  purged of the liquor traffic, where they may have a chance to
+  recover their manhood.”
+
+  _Letter on the effects of Prohibition, from a business man in
+  Ontario, published in the “Spectator:”_
+
+  “Men I have known for years to be regular promenading tanks have
+  given it up, and are starting a decent life again. The Police Court
+  is empty. England should try it. It would be, after the first heavy
+  initial loss, the best thing that ever struck the nation. I cursed
+  these temperance guys as hard as any, but all the same it cannot
+  blind you from the truth.”
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                     Your Share in the Food Crisis
+
+
+         The Food and Money Wasted on Drink in Our Great Towns
+
+           ESTIMATED FROM AUGUST 1914 TO APRIL 1917 INCLUSIVE
+                       by GEORGE B. WILSON, B.A.,
+                  Compiler of the National Drink Bill
+
+   ───────────────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────┬──────────────
+                          │ Drink Bill  │ Grain Lost  │Sugar in Beer
+   ───────────────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼──────────────
+                          │             │    Tons     │     lb.
+   United Kingdom         │ £510,000,000│    4,400,000│   762,000,000
+   London                 │  £83,000,000│      693,000│   120,000,000
+   Edinburgh              │   £3,200,000│       31,000│     5,300,000
+   Dublin                 │   £2,600,000│       29,000│     5,000,000
+   Glasgow                │  £10,500,000│      101,000│    17,400,000
+   Manchester and Salford │  £11,000,000│       92,000│    15,900,000
+   Birmingham             │   £9,900,000│       82,000│    14,200,000
+   Liverpool              │   £8,800,000│       73,000│    12,600,000
+   Sheffield              │   £5,400,000│       45,000│     7,800,000
+   Leeds                  │   £5,300,000│       44,000│     7,600,000
+   Bristol                │   £4,200,000│       35,000│     6,000,000
+   West Ham               │   £3,400,000│       28,000│     4,900,000
+   Bradford               │   £3,300,000│       28,000│     4,800,000
+   Hull                   │   £3,300,000│       27,000│     4,700,000
+   Newcastle              │   £3,100,000│       26,000│     4,500,000
+   Nottingham             │   £3,100,000│       26,000│     4,500,000
+   Portsmouth             │   £2,800,000│       23,000│     4,400,000
+   Stoke                  │   £2,800,000│       23,000│     4,000,000
+   Leicester              │   £2,700,000│       22,000│     3,800,000
+   Cardiff                │   £2,100,000│       18,000│     3,100,000
+   Bolton                 │   £2,100,000│       18,000│     3,000,000
+   Croydon                │   £2,100,000│       17,000│     3,000,000
+   Sunderland             │   £1,700,000│       14,000│     2,500,000
+   Oldham                 │   £1,700,000│       14,000│     2,500,000
+   Birkenhead             │   £1,600,000│       13,000│     2,200,000
+   Blackburn              │   £1,500,000│       13,000│     2,200,000
+   Brighton               │   £1,500,000│       13,000│     2,200,000
+   Plymouth               │   £1,500,000│       12,000│     2,100,000
+   Derby                  │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,100,000
+   Middlesbrough          │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,100,000
+   Stockport              │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,100,000
+   Norwich                │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,100,000
+   Southampton            │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,000,000
+   Swansea                │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,000,000
+   Gateshead              │   £1,400,000│       11,000│     2,000,000
+   Preston                │   £1,400,000│       11,000│     1,900,000
+   Coventry               │   £1,300,000│       11,000│     1,900,000
+   Huddersfield           │   £1,300,000│       10,000│     1,800,000
+   Halifax                │   £1,200,000│       10,000│     1,700,000
+   ───────────────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────┴──────────────
+
+
+                             PLAY THE GAME
+
+           There is one week’s bread in      18 pints of beer
+           There is one week’s sugar in      16 pints of beer
+
+  The man who drinks 3 pints a day drinks another man’s rations.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                 THE FOOD PYRAMIDS DESTROYED FOR DRINK
+
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  The Great Pyramid of Egypt, the biggest construction in stone ever
+    made by the hands of man—80,000,000 cubic feet of masonry]
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  The Great Pyramids of Food, the biggest wilful destruction of food
+    ever known—180,000,000 cubic feet of food destroyed for the Drink
+    Trade during the war]
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                      How the Brewer Gets Our Food
+
+
+THE MEN WHO BRING IT
+
+It is easy to talk of a mine-sweeper. I wish the whole nation could
+understand what these men are doing. They are feeding the whole
+population, battling with the elements as well as with the enemy,
+battling with dangers overhead and dangers under the sea. The
+mine-sweeper is like the soldier daily over the parapet—he carries his
+life in his hand.
+
+                                          _First Lord of the Admiralty._
+
+
+THE PEOPLE WHO WAIT FOR IT
+
+A London caterer ordered a quantity of sugar from the Philippines. The
+mine-sweepers cleared the way for it and it reached the docks. The
+caterer sent for it, and was informed that it could only be delivered if
+it was for a brewer.
+
+A provincial caterer ordered sugar _and paid for it_, but was told by
+the Food Controller that it could only be released if _it was sold to a
+brewer_.
+
+A working man was discussing rations with his minister in the street.
+“It is very hard,” he said, “to keep to your rations when you have five
+strapping lads, but we are going to try it.” Then a drunken man lurched
+past. The workman pulled himself together, and said, in great passion:
+“I tell you what it is, sir, I am not going to let my boys starve as
+long as there is food to make beer for men like that.”
+
+
+THE PRICE WE PAY FOR IT
+
+Immense quantities of food are used for beer and spirits. All this grain
+is lost for food purposes. _If this grain were available for food, the
+prices of bread and meat would be lowered._
+
+                                                _War Savings Committee._
+
+
+THE POOR WHO SUFFER FOR IT
+
+“Rationing bread could not be undertaken without grave risk to the
+health of the poor.”
+
+                                                 _Capt. Bathurst, M. P._
+
+                   By what right does the Government
+
+use our mine-sweepers to bring in food for brewers to destroy? allow
+brewers to increase the cost of living for every household? and allow
+the willful destruction of food supplies to imperil the health of the
+poor?
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                       The Way for the Government
+
+
+We do not want to be amused by fiddlers while our heroes fight and die.
+
+What are the things we see? We see the Government silent in the presence
+of what the greatest paper in our greatest overseas Dominion calls “the
+blackest tragedy of the war.” We see a trade which the King declared to
+be prolonging the war in the crisis of 1915, prolonging it still in the
+crisis of 1917. We see our Prime Minister, who has declared this trade
+to be worse than Germany, allowing it to have its way. We see our Prime
+Minister, who has said we cannot settle with Germany until we have
+settled with drink, fearing to settle with drink. Then are we not to
+settle with Germany, and are we to surrender to the greatest enemy of
+the three?
+
+There is one clear way before the Government; it is the only way of
+straightness and patriotism and honour. It is to wind up this enemy
+trade and move from our path the greatest hindrance to the winning of
+the war. It is to take our side honourably with our great Allies, to
+bring to an end the shameful isolation of Great Britain in the drink map
+of the great free countries that appears on the back of this book.
+
+It is the sign of weakness everywhere that it seeks a scapegoat for its
+sins, and we hear the everlasting talk of Labour. But it will not do. It
+is time these slanders on our workmen ceased.
+
+If the Government is afraid of the working man, let it say so, or let it
+try him. If it is afraid of temperance people, let it rally them to its
+side as one man on the platform where they meet. If it is afraid of the
+Drink Trade, then the time has come to say so, for we who send out our
+millions to fight a foreign foe are not going to starve for bread
+through fear of enemies within our gate. The Prime Minister gave the
+Army its munitions; the Army will use them in vain unless the munitions
+of life come into our homes.
+
+Working men are tired of men who fool with food and liberty. They do not
+object to any equal sacrifice: they believe in the democratic policy of
+the King, who based Prohibition, not on class distinction as the
+Government did by closing tap-rooms 15 hours a day and leaving cellars
+and Parliamentary bars open always, but on the principle of the King’s
+own words that “no difference shall be made, so far as his Majesty is
+concerned, between the treatment of the rich and poor in this respect.”
+Let the Government follow the King, and the people will follow the
+Government.
+
+In the highest interests of the nation and the war let this be said as
+plain as words can make it—_that there is no body of temperance opinion
+anywhere standing in the way of Prohibition_, but that the united moral
+forces of the nation would rally to the Government instantly on an act
+of a few words such as this:
+
+=That the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages be totally
+prohibited in the United Kingdom for the period of the war and
+demobilization, and that a committee be appointed to deal with all the
+private and public interests concerned; and that it be resolved upon,
+here and now, that reconstruction be accompanied by universal local
+option.=
+
+There would be no opposition the Government need count to a proposal
+like that.
+
+[Illustration: TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION LABEL WESTERVILLE O.]
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s note:
+
+Obvious typographical and punctuation errors were corrected.
+
+Inconsistencies in hyphenation were retained.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 53733 ***
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-<h1 class="pg">The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Fiddlers, by Arthur Mee</h1>

-<p>This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States

-and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no

-restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it

-under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this

-eBook or online at <a

-href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>.  If you are not

-located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the

-country where you are located before using this ebook.</p>

-<p>Title: The Fiddlers</p>

-<p>       Drink in the Witness Box </p>

-<p>Author: Arthur Mee</p>

-<p>Release Date: December 15, 2016  [eBook #53733]</p>

-<p>Language: English</p>

-<p>Character set encoding: UTF-8</p>

-<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIDDLERS***</p>

-<p>&nbsp;</p>

-<h4>E-text prepared by MWS, ellinora,<br />

-    and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />

-    (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br />

-    from page images generously made available by<br />

-    Internet Archive<br />

-    (<a href="https://archive.org">https://archive.org</a>)</h4>

-<p>&nbsp;</p>

-<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10">

-  <tr>

-    <td valign="top">

-      Note:

-    </td>

-    <td>

-      Images of the original pages are available through

-      Internet Archive. See

-      <a href="https://archive.org/details/fiddlersdrinkinw00meea">

-      https://archive.org/details/fiddlersdrinkinw00meea</a>

-    </td>

-  </tr>

-</table>

-<p>&nbsp;</p>

-<hr class="full" />

-<div class="body">

-<p>&nbsp;</p>

-<p>&nbsp;</p>

-<p>&nbsp;</p>

-

-<div  class='figcenter id001'>

-<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='cover' class='ig001' />

-</div>

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-

-<div>

-  <h1 class='c001'><span class='xxlarge'>The Fiddlers</span> <br /> <span class='xlarge'>Drink in the <br /> Witness Box</span></h1>

-</div>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c1'>

-<div class='nf-center c000'>

-    <div><i>By</i> ARTHUR MEE</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<div class='lg-container-l c002'>

-  <div class='linegroup'>

-    <div class='group'>

-      <div class='line'><i>If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain;</i></div>

-      <div class='line'><i>If thou sayest, “Behold, we knew it not;” doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it?</i></div>

-      <div class='line'><i>And shall not He render to every man according to his works?</i></div>

-    </div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c1'>

-<div class='nf-center c003'>

-    <div>Published by MORGAN &amp; SCOTT, <span class='sc'>Ltd</span></div>

-    <div>12 Paternoster Buildings, London, E. C. 4</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<table class='table0' summary=''>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c004'>First Hundred Thousand</td>

-    <td class='c005'>May 15, 1917</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c004'>Second Hundred Thousand</td>

-    <td class='c005'>June 1, 1917</td>

-  </tr>

-</table>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c1'>

-  <div class='nf-center'>

-    <div>Reprinted in the United States by</div>

-    <div>THE AMERICAN ISSUE PUBLISHING COMPANY</div>

-    <div>Westerville, Ohio</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-

-<div  class='figcenter id002'>

-<img src='images/image002.jpg' alt='Old man in suit with skeleton crouching behind his back' class='ig001' />

-<div class='ic002'>

-<p>DRINK LEADING FAMINE IN</p>

-</div>

-</div>

-<p class='c006'>The Drink Trade gave Germany her greatest weapon in the war by

-helping to make the bread famine.</p>

-

-<p class='c006'>It was the wilful destruction of 4,800,000 tons of food, depriving the

-nation of her reserves, that led to the appalling gravity of the submarine

-menace.</p>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-

-<div  class='figcenter id002'>

-<img src='images/image003.jpg' alt='woman in dress and helmet holding sword' class='ig001' />

-<div class='ic002'>

-<p>Drink, What did You do in the Great War?</p>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<div class='lg-container-b'>

-  <div class='linegroup'>

-    <div class='group'>

-      <div class='line'>This impressive picture of Britannia is from</div>

-      <div class='line'>the splendid 1916 issue of Bibby’s Annual</div>

-    </div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-

-<div  class='figcenter id003'>

-<img src='images/image004.jpg' alt='map of four countries' class='ig001' />

-<div class='ic002'>

-<p>THE ALLIES AND PROHIBITION—STOPPING DRINK TO WIN THE WAR<br />The Drink Map before the War and on the 1000th day of the War</p>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<div class='sansserif'>

-

-<div class='lg-container-b'>

-  <div class='linegroup'>

-    <div class='group'>

-      <div class='line'>CANADA—Prohibition almost from Sea to Sea</div>

-      <div class='line'>FRANCE—Total Prohibition of Absinthe</div>

-      <div class='line'>RUSSIA—Prohibition Everywhere</div>

-      <div class='line'>BRITAIN—120,000 Drink shops open daily</div>

-    </div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-</div>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>

-  <h2 class='c007'>The Wages of Sin</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c008'>The time has come when it should be said that those responsible

-for our country now stand on the very threshold of eternal glory or

-eternal shame. They play and palter with the greatest enemy force

-outside Berlin. The news from Vimy Ridge comes to a land whose

-rulers quail before a foe within the gate.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Not for one hour has the full strength of Britain been turned against

-her enemies. From the first day of the war, while our mighty Allies

-have been striking down this foe within their gates, Britain has let this

-trade stalk through her streets, serving the Kaiser’s purposes, and paying

-the Government £1,000,000 a week for the right to do it.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>She has let this trade destroy our food and bring us to the verge

-of famine; she has let it keep back guns and shells and hold up ships;

-she has let it waste our people’s wealth in hundreds of millions of

-pounds; she has let it put its callous brake on the merciful Red Cross;

-she has let it jeopardize the unity and safety of the Empire—for it may

-yet be found, as Dr. Stuart Holden has so finely said, that the links that

-bind the Pax Britannica are solvable in that great chemist’s solvent,

-alcohol.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>The witnesses are too great to number; we can only call a few.

-There is no room for all those witnesses whose evidence is in the House

-of Commons Return 220 (1915), showing the part drink played in the

-great shell famine, in delaying ships and guns, and imperiling the Army

-and the Fleet.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>But the indictment is heavy. I charge this trade with the crime

-the King laid at its door two years ago, the crime of prolonging the war;

-and the witnesses are here at the bar of the people. The verdict is with

-them, and the judgment is with those who rule.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><i>The wages of sin is death: What are the wages of those who fail in

-an hour like this?</i></p>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <h2 class='c007'>Fiddling to Disaster</h2>

-</div>

-

-<div class='sansserif'>

-

-<p class='c008'>We are not going to lose the war through the submarines if we all behave

-like reasonable human beings who want to save their country from disaster, privation

-and distress.</p>

-

-</div>

-<div class='small'>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>The Prime Minister</i></div>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c008'><i>What are we to say of a Government that plays with war and drink

-and famine while these brave words are ringing in our ears?</i></p>

-

-<p class='c009'>If the situation is so desperate that we must all go short of food, it

-is desperate enough for the Government to be in earnest. But what are

-the plain facts? No reasonable man who knows them can say that the

-Government is in earnest.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>It is not denied by anybody who knows the facts that drink has been

-the greatest hindrance of the war. There is not a doubt that it has prolonged

-the war for months and cost us countless lives. It is the duty

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_6'>6</span>of the Government to face a dangerous thing like this; it is its duty to

-pursue the war with a single eye to the speediest possible victory. But

-the records of our war Governments in dealing with drink have been

-records of fiddling and failure, and we stand in the third year of the war

-with a Government fiddling still.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>One thing will be perfectly clear if disaster and famine come. It

-will be known to all the world that the Government knew the facts in

-time to save us. We are in the war because we would not listen in

-times of peace. We are in the third year of the war because we would

-not listen in the first. We are faced with famine because we would not

-listen in times of plenty, when drink was breaking down our food reserves.

-And we are drifting now, nearer to disaster every day, because

-the Government surrenders to the enemy worse than Germany.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>It does not matter where you look, or when; the evidence of the

-fiddling is everywhere about you. Take the week before the Prime

-Minister’s grave speech about submarines—ending May 19.</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'><i>Submarines destroyed 27 British cargoes, mostly over 1600 tons.</i></p>

-

-</div>

-<div class='sansserif'>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>Brewers destroyed 27 British food cargoes, totaling 9000 tons.</b></p>

-

-</div>

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'><i>The granaries of Canada were crammed with wheat waiting for British ships,

-but there were no ships to bring this people’s food.</i></p>

-

-</div>

-<div class='sansserif'>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>The rum quay at London Docks was crammed with casks of rum to last

-till 1920, but a ship arrived with 1000 Casks more.</b></p>

-

-</div>

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'><i>A woman was fined £5 for destroying a quartern loaf.</i></p>

-

-</div>

-<div class='sansserif'>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>Brewers were fined nothing for destroying millions of loaves.</b></p>

-

-</div>

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'><i>Poor people waited in queues to buy sugar in London.</i></p>

-

-</div>

-<div class='sansserif'>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>Cartloads of sugar were destroyed in London breweries.</b></p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'>And so we might go on, looking on this picture and on that till

-the mind almost reels with the solemn farce. The Prime Minister has

-suggested that the farce does not end because those who demand its

-end cannot make up their mind. It is the Government that cannot make

-up its mind.</p>

-

-<div class='sansserif'>

-

-<p class='c009'>It tells Parliament that no more rum is to be imported, and goes on importing

-rum for years ahead.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>It forbids the use of spirits less than three years old, and reduces the three

-years to 18 months.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>It restricts beer to 10,000,000 barrels, and tells us one day that it is all-inclusive,

-and the next day that the Army Council can order as much extra beer as it likes.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>It issues a report saying that hops are not food, and gives up hundreds of thousands

-of feet to shipping them; 23,000 cubic feet the other week.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>It tells us that not an inch of shipping is wasted, and wastes shipping on bringing

-brewers’ vats from America and taking gin to Africa.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>It tells us that the Drink Trade gave up its distilleries patriotically, and leaves

-us to discover that it was made the subject of a bargain by which bread was being

-destroyed for whisky as late as May this year.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'>It is quite clear that the Government is desperately in need of a

-scapegoat, and desperately in need of a defense. Prohibition Russia

-is not mightily impressed with our drinking; serious Canadians are

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>asking how long they are to sacrifice their manhood to our brewers;

-America is asking already why she should go short of bread in order

-that England may drink more beer.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>A Government must clearly say something in view of these things,

-and it has put its defense in the care of one of the sanest and cleverest

-men in the United Kingdom, Mr. Kennedy Jones. If Mr. Jones does

-not make out a case for it, there is no case to make. What does he say?</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>1. <i>We are told that only five per cent. of malt can be mixed with

-flour for bread.</i></p>

-

-<p class='c009'>All over the country this explanation is supposed to satisfy those

-simple, honest people who know little about percentages but ask plain

-questions at Food Economy meetings. It is preposterous nonsense.

-If we have 200,000 tons of malted barley, what on earth does it matter

-whether we mix it at fifty, or five, or two per cent., so long as we do

-mix it? <i>It adds 200,000 tons to our bread in any case.</i> This talk of five

-per cent., puzzling to people who think it means that only one-twentieth

-of this malted barley can be used, is pitiful evidence, surely, of the straits

-to which the Food Controller’s Defense Department is reduced.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>2. <i>We are told that the barley destroyed for beer would give the nation

-only ten days’ bread.</i></p>

-

-<p class='c009'>It would actually last us a fortnight. Drink, which has taken a

-quartern loaf from every British cupboard in every week of the war,

-is taking still a quartern loaf a month from every cupboard, and the

-desperate appeals of Mr. Kennedy Jones will be more effective in saving

-crumbs when he can tell us that he has stopped this monstrous

-destruction of over 1,000 tons of grain a day.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>3. <i>We are told that our munition workers are dependent on beer.</i></p>

-

-<p class='c009'>It is an astounding slander. However true it may be of Governments,

-it is not true of our workmen. For four months the workman

-has been the scapegoat of this Government in its surrender to this trade,

-and we are asked at last to believe that these men who saved us from

-the Shell Famine are willing to drink us into a Bread Famine. Does

-the Government never pause to ask how millions of munition workers

-in America and Canada and the United Kingdom manage without beer?

-Does nobody in the Government know that the greatest steel furnaces

-in America are under total Prohibition, and that two million American

-railwaymen are subject to instant dismissal if they touch drink while

-on duty? Has the Government not read its own report of the Royal

-Society Committee which had this point in mind six months ago, and

-told us, on the highest authority in this country, that soldiers march

-better and keep fitter without alcohol; that men do more work on less

-energy without alcohol; and that “the records of American industrial

-experience are significant in showing a better output when no alcohol

-is taken by the workmen”?</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>4. <i>We are told we need this trade for yeast.</i></p>

-

-<p class='c009'>We need not bother overmuch about that. Industrial alcohol will

-give us all we want, and there is no need to carry on this dangerous

-trade for the sake of yeast. We do not need a single ounce of brewer’s

-yeast, and we can do without distiller’s yeast as well by setting up a

-thousandth part of the machinery we have set up in the last two years.

-Or, while we must have yeast, we need about 30,000 tons a year for the

-whole United Kingdom, and since the prohibition of hops in June last

-year <i>we have given enough shipping to hops every fortnight to bring in

-enough yeast for a year</i>. A Government with shipping to spare like

-that, with room on its ships for mountains of hops, for enormous brewers’

-vats, and for rum for 1921, can find room for 100 tons a day of the

-people’s bread. It is a monstrous perversion of the facts to suggest that

-we must maintain this food-destroying trade, with all its hideous

-tragedy and ruin, in order to make bread.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>It cannot be said that a Government with such desperate excuses

-is in earnest. We do not wonder that a great American farmers’ paper,

-with no axe to grind except that it is sane and patriotic and believes in

-the war, is asking plain questions as America prepares her Prohibition

-Army, her Prohibition Navy, and stops the destruction of grain for

-drink in order to enter the war at full strength.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Let the Food Controller, the Prime Minister, and every responsible

-citizen of the United Kingdom read this—it is from the most influential

-flour-milling paper in the world, the “North Western Miller,” published

-in Minneapolis:</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>“<b>Since the United States will be called upon to make food sacrifices

-on behalf of the Allies, it is certainly in order to call to account the

-stewardship of Great Britain in regard to food supplies. Ordinarily

-America would have no right to demand such an account, but Americans

-are now asked to deny themselves that Britain may have sufficient.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'>“<b>Britain has not seen fit to prohibit the use of cereals in the manufacture

-of drink, notwithstanding that the world’s food supply was obviously

-short. Are Americans required to forego a part of their accustomed

-ration of bread in order that their British Allies can continue

-to have a plentiful supply of beer and whisky? If not, then Britain

-should lose no time in putting its house in order, quitting the drink to

-add to the common store of food upon which the safety of all the Allies

-depends.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'>“<b>The food supply for the Allies is no longer a purely local proposition,

-to be used as a football in British politics; it deeply concerns the

-people of the United States, who are certainly not called upon to deny

-themselves bread in order that Britain shall have drink.</b>”</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>What is the Government’s answer to this? “We owe a very considerable

-debt of gratitude to the great American people for the effective

-assistance they are rendering us,” says the Prime Minister.

-<i>Is this the way we pay them back?</i> It is an ugly question for our great

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>Ally to have to raise as she comes into the war, flinging her Prohibition

-Navy in to smash the drink-made menace of the submarine. It is unthinkable

-that the Government can read these bitter words unmoved,

-or can leave this stain on our history in the face of all these questionings.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>There is another question, too, that comes across the Atlantic.

-What is the Government going to do with the soldiers of America’s

-Prohibition Army, and the sailors of America’s Prohibition Navy, when

-they come over here? Are they to be broken in their thousands, made

-useless and degraded as thousands of men from Prohibition Canada have

-been, by the enemy that traps them before they reach the war?</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>They are questions for the Government and the nation, and they

-must be answered in the interests of the nation, and not to please the

-trade that helps the Germans every day. We cannot afford to pay the

-appalling price the future will demand unless our fiddlers change their

-tune.</p>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <h2 class='c007'>The Drink Trade and Our War Services</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c008'><b>It is not possible to measure the strain the Drink Traffic has imposed

-on our war services.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'>The Food Controller’s Organization, with its great offices and

-staffs, would not have been needed had we saved the food destroyed

-by drink.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Rationing already involves 1,200 committees, and may mean 50,000

-officials and 50,000,000 tickets weekly. It could all be avoided. Prohibition

-would save more bread without food controlling than all the

-food controlling can save without Prohibition.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>The National Service, with its network of officials, its costly advertising,

-its absorption of paper and printing, could all have been avoided

-under Prohibition. About 200,000 men have enrolled, but Prohibition

-would give us twice that man-power any day.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>The strain on a host of men and women looking after soldiers’ children

-neglected through drink, soldiers’ wives spending allowances on

-drink, is incalculable.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>The strain on war charities and the strain on the police arising

-from drink are both very great.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>The strain of drink on doctors, nurses, and hospitals is beyond belief.

-Prohibition would set free for the Red Cross thousands who waste

-their time on the great drink trail.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>The strain on transport is seen in the long lines of wagons drawn

-by strong horses carting beer to public-houses. This year alone the

-handling of drink must equal the lifting of at least 9,000,000 tons, and

-the barrels of beer would fill nearly all the railway wagons in the kingdom.

-As to ships, drink materials during the war have used up 60

-ships of 5,000 tons working all the time.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>On Lord Milner’s estimate of 19 barrels to the truck it would require

-4,500,000 railway trucks to carry the 17,000,000 tons of beer manufactured

-in the United Kingdom during the war.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>It can be proved from official figures that the weight of drink-stuff

-carried about since war began has been equal to the weight of solid

-material carried by the Navy to all our fighting fronts.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'>It is a crying shame that the strength of Britain should be destroyed

-like this in such an hour as this.</p>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <h2 class='c007'>The War-Work of the Food Destroyers</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c008'>There are hundreds of great Food Destructors in the United Kingdom.

-The man-power at their service, spread over our breweries and

-distilleries, numbers hundreds of thousands of men; their capital is

-hundreds of millions. This is a summary of the work they did in the

-first 1,000 days of the war:</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>They sacrificed 4,400,000 tons of grain and 340,000 tons of sugar,

-enough to ration the whole United Kingdom with bread for 43 weeks

-and sugar for 33 weeks.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>They took from every kitchen cupboard in the land 600 pounds of

-bread and 76 pounds of sugar.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>They destroyed bread and sugar to last every child under fifteen

-for every day of the war.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>They took from our people over £512,000,000.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>They used up labour and transport for lifting over 50,000,000 tons.

-By sea they used up 60 ships of 5,000 tons; by rail their raw materials

-and the finished products would make up a train long enough to reach

-nearly round the world.</b></p>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <h2 class='c007'>The Food Now Being Destroyed for Beer</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c008'>Look at the actual facts about beer alone. We will ignore distilling,

-as it gives us munitions and yeast. Had the Government tried to solve

-the yeast question it could have solved it easily in these three years;

-it would have had no more trouble with that problem than Russia and

-Canada and America have had. But as the Government is still investigating

-the yeast question, we will confine our figures to beer.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>Brewers are destroying 450,000 4-lb. loaves a day.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>This year’s food destruction for beer alone will equal five weeks’

-bread rations and four weeks’ sugar rations for the whole United

-Kingdom.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>We have seven critical weeks in this summer, and this year’s destruction

-of food would carry us through.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>Beer alone is taking 10 pounds of sugar a year from every kitchen

-cupboard, and an ounce of sugar a day from every soldier.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'>That is what drink is doing at this moment with the shadow of

-famine creeping on.</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-  <div class='nf-center'>

-    <div>“<i>He who withholdeth the corn the people shall curse him.</i>” Proverbs.</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-</div>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>

-  <h2 class='c007'>The Shadow of Famine</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c008'>The Government came into office with the food shortage in sight;

-it was its first duty to build up the great reserve of food we might have

-had now in our granaries if the drink trade had not destroyed it. We

-could have laughed at submarines, for our barns would have been filled

-to overflowing, and we could have lived in comfort for a year if no

-ship reached us.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Let us see how much food drink has destroyed during the war.

-We will take it from August 4, 1914, to April 30, 1917. It is 999 days

-of the war. The grain and sugar destroyed for drink have been:</p>

-

-<table class='table0' summary=''>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c004'>Grain</td>

-    <td class='c005'>4,400,000 tons</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c004'>Sugar (for beer alone)</td>

-    <td class='c005'>340,000 tons</td>

-  </tr>

-</table>

-

-<div  class='figcenter id004'>

-<img src='images/image011.jpg' alt='Scales with bread on the left outweighed by beer and whisky on the right' class='ig001' />

-<div class='ic002'>

-<p>How Canada sees it—A Canadian cartoon of the callous destruction of bread  for beer and whisky</p>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'>It is not easy to realize what this means, but it will help us if we

-think of one or two examples.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>The biggest thing ever set up on earth is the Great Pyramid. It is

-80,000,000 cubic feet. The food destroyed by drink during the war

-would make two Great Pyramids, each bigger than the Pyramid of

-Egypt.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>The longest British railway is the Great Western; it is over 3,000

-miles, but it would not hold the food destroyed by drink since war began.

-If every inch of it were crammed with wagons, the Great Western

-Railway would need hundreds of miles more line to hold the train-loads

-of food destroyed.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span><b>There are about 750,000 railway wagons in the United Kingdom,

-but if the Drink Trade had them all they would not hold the food it

-has destroyed.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>There are about 30,000 engines on our British railways, and if the

-food destroyed were made up in trains of 125 tons apiece, all our engines

-would not pull them; we should still want 10,000 more.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'>So vast is this incredible quantity of food destroyed by an enemy

-trade while famine has been coming on. We should have saved it all

-if Parliament had followed the King, and it would have given the

-whole United Kingdom its flour rations for nearly a year. Take it at

-its minimum scientific human food value, and on the basis of our rations

-in May, 1917, it would have given us:</p>

-

-<table class='table0' summary=''>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c004'>Flour for the whole United Kingdom</td>

-    <td class='c005'>43 weeks</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c004'>Sugar for the whole United Kingdom</td>

-    <td class='c005'>33 weeks</td>

-  </tr>

-</table>

-

-<p class='c009'>Our three war Governments, confronted with the increasing certainty

-of at least a three-years’ war, have allowed the Drink Trade to

-destroy this vast reserve of food.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>The full toll of this trade upon our scanty food supply, growing

-shorter and shorter while the queues outside our food shops grow longer

-and longer, is staggering indeed, even now with drink about three-quarters

-stopped. We must remember that it makes no difference that

-the barley has been malted; it is still good human food, and every ounce

-of it should be mixed with grain for making bread. Let us remember,

-also, that <i>brewer’s sugar is a good pure sugar</i>, the objection to it being

-largely the objection most of us have to standard bread—its colour.

-Malt or sugar, every ounce a brewer destroys is food stolen from the

-people. Let us take expert opinion on the subject.</p>

-

-<h3 class='c011'>The Food Value of Brewer’s Sugar</h3>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c012'>We do not, of course, use this dark sugar when white sugar is cheap and easily

-procurable, but during the war we have used it for coffee, cocoa, and tea; and for

-puddings where colour did not matter. We have used it a good deal in our bakeries

-for chocolate goods, where colour again does not matter. It is a good, pure sugar,

-and the colour is the principal drawback.</p>

-<div class='c010'><i>Letter to Arthur Mee from a London caterer</i></div>

-

-</div>

-

-<h3 class='c011'>The Food Value of Brewer’s Malt</h3>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c012'>Malt flour can be used to make excellent cake with 50 per cent. wheat flour. It is

-sweet and pleasant to taste without the need of any sugar. Good scones can be made

-with 25 per cent. of malt flour. Its use in bread made with yeast causes too much

-fermentation in the bread, but it has no effect on baking-powder. The Food Controller’s

-Department is aware of the practicability of using malt flour, but the sale is

-restricted in order to limit its use for making beer. Brewers and maltsters are too

-patriotic to wish to use for beer what could be applied to food in case of a serious

-shortage, and the large stocks of barley and malt can supplement the supply of wheat

-flour.</p>

-<div class='c010'><i>Letter from a Brewer in the “Times,” April 11, 1917</i></div>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Yet we have seen our Government holding up sugar for brewers;

-we have seen our Food Controller refuse to release a caterer’s sugar

-unless it were sold to a brewer; we have seen a Government short of

-food-ships bringing in brewers’ vats and casks of rum; and we see the

-Government still holding up this malt that would feed a people asking

-for more bread.</p>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>

-  <h2 class='c007'>The Tunes They Play</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c008'>Strange tunes we hear the fiddlers play, but their music does not

-charm away the troubles of a famine-threatened land. From morning

-till night the prayer of the people rises, “Give us this day our daily

-bread,” but the heart of Downing Street is hardened, and the nation’s

-bread goes day by day to the destroyer.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>But all the time we see the measure of the courage of our rulers on

-the hoardings in the streets. We know their posters by heart.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><i>Defeat the enemy’s attempt to starve you</i>, by—not by stopping the destruction

-of food, but by joining the National Service, and probably

-helping to pick hops. There was a man in a co-operative store who

-volunteered for National Service, and last month he received instructions

-<i>to leave the grocery store and take up duty in a brewery</i>.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><i>Sow your window-boxes and plant your back gardens</i>—and Mr. Prothero

-will see that the soil of a million back gardens is wasted on hops.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><i>We have not enough food to last till the harvest</i>—why not go out and

-catch rabbits, asks Lord Devonport—and sit and wait for sparrows?</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><i>We must save every pound of bread we can to get over our critical

-weeks</i>—not by saving the quartern loaf that beer is taking every month

-from every British cupboard now, but by going hungry so that drinkers

-may not thirst.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><i>We must not eat more than our share, on our honour</i>—but the man

-across the table can eat his share of bread and drink somebody

-else’s too.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><i>We must eat less and eat slowly</i>—so that brewers may waste more

-and waste quickly.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><i>We must keep back famine</i>—but not by using malt, says Captain

-Bathurst: that would cost three times as much as letting famine come.

-<i>But why not keep the malt till bread is as dear as gold?</i></p>

-

-<p class='c009'><i>Let all heads of households abstain from using grain except in bread</i>,

-says the King’s Proclamation. But let the brewers waste 8,000 tons

-a day for beer, says the Government.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><i>God speed the plough and the woman who drives it</i>—yes, and God help

-the woman who drives the plough to feed the brewer while her little

-ones cry for bread.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><i>Let us fine £5 whoever wastes a loaf</i>, says the Food Controller—but

-not, of course, the brewers who waste 450,000 quartern loaves a day.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Hops are no use as food to anybody, says the Board of Trade Scientific

-Committee. “<i>Then let us grow only half as many</i>,” said Mr. Prothero.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Mr. Lloyd George says Mr. Prothero is working “in a continuous

-rattle of mocking laughter and gibes.” Yes, it is the mocking laughter

-of a nation that is not really amused by sights like this. The nation

-does not like to see the bread rations of 70,000 men in France cut down

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>while the Drink Trade is destroying every week bread enough to last

-these men a year. It does not like to see the Government sending letters

-out to managers of factory canteens, begging them to be careful

-of bread, while food flows through our beer canteens like a river running

-to waste. It does not like to see Y. M. C. A. canteens denied

-supplies of sugar while barrels of beer are stacked in great piles outside.

-It does not like the calling up of discharged soldiers while thousands

-of strong men are working hard all day destroying food or carting

-beer about the streets; and it does net like the tragic comedies of Captain

-Bathurst, who warns us that it really may become necessary in the

-national interest—and then, perhaps, he drops his voice to break it very

-gently—it really may become necessary, if these cake shops are not

-very careful, <i>to whitewash the lower part of their windows</i>.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Oh, these fiddlers! And now we have a new idea from the Food

-Control Department; it is a coloured poster of a Union Jack and a big

-loaf on it, and “Waste not, Want not,” printed in big type. It was

-being printed on the day the Prime Minister told the nation that America

-had found it is no use waving a neutral flag in the teeth of a shark.

-It is an eloquent and true saying, but it is also true, that it is no use

-waving platitudes from copybooks in the teeth of a wolf at the door.

-The Prime Minister says he is taking no chances. Let us be quite sure.

-We once had a Government of which men said its motto was “Wait and

-See.” <i>Are we better off, or are we worse, with a Government that Sees

-and Waits?</i></p>

-

-<p class='c009'>But there is no end to the fiddling. With Food Controllers who

-hold up food for Food Destroyers; with Food Economy Handbooks that

-cry out loud to save the crumbs but have no word to say about the

-tons we fling away; with a Prime Minister praying for window-boxes

-and a Board of Agriculture consecrating hopfields, we need not be

-surprised if the nation is not mightily impressed.</p>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <h2 class='c007'>How the Allies Did It</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c008'>All the world knows, except, apparently, the world that goes round

-at Westminster, how Prohibition has helped the Allies.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><i>With the Shell Famine at its height—largely made by Drink—the

-Prohibition Army on the East held up the enemy while Britain fought the

-Drink Trade for her shells.</i></p>

-

-<p class='c009'><i>With the Bread Famine looming in sight—largely made by Drink—the

-Prohibition Navy from the West flings in her power against the submarines.</i></p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Oh, for the spirit of our Allies in this land! If France wants to

-rouse the spirit of Verdun she strikes down her foe at home and puts

-absinthe away. If Russia wants to be great and free she stops this

-drink and orders out the Romanoffs. If Canada wants to give her utmost

-help to Britain she stops this drink from sea to sea. If Australia

-wants to make her soldiers fit she trains them in her Prohibition camps.

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>If America wants to beat the whole world at making shells she drives

-drink from her workshops. If San Francisco has an earthquake she

-stops drink while she pulls herself together. If Liverpool has a dangerous

-strike she shuts up public-houses and keeps the city quiet. Oh,

-for a Government of Britain that will see what all the world can see!</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>History will do justice to the part the Prohibition policy of the

-Allies has played in saving Europe, but a pamphlet has no room for

-these things. We can take only one or two great witnesses to the

-mighty achievements of our Prohibition Allies. Let us begin with

-France, and call our own Prime Minister to tell us what they did. Mr.

-Lloyd George:</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>One afternoon we had to postpone our conference in Paris, and the French Minister

-of Finance said, “I have to go to the Chamber of Deputies, because I am proposing

-a bill to abolish absinthe.” Absinthe plays the same part in France that whisky

-plays in this country, and they abolished it by a majority of something like ten to one

-that afternoon.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'>And how did Paris take this prohibition that men said would cause

-a revolution? Let us ask Mr. Philip Gibbs, whose splendid letters home

-have made his name a household word. Mr. Philip Gibbs:</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>Absinthe was banned by a thunderstroke, and Parisians who had acquired the

-absinthe habit trembled in every limb at this judgment which would reduce them to

-physical and moral wrecks. But the edict was given and Paris obeyed, loyally and

-with resignation.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'>And now we come to Russia, to these mighty Russian people who

-in the last year of vodka saved £6,000,000 or £7,000,000, and in the last

-full year of Prohibition saved £177,000,000. We will call our own

-Prime Minister again:</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>Russia, knowing her deficiency, knowing how unprepared she was, said, “I must

-pull myself together. I am not going to be trampled upon, unready as I am. I will

-use all my resources.” What is the first thing she does? She stops drink.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>I was talking to M. Bark, the Russian Minister of Finance, and I asked, “What

-has been the result?” He said, “The productivity of labour, the amount of work

-which is put out by the workmen, has gone up between 30 and 50 per cent.”</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>I said, “How do they stand it without their liquor?” and he replied, “Stand it?

-I have lost revenue over it up to £65,000,000 a year and we certainly cannot afford it,

-but if I proposed to put it back there would be a revolution in Russia.”</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'>How completely teetotal Russia became we read long ago in the

-<i>Daily Mail</i>, to which Mr. Hamilton Fyfe sent this message from Petrograd:</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>Try to imagine all the publichouses in the British Isles closed; all the restaurants

-putting away their wine cards and offering nothing stronger than cider or ginger ale.

-That is the state of things in Russia. Strange it seems indeed, yet there is one thing

-stranger. Nobody makes any audible complaint.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'>Everywhere in Russia it was the same: a nation was made sober

-by Act of Parliament.</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>“Without a murmur of protest,” said the Moscow correspondent of the <i>Times</i>,

-“the most drunken city in Europe was transformed into a temple of sobriety, and we

-felt that if Russia could thus conquer herself in a night, there was indeed nothing

-that might not be accomplished.” And two years later, when the revolution came, we

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>read in the <i>Times</i> this note from Odessa: “Perfect tranquillity continues to prevail

-here, although for the moment Odessa is practically without police. The satisfactory

-absence of crime may largely be attributed to the sealing up of spirituous liquors.”</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'>We need not be afraid of Drinkless Revolutions.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>But the truth about Russia is almost too incredible to believe, for

-it is Prohibition that made the revolution possible; it was stopping drink

-that set 170,000,000 people free. We will let a business correspondent

-of the <i>Times</i> give evidence; here is what he said on April 21, 1917:</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>In one respect it must be said that the Reactionaries saw clearly. They always

-claimed that the Tsar had ruined himself by decreeing the abolition of vodka. None

-but a sober people could have carried out the Russian Revolution.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>The police were, on the other hand, the victims of drink. They had seized the

-vodka at the order of the Government, and had kept plentiful supplies for themselves.

-Thus the Revolution was in part a struggle between drunken reaction and sober citizens.

-Sobriety triumphed.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'>The Russian people will not bow down and tie their hands to the

-thrones of Europe: do we wonder if they scorn our quailing before

-this trade?</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Free Russia flings off the dynastic yoke: do we wonder Prohibition

-Russia is not much impressed by a nation with a Drink Trade round

-its neck?</p>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <h2 class='c007'>The Soldier’s Home</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c008'>The things that will be told against this trade when all the truth

-is known will break the heart of those who read. It is well for us that

-we cannot know the full truth now; the burden would be too grievous

-to be borne in days like these. But if you will go into your street, or

-will talk of these things with the next man you meet from one of our

-pitiful slums, or will pick up one of those local papers that still have

-space to print the truth, you will find the evidence close about you.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>We are the guardians of our soldiers’ homes; we are the trustees

-of the hope and happiness of their little children; but we let this drink

-trade, that takes our people’s food out of their cupboards, turn that

-food into the means of death, and sow ruin and destruction through

-the land.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>But we will call the witnesses to these drink-ruined soldiers’ homes,

-these homes that the enemy worse than Germany has shattered and

-broken while our men have been fighting for your home and mine. We

-will call a few here and there, knowing that for every one called are

-hundreds more that can be called, and that beyond all these that are

-known there is in this little land a countless host of tragedies as secret

-as the grave.</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>A Tooting soldier whose wife had sent him loving letters to the trenches came

-back to surprise her after 18 months. He found another man in possession of his home

-and a new baby; and, overcome by the discovery, he gave way to drink and killed

-himself.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Balham Coroner, March 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier who had left a comfortable home behind returned from the Front to

-find it ruined, with not a bed to lie on, his children never sent to school, his wife all

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>the time in publichouses. “I wish I had been shot in the trenches,” he said when he

-arrived.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 10, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Outside a publichouse in Liverpool a man was dragging home his drunken wife,

-the mother of eleven children. They rolled over and over on the ground, the drunken

-women violently resisting the maddened man. Then came up the eldest son, home

-from the Front, with five wounds in his body.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Liverpool Post,” March 2, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier came back to his home in London to find his wife drinking his money

-away, harbouring another man; one of his children cruelly neglected and the other in

-its grave, perished from neglect; and a drunken carman’s baby about to be born in

-his home.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Shaftesbury Society Report</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A Lance-Corporal heard in the trenches of his wife’s misconduct. His commanding

-officer wrote to make inquiries, and the soldier wrote to the Chief Constable a

-pitiful letter: “What have I to look forward to at the end of the war?” he said.

-“Nothing, only sorrow. I never get a letter to know how my loving son is getting on;

-I think it will drive me mad.”</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>He came home, opened the door of his house, threw his kit on the floor, and declared

-that he would kill his wife. He put a razor on the table, and his little boy

-hid it in a cupboard, but a week later this boy of 12 went home and found his father

-and mother lying on the floor, the father drunk, the mother dead. The soldier, drowning

-his misery in drink, had strangled his wife. Rousing himself beside her, he said,

-as the police found them, “Kiss me, Sally. Aye, but tha are poorly.”</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>He had been the best of fathers, said the little boy; the best of soldiers, said his

-commanding officer; and the judge declared that such a man, with such a character,

-ought not to be with criminals.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Record of Huddersfield Assizes, Autumn 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier asked a London magistrate if he could draw the allowance instead of his

-wife, who was in prison for drunkenness and was neglecting his four children. The

-magistrate said the only thing was to send the children to the workhouse.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>The Soldier: “So I am to be a soldier for my King and country while my children

-go to the workhouse?” The Magistrate: “That is so, because you have a drunken

-wife. I am sorry for you.”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sunday Herald,” June 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A seaman gunner, who had been torpedoed and had fought in the trenches,

-arrived home to find his wife, in his own words, “filthy drunk,” and his children

-utterly deplorable. He reclothed them, but his wife pawned the clothes, though she

-had £7 a month. He took his children away, but a crowd of women interfered with

-him, and the police were powerless against the mob.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Western Daily Mercury,” July 23, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier just back from the Front was found in the street weeping bitterly on

-discovering that his wife was in gaol through drink, and his child, through her neglect,

-had been burned.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Statement by Marchioness of Waterford</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier came home from the Front to find that drink had ruined his home, and

-his children were being cared for by Glasgow Parish Council. “Hour after hour we

-sit on this council,” says the chairman, “listening to case after case, and the cause is

-drunkenness, drunkenness, drunkenness. There are 2300 children under the council,

-and two thousand of them have parents living.” “Our raw material is the finished

-product of the public-house,” says one of these workers.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts from Glasgow Councillors</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A motor mechanic at the Front, hearing that his wife, hitherto a sober woman,

-had given way to drink, obtained leave to come home. He found his wife, very drunk,

-struggling home with the help of the railings in the street, and neighbours described

-her horrible life with other soldiers. The husband obtained a separation for the sake

-of his children, and went back to France.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Full facts in “Kent Messenger,” July 31, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A young soldier came from the trenches to spend Christmas in his home in

-Sheffield—a teetotal home before the war. He found that his wife had given way to

-drink, had deserted one child and disappeared with the other, and that a baby was

-to be born which was not his.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts known to the Author</i></div>

-<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>A miner fighting at the Front came home to find his wife at a publichouse, his

-home filthy, and his children cruelly neglected. He was heartbroken. His young wife

-frequently left the house from tea-time till midnight, and in order to keep the children

-from the fire she had burned them severely with a piece of iron. A respectable-looking

-woman, the mother pleaded for a chance, and was led from the dock sobbing

-bitterly.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Independent,” February 21, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A young Yorkshire miner enlisted and left his wife, hitherto sober, with three

-children. She took to drink, neglected the home, and is now a dipsomaniac, with two

-children not her husband’s.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts known to the Author</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier came home ill from France, hurried from Waterloo to his home, and

-found the door locked. He knocked, and his little boy’s voice came—“Is that you,

-mother, and are you drunk?” Hearing his father’s voice the excited lad opened the

-door. “Where’s mother?” asked his father. “Mother?” said the boy; “she’s drinking.

-She comes home drunk night after night now and knocks the kids about. She daren’t

-hit <i>me</i>; I’m fair strong, dad; but the other.... And as for baby, she never does

-nothing for her. I and Freddy takes turns, but I dunno what to give her to eat

-sometimes.”</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Midnight passed before the mother appeared, helplessly drunk. “Did you expect

-me to sit at home weeping for you?” she said. The next morning, broken with tears,

-she promised to mend her ways. The soldier went into hospital, and there he had a

-letter from his boy. This is part of it:</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>“Dear Dad, I write to let you know mother is going on awful. She has took all

-Fred and Timmy’s clothes to the pawnshop, and she hit Selina on Saturday with the

-toasterfork and cut her face. She cried all night, it hurt her so. She is drunk every

-night and some nights dussent come back at all. She daren’t hit me, but I am getting

-afraid about baby. We are all very hungry and miserable.”</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>The soldier got leave, found his wife had disappeared, and, finding charity for his

-four little ones, he left his ruined home and went back to the hospital.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in possession of the Author</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A working-man at Gravesend went to the Front, leaving behind a wife and three

-children, the baby lately born. His wife started drinking away her allowance, neglected

-her home, and, full of remorse and shame for the disgrace she had brought on the man

-who was in the trenches, she hanged herself. The man came home to find waiting for

-him three motherless children, and one of the most pathetic letters a man has ever

-had to read.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Gravesend Coroner, 1916</i></div>

-

-</div>

-

-<h3 class='c011'>Mothers and Children</h3>

-

-<p class='c012'>It is easy to understand the pitiful appeal of 500 women out of

-Holloway Prison who begged the Duchess of Bedford to help to close

-all public-houses during the war. They know in their hearts of tragedies

-such as these, in which mothers and children die while the fathers

-fight and the Drink Trade goes on merrily.</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>A soldier’s wife in Sunderland drew £12 arrears of Army pay, and she and her

-mother began to drink it away. She drew her pay on Friday, was carried home drunk

-on Saturday, gave birth to twins on Sunday morning, and died on Sunday night. The

-twins died a week or two after, and a week or two after that the soldier came home

-from the trenches to find his family in the grave.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Sunderland papers, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Two women went drinking in Chester on a Sunday night, a soldier’s mother and a

-soldier’s wife. They had five whiskies each, and fell drunk in the street. One slept

-all night on a sofa, and the other lay on the floor, shouting and swearing. Her husband

-propped her up with a mat, and for hours she lay shrieking. In the morning she

-was dead. The publican was fined £5.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Chester Chronicle,” February 17, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The wife of a Yorkshire soldier was drowned while drunk at Sheffield. She

-started drinking with another soldier’s wife disappeared with a drunken man, and her

-death was a mystery.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Independent,” April 26, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>At an inquest on the bodies of a soldier’s twin children, both dead from chronic

-wasting, it was stated that the mother had 34<i>s.</i> a week, and both she and her husband

-drank. The mother had had four children in fifteen months, and all were dead.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Battersea Coroner, October 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>In one street in London where there were one day four convictions for drunkenness,

-a woman carried a sick baby into a public house. As she stood at the bar the

-little baby died, but the mother went on drinking, with the dead child in her arms.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Charity Organisation Society</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The wife of a highly-esteemed sergeant-major fighting in France was found lying

-drunk. Her four children, shockingly neglected, were put in a home, but she took

-them out, went on drinking, and received soldiers at her house. In a few weeks her

-husband heard in the trenches that his wife had died from drinking.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of West Surrey Coroner, March 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier left three children at home. He had been earning £1 a week, but his

-wife received 32<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> a week. She drank it away, neglected the children, and died in

-an asylum while her husband was in France.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Claybury Asylum</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The little child of a soldier in France died in Guy’s Hospital from burns. The

-mother said she could not buy a fireguard. While she was absent the baby was burned,

-and the mother, returning in a drunken state carrying a can of beer, said, “A good job!”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Southwark Coroner, December 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier’s widow with six children, an Army pension of 30<i>s.</i> a week, and her

-eldest boy’s wages of 30<i>s.</i>, drinks every night with a married man who has a respectable,

-clean, and sober wife with eight children and a ninth lately born—born prematurely

-as a result of her husband’s beating her. The child bore the marks of his

-violence, and died in two months.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Shaftesbury Society</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The young wife of a soldier was brought from prison to be tried for manslaughter

-of her baby, who had died in the infirmary from neglect. She spent her time in the

-publichouses, and laughed when the children were taken to the infirmary. She went

-out one day to fetch a bottle of whisky and as she drank with a neighbour she said

-she knew the baby would die. The doctor said the child’s skin was hanging in folds

-on the bones.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in the “Observer,” January 23, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier’s wife drank continuously while her child wasted away, left the tiny baby

-alone in the house while she went for beer, and a policeman found her lying drunk

-across the dead child’s body.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Barnsley Coroner, November, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The mother of two children whose father was fighting in France gave way to

-drink in his absence, neglected her children and left them in grave moral danger, and

-committed suicide.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of an Orphan Home</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier’s baby starved slowly to death as the mother drank away his pay, and

-while the child lay in its coffin the mother was out drinking.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>West Bromwich Police Records, June 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A munition worker at Newcastle was grievously upset by the drinking habits of

-his wife. The police left a summons for her and she disappeared. Two days later

-her body was found in the Tyne. The man broke down at the inquest, saying, between

-his sobs: “She was such a good wife to me for 20 years, and reared a good family

-before she took to drink.”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Newcastle Coroner, Summer 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The wife of a corporation workman at Sheffield, home from the trenches with

-six gunshot wounds and three pieces of shell in his body, found that his wife had given

-way to drink and starved her five children. She was sent to prison for six months.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Sheffield, November 3, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier’s wife who had spent the greater part of £100 Army money in drink was

-sent to prison for neglecting her children. Almost everything in the house was pawned,

-including the children’s clothes; and the woman began to drink at five o’clock in the

-morning, and went on drinking all day.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 10, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier’s wife in Monmouthshire, with £3 9<i>s.</i> a week, was found sodden with

-drink, while the soldier’s eight children were in rags starving by day and huddling up

-in one bed by night.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Westminster Gazette,” July 22, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>A smart tidy woman in a London suburb, whose husband is fighting in Mesopotamia,

-has £2 10<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> a week. She used to love her children and had a happy home,

-but she drinks away her Army pay, lives with a married man who has six children,

-and has become a drunken slattern. The other wife is beaten and neglected, and the

-soldier’s children have gone to the workhouse.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Shaftesbury Society</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The four children of a soldier in Dublin were found hungry and shivering with cold

-while the mother was drinking. Several times she had let her baby fall while reeling

-with it in the street.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Dublin Evening Herald,” October 20, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>At the trial of a soldier’s wife for drinking and neglecting seven children, it was

-stated that a child of eleven was left in charge of a baby a fortnight old while the

-mother was drinking. At night all the children were heard screaming. The house was

-in utter darkness, and there was an escape of gas. Some men went in and turned off

-the gas, and at last the mother came stumbling out of a publichouse across the road.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Star,” November 25, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>“Your husband is fighting for his country, and his children have the right to be

-protected,” said the Chairman of the Chesterfield Bench to a soldier’s wife. Her

-children were found starving while she was drinking, and one day the little boy of

-three was found crouching naked inside the fender, trying to get warm. The police

-described the house as foul from top to bottom, with a heap of horrible rags for a bed,

-and a food cupboard that made the house unendurable when the door was opened.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Yorkshire Telegraph,” March 24, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The wife of a missing soldier was sent to prison at Chesterfield for neglecting

-three children between 13 years and 16 weeks old. She had gone astray through drink,

-and the youngest child, born under terrible conditions, was not her husband’s. It was

-found lying on a filthy bed, and its drunken mother, to satisfy its pangs of hunger, had

-given it pennyworths of laudanum. Eleven people slept in two foul bedrooms.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Chesterfield Police Records, October 9, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Five hundred children of soldiers are being cared for in the great Homes founded

-by Mr. Quarrier in Scotland, and most of them are there because of drinking mothers.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Reports</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier’s wife at Biggleswade spent her allowance on drink and left her three

-children locked up in the house for days at a time.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Police Court Records of Biggleswade, September 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier’s wife was found reeling in the streets of Dublin with a baby in her

-arms. At her home were found four other children, cruelly neglected.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Dublin Mail,” August 16, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Nineteen hundred children of soldiers have come into the care of the N.S.P.C.C.,

-mainly through drink, since the war began.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of the N.S.P.C.C.</i></div>

-

-</div>

-

-<h3 class='c011'>The Ruined Wives</h3>

-

-<p class='c012'>Who does not remember the terrible rush for the last drop of drink

-when Prohibition seemed to be coming with the New Year? Long

-queues of women besieged the whisky shops in Glasgow. There were

-women of all ages, said the <i>Daily Mail</i>, tottering in grey hairs, young

-wives with babies in their arms, and men of the loafer type. “There

-was not a respectable citizen,” says the <i>Mail</i>, “who did not deplore this

-discreditable scene, but the remarks of passers-by provoked only torrents

-of insult.” The promise of the new year and the new Government,

-alas, was not fulfilled, and now in place of Drink Queues we have Food

-Queues. Let us see what drink is doing among our soldiers’ wives:</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>Of 3000 soldiers’ wives being cared for in South London, 2000 are splendid, while

-1000 are sinking daily to lower and lower levels through drink.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Shaftesbury Society</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>A soldier’s wife, with a separation allowance of 32<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> a week, drank most of it

-away, ruined her home, neglected her children, and became a lunatic.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Claybury Asylum</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A young soldier’s wife, hitherto “quite an elegant type,” is rapidly becoming a

-drunkard. Women hitherto sober have not the courage to keep from women’s drinking

-parties, and young girls come out of factories and go to publichouses in little groups.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Charity Organisation Society</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Outside a public house in Dublin 15 small children were crying in the cold, waiting

-for their mothers. Ninety-four drunken women came out in 25 minutes. There were

-ten drunken soldiers, and two girls of 15 were thrown into the street hopelessly drunk.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Irish Times,” April 20, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>In Dundee over 170 wives of soldiers gave way to drink last year, and cruelly

-neglected their homes.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of the N. S. P. C. C.</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier in the trenches received a letter from his little boy, which he sent to

-London with a pitiful appeal for help.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>“Kindly do what you can for me and the well-being and welfare of my four beautiful

-children,” the poor soldier wrote. “I am enclosing a fearful letter I have received

-from my poor little lad, 14-1/2, the first and only letter I have received from him.

-Sir, I shall be most anxiously awaiting your reply, for this letter is the greatest blow

-I have ever received.”</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>This is the little boy’s letter:</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c013'>Dear Dad: Just a line to let you know how everything is at home.

-Mother is drunk for a fortnight and sober for a week for months and

-months. I’ve stuck it now for seven months, and can’t stick it any

-longer. I tried to get into the Navy and passed all the tests, but mother

-would not sign the papers, for which I am sorry. If mum would sign

-I could go away to Portsmouth on Thursday, but she will not. At

-the present moment she is half drunk and keeps jawing me so that I

-could knife meself. I’ve lost my new job because mum would not wake

-me in the morning, and nothing for breakfast, and had to get mine and

-the children’s tea at tea-time. It pains me to write like this, but I

-can’t help it. I now seek your advice as to what to do. I hope <i>you</i>

-will enjoy Xmas, although there is not much hope for us. I now conclude

-with fondest love, X. Your heartbroken Son, Leslie.</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>A stream of nearly 15,000 men and women poured into 58 publichouses in Birmingham

-in less than four hours; over 6,000 were women. Into one house the people

-streamed at nearly 500 an hour.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Review of Reviews,” October 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>For months some wives of soldiers and sailors in Scotland were never really

-sober. “We have done our best,” says a worker among them, “going to their homes

-and doing all in our power, but it beats us.” In 23 families, with 178 children born,

-61 were dead.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts told to Secretary for Scotland, July 1916</i></div>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-<div class='nf-center c000'>

-    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>whether the ships that have brought in food for destruction by the drink

-trade could not have brought in a large proportion of the 3,500,000 tons

-of wheat now waiting for ships in Australia and the 2,000,000 tons waiting

-in Canada?</b></p>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>

-  <h2 class='c007'>The Roll of the Dead</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c008'>No more pitiful record of the war is there than that unnumbered

-roll of men lured from our armies by this liquor trade, and cast into

-dishonoured graves. We can take only a few of them.</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>A number of soldiers at Ormskirk came into camp drunk on Christmas night. A

-request for quiet led to a fight, and one of the men was struck two blows and was

-dead the next morning.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Mail,” December 28, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A Liverpool soldier, drinking continuously, had overstayed his leave, and in a

-quarrel about this he stabbed his brother dead.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Liverpool Courier,” April 20, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier invalided from France, having recovered from his wounds, gave way to

-drink, assaulted an officer, and hanged himself in his prison cell.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” April 11, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A young lieutenant shot himself in an hotel near Trafalgar Square, and among

-the documents read at the inquest was a letter striking him off his battalion for

-drinking and gross carelessness.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” October 27, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A captain in the Army ruined by drink, with a fine record of military service,

-started drinking on his way to a shooting range in London, and in a struggle he shot

-a detective dead.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” September 20, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>In the Scottish Express, between Doncaster and Selby, a drunken corporal of the

-Coldstream Guards was showing his rifle to a friend when it went off, the bullet killing

-a munitions works director in the next compartment, and narrowly escaping a lady in

-the compartment beyond. The corporal had in his pocket a bottle of whisky, which

-was freely handed round.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” December 3, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier who had been drinking heavily was placed in the guard room, and died

-after a night of groaning, evidently as the result of a fall.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Greenwich Coroner, January 1, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A young soldier arriving from India on Christmas morning was arrested three

-days later, after a drunken fight in which a man was killed.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Westminster Police Records, December 28, 1914</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier spent a day’s leave in Manchester, ate and drank very heavily, and was

-found dead the next morning from choking.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Manchester Coroner, December 28, 1914</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier home on leave was found drunk with his wife. They had been throwing

-pots at one another, and on Christmas morning the woman was found dead with a

-wound in her head.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Oldham Coroner, December 24, 1914</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Three gunners had four drinks each of rum, and at midnight lay down to sleep in

-a garden at Lee, where one was found dying from alcohol.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Local Papers at Lee, June 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier died from alcohol in a house where drink was unlawfully sold.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Manchester Guardian,” April 8, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A private in the Welsh Fusiliers died from alcohol, cold and exposure. He left a

-publichouse with a 4<i>s.</i> bottle of whisky, and was found dead on the roadside next

-morning, with the bottle almost empty.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” April 13, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>An old man who was said to be in a drunken condition was wounded in a fall with

-a soldier from Gallipoli, and died a few days after.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Mail,” January 17, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>An elderly man, seeing a drunken soldier lying in the street, went to his assistance,

-and was killed in a disturbance that followed.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Record of Yorkshire Assizes, November 21, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier was found drowned in the Trent. He was described as a good man at

-his work, but not steady, and had been drinking.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Newark Advertiser,” August 4, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>A terrible disturbance occurred in a camp at Portland Reservoir after the closing

-of the canteen one Sunday night. A large number of men who had been drinking

-created a disturbance, in which bricks and stones were used, a tent collapsed, and the

-officers were called to quell the riot. The captain, drawing his revolver, rushed with

-two lieutenants into a hut where men were shouting and struggling, but appeals had no

-effect—the men “did not appear to hear or recognize their officers,” and one man raised

-his rifle and took aim at them. At least fifty shots were fired, and a young corporal

-fired many shots through the window into the darkness. In the morning a soldier was

-found dead. Nobody knew who shot him, but the corporal thought he must have done.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Dorset Assizes, Spring 1915</i></div>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-<div class='nf-center c000'>

-    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>whether it is true that more food is being destroyed each week in breweries

-and distilleries than by submarines?</b></p>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <h2 class='c007'>The New Drinkers</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c008'>“<i>No complaints have reached the War Office of youths who were

-total abstainers having become confirmed drunkards since enlistment.</i>”</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>So we are told in the House of Commons. The records of the War

-Office are clearly incomplete, and the information from the camps may

-here be supplemented by unchallengeable witnesses of what happens

-in the horrible drink canteens run by the Army Council.</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>A soldier who was wounded at La Bassée, a total abstainer until then, was sentenced

-at the Old Bailey for killing his uncle while drunk. He was a newsvendor,

-aged 21, and had no memory of the tragedy in which he killed his uncle at a Christmas

-party.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” January 13, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A private in the Royal Scots Fusileers, aged 17, was charged with murdering a

-bugler boy, aged 16, in his regiment. The private became mad drunk in the camp

-canteen, went back to his hut, locked himself in and fired two shots, one of which

-entered another hut and killed the bugler. “Was there no one with power to say how

-much drink should be given?” asked the judge, and an officer said there was no one.

-“Then it was high time power was given to the commanding officer,” said the judge.

-“Was there to be no restraining hand to prevent young boys from fuddling themselves

-in canteens?”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in the “Times,” November 21, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>An old man sat in a tram in great distress. He had lost his boy at the Front.

-When he joined the Army he had never tasted alcohol, but when he came home on

-leave to see his mother he was drunk every night. He was drunk the night he went

-away, and in three days he was dead. “The last we saw of him,” said the poor old

-man between his sobs, “was his going away drunk, and his mother, who is old-fashioned

-in her faith, cannot get it out of her mind that no drunkard can enter the

-Kingdom of God.”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts told by Dr. Norman Maclean</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Many young officers, called upon to share the wine bill at mess, naturally say, “If I

-have to pay I may as well drink my share,” and one man accounted for ten glasses of

-champagne. On a Guest night in his mess several more “were under the table.”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Dublin Daily Express,” April 1916.</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A boy got his V.C., and came home wounded. The publican in his street sounded

-his praises in the taproom, where they subscribed to the bar for 120 pints for him

-when he arrived. He came home and began to drink it, and was nearly dead with it

-before he was rescued.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts related by Bishop of Lincoln</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>When the Scottish Horse Brigade were at Perth whisky was literally forced down

-the men, and they were inundated with floods of bad women.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Brigadier-General Lord Tullibardine</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A teetotal household had two boys in an officers’ training camp, and they gave

-pitiable accounts of drinking. Boys from school had a drunken sergeant put over

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>them, and a canteen in the midst of them. “Our boys never saw drink before,” one

-father wrote.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>From a letter to Dr. Norman Maclean</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A boy of 17, discharged from the Navy, spent 8<i>s.</i> one night on beer and rum, and

-created a disturbance in a workshop at Sheffield.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Star,” November 11, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Mr. Justice Atkin, charging the Grand Jury at Bristol, said that in nearly every

-case where a soldier was tried in the Western Circuit the defence was drink. One lad

-of 18 was treated to eight pints of beer in two hours, and did not know what happened.

-That sort of thing, said the judge, must seriously impair the efficiency of the troops

-when sent to the Front.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Record of Bristol Assizes, Autumn 1914</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Two boys, 15 and 17, were fined for being drunk in munition works. One was discovered

-just in time to save him from carrying molten liquid.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Birmingham Munitions Tribunal, Dec. 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>“A boy joined the Royal Navy as a carpenter, living in barracks and working on

-shore. Every day he was given ‘grog’ for his rations, although he never asked for it

-and never took it.”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in letter to the Author</i></div>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Such are the tragedies of boys handed over in our camps to drink

-and its temptations. What of the girls in our munition shops? They

-have learned to drink in thousands since the war began—respectable

-girls leaving home to go into munitions, respectable young wives alone

-at home. With no restraining hand upon them, with new companionships

-and pocket-money flowing freely, it is not surprising the temptation

-should be too strong for them. We can take only one or two cases.</p>

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c012'>The girl-wife of a Cardiff seaman died in the street from exposure after drinking

-in publichouses with other girls.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Pontypridd Coroner, December 27, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A publican at Lincoln was fined £5 for allowing children to be drunk on his

-premises. Ruth Onyon, 14, and Rose Herrick, 16, were found in his house with a

-soldier. They had been in five houses and had ten drinks each and reached home helplessly

-drunk.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Daily Telegraph,” Sept. 1, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A number of cartridge workers were summoned for taking drink into a munition

-works. One young woman was led to the surgery drunk at half-past four in the

-morning; another was discharged because she could not stand. Sixteen girls subscribed

-for four bottles of wine and whisky.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Leeds Munitions Tribunal, April 28, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Two girls of 16 and 17 were fined for being helplessly drunk in an explosive

-works, the magistrates pointing out that their conduct imperilled the lives of other

-workers.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Coventry Munitions Tribunal July 24, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The men and girls at a large armament works drank all night. Girls would lurch

-into the dormitory dead drunk at 2 a. m.; one lady was up till 4 a. m. letting in drunken

-girls. As a result of drunkenness there was an explosion at these works, two men

-being killed and six injured.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Spectator,” Jan. 20, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A Dublin publichouse was found full of girls and soldiers, all drunk. Three

-drunken girls were taken away by six soldiers.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Irish Times,” April 20, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>In half an hour 367 girls entered Birmingham publichouses, scores under 18. Stout

-and beer were chiefly drunk, but whisky and water also, and some port wine. Ten

-young girls were quite drunk.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Birmingham Daily Post”</i></div>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-<div class='nf-center c000'>

-    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask,</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>in view of the fact that American soldiers are not to touch alcohol, what

-arrangements the Government proposes to make for them in this

-country?</b></p>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>

-  <h2 class='c007'>Back to the Homeland</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c008'>Everywhere we hope and pray for peace, for the day when the men

-will come home; but we may dread the day if the men come home to

-drink and its temptations. The sudden release of millions of men, the

-certain reaction after the terrible stress of these three years, is fearful

-to contemplate with the door of the tap-room open. There would be

-an end of civilization itself for days and weeks and months, and for

-many a town at home the Peace would be worse than the War.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>We owe it to these men to listen to the warning of the Prison Commissioners

-who printed these words in their report last year:</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>When war is succeeded by peace there will come a time of trial

-for those who have never turned their backs to a bodily enemy. With

-the passing of military discipline our brave fellows will be tempted to

-forget the hardships and miseries of the trenches in a burst of uncontrolled

-pleasure and license, and, if trade be bad and work difficult to

-obtain, the lapse may, if not checked, become a step on a downward

-career.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'>It is not imagination merely. Judges, coroners, police, and all who

-face the crime and misery of life, know well the bitter things that happen

-when men come home without restraint. There are witnesses innumerable.

-Let us hear a few of them.</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>A captain in the Royal Flying Corps drove a motor-car through London, knocked

-a man down, drove on, and ignored the police, who eventually mounted the footboard

-and found the officer drunk.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Bow Street Police Records, June 3, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A lance-corporal on Chesterfield station was so drunk that he walked off the platform

-and fell on the line as a passenger train came up.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Chesterfield Police Records, June 2, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A corporal of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, leaving the Front with 150

-rounds of ammunition and his service rifle, came out drunk into the streets of West

-Ham and began firing his rifle.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” July 10, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier who had received a cartridge from his son at the Front, put it in his rifle,

-and while drunk fired it in the streets of Manchester.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Manchester Police Records, January 27, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>In the early hours of the morning two unarmed soldiers were fired at in Woolwich

-by a drunken soldier, who chased them for a long distance, firing shots all the time,

-until he was arrested.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Alliance News,” February, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Drunkenness among soldiers and sailors is appalling. Unoffending travellers are

-delayed by drunken sentries. Sailors landing after weeks of arduous toil in the North

-Sea find it easy to get so drunk that some are drowned, some die from exposure, and

-many return to their ships in a condition of helpless inebriety.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Inverness Courier,” May 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Two drunken soldiers entered the parish church at Codford, set fire to the vestry,

-threw down the altar cross and candlestick, broke a stained-glass window, and tore

-leaves out of a Bible 200 years old.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” April 3, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A drunken soldier at Cannock was imprisoned for drawing his bayonet in the

-streets. “If I meet a policeman I will murder the dog,” he said, and, meeting one, he

-threatened to cut off his head.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Police Records at Cannock, March 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>400 soldiers tried to get a drunken man from the police in Grantham.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Grimsby News,” July 30, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>A drunken sergeant was found forcibly detaining a girl at Hornsey. On the

-police interfering, the drunken soldier drew his bayonet.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” September 7, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Three splendid-looking fellows, minesweepers, were traveling on the Highland

-Railway. “All were married men,” said a fellow passenger, “happy and proud of their

-homes, and they spoke with ache still in their hearts something of their lives and work.

-Well, these men succumbed during the journey. A change of trains was their opportunity,

-and I left them in a nearly helpless condition.”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “The Spectator,” April 8, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A lady visited a soldier’s wife and found her at home with all her clothes in pawn.

-Her husband and brother had both been home from the Front, and in one week had

-spent £8 on drink.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in the “Cork Constitution,” Dec. 10, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A labourer, home from tunnelling work at the Front, was fined 13<i>s.</i> for drunkenness

-on his 33rd appearance, having spent £45 in seven days.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” Oct. 11, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A disabled soldier was selling papers in Kingsway, London. He was proud of his

-military record and the character his colonel gave him. He was trying to compound

-for a pension; he thought he would settle for £50. “Mind you,” said he “there is not

-a better character in London than mine, and I shall get the £50. Then I shall have a

-month’s booze.” “What, with that fine character of yours?” a gentleman said to him.

-“Yes,” said the man, “when I came home, and could leave the hospital, there was £50

-due to me, and I had a regular booze.”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts known to the Author</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier with twelve years’ clean record in the Army was sentenced for felony

-after being made drunk by his friends.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Southport, January 9, 1915</i></div>

-

-</div>

-<p class='c012'>No Government has ever received more warnings than the three

-war Governments have received concerning drink. There is no room

-for them here, but we may call a few witnesses such as cannot be ignored

-by a nation looking forward to the day when millions of men

-will be home again.</p>

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c012'>A house in Westminster reeked with filth and drink and drunken overseas soldiers,

-“and it would be better,” said the Crown Solicitor, “if power were given to the police

-to sweep such places off the earth.”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Westminster Police Records, Aug. 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A sapper seaman was found dead at the quay. Another seaman said his friend had

-seven drinks. They left the publichouse arm-in-arm, and went to the quay. There he

-saw a corporal, who was boatswain for the night, and was drunk. Leaving the sapper,

-he got the corporal into the boat, and went back for his friend, but the sapper had

-disappeared.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>The lieutenant: “The deceased was one of the quietest boys who had ever been

-on the ship, and one of the best oarsmen. The whole trouble was that it was pay day.”</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>The Coroner: “Prohibition during the war would be a blessing to all. It seems

-to be a very rotten state of affairs.”</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>The foreman: “Drink.”</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>The lieutenant: “Prohibition would be the best thing.”</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>The Coroner: “This poor man, unfortunately, is one of many.”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Western Daily Mercury,” January 8, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A publican at Dover was fined £20 for selling a bottle of whisky to a sailor. The

-Admiral said drink undermined the efficiency of the patrol vessels, and those who

-supplied it directly assisted the enemy, and might be the cause of the loss of very

-many lives.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Dover, October 6, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A private in the Northumberland Fusiliers, aged 23, was charged with burglary

-while drunk. His father and three brothers were in the Army. He took part in the

-battle of Loos, was wounded at Salonika, and was recommended for distinction for

-helping to save a wounded officer.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>During the whole of Christmas leave he was drinking, made drunk by his friends

-who were probably proud of his having held part of a trench against a German

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>bombing party. His captain described him as a good soldier in peace, and brave in

-action—a man whose disgrace would be felt by the regiment.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Mr. Justice Rowlatt said everyone was hoping for the time when millions of brave

-men would come home after facing incredible dangers, and we must look forward

-almost with terror to having these men exposed to drink and its temptations. What

-would be the state of the country in such a case unless we could make a clean sweep

-of drink? We should have to face this question over and over again, and the sooner

-we faced it the better.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Derbyshire Assizes, February 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Whoever allowed soldiers or sailors to drink to excess, said the Mayor of Tynemouth,

-should be tried by court-martial for treason. He would be recreant in his duty

-to God, to himself, and to the citizens, if he did not call attention to the brutalising of

-so many townspeople and the callous conduct of the “waster” element in the drink

-trade. He had no quarrel with those who conducted their business properly.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Tynemouth papers, February, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The Aldershot command appealed for the closing of half the publichouses, to save

-the men from temptation when the troops are demobilised and return with their

-pockets full of money.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Record of Workingham Licensing Sessions, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The <i>Army and Navy Gazette</i>, in an article disapproving of the Prohibition Campaign,

-issues a terrible warning which should be printed on the door of the room in

-which the Army Council meets. These are its words:</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<div class='sansserif'>

-

-<p class='c009'>“It is on record that towards the end of the siege of Sebastopol rum was made

-too regular an issue, with the result that almost every soldier who survived to

-return home became a drunkard.”</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'>The siege of Sebastopol lasted less than a year, and that is the

-work of the rum issue for a few months. If rum does that in months,

-what will it do in years?</p>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <h2 class='c007'>Into the Firing Line</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c008'>Lord Kitchener is dead, but there are two things that are with us

-still—that rare little note that he gave to his men as they went out,

-warning them of drink; and that infamous note sent out by a drink

-firm in London, begging our people to send out drink to our men. They

-can guarantee it right up to the firing line, they say, and even when

-our shells could not get there through drink, drink seems to have found

-its way. It can get on to transports when the Ministry of Munitions

-is waiting urgently for shipping space; it can commandeer our vans

-and horses and trains when these mean life or death to us; it seems

-to get past any regulation; it goes about with the power of a king, doing

-its work where it will.</p>

-<div class='sansserif'>

-

-<p class='c012'>It is regrettable that our troops at the Front cannot get more British Beer.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<div class='c010'>Managing Director of Allsopps, July 14, 1916</div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Dear Sir, In answer to your inquiry, the only limitation in the size of cases consigned

-to officers in the Expeditionary Force is that they must not exceed 1 cwt.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>We can guarantee delivery right into the front trenches. The cases are handed

-over at Southampton to the Military Forwarding Officer, and the A.S.C. see them

-right through. We are shipping hundreds of cases weekly. Yours faithfully,</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Letter from a Wine and Spirit firm in London</i></div>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c012'>So drink finds its way to the front, to weaken our troops, with all

-their matchless heroism. Let us call the witnesses who have seen the

-work it does.</p>

-

-<div><span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span></div>

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>Soldiers at the front, tried for drunkenness, have declared that they have received

-drink from home. Men sometimes receive flasks in the trenches. They are exhausted,

-the stimulant revives them for a minute or two, and the harm is done. “And then

-(says Col. Crozier) they get about two years’ hard labour.”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Letter from Colonel Crozier, commanding 9th Royal Irish Rifles</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>As a result of a Court-martial investigating charges of excessive drinking among

-the officers of a regiment at the Front, the Army Council removed the commanding

-officer from his post.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Court-martials, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>In the torrid climate of Mesopotamia, in defiance of all military medical history,

-rum was issued to the men instead of food and sterile water, and the presence of

-cholera, dysentery and other diseases, was attributed to this by Sir Victor Horsley.

-“Our gross failures and stupidity,” he said, “are in my opinion due to whisky affecting

-the intellectual organs and clearness of our leaders. They do not realise that alcohol

-in small doses acts as a brake on the brain.”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in a letter from Sir Victor Horsley, May 13, 1916</i></div>

-

-</div>

-

-<div  class='figcenter id004'>

-<img src='images/image028.jpg' alt='THE JUNKER’S LITTLE BROTHER' class='ig001' />

-<div class='ic002'>

-<p>THE JUNKER’S LITTLE BROTHER</p>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c012'>Battalion Headquarters—colonel and chaplain present. Enter Adjutant: “The

-rum ration is due tonight, sir; am I to distribute it?” The colonel (nobly and in a

-voice audible all over the trench): “No! Damn the rum! To hell with the rum!”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Chaplain’s letter in “Alliance News,” June 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>At a court-martial in Newcastle, a sergeant-major, charged with misappropriating

-funds of the sergeant’s mess, pleaded that during this period a resolution of the mess

-had come into effect, providing free drinks during Christmas and the New Year.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” April 17, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>“In the Flying Services one has seen more than one good man go to the dogs

-through drink, or become fat and flabby and useless through just the excess of alcohol

-which falls short of taking to drink in the usual acceptance of the term. More men

-take to drink because of the ‘have another’ custom than because they like or need

-alcohol, and simple Prohibition would stop all this nonsense straight away. This

-kindly note is not the outpouring of a teetotal fanatic, for I suppose I have paid in

-my time rather more than my share of the nation’s drink-bill; it is merely a perfectly

-sound argument in favour of increasing the nation’s efficiency at the expense of its

-chief bad habit.”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>The Editor of “The Aeroplane”</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A lieutenant in the trenches, knowing that the rum ration made him cold, threw

-his rum on the ground. His captain saw him, and threatened to report him. “You

-do, sir,” said the lieutenant, “and I will report you for being drunk on duty.”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in possession of the Author</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A seaman serving on a ship in Cork Harbour died from alcohol. Found drunk

-and unknown, he was put on a stretcher and died.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 9, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>“Over three-quarters of the court-martials I have had anything to do with are due

-directly or indirectly to drunkenness. Many thousands of competent N.C.O.s and

-soldiers have been punished, and become useless to the nation during their punishment,

-as a result of drink.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>“I have never been a teetotaler, and have rather opposed the radical temperance

-agitation, but am now changing my views as I see our success over here hampered

-and our progress towards victory retarded so obviously by drink.”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Letter from a Lieut.-Colonel at the Front, seen by the Author</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The captain of a British merchant ship, drunk on the bridge, ordered his chief

-gunner to fire 50 rounds of shell at nothing. The gunner fired four rounds to appease

-him. Going through the Mediterranean, the drunken captain ordered his gunner to

-fire at a British hospital ship, and the incident led to a struggle for life, which ended

-in the captain’s being put in irons, tried, and sentenced to five years’ penal servitude.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Record of Devon Assizes, Exeter, February 2, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>An officer was left in charge of a British ship. Mad with drink, he went among

-the men and shot one dead. He is now in an asylum.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Case reported to the Admiralty</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The crew of a Dutch ship arriving in the Tyne was placed under a naval guard

-after a drunken riot in which three were killed.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” September 14, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The captain of a Norwegian barque mysteriously disappeared, and the vessel

-arrived in port from the North Sea. The mate, who had been drinking heavily, was

-seen, with a hammer in his hand, with the captain in a corner, bleeding from wounds

-about the head.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” April 8, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A seaman ashore in Glasgow, “wild with drink and passion,” was terribly wounded

-in a quarrel in a public-house, and died the same night. A youth of 19 was sentenced

-to five years’ penal servitude.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Edinburgh High Court, Dec. 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A barge-loader at West India Docks died from alcohol, and three other men were

-removed in an ambulance after drinking rum.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” May 9, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Orders were given on a steamer for the boats to be swung out in readiness for

-submarines. The first and second officer, having been drinking, could not do their duty.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Liverpool Marine Board, April 13, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The jury returned a verdict of murder against a youth of 19 who, after drinking

-one night, went on to his ship and killed the second officer.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Hull Coroner, April 24, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A drunken captain in command of a drifter landed with an armed party on the

-Isle of Man. He posted the men on the quay, and gave them orders to allow no one

-to pass. Declaring he would shoot every person who came within reach, he fired twice,

-and threatened to kill two police officers.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Times,” October 6, 1916</i></div>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Such is the work of drink wherever it finds a soldier to entrap—the

-drink the Navy carries free from Southampton to the trenches; and

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>from America comes the news, as this page is being written, that the

-Army and the Navy of our Western Ally, like the Army and the Navy

-of our Eastern Ally, are to be under Total Prohibition.</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-  <div class='nf-center'>

-    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>how much bread is destroyed each week to make beer for German internment

-camps in this country?</b></p>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <h2 class='c007'>Drink and the Red Cross</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c008'>If the full story could ever be told of the national tragedy of drink

-and the war there would be no more ghastly chapter than that which

-would tell how drink fought the Red Cross; how, without pity, it hindered

-the work of mercy that is the general consolation of the world

-in days like these.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>We are coming to a famine not only in food, but in doctors. The

-death-roll has been heavy beyond all parallel; the strain on the medical

-services has been almost too great to be borne, and we look anxiously

-round to know where the doctors and nurses will come from. With

-Prohibition the problem would be largely solved, for the ordinary burden

-of life would be largely lifted from our doctors and hospitals, and thousands

-of men and women would be free to give themselves to the war

-instead of mending up and patching up the sordid effects of drink. A

-rich brewer gave a donation for extending a hospital. “Ah! but we

-should not have to extend if he would shut up his public-houses,” said

-a doctor.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>It is easy to see how drink is telling all the time against our doctors,

-our nurses, and our hospitals everywhere. Let us call a few

-witnesses.</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>Somebody gave a glass of neat whisky to two wounded men at a garden party in

-Tottenham. Both were drunk when the brake came to take them home, and one died

-on the way.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Telegraph,” September 3, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Three wounded soldiers at Oxford were overcome by four bottles of rum smuggled

-into the hospital by visitors, and one of the men died.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Oxford Coroner, January 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A wounded soldier asked for two hours’ leave, came back in four hours drunk with

-whisky, and died after a terrible night in the hospital.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Mail”</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Two limbless soldiers were found helplessly drunk on the pavement at Brighton.

-A publican was fined £20.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” November 25, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A wounded soldier, mentioned in despatches, was charged with causing the death

-of a soldier with whom he had been drinking. Reeling under a heavy blow, the injured

-man was helped to bed, but when the bugle sounded in the morning he was dead.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Mail,” December 21, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier, aged 29, with a gunshot wound in his arm, died from alcohol at Oxford.

-One Sunday night he and two other wounded soldiers consumed four bottles of rum

-brought into the hospital.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Oxford Coroner, January 10, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Three soldiers in hospital uniform were found lying helplessly drunk on the tramlines

-of Sheffield. Two were back from the Dardanelles.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Star,” March 2, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Seamen on a ship bringing wounded to England from Boulogne were so drunk

-that they interfered with the stretcher bearers, and one fell across a wounded soldier

-lying on deck.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Southampton, May 14, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>There was a paralysed and helpless man who was found hopelessly drunk in

-hospital after his friends had visited him.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Statement by Lieut.-Col. Sir Alfred Pearce Gould</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>An officer who has trained hundreds of men for the ambulance corps declared that

-a large percentage of wounded are in a very nervous condition, in which alcohol means

-collapse and almost certain death.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Quoted in “Daily Mail”</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Lying helpless at a London station, moaning on the ground in drunken delirium,

-was a lad in hospital blue who had, in truth, been wounded by his friends. Drink was

-taking him again through the worst of his experiences, and his mental pain was pitiable

-to see.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in the “Globe,” January, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Two drunken soldiers from Gallipoli made what a doctor described as the most

-savage attack he ever saw on a civilian. They held a young man’s head against a wall

-and pounded him unmercifully.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” August 19, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A party of soldiers were seriously injured in a struggle to arrest a drunken private

-at Pontefract. The publican called on the men in his taproom to rescue the private, but

-the sergeants drove them off.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” October 5, 1914</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A sergeant of a Welsh regiment, invited to drink by friends in Waterloo Road,

-was picked up as he lay senseless, his pulse beating feebly, his eyes wide open, and his

-body starving with cold.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” February 14, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A drunken man rushed from a publichouse and kicked a soldier unconscious. The

-military police, chasing the man, were stoned. Four soldiers were injured, one having

-his head cut open, and the military were ordered to clear the place with fixed bayonets.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” August 11, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The medical officer in charge of the Mental Block of a large military hospital said

-to the Colonel: “I have the worst job of all, and it is through Drink, Drink, Drink!

-Men recover fairly soon from shell shock, but officers, especially the younger ones, who

-habitually take wines and spirits, are subject to relapses every few days. It is awful!”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “National Temperance Quarterly,” May 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Of the thirty war hospitals in Hertfordshire, with 8000 men passing through them

-in the first thirty months of the war, there is not one that has not had trouble with

-drink.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts known to the Author</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A doctor from a Canadian hospital said a large percentage of their troops had had

-to be sent back to Canada rendered permanently insane through the action of alcohol.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” October 31, 1916</i></div>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c012'>One terrible truth remains to be told of the crime of drink against

-the Red Cross. The most blessed thing in all the world today is alcohol,

-for it makes chloroform and ether, which soothe the pain of men.

-We cannot get enough of either of these consoling drugs, yet we go

-on wasting precious food to make more alcohol <i>to add to the sum of

-misery and pain</i>.</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-  <div class='nf-center'>

-    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>whether the bread ration applies equally to all; or if it may be exceeded

-if the excess is drunk instead of being eaten?</b></p>

-

-<div class='smaller'>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-  <div class='nf-center'>

-    <div>and</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>how many brewers’ vats have been imported this year on ships which

-had no room for urgent munitions of war?</b></p>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>

-  <h2 class='c007'>Stabbing the Army in the Back</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c008'>All the world is learning now that the drink trade is the great confederate

-of venereal disease. It leads a man into temptation, destroys

-his power of resistance, and retards his chances of recovery.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>We can never know the truth about the extent of this disease, about

-the way in which the liquor trade, by breaking down tens of thousands

-of our men, has stabbed the Army in the back. But the number of soldiers

-incapacitated by this disease through drink is enormously greater

-than the number incapacitated by the most subtle or dramatic stroke

-devised by the German staff.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>The lost man-power of the Army through this disease must be equal

-to the whole of the original British Expeditionary Force. The Government

-has given us figures for the Army at home last year, and they are

-43 per 1,000—or over 100,000 cases for an army of 2,500,000 men. There

-were 7,000 cases in one Canadian camp alone.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Here are the black facts revealed in a debate in Parliament on April

-23, 1917, when two distinguished Army officers, speaking with great

-restraint, sought to open the eyes of the nation to this plague fostered

-in our camps by drink:</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>“During the war we have had admitted into the hospitals of England over 70,000

-cases of gonorrhœa, over 20,000 cases of syphilis, and over 6000 cases of another disease

-somewhat similar. I am quite openly prepared to state that of these 20,000 cases of

-syphilis you do not get much work out of them under two and a half years. I know

-from what I have seen of the modern conditions of this War that you may absolutely

-wipe them out, except for a few handfuls.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>“When you come to the great mass of casualties under this head ... the figures

-mean that you have <b>a Division constantly out of action</b>. If you have anything

-like 70,000 men enfeebled, you find that you suffer to that extent also. It is not only

-that you lose the men, and not only the men who are partially cured are suffering for

-many months to come, but their chances of recovery from wounds are not nearly

-so good.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>“I know of a hospital for venereal cases which it was found necessary to expand

-from its normal accommodation for 500 or 600 up to 2,000 cases, and they are continually

-full. It is a British hospital in France. A figure I should like to submit to

-challenge is that during the course of the war between 40,000 and 50,000 cases of

-syphilis have passed through our hospitals in France. When you come to gonorrhœa,

-the figure given me which covers that is between 150,000 and 200,000 cases.”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>“Every Canadian soldier who comes to this country arrives here not only a first-class

-specimen of a fine soldier, but as clean-limbed and as clean a man as the Creator

-Himself could create. The fact that in one only of the three Canadian camps in this

-country 7,000 of these clean Canadian boys went through the hospital for venereal

-disease in fourteen months is not only a great discredit to any Government in this

-country but has an effect in Canada which I can assure the House does not make for

-a better feeling with the Home Country, and does not make for what we all desire—Imperial

-Unity.”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Colonel Sir Hamar Greenwood in Parliament, April 23, 1917</i></div>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Those are unchallenged statements made in the House of Commons

-itself; they stand as a terrible indictment of this disease, and it is not

-to be denied that this evil could never have reached its present frightful

-proportions if Parliament had followed the King. Let us look at a few

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>examples of the ravages of this vice allied so closely to the public-house.</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>It is not possible to tell the whole truth about drink; the language in which it

-must be written would be offensive in a civilised country. It must be said, simply, that

-soldiers in England have been court-martialled for having been influenced by drink to

-commit unspeakable offences against animals.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Records of Court-Martials</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A special constable in a harlot-haunted district in London describes how these

-harpies carry off lonely soldiers to their rooms, make them drunk, and finally innoculate

-them, as likely as not, with disease. Is it not possible to hold in check these

-women who prey upon and poison our soldiers? asks Sir Conan Doyle.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Letter in the “Times”</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>One of the hot-beds of venereal disease to which drink leads our soldiers, was

-kept by an Austrian woman in Lambeth, who was receiving 15<i>s.</i> a week from the

-Austrian Government in April 1916, and used to lure our soldiers when weakened by

-drink. All the men seen to enter this house were either soldiers or sailors.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Lambeth</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier from the Front with £18 was taken by a married woman to her home,

-where he was found after a drunken bout with eight women, all drunk. The woman’s

-children were terribly neglected.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of St. Helens, November 30, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>If you describe the Waterloo Road and the back streets as an open sewer you

-will be somewhere near the truth. Not a day goes by without bringing some soldier

-who has been waylaid.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in the “Times,” February 22, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier came from the Front to go home to Scotland. He got drunk near

-Waterloo, losing all his money and his railway pass. He spent his leave living on

-charity, and returned to the Front without having been near either his home or his

-friends.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” February 14, 1916</i></div>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Here is the official proof of the relation of the drink trade to this

-traffic in disease. It is from the Report of the Royal Commission:</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>Abundant evidence was given as to the intimate relation between alcohol and

-venereal diseases.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Alcohol renders a man liable to yield to temptations which he might otherwise

-resist, and aggravates the disease by diminishing the resistance of the individual.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Alcoholism makes latent syphilis and gonorrhœa active.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Our evidence tends to show that the communication in disease is frequently due to

-indulgence in intoxicants, and there is no doubt that the growth of temperance among

-the population would help to bring about an amelioration of the very serious conditions

-which our enquiry has revealed.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>We desire, therefore, to place on record our opinion that action should be taken

-without delay.</p>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-  <div class='nf-center'>

-    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'><b>if, in view of Lord D’Abernon’s statement that Prohibition has failed

-in Canada, the Government will issue the figures showing the decrease

-of crime and the increase of wealth?</b></p>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <h2 class='c007'>The Price the Empire Pays</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c008'>It is a bitter irony that while the men of the Empire have come to

-France to fight the enemy of mankind, this foe within our gates has

-struck a blow at the British Empire that generations will not heal.

-How many Empire men this private trade has slain we do not know,

-but we know beyond all challenge that it has weakened the bonds that

-bind our Dominions to the Motherland. This trade that throttles us

-at home can pull the Empire down, and it has started well. It has

-struck its blow at Canada.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>Let us look at the plain facts which in other days than these would

-have caused a storm of anger that Parliament could not have ignored.

-Canada has followed the King; arming herself with her full powers,

-flinging herself upon her enemies with her utmost strength, she has

-swept drink out of Canada almost from sea to sea. But even before

-she did this Canada saw that alcohol must go from her camps if her

-men were to be fit to fight for England, and long before the Prohibition

-wave swept across the country, the Canadian Government removed all

-alcohol from the training camps. It was the deliberate choice of a

-Government and its people, and from that day to this there has been

-no reason for regret.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>So the young manhood of Canada, rallying to the flag, was guarded

-from alcohol. She poured out her men in hundreds of thousands; they

-came to us from Prohibition camps; they came in Prohibition ships, and

-even here this trade that has us in its grip was not allowed at first in

-the Canadian camps; the only condition that Canada made—a condition

-implied but clearly understood—was properly regarded and obeyed.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>We respected the desire of Canada, and kept her soldiers free from

-drink in their own camps. But a soldier cannot keep in camp, and in

-the villages around the Drink Trade waits in every street. The military

-authorities were willing for the Canadian Government to have their

-way inside the camps, but drink was free outside, and in these public-houses

-there was sown the seed that may one day break this Empire.

-The Drink Trade was so rampant outside the Canadian camps that

-Prohibition inside was almost in vain. We had to decide between

-breaking the word of the Canadian Government to its people or dealing

-with this trade as Canada herself has done; as Russia has done; as

-France and America are doing. It was the Empire or the drink traffic,

-and the drink traffic won, as it always wins with us.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>It came about in October, down on Salisbury Plain. During one

-week-end a number of Canadian troops gave way to drinking in villages

-around the camps, and it was then that the grave decision was come

-to that the drink trade should be allowed to set up its horrible canteens

-in every Canadian camp. The change was made at the request of a

-British General, and we have the assurance of the Prime Minister of

-Canada that the approval of the Canadian Government was neither obtained

-nor asked. In handing the Canadian Army over to the drink

-canteens, in deliberately reversing the policy of the Canadian Government

-and its people, there was no consultation with Canada.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>It is important to remember that this decision, fraught with tragic

-and far-reaching consequences for the Empire, was a pure and simple

-English act. We may imagine the Canadian view from the remark of

-a Canadian General, who said, “I know drink is a hindrance, but I can

-do very little, because in military circles in this country drunkenness is

-not considered a very serious offense.”</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>It would have been surprising if there had not poured in upon our

-Government a stream of protests, and from all parts of the Dominions

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>they came. The Dominion of Canada, giving freely to the Motherland

-450,000 boys and men, was moved to passionate indignation that England

-should scorn her love for them, should ignore the pleadings of

-their mothers and sisters, and should put in their way the temptations

-from which they were saved at home. Canada does not want our drink

-trade; she lives side by side with the United States, she sees that great

-country building up its future free from drink, and she sees America,

-splendid ally in war, as a mighty rival in peace.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>And Canada is ready for the Reconstruction. She has followed the

-Prohibition lead of the United States, and already she has ceased to

-be a borrowing country. The very first year of Prohibition has seen

-this young Dominion, for the first time in her history, financially self-sustaining.

-Crime is disappearing; social gatherings are held in her

-gaols; she has set up vast munition workshops, and instead of borrowing

-money for her own support she has made hundreds of millions’

-worth of munitions for which this country need not pay until the war

-is over, and then need never pay at all for the munitions the Canadians

-have used. Canada is in deadly earliest. She kept her men away from

-drink to make them fit; she has swept it away to make a clean country

-for those who go back.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>And what is England’s contribution to this Imperial Reconstruction?

-<i>We have scorned it all.</i> The Prime Minister has said that this

-drink trade is so horrible that it is worth this horrible war to settle

-with it, yet we have sacrificed the love of Canada on our brewers’ altar.

-We can believe the Canadian who declares his profound conviction that

-but for this Canada would have sent us 100,000 more recruits; we can

-believe it is true that where responsible Canadians meet together in

-these days the talk is of how long the tie will last unbroken that binds

-the daughter to the Motherland. We can understand the passion that

-lies behind the resolutions that come to Downing Street from Nova

-Scotia; we know the depth of the yearning of those 64,000 mothers and

-wives of Toronto who signed that great petition to the Government of

-Canada begging it in the name of God to intervene.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>We can understand it all; but let us call the witnesses, and let us

-see the price the Dominion pays for our quailing before this Kaiser’s

-trade.</p>

-

-<h3 class='c011'>Those Who Will Not Go Back</h3>

-

-<p class='c012'>It is the great consolation of Canada that, though their sons may

-fall before this tempter’s trade in Britain, they will go back to a Canada

-free from drink. But some will never go back, and they are not on

-the Roll of Honour. They have been destroyed by the enemy within

-our gate, this trade that traps men on their way to France and digs

-their graves.</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>A young Canadian who had never tasted alcohol came from a Prohibition camp

-in Canada, came to England on a Prohibition ship, and was put in a camp with a

-drink canteen. He started drinking and contracted venereal disease. Ordered home

-as unfit, in fear and shame he sought a friend’s advice about the girl he was to marry.

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>“You can never marry her,” said his friend, and that night in his hut the young

-Canadian blew out his brains.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in possession of the Author</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A young Canadian officer was sent home disgraced. Sodden with alcohol, he left

-the train and shot a railway clerk dead.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Montreal “Weekly Witness,” October 24, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A Russian soldier in the Canadian forces, described as a clean, soldierly man, with

-a splendid character from his officer, was charged with the murder of a Canadian

-private who tried to separate two quarrelling soldiers in a bar. The prisoner had

-drunk much whisky and remembered nothing of his crime, and was sentenced to

-twelve months’ hard labour for manslaughter. The judge hoped he might be used as

-a soldier <i>in the Russian Army</i>.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Record of Hampshire Assizes, February 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A man from Prohibition Russia enlisted in Prohibition Canada, and came to

-England. He spent 9<i>s.</i> on drink one day, and that night he crept from his bed and

-killed his corporal at Witley Camp.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Godalming, February 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A Canadian soldier, aged 26, after a publichouse quarrel with another soldier, was

-found dying on the pavement in Hastings. His throat had been cut, and he died on

-entering the hospital. The other soldier was charged with murder, and sentenced to

-15 years.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Record of Hastings Assizes, March 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A young Canadian soldier, aged 20, died from alcohol while in training at Witley.

-He had a bottle of stout followed by nine or ten “double-headers” of neat whisky in

-about two hours. He was carried back to camp, laid unconscious on his bed, and died.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” March 22, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A Canadian lieutenant was tried for the murder of a canteen sergeant. They

-arrived together at a house at Grayshott, where the lieutenant asked for some strong

-drink and took a bottle of whisky and two glasses. The sergeant was afterwards

-found dead in the cellar, and the lieutenant carried the body into the stable.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Grayshott Coroner, December 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A man leaving a publichouse in company with a woman, with whom he had been

-drinking, met a Canadian soldier not far from Charing Cross. The soldier spoke, and

-the man struck him. The soldier was carried to the hospital, where he died soon

-afterwards from a wound two inches deep, caused by a knife.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Bow Street, January 1, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The wife of a gunner in the South African Heavy Artillery died at Bexhill from

-alcohol. The soldier said he bought 12 bottles of stout and 12 bottles of beer, one of

-whisky, and one of port, which they drank between Saturday night and Monday night.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Bexhill Coroner, December 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A soldier from Toronto, having been drinking away his pay in a Carlisle publichouse,

-with another Canadian soldier and some married women, failed to appear the

-next morning, and was found dead on a footpath with a bottle of whisky in his pocket</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Carlisle Coroner, April 14, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A Canadian soldier, having drawn £20 from the Canadian office, visited several

-publichouses, and was killed in a scuffle in London.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” December 2, 1916</i></div>

-

-</div>

-

-<h3 class='c011'>The Men From the Prohibition Camps</h3>

-

-<p class='c012'>Again and again we have seen the peculiar temptations of drink

-among Canadians. Officers, chief-constables, chaplains, newspapers,

-the men themselves, have all borne witness that to these men from

-Prohibition Canada the sudden temptations of our drink trade come with

-terrible power, and often they fall not knowing. The finest manhood

-of the Empire our tap-rooms and canteens destroy, not in isolated cases,

-but in a host we dare not number.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Of the soldiers who first came over from Canada, says a great Canadian

-paper, many were emigrants from England, not yet securely planted

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>in Canada, and for their sakes especially drink should have been withheld

-from them. Of the larger number of Canadian troops that followed

-them, many were youths who had never known drink, and they

-were taken from home at the most social and reckless age, to face drink

-with all the temptations induced by the nervous strain, the hardships

-and social abandon of the camp and the trench, and the free pocket-money

-when on leave.</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>In an officers’ mess of two double companies of Canadians only one officer drank

-on his arrival in a canteen camp in England; within three months there was not an

-abstainer in the mess.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts told at Society for Study of Inebriety, Jan. 10, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>These men come mostly from districts in Canada where intoxicants are prohibited

-by law, and many of them, being young lads, who perhaps have never tasted liquor

-before their arrival, fall easy victims.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Chief Constable of Godalming</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>Overseas soldiers come to our hospitals astonishingly cheerful and fit in a general

-sense, and wonderfully receptive to treatment. Only three per thousand die in our

-great hospitals. This is largely due to the hardy life of the men and the fact that

-they are removed from the danger of taking too much alcohol. The home troops have

-a much higher mortality, partly because their use of alcohol diminishes their chances.

-Re-admissions are largely due to drink on furlough.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Major Maclean, M.D., of the Third Western General Hospital</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A Canadian soldier, who had been wounded at the Front, was taken to a house

-by women and left alone drunk. An officer gave him an excellent character, and said

-he was on his way back to Canada. These men experience temptations here (he said)

-that they would not find in Canada, and there was too much of this going on.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Hastings Police Records, February 19, 1917</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>I heard a sad account of the havoc of the wet canteen and a private in a Canadian

-A.M.C. told us of a lad of 17 who is made so drunk that there is rarely a night when

-he has not to be helped up to bed. One of the soldiers here told me of his son in

-Canada being anxious to join up, but after seeing the condition of things over here

-he was doing all he could to discourage his son.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Letter to the Author</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>The Canadians in most cases are entirely lost when they arrive in this country,

-and are much more liable to the temptation which is thrown in their way, but when

-you give a figure such as this—that in one camp during last year, and two months of

-the previous year, there were 7,000 cases—it seems to me that it is about time we

-realised the magnitude of the evil. I do not know what has happened to them, except

-that I imagine a large number have gone back to Canada, and have not been able to

-play the part they had hoped to play.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917</i></div>

-

-</div>

-

-<h3 class='c011'>In Camp and On Leave</h3>

-

-<p class='c012'>Everywhere we find the trail of drink among Canadians—in camp

-and on leave.</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>A Canadian corporal, wounded in the Battle of Ypres, was found terribly drunk

-after being missing all day from hospital. Confronted with the surgeon after violent

-acts of insubordination, the corporal broke down and cried like a child.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Western Mail,” February 18, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>In the first weeks of the war 42 Canadian soldiers disgraced themselves, by excessive

-drinking, insubordination, and disorderly conduct, to such an extent that they

-had to be sent back to Canada.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Canadian Pioneer,” December 4, 1914</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A Canadian soldier, helplessly drunk, was seen at King’s Cross station eating,

-tearing, and crumpling up £1 notes, and would have lost about fifteen pounds but for

-kindly help from passers by.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” September 28, 1916</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A gunner from Montreal, missing from camp for several days, drank himself

-delirious, and cut his throat with a razor.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Canadian Pioneer,” December 4, 1914</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>A Canadian soldier spent £70 in three weeks on drink and bad characters.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Mail” August 10, 1915</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A Sergeant-Major from Canada declared that he had lost 20 per cent. of the men

-of his battery through venereal disease. They had a little drink, and were captured

-by the swarm of bad women at Folkestone.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Letter to Author</i></div>

-

-<p class='c012'>A woman was imprisoned for placing young children in moral danger. Every

-night the girls brought soldiers home, and colonial soldiers were frequently so drunk

-that they were carried in.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Records of Central Criminal Court, April 25, 1917</i></div>

-

-</div>

-

-<h3 class='c011'>The Rising Storm in Canada</h3>

-

-<div class='sansserif'>

-

-<p class='c012'><b>The thing cannot be justified. It is the blackest tragedy of this whole war that,

-in fighting for freedom in Europe, the free sons of the British breed have to face

-this war-time record of waste at home, with its inevitable toll of debauchery and

-crime.</b></p>

-

-</div>

-<div class='small'>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Editorial in “Toronto Globe”</i></div>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c012'>While this book was being written one of the greatest meetings

-ever held in Manchester was cheering a Canadian in khaki who declared

-that he was not going hungry while brewers were destroying food, and

-he went on to say, this soldier and sportsman well-known in the

-Dominion:</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>“Great numbers of our men never saw France. Canadian boys cried because they

-had not munitions. England reeled and beer flowed like water while thousands of

-our boys went down into their graves. We will never forget it in Canada.”</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c009'>We may be sure Canada will not forget. She will not forget her

-dead: she will not forget that the Drink Traffic she has swept away at

-home struck down her sons in the land for which they fought. “We

-must know who is to blame,” says a Canadian paper; “we presume they

-will have no objection to have their names placarded before the country,

-that every mother may know.” Col. Sir Hamar Greenwood, M. P., has

-lately returned from Canada, and this is what he tells us:</p>

-

-<div class='small'>

-

-<p class='c009'>“I met many fathers and mothers whose boys had been sent back to Canada

-debilitated and ruined for life because they had been enmeshed by harpies, and again

-and again these parents have said to me, ‘We do not mind our boys dying on the

-field of battle for old England, but to think that we sent our sons to England to come

-back to us ruined in health, and a disgrace to us, to them, and to the country, is

-something the Home Country should never ask us to bear.’”</p>

-

-<p class='c014'><i>Letter from a Solicitor in Ontario to the Author</i>:</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>I wonder if the advocates of the drink traffic in Britain appreciate the contempt in

-which they are held in Canada. Before the war I had a class of ten young men.

-Every one of them is now at the Front, and one writes that when I told them of the

-drink conditions in England he did not believe half of it; now he says I did not tell

-him half. Letters from our Canadian soldiers are appearing in our papers, and they

-are all amazed at the drinking habits of Britain.</p>

-

-<p class='c014'><i>From a Resolution received by Mr. Lloyd George from the

-Social Service Council of Nova Scotia</i>:</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>That we, representing the social, moral, and spiritual forces of this part of the

-British Empire, who have proved our loyalty by the thousands of men this small

-province has sent overseas, do record our most earnest protest against Britain’s inaction

-in this matter, which we are sure must result in longer and increased suffering for the

-men we have sent to help her win the war; and do most insistently plead with the

-British Government and the British Parliament that they at once exercise the power

-vested in them to strike the blow that will dispose of this enemy at home, and so

-give mighty reinforcement to those who are bleeding and dying for Britain and human

-liberties on the battlefields abroad.</p>

-<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span><i>Sermon by Dr. Flanders in London, Ontario, Feb. 25, 1917</i>:</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Canada has the right to make this demand on the Motherland from the simple

-standpoint of political economics. That we might put the Dominion into the best

-possible shape to give the utmost of our strength in men and munitions, we have an

-almost Dominion-wide Prohibition, and no intelligent person will deny that our contributions

-to the war from the first have been multiplied and intensified by that action.

-Why should little Johnnie Canuck abolish drink that he might conserve his manhood

-and material resources in the interest of the Empire’s war, and big John Bull refuse

-to abolish the traffic to the great waste of his material resources and the undoing of

-his efficiency?</p>

-

-<p class='c014'><i>A public man with three soldier sons wrote to the Toronto Globe</i>:</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Canada, for efficiency in war, casts out the drink evil. Is it too much to expect

-Britain, in fairness, to do the same? Is it not a mockery for the British Isles to face

-our common struggle with this palsy in her frame?</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Here is the bitter pill, the embittering thought for many a Canadian parent. Let

-me be a type. Three of my sons are in khaki. I gave them a father’s blessing when

-they enlisted. But this thought strains, most of all, the ties of my loyalty to the cause—to

-see my sons fight and fall for a Britain that at home is saddled by distillery

-interests, and misguided by a Press silent as the grave on this entrenched evil. Why

-should our sons go from a country where booze is banished to spend months on the

-way to the trenches in England, where the vices of the liquor traffic are legalised?</p>

-

-<p class='c014'><i>We see the spirit of Canada in those great words of the Premier of Ontario, Mr. Hearst,

-speaking of the giving up of drink</i>:</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>In this day of national peril, in this day when the future of the British Empire,

-the freedom of the world, and the blessings of democratic government hang in the

-balance, if I should fail to listen to what I believe to be the call of duty, if I should

-neglect to take every action that in my judgment will help to conserve the financial

-strength and power and manhood of this province for the great struggle in which we

-are engaged, I would be a traitor to my country, a traitor to my own conscience, and

-unworthy of the brave sons of Canada that are fighting, bleeding and dying for freedom

-and for us.</p>

-

-<p class='c014'><i>A letter from one of the most eminent public men in Canada</i>:</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>“British Canada is intensely loyal to the Empire and the Allied Cause, but at

-present recruiting is almost at an end. Why? Partly because of considerable dissatisfaction

-with many of the conditions which prevail. Suffering, wounds, death, are

-expected as inevitable in war, but the evil influences, the lavish temptations of liquor

-and bad women which sweep down upon our boys in England, are not felt to be

-necessary, and the hearts of multitudes of Canadian parents are hot with indignation

-at the apparent indifference of the authorities to the moral welfare of our troops.”</p>

-

-<p class='c014'><i>Captain John MacNeill, with the Canadian troops in France</i>:</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>“I say to you solemnly, if England should lose this war because of drink, or if

-England should unnecessarily prolong the war with great sacrifice of life in her effort

-to protect drink, or even if England should win the war in spite of drink, you will

-have put upon the bonds of Empire such a strain as they have never known before,

-and such a strain as we cannot promise they will be able to survive.”</p>

-

-<p class='c014'><i>From the petition presented to the Prime Minister of Canada,

-signed by 64,000 mothers and wives in Toronto</i>:</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>1. That Mothers and Wives of Canada in giving their sons and husbands for

-King and Empire, asked and received from your Minister of Militia this only assurance

-that, in sending them into the ranks, we were not hereby irrevocably thrusting

-them into the temptation of Strong Drink.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>2. We appreciated from the depths of our hearts, your action in abolishing the

-Wet Canteen from the Canadian Militia. We believe the Wet Canteen established in

-the ranks of the front to be a double danger, robbing our King of the success in arms

-which in these days comes only to the brave heart that is controlled by a clear head,

-and robbing us and our Canada of the Manhood which we gave into our Empire’s

-keeping.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>3. We do not believe that the King will refuse the aid of Canada’s sons; nor that

-he will appreciate your patriotic efforts the less, if you keep faith with us and make

-known to His Majesty, his Ministers and Commanders, that our boys are sent forth

-on the one condition that the dispensing of intoxicating liquors shall be prohibited in

-the ranks.</p>

-

-<p class='c014'><i>From a Sermon preached in Ontario, February 25, 1917</i>:</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>“Thank God, if any of our Canadian soldiers return to us with the drink habit

-formed and raging, we can welcome them to a land nearly purged of the liquor traffic,

-where they may have a chance to recover their manhood.”</p>

-

-<p class='c014'><i>Letter on the effects of Prohibition, from a business man in Ontario,

-published in the “Spectator:”</i></p>

-

-<p class='c009'>“Men I have known for years to be regular promenading tanks have given it up,

-and are starting a decent life again. The Police Court is empty. England should try it.

-It would be, after the first heavy initial loss, the best thing that ever struck the nation.

-I cursed these temperance guys as hard as any, but all the same it cannot blind you

-from the truth.”</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <h2 class='c007'>Your Share in the Food Crisis</h2>

-</div>

-

-<h3 class='c011'>The Food and Money Wasted on Drink in Our Great Towns</h3>

-

-<div class='c000'></div>

-<div class="centerwide">

-<span class='sc'>Estimated from August 1914 to April 1917 inclusive</span> by <span class='sc'>George B. Wilson</span>, B.A.,

-Compiler of the National Drink Bill

-</div>

-

-<table class='table1' summary=''>

-  <tr>

- <th class='btt bbt brt c015'>&nbsp;</th>

- <th class='btt bbt brt c015'>Drink Bill</th>

- <th class='btt bbt brt c015'>Grain Lost</th>

- <th class='btt bbt c015'>Sugar in Beer</th>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c016'></td>

- <td class='brt c017'></td>

- <td class='brt c015'>Tons</td>

-    <td class='c015'>lb.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>United Kingdom</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£510,000,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>4,400,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>762,000,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>London</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£83,000,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>693,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>120,000,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Edinburgh</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£3,200,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>31,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>5,300,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Dublin</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£2,600,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>29,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>5,000,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Glasgow</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£10,500,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>101,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>17,400,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Manchester and Salford</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£11,000,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>92,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>15,900,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Birmingham</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£9,900,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>82,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>14,200,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Liverpool</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£8,800,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>73,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>12,600,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Sheffield</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£5,400,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>45,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>7,800,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Leeds</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£5,300,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>44,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>7,600,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Bristol</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£4,200,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>35,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>6,000,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>West Ham</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£3,400,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>28,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>4,900,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Bradford</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£3,300,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>28,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>4,800,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Hull</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£3,300,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>27,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>4,700,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Newcastle</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£3,100,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>26,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>4,500,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Nottingham</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£3,100,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>26,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>4,500,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Portsmouth</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£2,800,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>23,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>4,400,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Stoke</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£2,800,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>23,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>4,000,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Leicester</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£2,700,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>22,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>3,800,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Cardiff</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£2,100,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>18,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>3,100,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Bolton</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£2,100,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>18,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>3,000,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Croydon</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£2,100,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>17,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>3,000,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Sunderland</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£1,700,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>14,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>2,500,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Oldham</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£1,700,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>14,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>2,500,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Birkenhead</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£1,600,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>13,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>2,200,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Blackburn</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£1,500,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>13,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>2,200,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Brighton</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£1,500,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>13,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>2,200,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Plymouth</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£1,500,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>2,100,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Derby</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>2,100,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Middlesbrough</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>2,100,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Stockport</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>2,100,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Norwich</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>2,100,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Southampton</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>2,000,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Swansea</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>2,000,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Gateshead</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>11,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>2,000,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Preston</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>11,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>1,900,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Coventry</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£1,300,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>11,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>1,900,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='brt c018'>Huddersfield</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>£1,300,000</td>

- <td class='brt c019'>10,000</td>

-    <td class='c019'>1,800,000</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

- <td class='bbt brt c018'>Halifax</td>

- <td class='bbt brt c019'>£1,200,000</td>

- <td class='bbt brt c019'>10,000</td>

- <td class='bbt c019'>1,700,000</td>

-  </tr>

-</table>

-

-<h3 class='c011'>PLAY THE GAME</h3>

-

-<div class='sansserif'>

-

-<table class='table2' summary=''>

-  <tr><td class='c020' colspan='2'>There is one week’s bread in      18 pints of beer</td></tr>

-  <tr><td class='c020' colspan='2'>There is one week’s sugar in      16 pints of beer</td></tr>

-</table>

-<p class='c009'>The man who drinks 3 pints a day drinks another man’s rations.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>

-  <h2 class='c007'>THE FOOD PYRAMIDS DESTROYED FOR DRINK</h2>

-</div>

-

-<div  class='figcenter id004'>

-<img src='images/image041a.jpg' alt='The Great Pyramid of Egypt' class='ig001' />

-<div class='ic002'>

-<p>The Great Pyramid of Egypt, the biggest construction in stone ever made by the  hands of man—80,000,000 cubic feet of masonry</p>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<div  class='figcenter id004'>

-<img src='images/image041b.jpg' alt='The Great Pyramids of Food' class='ig001' />

-<div class='ic002'>

-<p>The Great Pyramids of Food, the biggest wilful destruction of food ever known—180,000,000  cubic feet of food destroyed for the Drink Trade during the war</p>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c003' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>

-  <h2 class='c007'>How the Brewer Gets Our Food</h2>

-</div>

-

-<div class='sansserif'>

-

-<h3 class='c021'>THE MEN WHO BRING IT</h3>

-

-</div>

-<p class='c012'>It is easy to talk of a mine-sweeper. I wish the whole nation could

-understand what these men are doing. They are feeding the whole

-population, battling with the elements as well as with the enemy, battling

-with dangers overhead and dangers under the sea. The mine-sweeper

-is like the soldier daily over the parapet—he carries his life in

-his hand.</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>First Lord of the Admiralty.</i></div>

-

-<div class='sansserif'>

-

-<h3 class='c021'>THE PEOPLE WHO WAIT FOR IT</h3>

-

-</div>

-<p class='c012'>A London caterer ordered a quantity of sugar from the Philippines.

-The mine-sweepers cleared the way for it and it reached the docks. The

-caterer sent for it, and was informed that it could only be delivered if

-it was for a brewer.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>A provincial caterer ordered sugar <i>and paid for it</i>, but was told by

-the Food Controller that it could only be released if <i>it was sold to a

-brewer</i>.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>A working man was discussing rations with his minister in the

-street. “It is very hard,” he said, “to keep to your rations when you

-have five strapping lads, but we are going to try it.” Then a drunken

-man lurched past. The workman pulled himself together, and said, in

-great passion: “I tell you what it is, sir, I am not going to let my

-boys starve as long as there is food to make beer for men like that.”</p>

-

-<div class='sansserif'>

-

-<h3 class='c021'>THE PRICE WE PAY FOR IT</h3>

-

-</div>

-<p class='c012'>Immense quantities of food are used for beer and spirits. All this

-grain is lost for food purposes. <i>If this grain were available for food, the

-prices of bread and meat would be lowered.</i></p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>War Savings Committee.</i></div>

-

-<div class='sansserif'>

-

-<h3 class='c021'>THE POOR WHO SUFFER FOR IT</h3>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class='c012'>“Rationing bread could not be undertaken without grave risk to

-the health of the poor.”</p>

-

-<div class='c010'><i>Capt. Bathurst, M. P.</i></div>

-

-<div class='sansserif'>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-<div class='nf-center c000'>

-    <div>By what right does the Government</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-</div>

-<p class='c009'>use our mine-sweepers to bring in food for brewers to destroy? allow

-brewers to increase the cost of living for every household? and allow

-the willful destruction of food supplies to imperil the health of the poor?</p>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>

-  <h2 class='c007'>The Way for the Government</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c008'>We do not want to be amused by fiddlers while our heroes fight

-and die.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>What are the things we see? We see the Government silent in

-the presence of what the greatest paper in our greatest overseas Dominion

-calls “the blackest tragedy of the war.” We see a trade which the

-King declared to be prolonging the war in the crisis of 1915, prolonging

-it still in the crisis of 1917. We see our Prime Minister, who has

-declared this trade to be worse than Germany, allowing it to have its

-way. We see our Prime Minister, who has said we cannot settle with

-Germany until we have settled with drink, fearing to settle with drink.

-Then are we not to settle with Germany, and are we to surrender to

-the greatest enemy of the three?</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>There is one clear way before the Government; it is the only way

-of straightness and patriotism and honour. It is to wind up this enemy

-trade and move from our path the greatest hindrance to the winning of

-the war. It is to take our side honourably with our great Allies, to

-bring to an end the shameful isolation of Great Britain in the drink map

-of the great free countries that appears on the back of this book.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>It is the sign of weakness everywhere that it seeks a scapegoat for

-its sins, and we hear the everlasting talk of Labour. But it will not do.

-It is time these slanders on our workmen ceased.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>If the Government is afraid of the working man, let it say so, or

-let it try him. If it is afraid of temperance people, let it rally them

-to its side as one man on the platform where they meet. If it is afraid

-of the Drink Trade, then the time has come to say so, for we who send

-out our millions to fight a foreign foe are not going to starve for bread

-through fear of enemies within our gate. The Prime Minister gave the

-Army its munitions; the Army will use them in vain unless the munitions

-of life come into our homes.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>Working men are tired of men who fool with food and liberty.

-They do not object to any equal sacrifice: they believe in the democratic

-policy of the King, who based Prohibition, not on class distinction

-as the Government did by closing tap-rooms 15 hours a day and

-leaving cellars and Parliamentary bars open always, but on the principle

-of the King’s own words that “no difference shall be made, so far

-as his Majesty is concerned, between the treatment of the rich and poor

-in this respect.” Let the Government follow the King, and the people

-will follow the Government.</p>

-

-<p class='c009'>In the highest interests of the nation and the war let this be said

-as plain as words can make it—<i>that there is no body of temperance opinion

-anywhere standing in the way of Prohibition</i>, but that the united moral

-forces of the nation would rally to the Government instantly on an act

-of a few words such as this:</p>

-

-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span><b>That the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages be totally prohibited

-in the United Kingdom for the period of the war and demobilization,

-and that a committee be appointed to deal with all the private

-and public interests concerned; and that it be resolved upon, here and

-now, that reconstruction be accompanied by universal local option.</b></p>

-

-<p class='c009'>There would be no opposition the Government need count to a proposal

-like that.</p>

-

-<div  class='figcenter id005'>

-<img src='images/image044.jpg' alt='TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION LABEL WESTERVILLE O.' class='ig001' />

-</div>

-</div>

-<p>&nbsp;</p>

-

-<div class='tnote'>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c1'>

-  <div class='nf-center'>

-    <div>Transcriber’s Note</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-  <ul  class='ul_1'>

-    <li>Obvious typographical and punctuation errors were corrected.

-    </li>

-    <li class='c000'>Inconsistencies in hyphenation were retained.

-    </li>

-  </ul>

-</div>

-

-<p>&nbsp;</p>

-<p>&nbsp;</p>

-<hr class="full" />

-<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIDDLERS***</p>

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+</head>
+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 53733 ***</div>
+<h1 class="pg">The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Fiddlers, by Arthur Mee</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      <a href="https://archive.org/details/fiddlersdrinkinw00meea">
+      https://archive.org/details/fiddlersdrinkinw00meea</a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<div class="body">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='cover' class='ig001' />
+</div>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+
+<div>
+  <h1 class='c001'><span class='xxlarge'>The Fiddlers</span> <br /> <span class='xlarge'>Drink in the <br /> Witness Box</span></h1>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c1'>
+<div class='nf-center c000'>
+    <div><i>By</i> ARTHUR MEE</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='lg-container-l c002'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><i>If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain;</i></div>
+      <div class='line'><i>If thou sayest, “Behold, we knew it not;” doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it?</i></div>
+      <div class='line'><i>And shall not He render to every man according to his works?</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c1'>
+<div class='nf-center c003'>
+    <div>Published by MORGAN &amp; SCOTT, <span class='sc'>Ltd</span></div>
+    <div>12 Paternoster Buildings, London, E. C. 4</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<table class='table0' summary=''>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c004'>First Hundred Thousand</td>
+    <td class='c005'>May 15, 1917</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c004'>Second Hundred Thousand</td>
+    <td class='c005'>June 1, 1917</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c1'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>Reprinted in the United States by</div>
+    <div>THE AMERICAN ISSUE PUBLISHING COMPANY</div>
+    <div>Westerville, Ohio</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/image002.jpg' alt='Old man in suit with skeleton crouching behind his back' class='ig001' />
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>DRINK LEADING FAMINE IN</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p class='c006'>The Drink Trade gave Germany her greatest weapon in the war by
+helping to make the bread famine.</p>
+
+<p class='c006'>It was the wilful destruction of 4,800,000 tons of food, depriving the
+nation of her reserves, that led to the appalling gravity of the submarine
+menace.</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/image003.jpg' alt='woman in dress and helmet holding sword' class='ig001' />
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Drink, What did You do in the Great War?</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>This impressive picture of Britannia is from</div>
+      <div class='line'>the splendid 1916 issue of Bibby’s Annual</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/image004.jpg' alt='map of four countries' class='ig001' />
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>THE ALLIES AND PROHIBITION—STOPPING DRINK TO WIN THE WAR<br />The Drink Map before the War and on the 1000th day of the War</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>CANADA—Prohibition almost from Sea to Sea</div>
+      <div class='line'>FRANCE—Total Prohibition of Absinthe</div>
+      <div class='line'>RUSSIA—Prohibition Everywhere</div>
+      <div class='line'>BRITAIN—120,000 Drink shops open daily</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Wages of Sin</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>The time has come when it should be said that those responsible
+for our country now stand on the very threshold of eternal glory or
+eternal shame. They play and palter with the greatest enemy force
+outside Berlin. The news from Vimy Ridge comes to a land whose
+rulers quail before a foe within the gate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Not for one hour has the full strength of Britain been turned against
+her enemies. From the first day of the war, while our mighty Allies
+have been striking down this foe within their gates, Britain has let this
+trade stalk through her streets, serving the Kaiser’s purposes, and paying
+the Government £1,000,000 a week for the right to do it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She has let this trade destroy our food and bring us to the verge
+of famine; she has let it keep back guns and shells and hold up ships;
+she has let it waste our people’s wealth in hundreds of millions of
+pounds; she has let it put its callous brake on the merciful Red Cross;
+she has let it jeopardize the unity and safety of the Empire—for it may
+yet be found, as Dr. Stuart Holden has so finely said, that the links that
+bind the Pax Britannica are solvable in that great chemist’s solvent,
+alcohol.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The witnesses are too great to number; we can only call a few.
+There is no room for all those witnesses whose evidence is in the House
+of Commons Return 220 (1915), showing the part drink played in the
+great shell famine, in delaying ships and guns, and imperiling the Army
+and the Fleet.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But the indictment is heavy. I charge this trade with the crime
+the King laid at its door two years ago, the crime of prolonging the war;
+and the witnesses are here at the bar of the people. The verdict is with
+them, and the judgment is with those who rule.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>The wages of sin is death: What are the wages of those who fail in
+an hour like this?</i></p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>Fiddling to Disaster</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c008'>We are not going to lose the war through the submarines if we all behave
+like reasonable human beings who want to save their country from disaster, privation
+and distress.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='small'>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>The Prime Minister</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'><i>What are we to say of a Government that plays with war and drink
+and famine while these brave words are ringing in our ears?</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>If the situation is so desperate that we must all go short of food, it
+is desperate enough for the Government to be in earnest. But what are
+the plain facts? No reasonable man who knows them can say that the
+Government is in earnest.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is not denied by anybody who knows the facts that drink has been
+the greatest hindrance of the war. There is not a doubt that it has prolonged
+the war for months and cost us countless lives. It is the duty
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_6'>6</span>of the Government to face a dangerous thing like this; it is its duty to
+pursue the war with a single eye to the speediest possible victory. But
+the records of our war Governments in dealing with drink have been
+records of fiddling and failure, and we stand in the third year of the war
+with a Government fiddling still.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>One thing will be perfectly clear if disaster and famine come. It
+will be known to all the world that the Government knew the facts in
+time to save us. We are in the war because we would not listen in
+times of peace. We are in the third year of the war because we would
+not listen in the first. We are faced with famine because we would not
+listen in times of plenty, when drink was breaking down our food reserves.
+And we are drifting now, nearer to disaster every day, because
+the Government surrenders to the enemy worse than Germany.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It does not matter where you look, or when; the evidence of the
+fiddling is everywhere about you. Take the week before the Prime
+Minister’s grave speech about submarines—ending May 19.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>Submarines destroyed 27 British cargoes, mostly over 1600 tons.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>Brewers destroyed 27 British food cargoes, totaling 9000 tons.</b></p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>The granaries of Canada were crammed with wheat waiting for British ships,
+but there were no ships to bring this people’s food.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>The rum quay at London Docks was crammed with casks of rum to last
+till 1920, but a ship arrived with 1000 Casks more.</b></p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>A woman was fined £5 for destroying a quartern loaf.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>Brewers were fined nothing for destroying millions of loaves.</b></p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>Poor people waited in queues to buy sugar in London.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>Cartloads of sugar were destroyed in London breweries.</b></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>And so we might go on, looking on this picture and on that till
+the mind almost reels with the solemn farce. The Prime Minister has
+suggested that the farce does not end because those who demand its
+end cannot make up their mind. It is the Government that cannot make
+up its mind.</p>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c009'>It tells Parliament that no more rum is to be imported, and goes on importing
+rum for years ahead.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It forbids the use of spirits less than three years old, and reduces the three
+years to 18 months.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It restricts beer to 10,000,000 barrels, and tells us one day that it is all-inclusive,
+and the next day that the Army Council can order as much extra beer as it likes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It issues a report saying that hops are not food, and gives up hundreds of thousands
+of feet to shipping them; 23,000 cubic feet the other week.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It tells us that not an inch of shipping is wasted, and wastes shipping on bringing
+brewers’ vats from America and taking gin to Africa.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It tells us that the Drink Trade gave up its distilleries patriotically, and leaves
+us to discover that it was made the subject of a bargain by which bread was being
+destroyed for whisky as late as May this year.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is quite clear that the Government is desperately in need of a
+scapegoat, and desperately in need of a defense. Prohibition Russia
+is not mightily impressed with our drinking; serious Canadians are
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>asking how long they are to sacrifice their manhood to our brewers;
+America is asking already why she should go short of bread in order
+that England may drink more beer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A Government must clearly say something in view of these things,
+and it has put its defense in the care of one of the sanest and cleverest
+men in the United Kingdom, Mr. Kennedy Jones. If Mr. Jones does
+not make out a case for it, there is no case to make. What does he say?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>1. <i>We are told that only five per cent. of malt can be mixed with
+flour for bread.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All over the country this explanation is supposed to satisfy those
+simple, honest people who know little about percentages but ask plain
+questions at Food Economy meetings. It is preposterous nonsense.
+If we have 200,000 tons of malted barley, what on earth does it matter
+whether we mix it at fifty, or five, or two per cent., so long as we do
+mix it? <i>It adds 200,000 tons to our bread in any case.</i> This talk of five
+per cent., puzzling to people who think it means that only one-twentieth
+of this malted barley can be used, is pitiful evidence, surely, of the straits
+to which the Food Controller’s Defense Department is reduced.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>2. <i>We are told that the barley destroyed for beer would give the nation
+only ten days’ bread.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It would actually last us a fortnight. Drink, which has taken a
+quartern loaf from every British cupboard in every week of the war,
+is taking still a quartern loaf a month from every cupboard, and the
+desperate appeals of Mr. Kennedy Jones will be more effective in saving
+crumbs when he can tell us that he has stopped this monstrous
+destruction of over 1,000 tons of grain a day.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>3. <i>We are told that our munition workers are dependent on beer.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is an astounding slander. However true it may be of Governments,
+it is not true of our workmen. For four months the workman
+has been the scapegoat of this Government in its surrender to this trade,
+and we are asked at last to believe that these men who saved us from
+the Shell Famine are willing to drink us into a Bread Famine. Does
+the Government never pause to ask how millions of munition workers
+in America and Canada and the United Kingdom manage without beer?
+Does nobody in the Government know that the greatest steel furnaces
+in America are under total Prohibition, and that two million American
+railwaymen are subject to instant dismissal if they touch drink while
+on duty? Has the Government not read its own report of the Royal
+Society Committee which had this point in mind six months ago, and
+told us, on the highest authority in this country, that soldiers march
+better and keep fitter without alcohol; that men do more work on less
+energy without alcohol; and that “the records of American industrial
+experience are significant in showing a better output when no alcohol
+is taken by the workmen”?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>4. <i>We are told we need this trade for yeast.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We need not bother overmuch about that. Industrial alcohol will
+give us all we want, and there is no need to carry on this dangerous
+trade for the sake of yeast. We do not need a single ounce of brewer’s
+yeast, and we can do without distiller’s yeast as well by setting up a
+thousandth part of the machinery we have set up in the last two years.
+Or, while we must have yeast, we need about 30,000 tons a year for the
+whole United Kingdom, and since the prohibition of hops in June last
+year <i>we have given enough shipping to hops every fortnight to bring in
+enough yeast for a year</i>. A Government with shipping to spare like
+that, with room on its ships for mountains of hops, for enormous brewers’
+vats, and for rum for 1921, can find room for 100 tons a day of the
+people’s bread. It is a monstrous perversion of the facts to suggest that
+we must maintain this food-destroying trade, with all its hideous
+tragedy and ruin, in order to make bread.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It cannot be said that a Government with such desperate excuses
+is in earnest. We do not wonder that a great American farmers’ paper,
+with no axe to grind except that it is sane and patriotic and believes in
+the war, is asking plain questions as America prepares her Prohibition
+Army, her Prohibition Navy, and stops the destruction of grain for
+drink in order to enter the war at full strength.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Let the Food Controller, the Prime Minister, and every responsible
+citizen of the United Kingdom read this—it is from the most influential
+flour-milling paper in the world, the “North Western Miller,” published
+in Minneapolis:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“<b>Since the United States will be called upon to make food sacrifices
+on behalf of the Allies, it is certainly in order to call to account the
+stewardship of Great Britain in regard to food supplies. Ordinarily
+America would have no right to demand such an account, but Americans
+are now asked to deny themselves that Britain may have sufficient.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“<b>Britain has not seen fit to prohibit the use of cereals in the manufacture
+of drink, notwithstanding that the world’s food supply was obviously
+short. Are Americans required to forego a part of their accustomed
+ration of bread in order that their British Allies can continue
+to have a plentiful supply of beer and whisky? If not, then Britain
+should lose no time in putting its house in order, quitting the drink to
+add to the common store of food upon which the safety of all the Allies
+depends.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“<b>The food supply for the Allies is no longer a purely local proposition,
+to be used as a football in British politics; it deeply concerns the
+people of the United States, who are certainly not called upon to deny
+themselves bread in order that Britain shall have drink.</b>”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>What is the Government’s answer to this? “We owe a very considerable
+debt of gratitude to the great American people for the effective
+assistance they are rendering us,” says the Prime Minister.
+<i>Is this the way we pay them back?</i> It is an ugly question for our great
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>Ally to have to raise as she comes into the war, flinging her Prohibition
+Navy in to smash the drink-made menace of the submarine. It is unthinkable
+that the Government can read these bitter words unmoved,
+or can leave this stain on our history in the face of all these questionings.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There is another question, too, that comes across the Atlantic.
+What is the Government going to do with the soldiers of America’s
+Prohibition Army, and the sailors of America’s Prohibition Navy, when
+they come over here? Are they to be broken in their thousands, made
+useless and degraded as thousands of men from Prohibition Canada have
+been, by the enemy that traps them before they reach the war?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They are questions for the Government and the nation, and they
+must be answered in the interests of the nation, and not to please the
+trade that helps the Germans every day. We cannot afford to pay the
+appalling price the future will demand unless our fiddlers change their
+tune.</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Drink Trade and Our War Services</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'><b>It is not possible to measure the strain the Drink Traffic has imposed
+on our war services.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Food Controller’s Organization, with its great offices and
+staffs, would not have been needed had we saved the food destroyed
+by drink.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Rationing already involves 1,200 committees, and may mean 50,000
+officials and 50,000,000 tickets weekly. It could all be avoided. Prohibition
+would save more bread without food controlling than all the
+food controlling can save without Prohibition.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The National Service, with its network of officials, its costly advertising,
+its absorption of paper and printing, could all have been avoided
+under Prohibition. About 200,000 men have enrolled, but Prohibition
+would give us twice that man-power any day.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The strain on a host of men and women looking after soldiers’ children
+neglected through drink, soldiers’ wives spending allowances on
+drink, is incalculable.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The strain on war charities and the strain on the police arising
+from drink are both very great.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The strain of drink on doctors, nurses, and hospitals is beyond belief.
+Prohibition would set free for the Red Cross thousands who waste
+their time on the great drink trail.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The strain on transport is seen in the long lines of wagons drawn
+by strong horses carting beer to public-houses. This year alone the
+handling of drink must equal the lifting of at least 9,000,000 tons, and
+the barrels of beer would fill nearly all the railway wagons in the kingdom.
+As to ships, drink materials during the war have used up 60
+ships of 5,000 tons working all the time.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>On Lord Milner’s estimate of 19 barrels to the truck it would require
+4,500,000 railway trucks to carry the 17,000,000 tons of beer manufactured
+in the United Kingdom during the war.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>It can be proved from official figures that the weight of drink-stuff
+carried about since war began has been equal to the weight of solid
+material carried by the Navy to all our fighting fronts.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is a crying shame that the strength of Britain should be destroyed
+like this in such an hour as this.</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The War-Work of the Food Destroyers</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>There are hundreds of great Food Destructors in the United Kingdom.
+The man-power at their service, spread over our breweries and
+distilleries, numbers hundreds of thousands of men; their capital is
+hundreds of millions. This is a summary of the work they did in the
+first 1,000 days of the war:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>They sacrificed 4,400,000 tons of grain and 340,000 tons of sugar,
+enough to ration the whole United Kingdom with bread for 43 weeks
+and sugar for 33 weeks.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>They took from every kitchen cupboard in the land 600 pounds of
+bread and 76 pounds of sugar.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>They destroyed bread and sugar to last every child under fifteen
+for every day of the war.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>They took from our people over £512,000,000.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>They used up labour and transport for lifting over 50,000,000 tons.
+By sea they used up 60 ships of 5,000 tons; by rail their raw materials
+and the finished products would make up a train long enough to reach
+nearly round the world.</b></p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Food Now Being Destroyed for Beer</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Look at the actual facts about beer alone. We will ignore distilling,
+as it gives us munitions and yeast. Had the Government tried to solve
+the yeast question it could have solved it easily in these three years;
+it would have had no more trouble with that problem than Russia and
+Canada and America have had. But as the Government is still investigating
+the yeast question, we will confine our figures to beer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>Brewers are destroying 450,000 4-lb. loaves a day.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>This year’s food destruction for beer alone will equal five weeks’
+bread rations and four weeks’ sugar rations for the whole United
+Kingdom.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>We have seven critical weeks in this summer, and this year’s destruction
+of food would carry us through.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>Beer alone is taking 10 pounds of sugar a year from every kitchen
+cupboard, and an ounce of sugar a day from every soldier.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>That is what drink is doing at this moment with the shadow of
+famine creeping on.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>“<i>He who withholdeth the corn the people shall curse him.</i>” Proverbs.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Shadow of Famine</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>The Government came into office with the food shortage in sight;
+it was its first duty to build up the great reserve of food we might have
+had now in our granaries if the drink trade had not destroyed it. We
+could have laughed at submarines, for our barns would have been filled
+to overflowing, and we could have lived in comfort for a year if no
+ship reached us.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Let us see how much food drink has destroyed during the war.
+We will take it from August 4, 1914, to April 30, 1917. It is 999 days
+of the war. The grain and sugar destroyed for drink have been:</p>
+
+<table class='table0' summary=''>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c004'>Grain</td>
+    <td class='c005'>4,400,000 tons</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c004'>Sugar (for beer alone)</td>
+    <td class='c005'>340,000 tons</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id004'>
+<img src='images/image011.jpg' alt='Scales with bread on the left outweighed by beer and whisky on the right' class='ig001' />
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>How Canada sees it—A Canadian cartoon of the callous destruction of bread  for beer and whisky</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is not easy to realize what this means, but it will help us if we
+think of one or two examples.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>The biggest thing ever set up on earth is the Great Pyramid. It is
+80,000,000 cubic feet. The food destroyed by drink during the war
+would make two Great Pyramids, each bigger than the Pyramid of
+Egypt.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>The longest British railway is the Great Western; it is over 3,000
+miles, but it would not hold the food destroyed by drink since war began.
+If every inch of it were crammed with wagons, the Great Western
+Railway would need hundreds of miles more line to hold the train-loads
+of food destroyed.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span><b>There are about 750,000 railway wagons in the United Kingdom,
+but if the Drink Trade had them all they would not hold the food it
+has destroyed.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>There are about 30,000 engines on our British railways, and if the
+food destroyed were made up in trains of 125 tons apiece, all our engines
+would not pull them; we should still want 10,000 more.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So vast is this incredible quantity of food destroyed by an enemy
+trade while famine has been coming on. We should have saved it all
+if Parliament had followed the King, and it would have given the
+whole United Kingdom its flour rations for nearly a year. Take it at
+its minimum scientific human food value, and on the basis of our rations
+in May, 1917, it would have given us:</p>
+
+<table class='table0' summary=''>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c004'>Flour for the whole United Kingdom</td>
+    <td class='c005'>43 weeks</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c004'>Sugar for the whole United Kingdom</td>
+    <td class='c005'>33 weeks</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class='c009'>Our three war Governments, confronted with the increasing certainty
+of at least a three-years’ war, have allowed the Drink Trade to
+destroy this vast reserve of food.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The full toll of this trade upon our scanty food supply, growing
+shorter and shorter while the queues outside our food shops grow longer
+and longer, is staggering indeed, even now with drink about three-quarters
+stopped. We must remember that it makes no difference that
+the barley has been malted; it is still good human food, and every ounce
+of it should be mixed with grain for making bread. Let us remember,
+also, that <i>brewer’s sugar is a good pure sugar</i>, the objection to it being
+largely the objection most of us have to standard bread—its colour.
+Malt or sugar, every ounce a brewer destroys is food stolen from the
+people. Let us take expert opinion on the subject.</p>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>The Food Value of Brewer’s Sugar</h3>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c012'>We do not, of course, use this dark sugar when white sugar is cheap and easily
+procurable, but during the war we have used it for coffee, cocoa, and tea; and for
+puddings where colour did not matter. We have used it a good deal in our bakeries
+for chocolate goods, where colour again does not matter. It is a good, pure sugar,
+and the colour is the principal drawback.</p>
+<div class='c010'><i>Letter to Arthur Mee from a London caterer</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>The Food Value of Brewer’s Malt</h3>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c012'>Malt flour can be used to make excellent cake with 50 per cent. wheat flour. It is
+sweet and pleasant to taste without the need of any sugar. Good scones can be made
+with 25 per cent. of malt flour. Its use in bread made with yeast causes too much
+fermentation in the bread, but it has no effect on baking-powder. The Food Controller’s
+Department is aware of the practicability of using malt flour, but the sale is
+restricted in order to limit its use for making beer. Brewers and maltsters are too
+patriotic to wish to use for beer what could be applied to food in case of a serious
+shortage, and the large stocks of barley and malt can supplement the supply of wheat
+flour.</p>
+<div class='c010'><i>Letter from a Brewer in the “Times,” April 11, 1917</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Yet we have seen our Government holding up sugar for brewers;
+we have seen our Food Controller refuse to release a caterer’s sugar
+unless it were sold to a brewer; we have seen a Government short of
+food-ships bringing in brewers’ vats and casks of rum; and we see the
+Government still holding up this malt that would feed a people asking
+for more bread.</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Tunes They Play</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Strange tunes we hear the fiddlers play, but their music does not
+charm away the troubles of a famine-threatened land. From morning
+till night the prayer of the people rises, “Give us this day our daily
+bread,” but the heart of Downing Street is hardened, and the nation’s
+bread goes day by day to the destroyer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But all the time we see the measure of the courage of our rulers on
+the hoardings in the streets. We know their posters by heart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>Defeat the enemy’s attempt to starve you</i>, by—not by stopping the destruction
+of food, but by joining the National Service, and probably
+helping to pick hops. There was a man in a co-operative store who
+volunteered for National Service, and last month he received instructions
+<i>to leave the grocery store and take up duty in a brewery</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>Sow your window-boxes and plant your back gardens</i>—and Mr. Prothero
+will see that the soil of a million back gardens is wasted on hops.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>We have not enough food to last till the harvest</i>—why not go out and
+catch rabbits, asks Lord Devonport—and sit and wait for sparrows?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>We must save every pound of bread we can to get over our critical
+weeks</i>—not by saving the quartern loaf that beer is taking every month
+from every British cupboard now, but by going hungry so that drinkers
+may not thirst.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>We must not eat more than our share, on our honour</i>—but the man
+across the table can eat his share of bread and drink somebody
+else’s too.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>We must eat less and eat slowly</i>—so that brewers may waste more
+and waste quickly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>We must keep back famine</i>—but not by using malt, says Captain
+Bathurst: that would cost three times as much as letting famine come.
+<i>But why not keep the malt till bread is as dear as gold?</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>Let all heads of households abstain from using grain except in bread</i>,
+says the King’s Proclamation. But let the brewers waste 8,000 tons
+a day for beer, says the Government.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>God speed the plough and the woman who drives it</i>—yes, and God help
+the woman who drives the plough to feed the brewer while her little
+ones cry for bread.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>Let us fine £5 whoever wastes a loaf</i>, says the Food Controller—but
+not, of course, the brewers who waste 450,000 quartern loaves a day.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Hops are no use as food to anybody, says the Board of Trade Scientific
+Committee. “<i>Then let us grow only half as many</i>,” said Mr. Prothero.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Lloyd George says Mr. Prothero is working “in a continuous
+rattle of mocking laughter and gibes.” Yes, it is the mocking laughter
+of a nation that is not really amused by sights like this. The nation
+does not like to see the bread rations of 70,000 men in France cut down
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>while the Drink Trade is destroying every week bread enough to last
+these men a year. It does not like to see the Government sending letters
+out to managers of factory canteens, begging them to be careful
+of bread, while food flows through our beer canteens like a river running
+to waste. It does not like to see Y. M. C. A. canteens denied
+supplies of sugar while barrels of beer are stacked in great piles outside.
+It does not like the calling up of discharged soldiers while thousands
+of strong men are working hard all day destroying food or carting
+beer about the streets; and it does net like the tragic comedies of Captain
+Bathurst, who warns us that it really may become necessary in the
+national interest—and then, perhaps, he drops his voice to break it very
+gently—it really may become necessary, if these cake shops are not
+very careful, <i>to whitewash the lower part of their windows</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Oh, these fiddlers! And now we have a new idea from the Food
+Control Department; it is a coloured poster of a Union Jack and a big
+loaf on it, and “Waste not, Want not,” printed in big type. It was
+being printed on the day the Prime Minister told the nation that America
+had found it is no use waving a neutral flag in the teeth of a shark.
+It is an eloquent and true saying, but it is also true, that it is no use
+waving platitudes from copybooks in the teeth of a wolf at the door.
+The Prime Minister says he is taking no chances. Let us be quite sure.
+We once had a Government of which men said its motto was “Wait and
+See.” <i>Are we better off, or are we worse, with a Government that Sees
+and Waits?</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But there is no end to the fiddling. With Food Controllers who
+hold up food for Food Destroyers; with Food Economy Handbooks that
+cry out loud to save the crumbs but have no word to say about the
+tons we fling away; with a Prime Minister praying for window-boxes
+and a Board of Agriculture consecrating hopfields, we need not be
+surprised if the nation is not mightily impressed.</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>How the Allies Did It</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>All the world knows, except, apparently, the world that goes round
+at Westminster, how Prohibition has helped the Allies.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>With the Shell Famine at its height—largely made by Drink—the
+Prohibition Army on the East held up the enemy while Britain fought the
+Drink Trade for her shells.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>With the Bread Famine looming in sight—largely made by Drink—the
+Prohibition Navy from the West flings in her power against the submarines.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Oh, for the spirit of our Allies in this land! If France wants to
+rouse the spirit of Verdun she strikes down her foe at home and puts
+absinthe away. If Russia wants to be great and free she stops this
+drink and orders out the Romanoffs. If Canada wants to give her utmost
+help to Britain she stops this drink from sea to sea. If Australia
+wants to make her soldiers fit she trains them in her Prohibition camps.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>If America wants to beat the whole world at making shells she drives
+drink from her workshops. If San Francisco has an earthquake she
+stops drink while she pulls herself together. If Liverpool has a dangerous
+strike she shuts up public-houses and keeps the city quiet. Oh,
+for a Government of Britain that will see what all the world can see!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>History will do justice to the part the Prohibition policy of the
+Allies has played in saving Europe, but a pamphlet has no room for
+these things. We can take only one or two great witnesses to the
+mighty achievements of our Prohibition Allies. Let us begin with
+France, and call our own Prime Minister to tell us what they did. Mr.
+Lloyd George:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>One afternoon we had to postpone our conference in Paris, and the French Minister
+of Finance said, “I have to go to the Chamber of Deputies, because I am proposing
+a bill to abolish absinthe.” Absinthe plays the same part in France that whisky
+plays in this country, and they abolished it by a majority of something like ten to one
+that afternoon.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>And how did Paris take this prohibition that men said would cause
+a revolution? Let us ask Mr. Philip Gibbs, whose splendid letters home
+have made his name a household word. Mr. Philip Gibbs:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>Absinthe was banned by a thunderstroke, and Parisians who had acquired the
+absinthe habit trembled in every limb at this judgment which would reduce them to
+physical and moral wrecks. But the edict was given and Paris obeyed, loyally and
+with resignation.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>And now we come to Russia, to these mighty Russian people who
+in the last year of vodka saved £6,000,000 or £7,000,000, and in the last
+full year of Prohibition saved £177,000,000. We will call our own
+Prime Minister again:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>Russia, knowing her deficiency, knowing how unprepared she was, said, “I must
+pull myself together. I am not going to be trampled upon, unready as I am. I will
+use all my resources.” What is the first thing she does? She stops drink.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>I was talking to M. Bark, the Russian Minister of Finance, and I asked, “What
+has been the result?” He said, “The productivity of labour, the amount of work
+which is put out by the workmen, has gone up between 30 and 50 per cent.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>I said, “How do they stand it without their liquor?” and he replied, “Stand it?
+I have lost revenue over it up to £65,000,000 a year and we certainly cannot afford it,
+but if I proposed to put it back there would be a revolution in Russia.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>How completely teetotal Russia became we read long ago in the
+<i>Daily Mail</i>, to which Mr. Hamilton Fyfe sent this message from Petrograd:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>Try to imagine all the publichouses in the British Isles closed; all the restaurants
+putting away their wine cards and offering nothing stronger than cider or ginger ale.
+That is the state of things in Russia. Strange it seems indeed, yet there is one thing
+stranger. Nobody makes any audible complaint.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>Everywhere in Russia it was the same: a nation was made sober
+by Act of Parliament.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Without a murmur of protest,” said the Moscow correspondent of the <i>Times</i>,
+“the most drunken city in Europe was transformed into a temple of sobriety, and we
+felt that if Russia could thus conquer herself in a night, there was indeed nothing
+that might not be accomplished.” And two years later, when the revolution came, we
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>read in the <i>Times</i> this note from Odessa: “Perfect tranquillity continues to prevail
+here, although for the moment Odessa is practically without police. The satisfactory
+absence of crime may largely be attributed to the sealing up of spirituous liquors.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>We need not be afraid of Drinkless Revolutions.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But the truth about Russia is almost too incredible to believe, for
+it is Prohibition that made the revolution possible; it was stopping drink
+that set 170,000,000 people free. We will let a business correspondent
+of the <i>Times</i> give evidence; here is what he said on April 21, 1917:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>In one respect it must be said that the Reactionaries saw clearly. They always
+claimed that the Tsar had ruined himself by decreeing the abolition of vodka. None
+but a sober people could have carried out the Russian Revolution.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The police were, on the other hand, the victims of drink. They had seized the
+vodka at the order of the Government, and had kept plentiful supplies for themselves.
+Thus the Revolution was in part a struggle between drunken reaction and sober citizens.
+Sobriety triumphed.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Russian people will not bow down and tie their hands to the
+thrones of Europe: do we wonder if they scorn our quailing before
+this trade?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Free Russia flings off the dynastic yoke: do we wonder Prohibition
+Russia is not much impressed by a nation with a Drink Trade round
+its neck?</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Soldier’s Home</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>The things that will be told against this trade when all the truth
+is known will break the heart of those who read. It is well for us that
+we cannot know the full truth now; the burden would be too grievous
+to be borne in days like these. But if you will go into your street, or
+will talk of these things with the next man you meet from one of our
+pitiful slums, or will pick up one of those local papers that still have
+space to print the truth, you will find the evidence close about you.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We are the guardians of our soldiers’ homes; we are the trustees
+of the hope and happiness of their little children; but we let this drink
+trade, that takes our people’s food out of their cupboards, turn that
+food into the means of death, and sow ruin and destruction through
+the land.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But we will call the witnesses to these drink-ruined soldiers’ homes,
+these homes that the enemy worse than Germany has shattered and
+broken while our men have been fighting for your home and mine. We
+will call a few here and there, knowing that for every one called are
+hundreds more that can be called, and that beyond all these that are
+known there is in this little land a countless host of tragedies as secret
+as the grave.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>A Tooting soldier whose wife had sent him loving letters to the trenches came
+back to surprise her after 18 months. He found another man in possession of his home
+and a new baby; and, overcome by the discovery, he gave way to drink and killed
+himself.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Balham Coroner, March 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier who had left a comfortable home behind returned from the Front to
+find it ruined, with not a bed to lie on, his children never sent to school, his wife all
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>the time in publichouses. “I wish I had been shot in the trenches,” he said when he
+arrived.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 10, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Outside a publichouse in Liverpool a man was dragging home his drunken wife,
+the mother of eleven children. They rolled over and over on the ground, the drunken
+women violently resisting the maddened man. Then came up the eldest son, home
+from the Front, with five wounds in his body.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Liverpool Post,” March 2, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier came back to his home in London to find his wife drinking his money
+away, harbouring another man; one of his children cruelly neglected and the other in
+its grave, perished from neglect; and a drunken carman’s baby about to be born in
+his home.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Shaftesbury Society Report</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Lance-Corporal heard in the trenches of his wife’s misconduct. His commanding
+officer wrote to make inquiries, and the soldier wrote to the Chief Constable a
+pitiful letter: “What have I to look forward to at the end of the war?” he said.
+“Nothing, only sorrow. I never get a letter to know how my loving son is getting on;
+I think it will drive me mad.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He came home, opened the door of his house, threw his kit on the floor, and declared
+that he would kill his wife. He put a razor on the table, and his little boy
+hid it in a cupboard, but a week later this boy of 12 went home and found his father
+and mother lying on the floor, the father drunk, the mother dead. The soldier, drowning
+his misery in drink, had strangled his wife. Rousing himself beside her, he said,
+as the police found them, “Kiss me, Sally. Aye, but tha are poorly.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He had been the best of fathers, said the little boy; the best of soldiers, said his
+commanding officer; and the judge declared that such a man, with such a character,
+ought not to be with criminals.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Record of Huddersfield Assizes, Autumn 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier asked a London magistrate if he could draw the allowance instead of his
+wife, who was in prison for drunkenness and was neglecting his four children. The
+magistrate said the only thing was to send the children to the workhouse.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Soldier: “So I am to be a soldier for my King and country while my children
+go to the workhouse?” The Magistrate: “That is so, because you have a drunken
+wife. I am sorry for you.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sunday Herald,” June 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A seaman gunner, who had been torpedoed and had fought in the trenches,
+arrived home to find his wife, in his own words, “filthy drunk,” and his children
+utterly deplorable. He reclothed them, but his wife pawned the clothes, though she
+had £7 a month. He took his children away, but a crowd of women interfered with
+him, and the police were powerless against the mob.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Western Daily Mercury,” July 23, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier just back from the Front was found in the street weeping bitterly on
+discovering that his wife was in gaol through drink, and his child, through her neglect,
+had been burned.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Statement by Marchioness of Waterford</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier came home from the Front to find that drink had ruined his home, and
+his children were being cared for by Glasgow Parish Council. “Hour after hour we
+sit on this council,” says the chairman, “listening to case after case, and the cause is
+drunkenness, drunkenness, drunkenness. There are 2300 children under the council,
+and two thousand of them have parents living.” “Our raw material is the finished
+product of the public-house,” says one of these workers.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts from Glasgow Councillors</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A motor mechanic at the Front, hearing that his wife, hitherto a sober woman,
+had given way to drink, obtained leave to come home. He found his wife, very drunk,
+struggling home with the help of the railings in the street, and neighbours described
+her horrible life with other soldiers. The husband obtained a separation for the sake
+of his children, and went back to France.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Full facts in “Kent Messenger,” July 31, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A young soldier came from the trenches to spend Christmas in his home in
+Sheffield—a teetotal home before the war. He found that his wife had given way to
+drink, had deserted one child and disappeared with the other, and that a baby was
+to be born which was not his.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts known to the Author</i></div>
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>A miner fighting at the Front came home to find his wife at a publichouse, his
+home filthy, and his children cruelly neglected. He was heartbroken. His young wife
+frequently left the house from tea-time till midnight, and in order to keep the children
+from the fire she had burned them severely with a piece of iron. A respectable-looking
+woman, the mother pleaded for a chance, and was led from the dock sobbing
+bitterly.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Independent,” February 21, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A young Yorkshire miner enlisted and left his wife, hitherto sober, with three
+children. She took to drink, neglected the home, and is now a dipsomaniac, with two
+children not her husband’s.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts known to the Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier came home ill from France, hurried from Waterloo to his home, and
+found the door locked. He knocked, and his little boy’s voice came—“Is that you,
+mother, and are you drunk?” Hearing his father’s voice the excited lad opened the
+door. “Where’s mother?” asked his father. “Mother?” said the boy; “she’s drinking.
+She comes home drunk night after night now and knocks the kids about. She daren’t
+hit <i>me</i>; I’m fair strong, dad; but the other.... And as for baby, she never does
+nothing for her. I and Freddy takes turns, but I dunno what to give her to eat
+sometimes.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Midnight passed before the mother appeared, helplessly drunk. “Did you expect
+me to sit at home weeping for you?” she said. The next morning, broken with tears,
+she promised to mend her ways. The soldier went into hospital, and there he had a
+letter from his boy. This is part of it:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Dear Dad, I write to let you know mother is going on awful. She has took all
+Fred and Timmy’s clothes to the pawnshop, and she hit Selina on Saturday with the
+toasterfork and cut her face. She cried all night, it hurt her so. She is drunk every
+night and some nights dussent come back at all. She daren’t hit me, but I am getting
+afraid about baby. We are all very hungry and miserable.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The soldier got leave, found his wife had disappeared, and, finding charity for his
+four little ones, he left his ruined home and went back to the hospital.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in possession of the Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A working-man at Gravesend went to the Front, leaving behind a wife and three
+children, the baby lately born. His wife started drinking away her allowance, neglected
+her home, and, full of remorse and shame for the disgrace she had brought on the man
+who was in the trenches, she hanged herself. The man came home to find waiting for
+him three motherless children, and one of the most pathetic letters a man has ever
+had to read.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Gravesend Coroner, 1916</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>Mothers and Children</h3>
+
+<p class='c012'>It is easy to understand the pitiful appeal of 500 women out of
+Holloway Prison who begged the Duchess of Bedford to help to close
+all public-houses during the war. They know in their hearts of tragedies
+such as these, in which mothers and children die while the fathers
+fight and the Drink Trade goes on merrily.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>A soldier’s wife in Sunderland drew £12 arrears of Army pay, and she and her
+mother began to drink it away. She drew her pay on Friday, was carried home drunk
+on Saturday, gave birth to twins on Sunday morning, and died on Sunday night. The
+twins died a week or two after, and a week or two after that the soldier came home
+from the trenches to find his family in the grave.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Sunderland papers, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Two women went drinking in Chester on a Sunday night, a soldier’s mother and a
+soldier’s wife. They had five whiskies each, and fell drunk in the street. One slept
+all night on a sofa, and the other lay on the floor, shouting and swearing. Her husband
+propped her up with a mat, and for hours she lay shrieking. In the morning she
+was dead. The publican was fined £5.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Chester Chronicle,” February 17, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The wife of a Yorkshire soldier was drowned while drunk at Sheffield. She
+started drinking with another soldier’s wife disappeared with a drunken man, and her
+death was a mystery.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Independent,” April 26, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>At an inquest on the bodies of a soldier’s twin children, both dead from chronic
+wasting, it was stated that the mother had 34<i>s.</i> a week, and both she and her husband
+drank. The mother had had four children in fifteen months, and all were dead.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Battersea Coroner, October 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>In one street in London where there were one day four convictions for drunkenness,
+a woman carried a sick baby into a public house. As she stood at the bar the
+little baby died, but the mother went on drinking, with the dead child in her arms.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Charity Organisation Society</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The wife of a highly-esteemed sergeant-major fighting in France was found lying
+drunk. Her four children, shockingly neglected, were put in a home, but she took
+them out, went on drinking, and received soldiers at her house. In a few weeks her
+husband heard in the trenches that his wife had died from drinking.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of West Surrey Coroner, March 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier left three children at home. He had been earning £1 a week, but his
+wife received 32<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> a week. She drank it away, neglected the children, and died in
+an asylum while her husband was in France.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Claybury Asylum</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The little child of a soldier in France died in Guy’s Hospital from burns. The
+mother said she could not buy a fireguard. While she was absent the baby was burned,
+and the mother, returning in a drunken state carrying a can of beer, said, “A good job!”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Southwark Coroner, December 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier’s widow with six children, an Army pension of 30<i>s.</i> a week, and her
+eldest boy’s wages of 30<i>s.</i>, drinks every night with a married man who has a respectable,
+clean, and sober wife with eight children and a ninth lately born—born prematurely
+as a result of her husband’s beating her. The child bore the marks of his
+violence, and died in two months.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Shaftesbury Society</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The young wife of a soldier was brought from prison to be tried for manslaughter
+of her baby, who had died in the infirmary from neglect. She spent her time in the
+publichouses, and laughed when the children were taken to the infirmary. She went
+out one day to fetch a bottle of whisky and as she drank with a neighbour she said
+she knew the baby would die. The doctor said the child’s skin was hanging in folds
+on the bones.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in the “Observer,” January 23, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier’s wife drank continuously while her child wasted away, left the tiny baby
+alone in the house while she went for beer, and a policeman found her lying drunk
+across the dead child’s body.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Barnsley Coroner, November, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The mother of two children whose father was fighting in France gave way to
+drink in his absence, neglected her children and left them in grave moral danger, and
+committed suicide.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of an Orphan Home</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier’s baby starved slowly to death as the mother drank away his pay, and
+while the child lay in its coffin the mother was out drinking.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>West Bromwich Police Records, June 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A munition worker at Newcastle was grievously upset by the drinking habits of
+his wife. The police left a summons for her and she disappeared. Two days later
+her body was found in the Tyne. The man broke down at the inquest, saying, between
+his sobs: “She was such a good wife to me for 20 years, and reared a good family
+before she took to drink.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Newcastle Coroner, Summer 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The wife of a corporation workman at Sheffield, home from the trenches with
+six gunshot wounds and three pieces of shell in his body, found that his wife had given
+way to drink and starved her five children. She was sent to prison for six months.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Sheffield, November 3, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier’s wife who had spent the greater part of £100 Army money in drink was
+sent to prison for neglecting her children. Almost everything in the house was pawned,
+including the children’s clothes; and the woman began to drink at five o’clock in the
+morning, and went on drinking all day.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 10, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier’s wife in Monmouthshire, with £3 9<i>s.</i> a week, was found sodden with
+drink, while the soldier’s eight children were in rags starving by day and huddling up
+in one bed by night.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Westminster Gazette,” July 22, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>A smart tidy woman in a London suburb, whose husband is fighting in Mesopotamia,
+has £2 10<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> a week. She used to love her children and had a happy home,
+but she drinks away her Army pay, lives with a married man who has six children,
+and has become a drunken slattern. The other wife is beaten and neglected, and the
+soldier’s children have gone to the workhouse.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Shaftesbury Society</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The four children of a soldier in Dublin were found hungry and shivering with cold
+while the mother was drinking. Several times she had let her baby fall while reeling
+with it in the street.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Dublin Evening Herald,” October 20, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>At the trial of a soldier’s wife for drinking and neglecting seven children, it was
+stated that a child of eleven was left in charge of a baby a fortnight old while the
+mother was drinking. At night all the children were heard screaming. The house was
+in utter darkness, and there was an escape of gas. Some men went in and turned off
+the gas, and at last the mother came stumbling out of a publichouse across the road.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Star,” November 25, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>“Your husband is fighting for his country, and his children have the right to be
+protected,” said the Chairman of the Chesterfield Bench to a soldier’s wife. Her
+children were found starving while she was drinking, and one day the little boy of
+three was found crouching naked inside the fender, trying to get warm. The police
+described the house as foul from top to bottom, with a heap of horrible rags for a bed,
+and a food cupboard that made the house unendurable when the door was opened.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Yorkshire Telegraph,” March 24, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The wife of a missing soldier was sent to prison at Chesterfield for neglecting
+three children between 13 years and 16 weeks old. She had gone astray through drink,
+and the youngest child, born under terrible conditions, was not her husband’s. It was
+found lying on a filthy bed, and its drunken mother, to satisfy its pangs of hunger, had
+given it pennyworths of laudanum. Eleven people slept in two foul bedrooms.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Chesterfield Police Records, October 9, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Five hundred children of soldiers are being cared for in the great Homes founded
+by Mr. Quarrier in Scotland, and most of them are there because of drinking mothers.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Reports</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier’s wife at Biggleswade spent her allowance on drink and left her three
+children locked up in the house for days at a time.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Court Records of Biggleswade, September 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier’s wife was found reeling in the streets of Dublin with a baby in her
+arms. At her home were found four other children, cruelly neglected.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Dublin Mail,” August 16, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Nineteen hundred children of soldiers have come into the care of the N.S.P.C.C.,
+mainly through drink, since the war began.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of the N.S.P.C.C.</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>The Ruined Wives</h3>
+
+<p class='c012'>Who does not remember the terrible rush for the last drop of drink
+when Prohibition seemed to be coming with the New Year? Long
+queues of women besieged the whisky shops in Glasgow. There were
+women of all ages, said the <i>Daily Mail</i>, tottering in grey hairs, young
+wives with babies in their arms, and men of the loafer type. “There
+was not a respectable citizen,” says the <i>Mail</i>, “who did not deplore this
+discreditable scene, but the remarks of passers-by provoked only torrents
+of insult.” The promise of the new year and the new Government,
+alas, was not fulfilled, and now in place of Drink Queues we have Food
+Queues. Let us see what drink is doing among our soldiers’ wives:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>Of 3000 soldiers’ wives being cared for in South London, 2000 are splendid, while
+1000 are sinking daily to lower and lower levels through drink.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Shaftesbury Society</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>A soldier’s wife, with a separation allowance of 32<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> a week, drank most of it
+away, ruined her home, neglected her children, and became a lunatic.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Claybury Asylum</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A young soldier’s wife, hitherto “quite an elegant type,” is rapidly becoming a
+drunkard. Women hitherto sober have not the courage to keep from women’s drinking
+parties, and young girls come out of factories and go to publichouses in little groups.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Charity Organisation Society</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Outside a public house in Dublin 15 small children were crying in the cold, waiting
+for their mothers. Ninety-four drunken women came out in 25 minutes. There were
+ten drunken soldiers, and two girls of 15 were thrown into the street hopelessly drunk.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Irish Times,” April 20, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>In Dundee over 170 wives of soldiers gave way to drink last year, and cruelly
+neglected their homes.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of the N. S. P. C. C.</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier in the trenches received a letter from his little boy, which he sent to
+London with a pitiful appeal for help.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Kindly do what you can for me and the well-being and welfare of my four beautiful
+children,” the poor soldier wrote. “I am enclosing a fearful letter I have received
+from my poor little lad, 14-1/2, the first and only letter I have received from him.
+Sir, I shall be most anxiously awaiting your reply, for this letter is the greatest blow
+I have ever received.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This is the little boy’s letter:</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>Dear Dad: Just a line to let you know how everything is at home.
+Mother is drunk for a fortnight and sober for a week for months and
+months. I’ve stuck it now for seven months, and can’t stick it any
+longer. I tried to get into the Navy and passed all the tests, but mother
+would not sign the papers, for which I am sorry. If mum would sign
+I could go away to Portsmouth on Thursday, but she will not. At
+the present moment she is half drunk and keeps jawing me so that I
+could knife meself. I’ve lost my new job because mum would not wake
+me in the morning, and nothing for breakfast, and had to get mine and
+the children’s tea at tea-time. It pains me to write like this, but I
+can’t help it. I now seek your advice as to what to do. I hope <i>you</i>
+will enjoy Xmas, although there is not much hope for us. I now conclude
+with fondest love, X. Your heartbroken Son, Leslie.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>A stream of nearly 15,000 men and women poured into 58 publichouses in Birmingham
+in less than four hours; over 6,000 were women. Into one house the people
+streamed at nearly 500 an hour.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Review of Reviews,” October 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>For months some wives of soldiers and sailors in Scotland were never really
+sober. “We have done our best,” says a worker among them, “going to their homes
+and doing all in our power, but it beats us.” In 23 families, with 178 children born,
+61 were dead.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts told to Secretary for Scotland, July 1916</i></div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c000'>
+    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>whether the ships that have brought in food for destruction by the drink
+trade could not have brought in a large proportion of the 3,500,000 tons
+of wheat now waiting for ships in Australia and the 2,000,000 tons waiting
+in Canada?</b></p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Roll of the Dead</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>No more pitiful record of the war is there than that unnumbered
+roll of men lured from our armies by this liquor trade, and cast into
+dishonoured graves. We can take only a few of them.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>A number of soldiers at Ormskirk came into camp drunk on Christmas night. A
+request for quiet led to a fight, and one of the men was struck two blows and was
+dead the next morning.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Mail,” December 28, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Liverpool soldier, drinking continuously, had overstayed his leave, and in a
+quarrel about this he stabbed his brother dead.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Liverpool Courier,” April 20, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier invalided from France, having recovered from his wounds, gave way to
+drink, assaulted an officer, and hanged himself in his prison cell.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” April 11, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A young lieutenant shot himself in an hotel near Trafalgar Square, and among
+the documents read at the inquest was a letter striking him off his battalion for
+drinking and gross carelessness.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” October 27, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A captain in the Army ruined by drink, with a fine record of military service,
+started drinking on his way to a shooting range in London, and in a struggle he shot
+a detective dead.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” September 20, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>In the Scottish Express, between Doncaster and Selby, a drunken corporal of the
+Coldstream Guards was showing his rifle to a friend when it went off, the bullet killing
+a munitions works director in the next compartment, and narrowly escaping a lady in
+the compartment beyond. The corporal had in his pocket a bottle of whisky, which
+was freely handed round.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” December 3, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier who had been drinking heavily was placed in the guard room, and died
+after a night of groaning, evidently as the result of a fall.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Greenwich Coroner, January 1, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A young soldier arriving from India on Christmas morning was arrested three
+days later, after a drunken fight in which a man was killed.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Westminster Police Records, December 28, 1914</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier spent a day’s leave in Manchester, ate and drank very heavily, and was
+found dead the next morning from choking.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Manchester Coroner, December 28, 1914</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier home on leave was found drunk with his wife. They had been throwing
+pots at one another, and on Christmas morning the woman was found dead with a
+wound in her head.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Oldham Coroner, December 24, 1914</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Three gunners had four drinks each of rum, and at midnight lay down to sleep in
+a garden at Lee, where one was found dying from alcohol.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Local Papers at Lee, June 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier died from alcohol in a house where drink was unlawfully sold.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Manchester Guardian,” April 8, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A private in the Welsh Fusiliers died from alcohol, cold and exposure. He left a
+publichouse with a 4<i>s.</i> bottle of whisky, and was found dead on the roadside next
+morning, with the bottle almost empty.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” April 13, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>An old man who was said to be in a drunken condition was wounded in a fall with
+a soldier from Gallipoli, and died a few days after.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Mail,” January 17, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>An elderly man, seeing a drunken soldier lying in the street, went to his assistance,
+and was killed in a disturbance that followed.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Record of Yorkshire Assizes, November 21, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier was found drowned in the Trent. He was described as a good man at
+his work, but not steady, and had been drinking.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Newark Advertiser,” August 4, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>A terrible disturbance occurred in a camp at Portland Reservoir after the closing
+of the canteen one Sunday night. A large number of men who had been drinking
+created a disturbance, in which bricks and stones were used, a tent collapsed, and the
+officers were called to quell the riot. The captain, drawing his revolver, rushed with
+two lieutenants into a hut where men were shouting and struggling, but appeals had no
+effect—the men “did not appear to hear or recognize their officers,” and one man raised
+his rifle and took aim at them. At least fifty shots were fired, and a young corporal
+fired many shots through the window into the darkness. In the morning a soldier was
+found dead. Nobody knew who shot him, but the corporal thought he must have done.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Dorset Assizes, Spring 1915</i></div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c000'>
+    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>whether it is true that more food is being destroyed each week in breweries
+and distilleries than by submarines?</b></p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The New Drinkers</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>“<i>No complaints have reached the War Office of youths who were
+total abstainers having become confirmed drunkards since enlistment.</i>”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So we are told in the House of Commons. The records of the War
+Office are clearly incomplete, and the information from the camps may
+here be supplemented by unchallengeable witnesses of what happens
+in the horrible drink canteens run by the Army Council.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>A soldier who was wounded at La Bassée, a total abstainer until then, was sentenced
+at the Old Bailey for killing his uncle while drunk. He was a newsvendor,
+aged 21, and had no memory of the tragedy in which he killed his uncle at a Christmas
+party.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” January 13, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A private in the Royal Scots Fusileers, aged 17, was charged with murdering a
+bugler boy, aged 16, in his regiment. The private became mad drunk in the camp
+canteen, went back to his hut, locked himself in and fired two shots, one of which
+entered another hut and killed the bugler. “Was there no one with power to say how
+much drink should be given?” asked the judge, and an officer said there was no one.
+“Then it was high time power was given to the commanding officer,” said the judge.
+“Was there to be no restraining hand to prevent young boys from fuddling themselves
+in canteens?”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in the “Times,” November 21, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>An old man sat in a tram in great distress. He had lost his boy at the Front.
+When he joined the Army he had never tasted alcohol, but when he came home on
+leave to see his mother he was drunk every night. He was drunk the night he went
+away, and in three days he was dead. “The last we saw of him,” said the poor old
+man between his sobs, “was his going away drunk, and his mother, who is old-fashioned
+in her faith, cannot get it out of her mind that no drunkard can enter the
+Kingdom of God.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts told by Dr. Norman Maclean</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Many young officers, called upon to share the wine bill at mess, naturally say, “If I
+have to pay I may as well drink my share,” and one man accounted for ten glasses of
+champagne. On a Guest night in his mess several more “were under the table.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Dublin Daily Express,” April 1916.</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A boy got his V.C., and came home wounded. The publican in his street sounded
+his praises in the taproom, where they subscribed to the bar for 120 pints for him
+when he arrived. He came home and began to drink it, and was nearly dead with it
+before he was rescued.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts related by Bishop of Lincoln</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>When the Scottish Horse Brigade were at Perth whisky was literally forced down
+the men, and they were inundated with floods of bad women.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Brigadier-General Lord Tullibardine</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A teetotal household had two boys in an officers’ training camp, and they gave
+pitiable accounts of drinking. Boys from school had a drunken sergeant put over
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>them, and a canteen in the midst of them. “Our boys never saw drink before,” one
+father wrote.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>From a letter to Dr. Norman Maclean</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A boy of 17, discharged from the Navy, spent 8<i>s.</i> one night on beer and rum, and
+created a disturbance in a workshop at Sheffield.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Star,” November 11, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Mr. Justice Atkin, charging the Grand Jury at Bristol, said that in nearly every
+case where a soldier was tried in the Western Circuit the defence was drink. One lad
+of 18 was treated to eight pints of beer in two hours, and did not know what happened.
+That sort of thing, said the judge, must seriously impair the efficiency of the troops
+when sent to the Front.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Record of Bristol Assizes, Autumn 1914</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Two boys, 15 and 17, were fined for being drunk in munition works. One was discovered
+just in time to save him from carrying molten liquid.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Birmingham Munitions Tribunal, Dec. 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>“A boy joined the Royal Navy as a carpenter, living in barracks and working on
+shore. Every day he was given ‘grog’ for his rations, although he never asked for it
+and never took it.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in letter to the Author</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Such are the tragedies of boys handed over in our camps to drink
+and its temptations. What of the girls in our munition shops? They
+have learned to drink in thousands since the war began—respectable
+girls leaving home to go into munitions, respectable young wives alone
+at home. With no restraining hand upon them, with new companionships
+and pocket-money flowing freely, it is not surprising the temptation
+should be too strong for them. We can take only one or two cases.</p>
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c012'>The girl-wife of a Cardiff seaman died in the street from exposure after drinking
+in publichouses with other girls.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Pontypridd Coroner, December 27, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A publican at Lincoln was fined £5 for allowing children to be drunk on his
+premises. Ruth Onyon, 14, and Rose Herrick, 16, were found in his house with a
+soldier. They had been in five houses and had ten drinks each and reached home helplessly
+drunk.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Daily Telegraph,” Sept. 1, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A number of cartridge workers were summoned for taking drink into a munition
+works. One young woman was led to the surgery drunk at half-past four in the
+morning; another was discharged because she could not stand. Sixteen girls subscribed
+for four bottles of wine and whisky.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Leeds Munitions Tribunal, April 28, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Two girls of 16 and 17 were fined for being helplessly drunk in an explosive
+works, the magistrates pointing out that their conduct imperilled the lives of other
+workers.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Coventry Munitions Tribunal July 24, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The men and girls at a large armament works drank all night. Girls would lurch
+into the dormitory dead drunk at 2 a. m.; one lady was up till 4 a. m. letting in drunken
+girls. As a result of drunkenness there was an explosion at these works, two men
+being killed and six injured.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Spectator,” Jan. 20, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Dublin publichouse was found full of girls and soldiers, all drunk. Three
+drunken girls were taken away by six soldiers.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Irish Times,” April 20, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>In half an hour 367 girls entered Birmingham publichouses, scores under 18. Stout
+and beer were chiefly drunk, but whisky and water also, and some port wine. Ten
+young girls were quite drunk.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Birmingham Daily Post”</i></div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c000'>
+    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask,</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>in view of the fact that American soldiers are not to touch alcohol, what
+arrangements the Government proposes to make for them in this
+country?</b></p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>Back to the Homeland</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Everywhere we hope and pray for peace, for the day when the men
+will come home; but we may dread the day if the men come home to
+drink and its temptations. The sudden release of millions of men, the
+certain reaction after the terrible stress of these three years, is fearful
+to contemplate with the door of the tap-room open. There would be
+an end of civilization itself for days and weeks and months, and for
+many a town at home the Peace would be worse than the War.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We owe it to these men to listen to the warning of the Prison Commissioners
+who printed these words in their report last year:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>When war is succeeded by peace there will come a time of trial
+for those who have never turned their backs to a bodily enemy. With
+the passing of military discipline our brave fellows will be tempted to
+forget the hardships and miseries of the trenches in a burst of uncontrolled
+pleasure and license, and, if trade be bad and work difficult to
+obtain, the lapse may, if not checked, become a step on a downward
+career.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is not imagination merely. Judges, coroners, police, and all who
+face the crime and misery of life, know well the bitter things that happen
+when men come home without restraint. There are witnesses innumerable.
+Let us hear a few of them.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>A captain in the Royal Flying Corps drove a motor-car through London, knocked
+a man down, drove on, and ignored the police, who eventually mounted the footboard
+and found the officer drunk.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Bow Street Police Records, June 3, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A lance-corporal on Chesterfield station was so drunk that he walked off the platform
+and fell on the line as a passenger train came up.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Chesterfield Police Records, June 2, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A corporal of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, leaving the Front with 150
+rounds of ammunition and his service rifle, came out drunk into the streets of West
+Ham and began firing his rifle.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” July 10, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier who had received a cartridge from his son at the Front, put it in his rifle,
+and while drunk fired it in the streets of Manchester.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Manchester Police Records, January 27, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>In the early hours of the morning two unarmed soldiers were fired at in Woolwich
+by a drunken soldier, who chased them for a long distance, firing shots all the time,
+until he was arrested.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Alliance News,” February, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Drunkenness among soldiers and sailors is appalling. Unoffending travellers are
+delayed by drunken sentries. Sailors landing after weeks of arduous toil in the North
+Sea find it easy to get so drunk that some are drowned, some die from exposure, and
+many return to their ships in a condition of helpless inebriety.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Inverness Courier,” May 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Two drunken soldiers entered the parish church at Codford, set fire to the vestry,
+threw down the altar cross and candlestick, broke a stained-glass window, and tore
+leaves out of a Bible 200 years old.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” April 3, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A drunken soldier at Cannock was imprisoned for drawing his bayonet in the
+streets. “If I meet a policeman I will murder the dog,” he said, and, meeting one, he
+threatened to cut off his head.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records at Cannock, March 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>400 soldiers tried to get a drunken man from the police in Grantham.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Grimsby News,” July 30, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>A drunken sergeant was found forcibly detaining a girl at Hornsey. On the
+police interfering, the drunken soldier drew his bayonet.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” September 7, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Three splendid-looking fellows, minesweepers, were traveling on the Highland
+Railway. “All were married men,” said a fellow passenger, “happy and proud of their
+homes, and they spoke with ache still in their hearts something of their lives and work.
+Well, these men succumbed during the journey. A change of trains was their opportunity,
+and I left them in a nearly helpless condition.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “The Spectator,” April 8, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A lady visited a soldier’s wife and found her at home with all her clothes in pawn.
+Her husband and brother had both been home from the Front, and in one week had
+spent £8 on drink.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in the “Cork Constitution,” Dec. 10, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A labourer, home from tunnelling work at the Front, was fined 13<i>s.</i> for drunkenness
+on his 33rd appearance, having spent £45 in seven days.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” Oct. 11, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A disabled soldier was selling papers in Kingsway, London. He was proud of his
+military record and the character his colonel gave him. He was trying to compound
+for a pension; he thought he would settle for £50. “Mind you,” said he “there is not
+a better character in London than mine, and I shall get the £50. Then I shall have a
+month’s booze.” “What, with that fine character of yours?” a gentleman said to him.
+“Yes,” said the man, “when I came home, and could leave the hospital, there was £50
+due to me, and I had a regular booze.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts known to the Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier with twelve years’ clean record in the Army was sentenced for felony
+after being made drunk by his friends.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Southport, January 9, 1915</i></div>
+
+</div>
+<p class='c012'>No Government has ever received more warnings than the three
+war Governments have received concerning drink. There is no room
+for them here, but we may call a few witnesses such as cannot be ignored
+by a nation looking forward to the day when millions of men
+will be home again.</p>
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c012'>A house in Westminster reeked with filth and drink and drunken overseas soldiers,
+“and it would be better,” said the Crown Solicitor, “if power were given to the police
+to sweep such places off the earth.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Westminster Police Records, Aug. 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A sapper seaman was found dead at the quay. Another seaman said his friend had
+seven drinks. They left the publichouse arm-in-arm, and went to the quay. There he
+saw a corporal, who was boatswain for the night, and was drunk. Leaving the sapper,
+he got the corporal into the boat, and went back for his friend, but the sapper had
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The lieutenant: “The deceased was one of the quietest boys who had ever been
+on the ship, and one of the best oarsmen. The whole trouble was that it was pay day.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Coroner: “Prohibition during the war would be a blessing to all. It seems
+to be a very rotten state of affairs.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The foreman: “Drink.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The lieutenant: “Prohibition would be the best thing.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Coroner: “This poor man, unfortunately, is one of many.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Western Daily Mercury,” January 8, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A publican at Dover was fined £20 for selling a bottle of whisky to a sailor. The
+Admiral said drink undermined the efficiency of the patrol vessels, and those who
+supplied it directly assisted the enemy, and might be the cause of the loss of very
+many lives.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Dover, October 6, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A private in the Northumberland Fusiliers, aged 23, was charged with burglary
+while drunk. His father and three brothers were in the Army. He took part in the
+battle of Loos, was wounded at Salonika, and was recommended for distinction for
+helping to save a wounded officer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>During the whole of Christmas leave he was drinking, made drunk by his friends
+who were probably proud of his having held part of a trench against a German
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>bombing party. His captain described him as a good soldier in peace, and brave in
+action—a man whose disgrace would be felt by the regiment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Justice Rowlatt said everyone was hoping for the time when millions of brave
+men would come home after facing incredible dangers, and we must look forward
+almost with terror to having these men exposed to drink and its temptations. What
+would be the state of the country in such a case unless we could make a clean sweep
+of drink? We should have to face this question over and over again, and the sooner
+we faced it the better.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Derbyshire Assizes, February 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Whoever allowed soldiers or sailors to drink to excess, said the Mayor of Tynemouth,
+should be tried by court-martial for treason. He would be recreant in his duty
+to God, to himself, and to the citizens, if he did not call attention to the brutalising of
+so many townspeople and the callous conduct of the “waster” element in the drink
+trade. He had no quarrel with those who conducted their business properly.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Tynemouth papers, February, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The Aldershot command appealed for the closing of half the publichouses, to save
+the men from temptation when the troops are demobilised and return with their
+pockets full of money.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Record of Workingham Licensing Sessions, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The <i>Army and Navy Gazette</i>, in an article disapproving of the Prohibition Campaign,
+issues a terrible warning which should be printed on the door of the room in
+which the Army Council meets. These are its words:</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is on record that towards the end of the siege of Sebastopol rum was made
+too regular an issue, with the result that almost every soldier who survived to
+return home became a drunkard.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>The siege of Sebastopol lasted less than a year, and that is the
+work of the rum issue for a few months. If rum does that in months,
+what will it do in years?</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>Into the Firing Line</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Lord Kitchener is dead, but there are two things that are with us
+still—that rare little note that he gave to his men as they went out,
+warning them of drink; and that infamous note sent out by a drink
+firm in London, begging our people to send out drink to our men. They
+can guarantee it right up to the firing line, they say, and even when
+our shells could not get there through drink, drink seems to have found
+its way. It can get on to transports when the Ministry of Munitions
+is waiting urgently for shipping space; it can commandeer our vans
+and horses and trains when these mean life or death to us; it seems
+to get past any regulation; it goes about with the power of a king, doing
+its work where it will.</p>
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c012'>It is regrettable that our troops at the Front cannot get more British Beer.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<div class='c010'>Managing Director of Allsopps, July 14, 1916</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Dear Sir, In answer to your inquiry, the only limitation in the size of cases consigned
+to officers in the Expeditionary Force is that they must not exceed 1 cwt.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We can guarantee delivery right into the front trenches. The cases are handed
+over at Southampton to the Military Forwarding Officer, and the A.S.C. see them
+right through. We are shipping hundreds of cases weekly. Yours faithfully,</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Letter from a Wine and Spirit firm in London</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>So drink finds its way to the front, to weaken our troops, with all
+their matchless heroism. Let us call the witnesses who have seen the
+work it does.</p>
+
+<div><span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span></div>
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>Soldiers at the front, tried for drunkenness, have declared that they have received
+drink from home. Men sometimes receive flasks in the trenches. They are exhausted,
+the stimulant revives them for a minute or two, and the harm is done. “And then
+(says Col. Crozier) they get about two years’ hard labour.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Letter from Colonel Crozier, commanding 9th Royal Irish Rifles</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>As a result of a Court-martial investigating charges of excessive drinking among
+the officers of a regiment at the Front, the Army Council removed the commanding
+officer from his post.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Court-martials, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>In the torrid climate of Mesopotamia, in defiance of all military medical history,
+rum was issued to the men instead of food and sterile water, and the presence of
+cholera, dysentery and other diseases, was attributed to this by Sir Victor Horsley.
+“Our gross failures and stupidity,” he said, “are in my opinion due to whisky affecting
+the intellectual organs and clearness of our leaders. They do not realise that alcohol
+in small doses acts as a brake on the brain.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in a letter from Sir Victor Horsley, May 13, 1916</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id004'>
+<img src='images/image028.jpg' alt='THE JUNKER’S LITTLE BROTHER' class='ig001' />
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>THE JUNKER’S LITTLE BROTHER</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c012'>Battalion Headquarters—colonel and chaplain present. Enter Adjutant: “The
+rum ration is due tonight, sir; am I to distribute it?” The colonel (nobly and in a
+voice audible all over the trench): “No! Damn the rum! To hell with the rum!”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Chaplain’s letter in “Alliance News,” June 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>At a court-martial in Newcastle, a sergeant-major, charged with misappropriating
+funds of the sergeant’s mess, pleaded that during this period a resolution of the mess
+had come into effect, providing free drinks during Christmas and the New Year.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” April 17, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>“In the Flying Services one has seen more than one good man go to the dogs
+through drink, or become fat and flabby and useless through just the excess of alcohol
+which falls short of taking to drink in the usual acceptance of the term. More men
+take to drink because of the ‘have another’ custom than because they like or need
+alcohol, and simple Prohibition would stop all this nonsense straight away. This
+kindly note is not the outpouring of a teetotal fanatic, for I suppose I have paid in
+my time rather more than my share of the nation’s drink-bill; it is merely a perfectly
+sound argument in favour of increasing the nation’s efficiency at the expense of its
+chief bad habit.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>The Editor of “The Aeroplane”</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A lieutenant in the trenches, knowing that the rum ration made him cold, threw
+his rum on the ground. His captain saw him, and threatened to report him. “You
+do, sir,” said the lieutenant, “and I will report you for being drunk on duty.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in possession of the Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A seaman serving on a ship in Cork Harbour died from alcohol. Found drunk
+and unknown, he was put on a stretcher and died.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 9, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>“Over three-quarters of the court-martials I have had anything to do with are due
+directly or indirectly to drunkenness. Many thousands of competent N.C.O.s and
+soldiers have been punished, and become useless to the nation during their punishment,
+as a result of drink.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have never been a teetotaler, and have rather opposed the radical temperance
+agitation, but am now changing my views as I see our success over here hampered
+and our progress towards victory retarded so obviously by drink.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Letter from a Lieut.-Colonel at the Front, seen by the Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The captain of a British merchant ship, drunk on the bridge, ordered his chief
+gunner to fire 50 rounds of shell at nothing. The gunner fired four rounds to appease
+him. Going through the Mediterranean, the drunken captain ordered his gunner to
+fire at a British hospital ship, and the incident led to a struggle for life, which ended
+in the captain’s being put in irons, tried, and sentenced to five years’ penal servitude.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Record of Devon Assizes, Exeter, February 2, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>An officer was left in charge of a British ship. Mad with drink, he went among
+the men and shot one dead. He is now in an asylum.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Case reported to the Admiralty</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The crew of a Dutch ship arriving in the Tyne was placed under a naval guard
+after a drunken riot in which three were killed.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” September 14, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The captain of a Norwegian barque mysteriously disappeared, and the vessel
+arrived in port from the North Sea. The mate, who had been drinking heavily, was
+seen, with a hammer in his hand, with the captain in a corner, bleeding from wounds
+about the head.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” April 8, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A seaman ashore in Glasgow, “wild with drink and passion,” was terribly wounded
+in a quarrel in a public-house, and died the same night. A youth of 19 was sentenced
+to five years’ penal servitude.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Edinburgh High Court, Dec. 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A barge-loader at West India Docks died from alcohol, and three other men were
+removed in an ambulance after drinking rum.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” May 9, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Orders were given on a steamer for the boats to be swung out in readiness for
+submarines. The first and second officer, having been drinking, could not do their duty.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Liverpool Marine Board, April 13, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The jury returned a verdict of murder against a youth of 19 who, after drinking
+one night, went on to his ship and killed the second officer.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Hull Coroner, April 24, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A drunken captain in command of a drifter landed with an armed party on the
+Isle of Man. He posted the men on the quay, and gave them orders to allow no one
+to pass. Declaring he would shoot every person who came within reach, he fired twice,
+and threatened to kill two police officers.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Times,” October 6, 1916</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Such is the work of drink wherever it finds a soldier to entrap—the
+drink the Navy carries free from Southampton to the trenches; and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>from America comes the news, as this page is being written, that the
+Army and the Navy of our Western Ally, like the Army and the Navy
+of our Eastern Ally, are to be under Total Prohibition.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>how much bread is destroyed each week to make beer for German internment
+camps in this country?</b></p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>Drink and the Red Cross</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>If the full story could ever be told of the national tragedy of drink
+and the war there would be no more ghastly chapter than that which
+would tell how drink fought the Red Cross; how, without pity, it hindered
+the work of mercy that is the general consolation of the world
+in days like these.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We are coming to a famine not only in food, but in doctors. The
+death-roll has been heavy beyond all parallel; the strain on the medical
+services has been almost too great to be borne, and we look anxiously
+round to know where the doctors and nurses will come from. With
+Prohibition the problem would be largely solved, for the ordinary burden
+of life would be largely lifted from our doctors and hospitals, and thousands
+of men and women would be free to give themselves to the war
+instead of mending up and patching up the sordid effects of drink. A
+rich brewer gave a donation for extending a hospital. “Ah! but we
+should not have to extend if he would shut up his public-houses,” said
+a doctor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is easy to see how drink is telling all the time against our doctors,
+our nurses, and our hospitals everywhere. Let us call a few
+witnesses.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>Somebody gave a glass of neat whisky to two wounded men at a garden party in
+Tottenham. Both were drunk when the brake came to take them home, and one died
+on the way.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Telegraph,” September 3, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Three wounded soldiers at Oxford were overcome by four bottles of rum smuggled
+into the hospital by visitors, and one of the men died.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Oxford Coroner, January 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A wounded soldier asked for two hours’ leave, came back in four hours drunk with
+whisky, and died after a terrible night in the hospital.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Mail”</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Two limbless soldiers were found helplessly drunk on the pavement at Brighton.
+A publican was fined £20.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” November 25, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A wounded soldier, mentioned in despatches, was charged with causing the death
+of a soldier with whom he had been drinking. Reeling under a heavy blow, the injured
+man was helped to bed, but when the bugle sounded in the morning he was dead.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Mail,” December 21, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier, aged 29, with a gunshot wound in his arm, died from alcohol at Oxford.
+One Sunday night he and two other wounded soldiers consumed four bottles of rum
+brought into the hospital.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Oxford Coroner, January 10, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Three soldiers in hospital uniform were found lying helplessly drunk on the tramlines
+of Sheffield. Two were back from the Dardanelles.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Star,” March 2, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Seamen on a ship bringing wounded to England from Boulogne were so drunk
+that they interfered with the stretcher bearers, and one fell across a wounded soldier
+lying on deck.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Southampton, May 14, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>There was a paralysed and helpless man who was found hopelessly drunk in
+hospital after his friends had visited him.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Statement by Lieut.-Col. Sir Alfred Pearce Gould</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>An officer who has trained hundreds of men for the ambulance corps declared that
+a large percentage of wounded are in a very nervous condition, in which alcohol means
+collapse and almost certain death.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Quoted in “Daily Mail”</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Lying helpless at a London station, moaning on the ground in drunken delirium,
+was a lad in hospital blue who had, in truth, been wounded by his friends. Drink was
+taking him again through the worst of his experiences, and his mental pain was pitiable
+to see.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in the “Globe,” January, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Two drunken soldiers from Gallipoli made what a doctor described as the most
+savage attack he ever saw on a civilian. They held a young man’s head against a wall
+and pounded him unmercifully.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” August 19, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A party of soldiers were seriously injured in a struggle to arrest a drunken private
+at Pontefract. The publican called on the men in his taproom to rescue the private, but
+the sergeants drove them off.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” October 5, 1914</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A sergeant of a Welsh regiment, invited to drink by friends in Waterloo Road,
+was picked up as he lay senseless, his pulse beating feebly, his eyes wide open, and his
+body starving with cold.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” February 14, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A drunken man rushed from a publichouse and kicked a soldier unconscious. The
+military police, chasing the man, were stoned. Four soldiers were injured, one having
+his head cut open, and the military were ordered to clear the place with fixed bayonets.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” August 11, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The medical officer in charge of the Mental Block of a large military hospital said
+to the Colonel: “I have the worst job of all, and it is through Drink, Drink, Drink!
+Men recover fairly soon from shell shock, but officers, especially the younger ones, who
+habitually take wines and spirits, are subject to relapses every few days. It is awful!”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “National Temperance Quarterly,” May 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Of the thirty war hospitals in Hertfordshire, with 8000 men passing through them
+in the first thirty months of the war, there is not one that has not had trouble with
+drink.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts known to the Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A doctor from a Canadian hospital said a large percentage of their troops had had
+to be sent back to Canada rendered permanently insane through the action of alcohol.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” October 31, 1916</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>One terrible truth remains to be told of the crime of drink against
+the Red Cross. The most blessed thing in all the world today is alcohol,
+for it makes chloroform and ether, which soothe the pain of men.
+We cannot get enough of either of these consoling drugs, yet we go
+on wasting precious food to make more alcohol <i>to add to the sum of
+misery and pain</i>.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>whether the bread ration applies equally to all; or if it may be exceeded
+if the excess is drunk instead of being eaten?</b></p>
+
+<div class='smaller'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>and</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>how many brewers’ vats have been imported this year on ships which
+had no room for urgent munitions of war?</b></p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>Stabbing the Army in the Back</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>All the world is learning now that the drink trade is the great confederate
+of venereal disease. It leads a man into temptation, destroys
+his power of resistance, and retards his chances of recovery.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We can never know the truth about the extent of this disease, about
+the way in which the liquor trade, by breaking down tens of thousands
+of our men, has stabbed the Army in the back. But the number of soldiers
+incapacitated by this disease through drink is enormously greater
+than the number incapacitated by the most subtle or dramatic stroke
+devised by the German staff.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The lost man-power of the Army through this disease must be equal
+to the whole of the original British Expeditionary Force. The Government
+has given us figures for the Army at home last year, and they are
+43 per 1,000—or over 100,000 cases for an army of 2,500,000 men. There
+were 7,000 cases in one Canadian camp alone.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Here are the black facts revealed in a debate in Parliament on April
+23, 1917, when two distinguished Army officers, speaking with great
+restraint, sought to open the eyes of the nation to this plague fostered
+in our camps by drink:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>“During the war we have had admitted into the hospitals of England over 70,000
+cases of gonorrhœa, over 20,000 cases of syphilis, and over 6000 cases of another disease
+somewhat similar. I am quite openly prepared to state that of these 20,000 cases of
+syphilis you do not get much work out of them under two and a half years. I know
+from what I have seen of the modern conditions of this War that you may absolutely
+wipe them out, except for a few handfuls.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“When you come to the great mass of casualties under this head ... the figures
+mean that you have <b>a Division constantly out of action</b>. If you have anything
+like 70,000 men enfeebled, you find that you suffer to that extent also. It is not only
+that you lose the men, and not only the men who are partially cured are suffering for
+many months to come, but their chances of recovery from wounds are not nearly
+so good.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I know of a hospital for venereal cases which it was found necessary to expand
+from its normal accommodation for 500 or 600 up to 2,000 cases, and they are continually
+full. It is a British hospital in France. A figure I should like to submit to
+challenge is that during the course of the war between 40,000 and 50,000 cases of
+syphilis have passed through our hospitals in France. When you come to gonorrhœa,
+the figure given me which covers that is between 150,000 and 200,000 cases.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>“Every Canadian soldier who comes to this country arrives here not only a first-class
+specimen of a fine soldier, but as clean-limbed and as clean a man as the Creator
+Himself could create. The fact that in one only of the three Canadian camps in this
+country 7,000 of these clean Canadian boys went through the hospital for venereal
+disease in fourteen months is not only a great discredit to any Government in this
+country but has an effect in Canada which I can assure the House does not make for
+a better feeling with the Home Country, and does not make for what we all desire—Imperial
+Unity.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Colonel Sir Hamar Greenwood in Parliament, April 23, 1917</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Those are unchallenged statements made in the House of Commons
+itself; they stand as a terrible indictment of this disease, and it is not
+to be denied that this evil could never have reached its present frightful
+proportions if Parliament had followed the King. Let us look at a few
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>examples of the ravages of this vice allied so closely to the public-house.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is not possible to tell the whole truth about drink; the language in which it
+must be written would be offensive in a civilised country. It must be said, simply, that
+soldiers in England have been court-martialled for having been influenced by drink to
+commit unspeakable offences against animals.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Records of Court-Martials</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A special constable in a harlot-haunted district in London describes how these
+harpies carry off lonely soldiers to their rooms, make them drunk, and finally innoculate
+them, as likely as not, with disease. Is it not possible to hold in check these
+women who prey upon and poison our soldiers? asks Sir Conan Doyle.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Letter in the “Times”</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>One of the hot-beds of venereal disease to which drink leads our soldiers, was
+kept by an Austrian woman in Lambeth, who was receiving 15<i>s.</i> a week from the
+Austrian Government in April 1916, and used to lure our soldiers when weakened by
+drink. All the men seen to enter this house were either soldiers or sailors.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Lambeth</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier from the Front with £18 was taken by a married woman to her home,
+where he was found after a drunken bout with eight women, all drunk. The woman’s
+children were terribly neglected.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of St. Helens, November 30, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>If you describe the Waterloo Road and the back streets as an open sewer you
+will be somewhere near the truth. Not a day goes by without bringing some soldier
+who has been waylaid.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in the “Times,” February 22, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier came from the Front to go home to Scotland. He got drunk near
+Waterloo, losing all his money and his railway pass. He spent his leave living on
+charity, and returned to the Front without having been near either his home or his
+friends.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” February 14, 1916</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Here is the official proof of the relation of the drink trade to this
+traffic in disease. It is from the Report of the Royal Commission:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>Abundant evidence was given as to the intimate relation between alcohol and
+venereal diseases.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Alcohol renders a man liable to yield to temptations which he might otherwise
+resist, and aggravates the disease by diminishing the resistance of the individual.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Alcoholism makes latent syphilis and gonorrhœa active.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Our evidence tends to show that the communication in disease is frequently due to
+indulgence in intoxicants, and there is no doubt that the growth of temperance among
+the population would help to bring about an amelioration of the very serious conditions
+which our enquiry has revealed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We desire, therefore, to place on record our opinion that action should be taken
+without delay.</p>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>if, in view of Lord D’Abernon’s statement that Prohibition has failed
+in Canada, the Government will issue the figures showing the decrease
+of crime and the increase of wealth?</b></p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Price the Empire Pays</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>It is a bitter irony that while the men of the Empire have come to
+France to fight the enemy of mankind, this foe within our gates has
+struck a blow at the British Empire that generations will not heal.
+How many Empire men this private trade has slain we do not know,
+but we know beyond all challenge that it has weakened the bonds that
+bind our Dominions to the Motherland. This trade that throttles us
+at home can pull the Empire down, and it has started well. It has
+struck its blow at Canada.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>Let us look at the plain facts which in other days than these would
+have caused a storm of anger that Parliament could not have ignored.
+Canada has followed the King; arming herself with her full powers,
+flinging herself upon her enemies with her utmost strength, she has
+swept drink out of Canada almost from sea to sea. But even before
+she did this Canada saw that alcohol must go from her camps if her
+men were to be fit to fight for England, and long before the Prohibition
+wave swept across the country, the Canadian Government removed all
+alcohol from the training camps. It was the deliberate choice of a
+Government and its people, and from that day to this there has been
+no reason for regret.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So the young manhood of Canada, rallying to the flag, was guarded
+from alcohol. She poured out her men in hundreds of thousands; they
+came to us from Prohibition camps; they came in Prohibition ships, and
+even here this trade that has us in its grip was not allowed at first in
+the Canadian camps; the only condition that Canada made—a condition
+implied but clearly understood—was properly regarded and obeyed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We respected the desire of Canada, and kept her soldiers free from
+drink in their own camps. But a soldier cannot keep in camp, and in
+the villages around the Drink Trade waits in every street. The military
+authorities were willing for the Canadian Government to have their
+way inside the camps, but drink was free outside, and in these public-houses
+there was sown the seed that may one day break this Empire.
+The Drink Trade was so rampant outside the Canadian camps that
+Prohibition inside was almost in vain. We had to decide between
+breaking the word of the Canadian Government to its people or dealing
+with this trade as Canada herself has done; as Russia has done; as
+France and America are doing. It was the Empire or the drink traffic,
+and the drink traffic won, as it always wins with us.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It came about in October, down on Salisbury Plain. During one
+week-end a number of Canadian troops gave way to drinking in villages
+around the camps, and it was then that the grave decision was come
+to that the drink trade should be allowed to set up its horrible canteens
+in every Canadian camp. The change was made at the request of a
+British General, and we have the assurance of the Prime Minister of
+Canada that the approval of the Canadian Government was neither obtained
+nor asked. In handing the Canadian Army over to the drink
+canteens, in deliberately reversing the policy of the Canadian Government
+and its people, there was no consultation with Canada.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is important to remember that this decision, fraught with tragic
+and far-reaching consequences for the Empire, was a pure and simple
+English act. We may imagine the Canadian view from the remark of
+a Canadian General, who said, “I know drink is a hindrance, but I can
+do very little, because in military circles in this country drunkenness is
+not considered a very serious offense.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It would have been surprising if there had not poured in upon our
+Government a stream of protests, and from all parts of the Dominions
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>they came. The Dominion of Canada, giving freely to the Motherland
+450,000 boys and men, was moved to passionate indignation that England
+should scorn her love for them, should ignore the pleadings of
+their mothers and sisters, and should put in their way the temptations
+from which they were saved at home. Canada does not want our drink
+trade; she lives side by side with the United States, she sees that great
+country building up its future free from drink, and she sees America,
+splendid ally in war, as a mighty rival in peace.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And Canada is ready for the Reconstruction. She has followed the
+Prohibition lead of the United States, and already she has ceased to
+be a borrowing country. The very first year of Prohibition has seen
+this young Dominion, for the first time in her history, financially self-sustaining.
+Crime is disappearing; social gatherings are held in her
+gaols; she has set up vast munition workshops, and instead of borrowing
+money for her own support she has made hundreds of millions’
+worth of munitions for which this country need not pay until the war
+is over, and then need never pay at all for the munitions the Canadians
+have used. Canada is in deadly earliest. She kept her men away from
+drink to make them fit; she has swept it away to make a clean country
+for those who go back.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And what is England’s contribution to this Imperial Reconstruction?
+<i>We have scorned it all.</i> The Prime Minister has said that this
+drink trade is so horrible that it is worth this horrible war to settle
+with it, yet we have sacrificed the love of Canada on our brewers’ altar.
+We can believe the Canadian who declares his profound conviction that
+but for this Canada would have sent us 100,000 more recruits; we can
+believe it is true that where responsible Canadians meet together in
+these days the talk is of how long the tie will last unbroken that binds
+the daughter to the Motherland. We can understand the passion that
+lies behind the resolutions that come to Downing Street from Nova
+Scotia; we know the depth of the yearning of those 64,000 mothers and
+wives of Toronto who signed that great petition to the Government of
+Canada begging it in the name of God to intervene.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We can understand it all; but let us call the witnesses, and let us
+see the price the Dominion pays for our quailing before this Kaiser’s
+trade.</p>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>Those Who Will Not Go Back</h3>
+
+<p class='c012'>It is the great consolation of Canada that, though their sons may
+fall before this tempter’s trade in Britain, they will go back to a Canada
+free from drink. But some will never go back, and they are not on
+the Roll of Honour. They have been destroyed by the enemy within
+our gate, this trade that traps men on their way to France and digs
+their graves.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>A young Canadian who had never tasted alcohol came from a Prohibition camp
+in Canada, came to England on a Prohibition ship, and was put in a camp with a
+drink canteen. He started drinking and contracted venereal disease. Ordered home
+as unfit, in fear and shame he sought a friend’s advice about the girl he was to marry.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>“You can never marry her,” said his friend, and that night in his hut the young
+Canadian blew out his brains.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in possession of the Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A young Canadian officer was sent home disgraced. Sodden with alcohol, he left
+the train and shot a railway clerk dead.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Montreal “Weekly Witness,” October 24, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Russian soldier in the Canadian forces, described as a clean, soldierly man, with
+a splendid character from his officer, was charged with the murder of a Canadian
+private who tried to separate two quarrelling soldiers in a bar. The prisoner had
+drunk much whisky and remembered nothing of his crime, and was sentenced to
+twelve months’ hard labour for manslaughter. The judge hoped he might be used as
+a soldier <i>in the Russian Army</i>.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Record of Hampshire Assizes, February 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A man from Prohibition Russia enlisted in Prohibition Canada, and came to
+England. He spent 9<i>s.</i> on drink one day, and that night he crept from his bed and
+killed his corporal at Witley Camp.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Godalming, February 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Canadian soldier, aged 26, after a publichouse quarrel with another soldier, was
+found dying on the pavement in Hastings. His throat had been cut, and he died on
+entering the hospital. The other soldier was charged with murder, and sentenced to
+15 years.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Record of Hastings Assizes, March 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A young Canadian soldier, aged 20, died from alcohol while in training at Witley.
+He had a bottle of stout followed by nine or ten “double-headers” of neat whisky in
+about two hours. He was carried back to camp, laid unconscious on his bed, and died.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” March 22, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Canadian lieutenant was tried for the murder of a canteen sergeant. They
+arrived together at a house at Grayshott, where the lieutenant asked for some strong
+drink and took a bottle of whisky and two glasses. The sergeant was afterwards
+found dead in the cellar, and the lieutenant carried the body into the stable.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Grayshott Coroner, December 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A man leaving a publichouse in company with a woman, with whom he had been
+drinking, met a Canadian soldier not far from Charing Cross. The soldier spoke, and
+the man struck him. The soldier was carried to the hospital, where he died soon
+afterwards from a wound two inches deep, caused by a knife.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Bow Street, January 1, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The wife of a gunner in the South African Heavy Artillery died at Bexhill from
+alcohol. The soldier said he bought 12 bottles of stout and 12 bottles of beer, one of
+whisky, and one of port, which they drank between Saturday night and Monday night.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Bexhill Coroner, December 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier from Toronto, having been drinking away his pay in a Carlisle publichouse,
+with another Canadian soldier and some married women, failed to appear the
+next morning, and was found dead on a footpath with a bottle of whisky in his pocket</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Carlisle Coroner, April 14, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Canadian soldier, having drawn £20 from the Canadian office, visited several
+publichouses, and was killed in a scuffle in London.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” December 2, 1916</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>The Men From the Prohibition Camps</h3>
+
+<p class='c012'>Again and again we have seen the peculiar temptations of drink
+among Canadians. Officers, chief-constables, chaplains, newspapers,
+the men themselves, have all borne witness that to these men from
+Prohibition Canada the sudden temptations of our drink trade come with
+terrible power, and often they fall not knowing. The finest manhood
+of the Empire our tap-rooms and canteens destroy, not in isolated cases,
+but in a host we dare not number.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Of the soldiers who first came over from Canada, says a great Canadian
+paper, many were emigrants from England, not yet securely planted
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>in Canada, and for their sakes especially drink should have been withheld
+from them. Of the larger number of Canadian troops that followed
+them, many were youths who had never known drink, and they
+were taken from home at the most social and reckless age, to face drink
+with all the temptations induced by the nervous strain, the hardships
+and social abandon of the camp and the trench, and the free pocket-money
+when on leave.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>In an officers’ mess of two double companies of Canadians only one officer drank
+on his arrival in a canteen camp in England; within three months there was not an
+abstainer in the mess.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts told at Society for Study of Inebriety, Jan. 10, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>These men come mostly from districts in Canada where intoxicants are prohibited
+by law, and many of them, being young lads, who perhaps have never tasted liquor
+before their arrival, fall easy victims.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Chief Constable of Godalming</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Overseas soldiers come to our hospitals astonishingly cheerful and fit in a general
+sense, and wonderfully receptive to treatment. Only three per thousand die in our
+great hospitals. This is largely due to the hardy life of the men and the fact that
+they are removed from the danger of taking too much alcohol. The home troops have
+a much higher mortality, partly because their use of alcohol diminishes their chances.
+Re-admissions are largely due to drink on furlough.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Major Maclean, M.D., of the Third Western General Hospital</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Canadian soldier, who had been wounded at the Front, was taken to a house
+by women and left alone drunk. An officer gave him an excellent character, and said
+he was on his way back to Canada. These men experience temptations here (he said)
+that they would not find in Canada, and there was too much of this going on.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Hastings Police Records, February 19, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>I heard a sad account of the havoc of the wet canteen and a private in a Canadian
+A.M.C. told us of a lad of 17 who is made so drunk that there is rarely a night when
+he has not to be helped up to bed. One of the soldiers here told me of his son in
+Canada being anxious to join up, but after seeing the condition of things over here
+he was doing all he could to discourage his son.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Letter to the Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The Canadians in most cases are entirely lost when they arrive in this country,
+and are much more liable to the temptation which is thrown in their way, but when
+you give a figure such as this—that in one camp during last year, and two months of
+the previous year, there were 7,000 cases—it seems to me that it is about time we
+realised the magnitude of the evil. I do not know what has happened to them, except
+that I imagine a large number have gone back to Canada, and have not been able to
+play the part they had hoped to play.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>In Camp and On Leave</h3>
+
+<p class='c012'>Everywhere we find the trail of drink among Canadians—in camp
+and on leave.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>A Canadian corporal, wounded in the Battle of Ypres, was found terribly drunk
+after being missing all day from hospital. Confronted with the surgeon after violent
+acts of insubordination, the corporal broke down and cried like a child.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Western Mail,” February 18, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>In the first weeks of the war 42 Canadian soldiers disgraced themselves, by excessive
+drinking, insubordination, and disorderly conduct, to such an extent that they
+had to be sent back to Canada.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Canadian Pioneer,” December 4, 1914</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Canadian soldier, helplessly drunk, was seen at King’s Cross station eating,
+tearing, and crumpling up £1 notes, and would have lost about fifteen pounds but for
+kindly help from passers by.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” September 28, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A gunner from Montreal, missing from camp for several days, drank himself
+delirious, and cut his throat with a razor.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Canadian Pioneer,” December 4, 1914</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>A Canadian soldier spent £70 in three weeks on drink and bad characters.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Mail” August 10, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Sergeant-Major from Canada declared that he had lost 20 per cent. of the men
+of his battery through venereal disease. They had a little drink, and were captured
+by the swarm of bad women at Folkestone.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Letter to Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A woman was imprisoned for placing young children in moral danger. Every
+night the girls brought soldiers home, and colonial soldiers were frequently so drunk
+that they were carried in.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Central Criminal Court, April 25, 1917</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>The Rising Storm in Canada</h3>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c012'><b>The thing cannot be justified. It is the blackest tragedy of this whole war that,
+in fighting for freedom in Europe, the free sons of the British breed have to face
+this war-time record of waste at home, with its inevitable toll of debauchery and
+crime.</b></p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='small'>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Editorial in “Toronto Globe”</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>While this book was being written one of the greatest meetings
+ever held in Manchester was cheering a Canadian in khaki who declared
+that he was not going hungry while brewers were destroying food, and
+he went on to say, this soldier and sportsman well-known in the
+Dominion:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Great numbers of our men never saw France. Canadian boys cried because they
+had not munitions. England reeled and beer flowed like water while thousands of
+our boys went down into their graves. We will never forget it in Canada.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>We may be sure Canada will not forget. She will not forget her
+dead: she will not forget that the Drink Traffic she has swept away at
+home struck down her sons in the land for which they fought. “We
+must know who is to blame,” says a Canadian paper; “we presume they
+will have no objection to have their names placarded before the country,
+that every mother may know.” Col. Sir Hamar Greenwood, M. P., has
+lately returned from Canada, and this is what he tells us:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I met many fathers and mothers whose boys had been sent back to Canada
+debilitated and ruined for life because they had been enmeshed by harpies, and again
+and again these parents have said to me, ‘We do not mind our boys dying on the
+field of battle for old England, but to think that we sent our sons to England to come
+back to us ruined in health, and a disgrace to us, to them, and to the country, is
+something the Home Country should never ask us to bear.’”</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>Letter from a Solicitor in Ontario to the Author</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>I wonder if the advocates of the drink traffic in Britain appreciate the contempt in
+which they are held in Canada. Before the war I had a class of ten young men.
+Every one of them is now at the Front, and one writes that when I told them of the
+drink conditions in England he did not believe half of it; now he says I did not tell
+him half. Letters from our Canadian soldiers are appearing in our papers, and they
+are all amazed at the drinking habits of Britain.</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>From a Resolution received by Mr. Lloyd George from the
+Social Service Council of Nova Scotia</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>That we, representing the social, moral, and spiritual forces of this part of the
+British Empire, who have proved our loyalty by the thousands of men this small
+province has sent overseas, do record our most earnest protest against Britain’s inaction
+in this matter, which we are sure must result in longer and increased suffering for the
+men we have sent to help her win the war; and do most insistently plead with the
+British Government and the British Parliament that they at once exercise the power
+vested in them to strike the blow that will dispose of this enemy at home, and so
+give mighty reinforcement to those who are bleeding and dying for Britain and human
+liberties on the battlefields abroad.</p>
+<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span><i>Sermon by Dr. Flanders in London, Ontario, Feb. 25, 1917</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Canada has the right to make this demand on the Motherland from the simple
+standpoint of political economics. That we might put the Dominion into the best
+possible shape to give the utmost of our strength in men and munitions, we have an
+almost Dominion-wide Prohibition, and no intelligent person will deny that our contributions
+to the war from the first have been multiplied and intensified by that action.
+Why should little Johnnie Canuck abolish drink that he might conserve his manhood
+and material resources in the interest of the Empire’s war, and big John Bull refuse
+to abolish the traffic to the great waste of his material resources and the undoing of
+his efficiency?</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>A public man with three soldier sons wrote to the Toronto Globe</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Canada, for efficiency in war, casts out the drink evil. Is it too much to expect
+Britain, in fairness, to do the same? Is it not a mockery for the British Isles to face
+our common struggle with this palsy in her frame?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Here is the bitter pill, the embittering thought for many a Canadian parent. Let
+me be a type. Three of my sons are in khaki. I gave them a father’s blessing when
+they enlisted. But this thought strains, most of all, the ties of my loyalty to the cause—to
+see my sons fight and fall for a Britain that at home is saddled by distillery
+interests, and misguided by a Press silent as the grave on this entrenched evil. Why
+should our sons go from a country where booze is banished to spend months on the
+way to the trenches in England, where the vices of the liquor traffic are legalised?</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>We see the spirit of Canada in those great words of the Premier of Ontario, Mr. Hearst,
+speaking of the giving up of drink</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In this day of national peril, in this day when the future of the British Empire,
+the freedom of the world, and the blessings of democratic government hang in the
+balance, if I should fail to listen to what I believe to be the call of duty, if I should
+neglect to take every action that in my judgment will help to conserve the financial
+strength and power and manhood of this province for the great struggle in which we
+are engaged, I would be a traitor to my country, a traitor to my own conscience, and
+unworthy of the brave sons of Canada that are fighting, bleeding and dying for freedom
+and for us.</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>A letter from one of the most eminent public men in Canada</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“British Canada is intensely loyal to the Empire and the Allied Cause, but at
+present recruiting is almost at an end. Why? Partly because of considerable dissatisfaction
+with many of the conditions which prevail. Suffering, wounds, death, are
+expected as inevitable in war, but the evil influences, the lavish temptations of liquor
+and bad women which sweep down upon our boys in England, are not felt to be
+necessary, and the hearts of multitudes of Canadian parents are hot with indignation
+at the apparent indifference of the authorities to the moral welfare of our troops.”</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>Captain John MacNeill, with the Canadian troops in France</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I say to you solemnly, if England should lose this war because of drink, or if
+England should unnecessarily prolong the war with great sacrifice of life in her effort
+to protect drink, or even if England should win the war in spite of drink, you will
+have put upon the bonds of Empire such a strain as they have never known before,
+and such a strain as we cannot promise they will be able to survive.”</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>From the petition presented to the Prime Minister of Canada,
+signed by 64,000 mothers and wives in Toronto</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>1. That Mothers and Wives of Canada in giving their sons and husbands for
+King and Empire, asked and received from your Minister of Militia this only assurance
+that, in sending them into the ranks, we were not hereby irrevocably thrusting
+them into the temptation of Strong Drink.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>2. We appreciated from the depths of our hearts, your action in abolishing the
+Wet Canteen from the Canadian Militia. We believe the Wet Canteen established in
+the ranks of the front to be a double danger, robbing our King of the success in arms
+which in these days comes only to the brave heart that is controlled by a clear head,
+and robbing us and our Canada of the Manhood which we gave into our Empire’s
+keeping.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>3. We do not believe that the King will refuse the aid of Canada’s sons; nor that
+he will appreciate your patriotic efforts the less, if you keep faith with us and make
+known to His Majesty, his Ministers and Commanders, that our boys are sent forth
+on the one condition that the dispensing of intoxicating liquors shall be prohibited in
+the ranks.</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>From a Sermon preached in Ontario, February 25, 1917</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank God, if any of our Canadian soldiers return to us with the drink habit
+formed and raging, we can welcome them to a land nearly purged of the liquor traffic,
+where they may have a chance to recover their manhood.”</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>Letter on the effects of Prohibition, from a business man in Ontario,
+published in the “Spectator:”</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Men I have known for years to be regular promenading tanks have given it up,
+and are starting a decent life again. The Police Court is empty. England should try it.
+It would be, after the first heavy initial loss, the best thing that ever struck the nation.
+I cursed these temperance guys as hard as any, but all the same it cannot blind you
+from the truth.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>Your Share in the Food Crisis</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>The Food and Money Wasted on Drink in Our Great Towns</h3>
+
+<div class='c000'></div>
+<div class="centerwide">
+<span class='sc'>Estimated from August 1914 to April 1917 inclusive</span> by <span class='sc'>George B. Wilson</span>, B.A.,
+Compiler of the National Drink Bill
+</div>
+
+<table class='table1' summary=''>
+  <tr>
+ <th class='btt bbt brt c015'>&nbsp;</th>
+ <th class='btt bbt brt c015'>Drink Bill</th>
+ <th class='btt bbt brt c015'>Grain Lost</th>
+ <th class='btt bbt c015'>Sugar in Beer</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c016'></td>
+ <td class='brt c017'></td>
+ <td class='brt c015'>Tons</td>
+    <td class='c015'>lb.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>United Kingdom</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£510,000,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>4,400,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>762,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>London</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£83,000,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>693,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>120,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Edinburgh</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£3,200,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>31,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>5,300,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Dublin</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£2,600,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>29,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>5,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Glasgow</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£10,500,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>101,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>17,400,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Manchester and Salford</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£11,000,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>92,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>15,900,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Birmingham</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£9,900,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>82,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>14,200,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Liverpool</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£8,800,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>73,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>12,600,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Sheffield</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£5,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>45,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>7,800,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Leeds</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£5,300,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>44,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>7,600,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Bristol</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£4,200,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>35,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>6,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>West Ham</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£3,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>28,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>4,900,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Bradford</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£3,300,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>28,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>4,800,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Hull</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£3,300,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>27,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>4,700,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Newcastle</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£3,100,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>26,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>4,500,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Nottingham</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£3,100,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>26,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>4,500,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Portsmouth</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£2,800,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>23,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>4,400,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Stoke</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£2,800,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>23,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>4,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Leicester</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£2,700,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>22,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>3,800,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Cardiff</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£2,100,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>18,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>3,100,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Bolton</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£2,100,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>18,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>3,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Croydon</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£2,100,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>17,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>3,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Sunderland</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,700,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>14,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,500,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Oldham</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,700,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>14,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,500,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Birkenhead</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,600,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>13,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,200,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Blackburn</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,500,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>13,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,200,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Brighton</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,500,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>13,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,200,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Plymouth</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,500,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,100,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Derby</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,100,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Middlesbrough</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,100,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Stockport</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,100,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Norwich</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,100,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Southampton</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Swansea</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Gateshead</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>11,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Preston</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>11,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>1,900,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Coventry</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,300,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>11,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>1,900,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Huddersfield</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,300,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>10,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>1,800,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='bbt brt c018'>Halifax</td>
+ <td class='bbt brt c019'>£1,200,000</td>
+ <td class='bbt brt c019'>10,000</td>
+ <td class='bbt c019'>1,700,000</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>PLAY THE GAME</h3>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<table class='table2' summary=''>
+  <tr><td class='c020' colspan='2'>There is one week’s bread in      18 pints of beer</td></tr>
+  <tr><td class='c020' colspan='2'>There is one week’s sugar in      16 pints of beer</td></tr>
+</table>
+<p class='c009'>The man who drinks 3 pints a day drinks another man’s rations.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>THE FOOD PYRAMIDS DESTROYED FOR DRINK</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id004'>
+<img src='images/image041a.jpg' alt='The Great Pyramid of Egypt' class='ig001' />
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>The Great Pyramid of Egypt, the biggest construction in stone ever made by the  hands of man—80,000,000 cubic feet of masonry</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id004'>
+<img src='images/image041b.jpg' alt='The Great Pyramids of Food' class='ig001' />
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>The Great Pyramids of Food, the biggest wilful destruction of food ever known—180,000,000  cubic feet of food destroyed for the Drink Trade during the war</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>How the Brewer Gets Our Food</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<h3 class='c021'>THE MEN WHO BRING IT</h3>
+
+</div>
+<p class='c012'>It is easy to talk of a mine-sweeper. I wish the whole nation could
+understand what these men are doing. They are feeding the whole
+population, battling with the elements as well as with the enemy, battling
+with dangers overhead and dangers under the sea. The mine-sweeper
+is like the soldier daily over the parapet—he carries his life in
+his hand.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>First Lord of the Admiralty.</i></div>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<h3 class='c021'>THE PEOPLE WHO WAIT FOR IT</h3>
+
+</div>
+<p class='c012'>A London caterer ordered a quantity of sugar from the Philippines.
+The mine-sweepers cleared the way for it and it reached the docks. The
+caterer sent for it, and was informed that it could only be delivered if
+it was for a brewer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A provincial caterer ordered sugar <i>and paid for it</i>, but was told by
+the Food Controller that it could only be released if <i>it was sold to a
+brewer</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A working man was discussing rations with his minister in the
+street. “It is very hard,” he said, “to keep to your rations when you
+have five strapping lads, but we are going to try it.” Then a drunken
+man lurched past. The workman pulled himself together, and said, in
+great passion: “I tell you what it is, sir, I am not going to let my
+boys starve as long as there is food to make beer for men like that.”</p>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<h3 class='c021'>THE PRICE WE PAY FOR IT</h3>
+
+</div>
+<p class='c012'>Immense quantities of food are used for beer and spirits. All this
+grain is lost for food purposes. <i>If this grain were available for food, the
+prices of bread and meat would be lowered.</i></p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>War Savings Committee.</i></div>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<h3 class='c021'>THE POOR WHO SUFFER FOR IT</h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>“Rationing bread could not be undertaken without grave risk to
+the health of the poor.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Capt. Bathurst, M. P.</i></div>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c000'>
+    <div>By what right does the Government</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+<p class='c009'>use our mine-sweepers to bring in food for brewers to destroy? allow
+brewers to increase the cost of living for every household? and allow
+the willful destruction of food supplies to imperil the health of the poor?</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Way for the Government</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>We do not want to be amused by fiddlers while our heroes fight
+and die.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>What are the things we see? We see the Government silent in
+the presence of what the greatest paper in our greatest overseas Dominion
+calls “the blackest tragedy of the war.” We see a trade which the
+King declared to be prolonging the war in the crisis of 1915, prolonging
+it still in the crisis of 1917. We see our Prime Minister, who has
+declared this trade to be worse than Germany, allowing it to have its
+way. We see our Prime Minister, who has said we cannot settle with
+Germany until we have settled with drink, fearing to settle with drink.
+Then are we not to settle with Germany, and are we to surrender to
+the greatest enemy of the three?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There is one clear way before the Government; it is the only way
+of straightness and patriotism and honour. It is to wind up this enemy
+trade and move from our path the greatest hindrance to the winning of
+the war. It is to take our side honourably with our great Allies, to
+bring to an end the shameful isolation of Great Britain in the drink map
+of the great free countries that appears on the back of this book.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is the sign of weakness everywhere that it seeks a scapegoat for
+its sins, and we hear the everlasting talk of Labour. But it will not do.
+It is time these slanders on our workmen ceased.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>If the Government is afraid of the working man, let it say so, or
+let it try him. If it is afraid of temperance people, let it rally them
+to its side as one man on the platform where they meet. If it is afraid
+of the Drink Trade, then the time has come to say so, for we who send
+out our millions to fight a foreign foe are not going to starve for bread
+through fear of enemies within our gate. The Prime Minister gave the
+Army its munitions; the Army will use them in vain unless the munitions
+of life come into our homes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Working men are tired of men who fool with food and liberty.
+They do not object to any equal sacrifice: they believe in the democratic
+policy of the King, who based Prohibition, not on class distinction
+as the Government did by closing tap-rooms 15 hours a day and
+leaving cellars and Parliamentary bars open always, but on the principle
+of the King’s own words that “no difference shall be made, so far
+as his Majesty is concerned, between the treatment of the rich and poor
+in this respect.” Let the Government follow the King, and the people
+will follow the Government.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the highest interests of the nation and the war let this be said
+as plain as words can make it—<i>that there is no body of temperance opinion
+anywhere standing in the way of Prohibition</i>, but that the united moral
+forces of the nation would rally to the Government instantly on an act
+of a few words such as this:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span><b>That the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages be totally prohibited
+in the United Kingdom for the period of the war and demobilization,
+and that a committee be appointed to deal with all the private
+and public interests concerned; and that it be resolved upon, here and
+now, that reconstruction be accompanied by universal local option.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There would be no opposition the Government need count to a proposal
+like that.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id005'>
+<img src='images/image044.jpg' alt='TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION LABEL WESTERVILLE O.' class='ig001' />
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class='tnote'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c1'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>Transcriber’s Note</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+  <ul  class='ul_1'>
+    <li>Obvious typographical and punctuation errors were corrected.
+    </li>
+    <li class='c000'>Inconsistencies in hyphenation were retained.
+    </li>
+  </ul>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 53733 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Fiddlers, by Arthur Mee
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Fiddlers
+       Drink in the Witness Box 
+
+
+Author: Arthur Mee
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 15, 2016  [eBook #53733]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIDDLERS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by MWS, ellinora, and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by
+Internet Archive (https://archive.org)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 53733-h.htm or 53733-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/53733/53733-h/53733-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/53733/53733-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      https://archive.org/details/fiddlersdrinkinw00meea
+
+
+Transcriber’s note:
+
+      Italic text is represented by underscores surrounding the
+      _italic text_.
+
+      Bold text is represented by equal signs surrounding the
+      =bold text=.
+
+      Small capitals have been converted to ALL CAPITALS.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FIDDLERS
+
+Drink in the Witness Box
+
+by
+
+ARTHUR MEE
+
+
+    _If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and
+       those that are ready to be slain;
+    If thou sayest, “Behold, we knew it not;” doth not he that
+       pondereth the heart consider it?
+    And shall not He render to every man according to his works?_
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Published by Morgan & Scott, Ltd
+12 Paternoster Buildings, London, E. C. 4
+
+First Hundred Thousand       May 15, 1917
+Second Hundred Thousand      June 1, 1917
+
+Reprinted in the United States by
+The American Issue Publishing Company
+Westerville, Ohio
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+[Illustration:
+
+                        DRINK LEADING FAMINE IN
+
+  The Drink Trade gave Germany her greatest weapon in the war by helping
+  to make the bread famine.
+
+  It was the wilful destruction of 4,800,000 tons of food, depriving the
+  nation of her reserves, that led to the appalling gravity of the
+  submarine menace.]
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+[Illustration:
+
+                Drink, What did You do in the Great War?
+
+              This impressive picture of Britannia is from
+               the splendid 1916 issue of Bibby’s Annual]
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+[Illustration:
+
+        THE ALLIES AND PROHIBITION—STOPPING DRINK TO WIN THE WAR
+
+     The Drink Map before the War and on the 1000th day of the War
+
+               CANADA—Prohibition almost from Sea to Sea
+               FRANCE—Total Prohibition of Absinthe
+               RUSSIA—Prohibition Everywhere
+               BRITAIN—120,000 Drink shops open daily]
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                            The Wages of Sin
+
+
+The time has come when it should be said that those responsible for our
+country now stand on the very threshold of eternal glory or eternal
+shame. They play and palter with the greatest enemy force outside
+Berlin. The news from Vimy Ridge comes to a land whose rulers quail
+before a foe within the gate.
+
+Not for one hour has the full strength of Britain been turned against
+her enemies. From the first day of the war, while our mighty Allies have
+been striking down this foe within their gates, Britain has let this
+trade stalk through her streets, serving the Kaiser’s purposes, and
+paying the Government £1,000,000 a week for the right to do it.
+
+She has let this trade destroy our food and bring us to the verge of
+famine; she has let it keep back guns and shells and hold up ships; she
+has let it waste our people’s wealth in hundreds of millions of pounds;
+she has let it put its callous brake on the merciful Red Cross; she has
+let it jeopardize the unity and safety of the Empire—for it may yet be
+found, as Dr. Stuart Holden has so finely said, that the links that bind
+the Pax Britannica are solvable in that great chemist’s solvent,
+alcohol.
+
+The witnesses are too great to number; we can only call a few. There is
+no room for all those witnesses whose evidence is in the House of
+Commons Return 220 (1915), showing the part drink played in the great
+shell famine, in delaying ships and guns, and imperiling the Army and
+the Fleet.
+
+But the indictment is heavy. I charge this trade with the crime the King
+laid at its door two years ago, the crime of prolonging the war; and the
+witnesses are here at the bar of the people. The verdict is with them,
+and the judgment is with those who rule.
+
+_The wages of sin is death: What are the wages of those who fail in an
+hour like this?_
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          Fiddling to Disaster
+
+  We are not going to lose the war through the submarines if we all
+  behave like reasonable human beings who want to save their country
+  from disaster, privation and distress.
+
+                                                  _The Prime Minister_
+
+
+_What are we to say of a Government that plays with war and drink and
+famine while these brave words are ringing in our ears?_
+
+If the situation is so desperate that we must all go short of food, it
+is desperate enough for the Government to be in earnest. But what are
+the plain facts? No reasonable man who knows them can say that the
+Government is in earnest.
+
+It is not denied by anybody who knows the facts that drink has been the
+greatest hindrance of the war. There is not a doubt that it has
+prolonged the war for months and cost us countless lives. It is the duty
+of the Government to face a dangerous thing like this; it is its duty to
+pursue the war with a single eye to the speediest possible victory. But
+the records of our war Governments in dealing with drink have been
+records of fiddling and failure, and we stand in the third year of the
+war with a Government fiddling still.
+
+One thing will be perfectly clear if disaster and famine come. It will
+be known to all the world that the Government knew the facts in time to
+save us. We are in the war because we would not listen in times of
+peace. We are in the third year of the war because we would not listen
+in the first. We are faced with famine because we would not listen in
+times of plenty, when drink was breaking down our food reserves. And we
+are drifting now, nearer to disaster every day, because the Government
+surrenders to the enemy worse than Germany.
+
+It does not matter where you look, or when; the evidence of the fiddling
+is everywhere about you. Take the week before the Prime Minister’s grave
+speech about submarines—ending May 19.
+
+  _Submarines destroyed 27 British cargoes, mostly over 1600 tons._
+
+  =Brewers destroyed 27 British food cargoes, totaling 9000 tons.=
+
+  _The granaries of Canada were crammed with wheat waiting for British
+  ships, but there were no ships to bring this people’s food._
+
+  =The rum quay at London Docks was crammed with casks of rum to last
+  till 1920, but a ship arrived with 1000 Casks more.=
+
+  _A woman was fined £5 for destroying a quartern loaf._
+
+  =Brewers were fined nothing for destroying millions of loaves.=
+
+  _Poor people waited in queues to buy sugar in London._
+
+  =Cartloads of sugar were destroyed in London breweries.=
+
+And so we might go on, looking on this picture and on that till the mind
+almost reels with the solemn farce. The Prime Minister has suggested
+that the farce does not end because those who demand its end cannot make
+up their mind. It is the Government that cannot make up its mind.
+
+  It tells Parliament that no more rum is to be imported, and goes on
+  importing rum for years ahead.
+
+  It forbids the use of spirits less than three years old, and reduces
+  the three years to 18 months.
+
+  It restricts beer to 10,000,000 barrels, and tells us one day that
+  it is all-inclusive, and the next day that the Army Council can
+  order as much extra beer as it likes.
+
+  It issues a report saying that hops are not food, and gives up
+  hundreds of thousands of feet to shipping them; 23,000 cubic feet
+  the other week.
+
+  It tells us that not an inch of shipping is wasted, and wastes
+  shipping on bringing brewers’ vats from America and taking gin to
+  Africa.
+
+  It tells us that the Drink Trade gave up its distilleries
+  patriotically, and leaves us to discover that it was made the
+  subject of a bargain by which bread was being destroyed for whisky
+  as late as May this year.
+
+It is quite clear that the Government is desperately in need of a
+scapegoat, and desperately in need of a defense. Prohibition Russia is
+not mightily impressed with our drinking; serious Canadians are asking
+how long they are to sacrifice their manhood to our brewers; America is
+asking already why she should go short of bread in order that England
+may drink more beer.
+
+A Government must clearly say something in view of these things, and it
+has put its defense in the care of one of the sanest and cleverest men
+in the United Kingdom, Mr. Kennedy Jones. If Mr. Jones does not make out
+a case for it, there is no case to make. What does he say?
+
+1. _We are told that only five per cent. of malt can be mixed with flour
+for bread._
+
+All over the country this explanation is supposed to satisfy those
+simple, honest people who know little about percentages but ask plain
+questions at Food Economy meetings. It is preposterous nonsense. If we
+have 200,000 tons of malted barley, what on earth does it matter whether
+we mix it at fifty, or five, or two per cent., so long as we do mix it?
+_It adds 200,000 tons to our bread in any case._ This talk of five per
+cent., puzzling to people who think it means that only one-twentieth of
+this malted barley can be used, is pitiful evidence, surely, of the
+straits to which the Food Controller’s Defense Department is reduced.
+
+2. _We are told that the barley destroyed for beer would give the nation
+only ten days’ bread._
+
+It would actually last us a fortnight. Drink, which has taken a quartern
+loaf from every British cupboard in every week of the war, is taking
+still a quartern loaf a month from every cupboard, and the desperate
+appeals of Mr. Kennedy Jones will be more effective in saving crumbs
+when he can tell us that he has stopped this monstrous destruction of
+over 1,000 tons of grain a day.
+
+3. _We are told that our munition workers are dependent on beer._
+
+It is an astounding slander. However true it may be of Governments, it
+is not true of our workmen. For four months the workman has been the
+scapegoat of this Government in its surrender to this trade, and we are
+asked at last to believe that these men who saved us from the Shell
+Famine are willing to drink us into a Bread Famine. Does the Government
+never pause to ask how millions of munition workers in America and
+Canada and the United Kingdom manage without beer? Does nobody in the
+Government know that the greatest steel furnaces in America are under
+total Prohibition, and that two million American railwaymen are subject
+to instant dismissal if they touch drink while on duty? Has the
+Government not read its own report of the Royal Society Committee which
+had this point in mind six months ago, and told us, on the highest
+authority in this country, that soldiers march better and keep fitter
+without alcohol; that men do more work on less energy without alcohol;
+and that “the records of American industrial experience are significant
+in showing a better output when no alcohol is taken by the workmen”?
+
+4. _We are told we need this trade for yeast._
+
+We need not bother overmuch about that. Industrial alcohol will give us
+all we want, and there is no need to carry on this dangerous trade for
+the sake of yeast. We do not need a single ounce of brewer’s yeast, and
+we can do without distiller’s yeast as well by setting up a thousandth
+part of the machinery we have set up in the last two years. Or, while we
+must have yeast, we need about 30,000 tons a year for the whole United
+Kingdom, and since the prohibition of hops in June last year _we have
+given enough shipping to hops every fortnight to bring in enough yeast
+for a year_. A Government with shipping to spare like that, with room on
+its ships for mountains of hops, for enormous brewers’ vats, and for rum
+for 1921, can find room for 100 tons a day of the people’s bread. It is
+a monstrous perversion of the facts to suggest that we must maintain
+this food-destroying trade, with all its hideous tragedy and ruin, in
+order to make bread.
+
+It cannot be said that a Government with such desperate excuses is in
+earnest. We do not wonder that a great American farmers’ paper, with no
+axe to grind except that it is sane and patriotic and believes in the
+war, is asking plain questions as America prepares her Prohibition Army,
+her Prohibition Navy, and stops the destruction of grain for drink in
+order to enter the war at full strength.
+
+Let the Food Controller, the Prime Minister, and every responsible
+citizen of the United Kingdom read this—it is from the most influential
+flour-milling paper in the world, the “North Western Miller,” published
+in Minneapolis:
+
+“=Since the United States will be called upon to make food sacrifices on
+behalf of the Allies, it is certainly in order to call to account the
+stewardship of Great Britain in regard to food supplies. Ordinarily
+America would have no right to demand such an account, but Americans are
+now asked to deny themselves that Britain may have sufficient.=
+
+“=Britain has not seen fit to prohibit the use of cereals in the
+manufacture of drink, notwithstanding that the world’s food supply was
+obviously short. Are Americans required to forego a part of their
+accustomed ration of bread in order that their British Allies can
+continue to have a plentiful supply of beer and whisky? If not, then
+Britain should lose no time in putting its house in order, quitting the
+drink to add to the common store of food upon which the safety of all
+the Allies depends.=
+
+“=The food supply for the Allies is no longer a purely local
+proposition, to be used as a football in British politics; it deeply
+concerns the people of the United States, who are certainly not called
+upon to deny themselves bread in order that Britain shall have drink.=”
+
+What is the Government’s answer to this? “We owe a very considerable
+debt of gratitude to the great American people for the effective
+assistance they are rendering us,” says the Prime Minister. _Is this the
+way we pay them back?_ It is an ugly question for our great Ally to have
+to raise as she comes into the war, flinging her Prohibition Navy in to
+smash the drink-made menace of the submarine. It is unthinkable that the
+Government can read these bitter words unmoved, or can leave this stain
+on our history in the face of all these questionings.
+
+There is another question, too, that comes across the Atlantic. What is
+the Government going to do with the soldiers of America’s Prohibition
+Army, and the sailors of America’s Prohibition Navy, when they come over
+here? Are they to be broken in their thousands, made useless and
+degraded as thousands of men from Prohibition Canada have been, by the
+enemy that traps them before they reach the war?
+
+They are questions for the Government and the nation, and they must be
+answered in the interests of the nation, and not to please the trade
+that helps the Germans every day. We cannot afford to pay the appalling
+price the future will demand unless our fiddlers change their tune.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                  The Drink Trade and Our War Services
+
+
+=It is not possible to measure the strain the Drink Traffic has imposed
+on our war services.=
+
+The Food Controller’s Organization, with its great offices and staffs,
+would not have been needed had we saved the food destroyed by drink.
+
+Rationing already involves 1,200 committees, and may mean 50,000
+officials and 50,000,000 tickets weekly. It could all be avoided.
+Prohibition would save more bread without food controlling than all the
+food controlling can save without Prohibition.
+
+The National Service, with its network of officials, its costly
+advertising, its absorption of paper and printing, could all have been
+avoided under Prohibition. About 200,000 men have enrolled, but
+Prohibition would give us twice that man-power any day.
+
+The strain on a host of men and women looking after soldiers’ children
+neglected through drink, soldiers’ wives spending allowances on drink,
+is incalculable.
+
+The strain on war charities and the strain on the police arising from
+drink are both very great.
+
+The strain of drink on doctors, nurses, and hospitals is beyond belief.
+Prohibition would set free for the Red Cross thousands who waste their
+time on the great drink trail.
+
+The strain on transport is seen in the long lines of wagons drawn by
+strong horses carting beer to public-houses. This year alone the
+handling of drink must equal the lifting of at least 9,000,000 tons, and
+the barrels of beer would fill nearly all the railway wagons in the
+kingdom. As to ships, drink materials during the war have used up 60
+ships of 5,000 tons working all the time.
+
+On Lord Milner’s estimate of 19 barrels to the truck it would require
+4,500,000 railway trucks to carry the 17,000,000 tons of beer
+manufactured in the United Kingdom during the war.
+
+=It can be proved from official figures that the weight of drink-stuff
+carried about since war began has been equal to the weight of solid
+material carried by the Navy to all our fighting fronts.=
+
+It is a crying shame that the strength of Britain should be destroyed
+like this in such an hour as this.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                  The War-Work of the Food Destroyers
+
+
+There are hundreds of great Food Destructors in the United Kingdom. The
+man-power at their service, spread over our breweries and distilleries,
+numbers hundreds of thousands of men; their capital is hundreds of
+millions. This is a summary of the work they did in the first 1,000 days
+of the war:
+
+=They sacrificed 4,400,000 tons of grain and 340,000 tons of sugar,
+enough to ration the whole United Kingdom with bread for 43 weeks and
+sugar for 33 weeks.=
+
+=They took from every kitchen cupboard in the land 600 pounds of bread
+and 76 pounds of sugar.=
+
+=They destroyed bread and sugar to last every child under fifteen for
+every day of the war.=
+
+=They took from our people over £512,000,000.=
+
+=They used up labour and transport for lifting over 50,000,000 tons. By
+sea they used up 60 ships of 5,000 tons; by rail their raw materials and
+the finished products would make up a train long enough to reach nearly
+round the world.=
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                 The Food Now Being Destroyed for Beer
+
+
+Look at the actual facts about beer alone. We will ignore distilling, as
+it gives us munitions and yeast. Had the Government tried to solve the
+yeast question it could have solved it easily in these three years; it
+would have had no more trouble with that problem than Russia and Canada
+and America have had. But as the Government is still investigating the
+yeast question, we will confine our figures to beer.
+
+=Brewers are destroying 450,000 4-lb. loaves a day.=
+
+=This year’s food destruction for beer alone will equal five weeks’
+bread rations and four weeks’ sugar rations for the whole United
+Kingdom.=
+
+=We have seven critical weeks in this summer, and this year’s
+destruction of food would carry us through.=
+
+=Beer alone is taking 10 pounds of sugar a year from every kitchen
+cupboard, and an ounce of sugar a day from every soldier.=
+
+That is what drink is doing at this moment with the shadow of famine
+creeping on.
+
+ “_He who withholdeth the corn the people shall curse him._” Proverbs.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          The Shadow of Famine
+
+
+The Government came into office with the food shortage in sight; it was
+its first duty to build up the great reserve of food we might have had
+now in our granaries if the drink trade had not destroyed it. We could
+have laughed at submarines, for our barns would have been filled to
+overflowing, and we could have lived in comfort for a year if no ship
+reached us.
+
+Let us see how much food drink has destroyed during the war. We will
+take it from August 4, 1914, to April 30, 1917. It is 999 days of the
+war. The grain and sugar destroyed for drink have been:
+
+               Grain                      4,400,000 tons
+               Sugar (for beer alone)       340,000 tons
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  How Canada sees it—A Canadian cartoon of the callous destruction of
+    bread for beer and whisky]
+
+It is not easy to realize what this means, but it will help us if we
+think of one or two examples.
+
+=The biggest thing ever set up on earth is the Great Pyramid. It is
+80,000,000 cubic feet. The food destroyed by drink during the war would
+make two Great Pyramids, each bigger than the Pyramid of Egypt.=
+
+=The longest British railway is the Great Western; it is over 3,000
+miles, but it would not hold the food destroyed by drink since war
+began. If every inch of it were crammed with wagons, the Great Western
+Railway would need hundreds of miles more line to hold the train-loads
+of food destroyed.=
+
+=There are about 750,000 railway wagons in the United Kingdom, but if
+the Drink Trade had them all they would not hold the food it has
+destroyed.=
+
+=There are about 30,000 engines on our British railways, and if the food
+destroyed were made up in trains of 125 tons apiece, all our engines
+would not pull them; we should still want 10,000 more.=
+
+So vast is this incredible quantity of food destroyed by an enemy trade
+while famine has been coming on. We should have saved it all if
+Parliament had followed the King, and it would have given the whole
+United Kingdom its flour rations for nearly a year. Take it at its
+minimum scientific human food value, and on the basis of our rations in
+May, 1917, it would have given us:
+
+             Flour for the whole United Kingdom    43 weeks
+             Sugar for the whole United Kingdom    33 weeks
+
+Our three war Governments, confronted with the increasing certainty of
+at least a three-years’ war, have allowed the Drink Trade to destroy
+this vast reserve of food.
+
+The full toll of this trade upon our scanty food supply, growing shorter
+and shorter while the queues outside our food shops grow longer and
+longer, is staggering indeed, even now with drink about three-quarters
+stopped. We must remember that it makes no difference that the barley
+has been malted; it is still good human food, and every ounce of it
+should be mixed with grain for making bread. Let us remember, also, that
+_brewer’s sugar is a good pure sugar_, the objection to it being largely
+the objection most of us have to standard bread—its colour. Malt or
+sugar, every ounce a brewer destroys is food stolen from the people. Let
+us take expert opinion on the subject.
+
+
+                    The Food Value of Brewer’s Sugar
+
+  We do not, of course, use this dark sugar when white sugar is cheap
+  and easily procurable, but during the war we have used it for
+  coffee, cocoa, and tea; and for puddings where colour did not
+  matter. We have used it a good deal in our bakeries for chocolate
+  goods, where colour again does not matter. It is a good, pure sugar,
+  and the colour is the principal drawback.
+
+                          _Letter to Arthur Mee from a London caterer_
+
+
+                    The Food Value of Brewer’s Malt
+
+  Malt flour can be used to make excellent cake with 50 per cent.
+  wheat flour. It is sweet and pleasant to taste without the need of
+  any sugar. Good scones can be made with 25 per cent. of malt flour.
+  Its use in bread made with yeast causes too much fermentation in the
+  bread, but it has no effect on baking-powder. The Food Controller’s
+  Department is aware of the practicability of using malt flour, but
+  the sale is restricted in order to limit its use for making beer.
+  Brewers and maltsters are too patriotic to wish to use for beer what
+  could be applied to food in case of a serious shortage, and the
+  large stocks of barley and malt can supplement the supply of wheat
+  flour.
+
+                 _Letter from a Brewer in the “Times,” April 11, 1917_
+
+Yet we have seen our Government holding up sugar for brewers; we have
+seen our Food Controller refuse to release a caterer’s sugar unless it
+were sold to a brewer; we have seen a Government short of food-ships
+bringing in brewers’ vats and casks of rum; and we see the Government
+still holding up this malt that would feed a people asking for more
+bread.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          The Tunes They Play
+
+
+Strange tunes we hear the fiddlers play, but their music does not charm
+away the troubles of a famine-threatened land. From morning till night
+the prayer of the people rises, “Give us this day our daily bread,” but
+the heart of Downing Street is hardened, and the nation’s bread goes day
+by day to the destroyer.
+
+But all the time we see the measure of the courage of our rulers on the
+hoardings in the streets. We know their posters by heart.
+
+_Defeat the enemy’s attempt to starve you_, by—not by stopping the
+destruction of food, but by joining the National Service, and probably
+helping to pick hops. There was a man in a co-operative store who
+volunteered for National Service, and last month he received
+instructions _to leave the grocery store and take up duty in a brewery_.
+
+_Sow your window-boxes and plant your back gardens_—and Mr. Prothero
+will see that the soil of a million back gardens is wasted on hops.
+
+_We have not enough food to last till the harvest_—why not go out and
+catch rabbits, asks Lord Devonport—and sit and wait for sparrows?
+
+_We must save every pound of bread we can to get over our critical
+weeks_—not by saving the quartern loaf that beer is taking every month
+from every British cupboard now, but by going hungry so that drinkers
+may not thirst.
+
+_We must not eat more than our share, on our honour_—but the man across
+the table can eat his share of bread and drink somebody else’s too.
+
+_We must eat less and eat slowly_—so that brewers may waste more and
+waste quickly.
+
+_We must keep back famine_—but not by using malt, says Captain Bathurst:
+that would cost three times as much as letting famine come. _But why not
+keep the malt till bread is as dear as gold?_
+
+_Let all heads of households abstain from using grain except in bread_,
+says the King’s Proclamation. But let the brewers waste 8,000 tons a day
+for beer, says the Government.
+
+_God speed the plough and the woman who drives it_—yes, and God help the
+woman who drives the plough to feed the brewer while her little ones cry
+for bread.
+
+_Let us fine £5 whoever wastes a loaf_, says the Food Controller—but
+not, of course, the brewers who waste 450,000 quartern loaves a day.
+
+Hops are no use as food to anybody, says the Board of Trade Scientific
+Committee. “_Then let us grow only half as many_,” said Mr. Prothero.
+
+Mr. Lloyd George says Mr. Prothero is working “in a continuous rattle of
+mocking laughter and gibes.” Yes, it is the mocking laughter of a nation
+that is not really amused by sights like this. The nation does not like
+to see the bread rations of 70,000 men in France cut down while the
+Drink Trade is destroying every week bread enough to last these men a
+year. It does not like to see the Government sending letters out to
+managers of factory canteens, begging them to be careful of bread, while
+food flows through our beer canteens like a river running to waste. It
+does not like to see Y. M. C. A. canteens denied supplies of sugar while
+barrels of beer are stacked in great piles outside. It does not like the
+calling up of discharged soldiers while thousands of strong men are
+working hard all day destroying food or carting beer about the streets;
+and it does net like the tragic comedies of Captain Bathurst, who warns
+us that it really may become necessary in the national interest—and
+then, perhaps, he drops his voice to break it very gently—it really may
+become necessary, if these cake shops are not very careful, _to
+whitewash the lower part of their windows_.
+
+Oh, these fiddlers! And now we have a new idea from the Food Control
+Department; it is a coloured poster of a Union Jack and a big loaf on
+it, and “Waste not, Want not,” printed in big type. It was being printed
+on the day the Prime Minister told the nation that America had found it
+is no use waving a neutral flag in the teeth of a shark. It is an
+eloquent and true saying, but it is also true, that it is no use waving
+platitudes from copybooks in the teeth of a wolf at the door. The Prime
+Minister says he is taking no chances. Let us be quite sure. We once had
+a Government of which men said its motto was “Wait and See.” _Are we
+better off, or are we worse, with a Government that Sees and Waits?_
+
+But there is no end to the fiddling. With Food Controllers who hold up
+food for Food Destroyers; with Food Economy Handbooks that cry out loud
+to save the crumbs but have no word to say about the tons we fling away;
+with a Prime Minister praying for window-boxes and a Board of
+Agriculture consecrating hopfields, we need not be surprised if the
+nation is not mightily impressed.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                         How the Allies Did It
+
+
+All the world knows, except, apparently, the world that goes round at
+Westminster, how Prohibition has helped the Allies.
+
+_With the Shell Famine at its height—largely made by Drink—the
+Prohibition Army on the East held up the enemy while Britain fought the
+Drink Trade for her shells._
+
+_With the Bread Famine looming in sight—largely made by Drink—the
+Prohibition Navy from the West flings in her power against the
+submarines._
+
+Oh, for the spirit of our Allies in this land! If France wants to rouse
+the spirit of Verdun she strikes down her foe at home and puts absinthe
+away. If Russia wants to be great and free she stops this drink and
+orders out the Romanoffs. If Canada wants to give her utmost help to
+Britain she stops this drink from sea to sea. If Australia wants to make
+her soldiers fit she trains them in her Prohibition camps. If America
+wants to beat the whole world at making shells she drives drink from her
+workshops. If San Francisco has an earthquake she stops drink while she
+pulls herself together. If Liverpool has a dangerous strike she shuts up
+public-houses and keeps the city quiet. Oh, for a Government of Britain
+that will see what all the world can see!
+
+History will do justice to the part the Prohibition policy of the Allies
+has played in saving Europe, but a pamphlet has no room for these
+things. We can take only one or two great witnesses to the mighty
+achievements of our Prohibition Allies. Let us begin with France, and
+call our own Prime Minister to tell us what they did. Mr. Lloyd George:
+
+  One afternoon we had to postpone our conference in Paris, and the
+  French Minister of Finance said, “I have to go to the Chamber of
+  Deputies, because I am proposing a bill to abolish absinthe.”
+  Absinthe plays the same part in France that whisky plays in this
+  country, and they abolished it by a majority of something like ten
+  to one that afternoon.
+
+And how did Paris take this prohibition that men said would cause a
+revolution? Let us ask Mr. Philip Gibbs, whose splendid letters home
+have made his name a household word. Mr. Philip Gibbs:
+
+  Absinthe was banned by a thunderstroke, and Parisians who had
+  acquired the absinthe habit trembled in every limb at this judgment
+  which would reduce them to physical and moral wrecks. But the edict
+  was given and Paris obeyed, loyally and with resignation.
+
+And now we come to Russia, to these mighty Russian people who in the
+last year of vodka saved £6,000,000 or £7,000,000, and in the last full
+year of Prohibition saved £177,000,000. We will call our own Prime
+Minister again:
+
+  Russia, knowing her deficiency, knowing how unprepared she was,
+  said, “I must pull myself together. I am not going to be trampled
+  upon, unready as I am. I will use all my resources.” What is the
+  first thing she does? She stops drink.
+
+  I was talking to M. Bark, the Russian Minister of Finance, and I
+  asked, “What has been the result?” He said, “The productivity of
+  labour, the amount of work which is put out by the workmen, has gone
+  up between 30 and 50 per cent.”
+
+  I said, “How do they stand it without their liquor?” and he replied,
+  “Stand it? I have lost revenue over it up to £65,000,000 a year and
+  we certainly cannot afford it, but if I proposed to put it back
+  there would be a revolution in Russia.”
+
+How completely teetotal Russia became we read long ago in the _Daily
+Mail_, to which Mr. Hamilton Fyfe sent this message from Petrograd:
+
+  Try to imagine all the publichouses in the British Isles closed; all
+  the restaurants putting away their wine cards and offering nothing
+  stronger than cider or ginger ale. That is the state of things in
+  Russia. Strange it seems indeed, yet there is one thing stranger.
+  Nobody makes any audible complaint.
+
+Everywhere in Russia it was the same: a nation was made sober by Act of
+Parliament.
+
+  “Without a murmur of protest,” said the Moscow correspondent of the
+  _Times_, “the most drunken city in Europe was transformed into a
+  temple of sobriety, and we felt that if Russia could thus conquer
+  herself in a night, there was indeed nothing that might not be
+  accomplished.” And two years later, when the revolution came, we
+  read in the _Times_ this note from Odessa: “Perfect tranquillity
+  continues to prevail here, although for the moment Odessa is
+  practically without police. The satisfactory absence of crime may
+  largely be attributed to the sealing up of spirituous liquors.”
+
+We need not be afraid of Drinkless Revolutions.
+
+But the truth about Russia is almost too incredible to believe, for it
+is Prohibition that made the revolution possible; it was stopping drink
+that set 170,000,000 people free. We will let a business correspondent
+of the _Times_ give evidence; here is what he said on April 21, 1917:
+
+  In one respect it must be said that the Reactionaries saw clearly.
+  They always claimed that the Tsar had ruined himself by decreeing
+  the abolition of vodka. None but a sober people could have carried
+  out the Russian Revolution.
+
+  The police were, on the other hand, the victims of drink. They had
+  seized the vodka at the order of the Government, and had kept
+  plentiful supplies for themselves. Thus the Revolution was in part a
+  struggle between drunken reaction and sober citizens. Sobriety
+  triumphed.
+
+The Russian people will not bow down and tie their hands to the thrones
+of Europe: do we wonder if they scorn our quailing before this trade?
+
+Free Russia flings off the dynastic yoke: do we wonder Prohibition
+Russia is not much impressed by a nation with a Drink Trade round its
+neck?
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                           The Soldier’s Home
+
+
+The things that will be told against this trade when all the truth is
+known will break the heart of those who read. It is well for us that we
+cannot know the full truth now; the burden would be too grievous to be
+borne in days like these. But if you will go into your street, or will
+talk of these things with the next man you meet from one of our pitiful
+slums, or will pick up one of those local papers that still have space
+to print the truth, you will find the evidence close about you.
+
+We are the guardians of our soldiers’ homes; we are the trustees of the
+hope and happiness of their little children; but we let this drink
+trade, that takes our people’s food out of their cupboards, turn that
+food into the means of death, and sow ruin and destruction through the
+land.
+
+But we will call the witnesses to these drink-ruined soldiers’ homes,
+these homes that the enemy worse than Germany has shattered and broken
+while our men have been fighting for your home and mine. We will call a
+few here and there, knowing that for every one called are hundreds more
+that can be called, and that beyond all these that are known there is in
+this little land a countless host of tragedies as secret as the grave.
+
+  A Tooting soldier whose wife had sent him loving letters to the
+  trenches came back to surprise her after 18 months. He found another
+  man in possession of his home and a new baby; and, overcome by the
+  discovery, he gave way to drink and killed himself.
+
+                               _Records of Balham Coroner, March 1916_
+
+  A soldier who had left a comfortable home behind returned from the
+  Front to find it ruined, with not a bed to lie on, his children
+  never sent to school, his wife all the time in publichouses. “I wish
+  I had been shot in the trenches,” he said when he arrived.
+
+                     _Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 10, 1915_
+
+  Outside a publichouse in Liverpool a man was dragging home his
+  drunken wife, the mother of eleven children. They rolled over and
+  over on the ground, the drunken women violently resisting the
+  maddened man. Then came up the eldest son, home from the Front, with
+  five wounds in his body.
+
+                            _Facts in “Liverpool Post,” March 2, 1917_
+
+  A soldier came back to his home in London to find his wife drinking
+  his money away, harbouring another man; one of his children cruelly
+  neglected and the other in its grave, perished from neglect; and a
+  drunken carman’s baby about to be born in his home.
+
+                                 _Facts in Shaftesbury Society Report_
+
+  A Lance-Corporal heard in the trenches of his wife’s misconduct. His
+  commanding officer wrote to make inquiries, and the soldier wrote to
+  the Chief Constable a pitiful letter: “What have I to look forward
+  to at the end of the war?” he said. “Nothing, only sorrow. I never
+  get a letter to know how my loving son is getting on; I think it
+  will drive me mad.”
+
+  He came home, opened the door of his house, threw his kit on the
+  floor, and declared that he would kill his wife. He put a razor on
+  the table, and his little boy hid it in a cupboard, but a week later
+  this boy of 12 went home and found his father and mother lying on
+  the floor, the father drunk, the mother dead. The soldier, drowning
+  his misery in drink, had strangled his wife. Rousing himself beside
+  her, he said, as the police found them, “Kiss me, Sally. Aye, but
+  tha are poorly.”
+
+  He had been the best of fathers, said the little boy; the best of
+  soldiers, said his commanding officer; and the judge declared that
+  such a man, with such a character, ought not to be with criminals.
+
+                         _Record of Huddersfield Assizes, Autumn 1916_
+
+  A soldier asked a London magistrate if he could draw the allowance
+  instead of his wife, who was in prison for drunkenness and was
+  neglecting his four children. The magistrate said the only thing was
+  to send the children to the workhouse.
+
+  The Soldier: “So I am to be a soldier for my King and country while
+  my children go to the workhouse?” The Magistrate: “That is so,
+  because you have a drunken wife. I am sorry for you.”
+
+                                 _Facts in “Sunday Herald,” June 1916_
+
+  A seaman gunner, who had been torpedoed and had fought in the
+  trenches, arrived home to find his wife, in his own words, “filthy
+  drunk,” and his children utterly deplorable. He reclothed them, but
+  his wife pawned the clothes, though she had £7 a month. He took his
+  children away, but a crowd of women interfered with him, and the
+  police were powerless against the mob.
+
+                     _Facts in “Western Daily Mercury,” July 23, 1915_
+
+  A soldier just back from the Front was found in the street weeping
+  bitterly on discovering that his wife was in gaol through drink, and
+  his child, through her neglect, had been burned.
+
+                               _Statement by Marchioness of Waterford_
+
+  A soldier came home from the Front to find that drink had ruined his
+  home, and his children were being cared for by Glasgow Parish
+  Council. “Hour after hour we sit on this council,” says the
+  chairman, “listening to case after case, and the cause is
+  drunkenness, drunkenness, drunkenness. There are 2300 children under
+  the council, and two thousand of them have parents living.” “Our raw
+  material is the finished product of the public-house,” says one of
+  these workers.
+
+                                      _Facts from Glasgow Councillors_
+
+  A motor mechanic at the Front, hearing that his wife, hitherto a
+  sober woman, had given way to drink, obtained leave to come home. He
+  found his wife, very drunk, struggling home with the help of the
+  railings in the street, and neighbours described her horrible life
+  with other soldiers. The husband obtained a separation for the sake
+  of his children, and went back to France.
+
+                       _Full facts in “Kent Messenger,” July 31, 1915_
+
+  A young soldier came from the trenches to spend Christmas in his
+  home in Sheffield—a teetotal home before the war. He found that his
+  wife had given way to drink, had deserted one child and disappeared
+  with the other, and that a baby was to be born which was not his.
+
+                                           _Facts known to the Author_
+
+  A miner fighting at the Front came home to find his wife at a
+  publichouse, his home filthy, and his children cruelly neglected. He
+  was heartbroken. His young wife frequently left the house from
+  tea-time till midnight, and in order to keep the children from the
+  fire she had burned them severely with a piece of iron. A
+  respectable-looking woman, the mother pleaded for a chance, and was
+  led from the dock sobbing bitterly.
+
+                 _Facts in “Sheffield Independent,” February 21, 1917_
+
+  A young Yorkshire miner enlisted and left his wife, hitherto sober,
+  with three children. She took to drink, neglected the home, and is
+  now a dipsomaniac, with two children not her husband’s.
+
+                                           _Facts known to the Author_
+
+  A soldier came home ill from France, hurried from Waterloo to his
+  home, and found the door locked. He knocked, and his little boy’s
+  voice came—“Is that you, mother, and are you drunk?” Hearing his
+  father’s voice the excited lad opened the door. “Where’s mother?”
+  asked his father. “Mother?” said the boy; “she’s drinking. She comes
+  home drunk night after night now and knocks the kids about. She
+  daren’t hit _me_; I’m fair strong, dad; but the other.... And as for
+  baby, she never does nothing for her. I and Freddy takes turns, but
+  I dunno what to give her to eat sometimes.”
+
+  Midnight passed before the mother appeared, helplessly drunk. “Did
+  you expect me to sit at home weeping for you?” she said. The next
+  morning, broken with tears, she promised to mend her ways. The
+  soldier went into hospital, and there he had a letter from his boy.
+  This is part of it:
+
+  “Dear Dad, I write to let you know mother is going on awful. She has
+  took all Fred and Timmy’s clothes to the pawnshop, and she hit
+  Selina on Saturday with the toasterfork and cut her face. She cried
+  all night, it hurt her so. She is drunk every night and some nights
+  dussent come back at all. She daren’t hit me, but I am getting
+  afraid about baby. We are all very hungry and miserable.”
+
+  The soldier got leave, found his wife had disappeared, and, finding
+  charity for his four little ones, he left his ruined home and went
+  back to the hospital.
+
+                                   _Facts in possession of the Author_
+
+  A working-man at Gravesend went to the Front, leaving behind a wife
+  and three children, the baby lately born. His wife started drinking
+  away her allowance, neglected her home, and, full of remorse and
+  shame for the disgrace she had brought on the man who was in the
+  trenches, she hanged herself. The man came home to find waiting for
+  him three motherless children, and one of the most pathetic letters
+  a man has ever had to read.
+
+                                  _Records of Gravesend Coroner, 1916_
+
+
+                          Mothers and Children
+
+It is easy to understand the pitiful appeal of 500 women out of Holloway
+Prison who begged the Duchess of Bedford to help to close all
+public-houses during the war. They know in their hearts of tragedies
+such as these, in which mothers and children die while the fathers fight
+and the Drink Trade goes on merrily.
+
+  A soldier’s wife in Sunderland drew £12 arrears of Army pay, and she
+  and her mother began to drink it away. She drew her pay on Friday,
+  was carried home drunk on Saturday, gave birth to twins on Sunday
+  morning, and died on Sunday night. The twins died a week or two
+  after, and a week or two after that the soldier came home from the
+  trenches to find his family in the grave.
+
+                                    _Facts in Sunderland papers, 1917_
+
+  Two women went drinking in Chester on a Sunday night, a soldier’s
+  mother and a soldier’s wife. They had five whiskies each, and fell
+  drunk in the street. One slept all night on a sofa, and the other
+  lay on the floor, shouting and swearing. Her husband propped her up
+  with a mat, and for hours she lay shrieking. In the morning she was
+  dead. The publican was fined £5.
+
+                     _Facts in “Chester Chronicle,” February 17, 1917_
+
+  The wife of a Yorkshire soldier was drowned while drunk at
+  Sheffield. She started drinking with another soldier’s wife
+  disappeared with a drunken man, and her death was a mystery.
+
+                    _Facts in “Sheffield Independent,” April 26, 1916_
+
+  At an inquest on the bodies of a soldier’s twin children, both dead
+  from chronic wasting, it was stated that the mother had 34_s._ a
+  week, and both she and her husband drank. The mother had had four
+  children in fifteen months, and all were dead.
+
+                          _Records of Battersea Coroner, October 1915_
+
+  In one street in London where there were one day four convictions
+  for drunkenness, a woman carried a sick baby into a public house. As
+  she stood at the bar the little baby died, but the mother went on
+  drinking, with the dead child in her arms.
+
+                             _Records of Charity Organisation Society_
+
+  The wife of a highly-esteemed sergeant-major fighting in France was
+  found lying drunk. Her four children, shockingly neglected, were put
+  in a home, but she took them out, went on drinking, and received
+  soldiers at her house. In a few weeks her husband heard in the
+  trenches that his wife had died from drinking.
+
+                          _Records of West Surrey Coroner, March 1917_
+
+  A soldier left three children at home. He had been earning £1 a
+  week, but his wife received 32_s._ 6_d._ a week. She drank it away,
+  neglected the children, and died in an asylum while her husband was
+  in France.
+
+                                          _Records of Claybury Asylum_
+
+  The little child of a soldier in France died in Guy’s Hospital from
+  burns. The mother said she could not buy a fireguard. While she was
+  absent the baby was burned, and the mother, returning in a drunken
+  state carrying a can of beer, said, “A good job!”
+
+                         _Records of Southwark Coroner, December 1915_
+
+  A soldier’s widow with six children, an Army pension of 30_s._ a
+  week, and her eldest boy’s wages of 30_s._, drinks every night with
+  a married man who has a respectable, clean, and sober wife with
+  eight children and a ninth lately born—born prematurely as a result
+  of her husband’s beating her. The child bore the marks of his
+  violence, and died in two months.
+
+                                      _Records of Shaftesbury Society_
+
+  The young wife of a soldier was brought from prison to be tried for
+  manslaughter of her baby, who had died in the infirmary from
+  neglect. She spent her time in the publichouses, and laughed when
+  the children were taken to the infirmary. She went out one day to
+  fetch a bottle of whisky and as she drank with a neighbour she said
+  she knew the baby would die. The doctor said the child’s skin was
+  hanging in folds on the bones.
+
+                           _Facts in the “Observer,” January 23, 1916_
+
+  A soldier’s wife drank continuously while her child wasted away,
+  left the tiny baby alone in the house while she went for beer, and a
+  policeman found her lying drunk across the dead child’s body.
+
+                         _Records of Barnsley Coroner, November, 1916_
+
+  The mother of two children whose father was fighting in France gave
+  way to drink in his absence, neglected her children and left them in
+  grave moral danger, and committed suicide.
+
+                                           _Records of an Orphan Home_
+
+  A soldier’s baby starved slowly to death as the mother drank away
+  his pay, and while the child lay in its coffin the mother was out
+  drinking.
+
+                             _West Bromwich Police Records, June 1915_
+
+  A munition worker at Newcastle was grievously upset by the drinking
+  habits of his wife. The police left a summons for her and she
+  disappeared. Two days later her body was found in the Tyne. The man
+  broke down at the inquest, saying, between his sobs: “She was such a
+  good wife to me for 20 years, and reared a good family before she
+  took to drink.”
+
+                           _Records of Newcastle Coroner, Summer 1916_
+
+  The wife of a corporation workman at Sheffield, home from the
+  trenches with six gunshot wounds and three pieces of shell in his
+  body, found that his wife had given way to drink and starved her
+  five children. She was sent to prison for six months.
+
+                       _Police Records of Sheffield, November 3, 1915_
+
+  A soldier’s wife who had spent the greater part of £100 Army money
+  in drink was sent to prison for neglecting her children. Almost
+  everything in the house was pawned, including the children’s
+  clothes; and the woman began to drink at five o’clock in the
+  morning, and went on drinking all day.
+
+                     _Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 10, 1915_
+
+  A soldier’s wife in Monmouthshire, with £3 9_s._ a week, was found
+  sodden with drink, while the soldier’s eight children were in rags
+  starving by day and huddling up in one bed by night.
+
+                       _Facts in “Westminster Gazette,” July 22, 1916_
+
+  A smart tidy woman in a London suburb, whose husband is fighting in
+  Mesopotamia, has £2 10_s._ 6_d._ a week. She used to love her
+  children and had a happy home, but she drinks away her Army pay,
+  lives with a married man who has six children, and has become a
+  drunken slattern. The other wife is beaten and neglected, and the
+  soldier’s children have gone to the workhouse.
+
+                                      _Records of Shaftesbury Society_
+
+  The four children of a soldier in Dublin were found hungry and
+  shivering with cold while the mother was drinking. Several times she
+  had let her baby fall while reeling with it in the street.
+
+                  _Facts in “Dublin Evening Herald,” October 20, 1916_
+
+  At the trial of a soldier’s wife for drinking and neglecting seven
+  children, it was stated that a child of eleven was left in charge of
+  a baby a fortnight old while the mother was drinking. At night all
+  the children were heard screaming. The house was in utter darkness,
+  and there was an escape of gas. Some men went in and turned off the
+  gas, and at last the mother came stumbling out of a publichouse
+  across the road.
+
+                        _Facts in “Sheffield Star,” November 25, 1915_
+
+  “Your husband is fighting for his country, and his children have the
+  right to be protected,” said the Chairman of the Chesterfield Bench
+  to a soldier’s wife. Her children were found starving while she was
+  drinking, and one day the little boy of three was found crouching
+  naked inside the fender, trying to get warm. The police described
+  the house as foul from top to bottom, with a heap of horrible rags
+  for a bed, and a food cupboard that made the house unendurable when
+  the door was opened.
+
+                      _Facts in “Yorkshire Telegraph,” March 24, 1916_
+
+  The wife of a missing soldier was sent to prison at Chesterfield for
+  neglecting three children between 13 years and 16 weeks old. She had
+  gone astray through drink, and the youngest child, born under
+  terrible conditions, was not her husband’s. It was found lying on a
+  filthy bed, and its drunken mother, to satisfy its pangs of hunger,
+  had given it pennyworths of laudanum. Eleven people slept in two
+  foul bedrooms.
+
+                        _Chesterfield Police Records, October 9, 1916_
+
+  Five hundred children of soldiers are being cared for in the great
+  Homes founded by Mr. Quarrier in Scotland, and most of them are
+  there because of drinking mothers.
+
+                                                    _Facts in Reports_
+
+  A soldier’s wife at Biggleswade spent her allowance on drink and
+  left her three children locked up in the house for days at a time.
+
+                 _Police Court Records of Biggleswade, September 1915_
+
+  A soldier’s wife was found reeling in the streets of Dublin with a
+  baby in her arms. At her home were found four other children,
+  cruelly neglected.
+
+                             _Facts in “Dublin Mail,” August 16, 1916_
+
+  Nineteen hundred children of soldiers have come into the care of the
+  N.S.P.C.C., mainly through drink, since the war began.
+
+                                           _Records of the N.S.P.C.C._
+
+
+                            The Ruined Wives
+
+Who does not remember the terrible rush for the last drop of drink when
+Prohibition seemed to be coming with the New Year? Long queues of women
+besieged the whisky shops in Glasgow. There were women of all ages, said
+the _Daily Mail_, tottering in grey hairs, young wives with babies in
+their arms, and men of the loafer type. “There was not a respectable
+citizen,” says the _Mail_, “who did not deplore this discreditable
+scene, but the remarks of passers-by provoked only torrents of insult.”
+The promise of the new year and the new Government, alas, was not
+fulfilled, and now in place of Drink Queues we have Food Queues. Let us
+see what drink is doing among our soldiers’ wives:
+
+  Of 3000 soldiers’ wives being cared for in South London, 2000 are
+  splendid, while 1000 are sinking daily to lower and lower levels
+  through drink.
+
+                                      _Records of Shaftesbury Society_
+
+  A soldier’s wife, with a separation allowance of 32_s._ 6_d._ a
+  week, drank most of it away, ruined her home, neglected her
+  children, and became a lunatic.
+
+                                          _Records of Claybury Asylum_
+
+  A young soldier’s wife, hitherto “quite an elegant type,” is rapidly
+  becoming a drunkard. Women hitherto sober have not the courage to
+  keep from women’s drinking parties, and young girls come out of
+  factories and go to publichouses in little groups.
+
+                             _Records of Charity Organisation Society_
+
+  Outside a public house in Dublin 15 small children were crying in
+  the cold, waiting for their mothers. Ninety-four drunken women came
+  out in 25 minutes. There were ten drunken soldiers, and two girls of
+  15 were thrown into the street hopelessly drunk.
+
+                              _Facts in “Irish Times,” April 20, 1915_
+
+  In Dundee over 170 wives of soldiers gave way to drink last year,
+  and cruelly neglected their homes.
+
+                                       _Records of the N. S. P. C. C._
+
+  A soldier in the trenches received a letter from his little boy,
+  which he sent to London with a pitiful appeal for help.
+
+  “Kindly do what you can for me and the well-being and welfare of my
+  four beautiful children,” the poor soldier wrote. “I am enclosing a
+  fearful letter I have received from my poor little lad, 14-1/2, the
+  first and only letter I have received from him. Sir, I shall be most
+  anxiously awaiting your reply, for this letter is the greatest blow
+  I have ever received.”
+
+  This is the little boy’s letter:
+
+    Dear Dad: Just a line to let you know how everything is at home.
+    Mother is drunk for a fortnight and sober for a week for months
+    and months. I’ve stuck it now for seven months, and can’t stick
+    it any longer. I tried to get into the Navy and passed all the
+    tests, but mother would not sign the papers, for which I am
+    sorry. If mum would sign I could go away to Portsmouth on
+    Thursday, but she will not. At the present moment she is half
+    drunk and keeps jawing me so that I could knife meself. I’ve
+    lost my new job because mum would not wake me in the morning,
+    and nothing for breakfast, and had to get mine and the
+    children’s tea at tea-time. It pains me to write like this, but
+    I can’t help it. I now seek your advice as to what to do. I hope
+    _you_ will enjoy Xmas, although there is not much hope for us. I
+    now conclude with fondest love, X. Your heartbroken Son, Leslie.
+
+  A stream of nearly 15,000 men and women poured into 58 publichouses
+  in Birmingham in less than four hours; over 6,000 were women. Into
+  one house the people streamed at nearly 500 an hour.
+
+                          _Facts in “Review of Reviews,” October 1915_
+
+  For months some wives of soldiers and sailors in Scotland were never
+  really sober. “We have done our best,” says a worker among them,
+  “going to their homes and doing all in our power, but it beats us.”
+  In 23 families, with 178 children born, 61 were dead.
+
+                     _Facts told to Secretary for Scotland, July 1916_
+
+               Will some Member of Parliament please ask
+
+=whether the ships that have brought in food for destruction by the
+drink trade could not have brought in a large proportion of the
+3,500,000 tons of wheat now waiting for ships in Australia and the
+2,000,000 tons waiting in Canada?=
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          The Roll of the Dead
+
+
+No more pitiful record of the war is there than that unnumbered roll of
+men lured from our armies by this liquor trade, and cast into
+dishonoured graves. We can take only a few of them.
+
+  A number of soldiers at Ormskirk came into camp drunk on Christmas
+  night. A request for quiet led to a fight, and one of the men was
+  struck two blows and was dead the next morning.
+
+                            _Facts in “Daily Mail,” December 28, 1915_
+
+  A Liverpool soldier, drinking continuously, had overstayed his
+  leave, and in a quarrel about this he stabbed his brother dead.
+
+                        _Facts in “Liverpool Courier,” April 20, 1917_
+
+  A soldier invalided from France, having recovered from his wounds,
+  gave way to drink, assaulted an officer, and hanged himself in his
+  prison cell.
+
+                               _Facts in “Daily News,” April 11, 1916_
+
+  A young lieutenant shot himself in an hotel near Trafalgar Square,
+  and among the documents read at the inquest was a letter striking
+  him off his battalion for drinking and gross carelessness.
+
+                        _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” October 27, 1916_
+
+  A captain in the Army ruined by drink, with a fine record of
+  military service, started drinking on his way to a shooting range in
+  London, and in a struggle he shot a detective dead.
+
+                           _Facts in “Daily News,” September 20, 1915_
+
+  In the Scottish Express, between Doncaster and Selby, a drunken
+  corporal of the Coldstream Guards was showing his rifle to a friend
+  when it went off, the bullet killing a munitions works director in
+  the next compartment, and narrowly escaping a lady in the
+  compartment beyond. The corporal had in his pocket a bottle of
+  whisky, which was freely handed round.
+
+                             _Facts in “Daily News,” December 3, 1915_
+
+  A soldier who had been drinking heavily was placed in the guard
+  room, and died after a night of groaning, evidently as the result of
+  a fall.
+
+                       _Records of Greenwich Coroner, January 1, 1915_
+
+  A young soldier arriving from India on Christmas morning was
+  arrested three days later, after a drunken fight in which a man was
+  killed.
+
+                       _Westminster Police Records, December 28, 1914_
+
+  A soldier spent a day’s leave in Manchester, ate and drank very
+  heavily, and was found dead the next morning from choking.
+
+                    _Records of Manchester Coroner, December 28, 1914_
+
+  A soldier home on leave was found drunk with his wife. They had been
+  throwing pots at one another, and on Christmas morning the woman was
+  found dead with a wound in her head.
+
+                        _Records of Oldham Coroner, December 24, 1914_
+
+  Three gunners had four drinks each of rum, and at midnight lay down
+  to sleep in a garden at Lee, where one was found dying from alcohol.
+
+                             _Facts in Local Papers at Lee, June 1915_
+
+  A soldier died from alcohol in a house where drink was unlawfully
+  sold.
+
+                       _Facts in “Manchester Guardian,” April 8, 1915_
+
+  A private in the Welsh Fusiliers died from alcohol, cold and
+  exposure. He left a publichouse with a 4_s._ bottle of whisky, and
+  was found dead on the roadside next morning, with the bottle almost
+  empty.
+
+                               _Facts in “Daily News,” April 13, 1915_
+
+  An old man who was said to be in a drunken condition was wounded in
+  a fall with a soldier from Gallipoli, and died a few days after.
+
+                             _Facts in “Daily Mail,” January 17, 1916_
+
+  An elderly man, seeing a drunken soldier lying in the street, went
+  to his assistance, and was killed in a disturbance that followed.
+
+                      _Record of Yorkshire Assizes, November 21, 1916_
+
+  A soldier was found drowned in the Trent. He was described as a good
+  man at his work, but not steady, and had been drinking.
+
+                        _Facts in “Newark Advertiser,” August 4, 1915_
+
+  A terrible disturbance occurred in a camp at Portland Reservoir
+  after the closing of the canteen one Sunday night. A large number of
+  men who had been drinking created a disturbance, in which bricks and
+  stones were used, a tent collapsed, and the officers were called to
+  quell the riot. The captain, drawing his revolver, rushed with two
+  lieutenants into a hut where men were shouting and struggling, but
+  appeals had no effect—the men “did not appear to hear or recognize
+  their officers,” and one man raised his rifle and took aim at them.
+  At least fifty shots were fired, and a young corporal fired many
+  shots through the window into the darkness. In the morning a soldier
+  was found dead. Nobody knew who shot him, but the corporal thought
+  he must have done.
+
+                              _Records of Dorset Assizes, Spring 1915_
+
+               Will some Member of Parliament please ask
+
+=whether it is true that more food is being destroyed each week in
+breweries and distilleries than by submarines?=
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                            The New Drinkers
+
+
+“_No complaints have reached the War Office of youths who were total
+abstainers having become confirmed drunkards since enlistment._”
+
+So we are told in the House of Commons. The records of the War Office
+are clearly incomplete, and the information from the camps may here be
+supplemented by unchallengeable witnesses of what happens in the
+horrible drink canteens run by the Army Council.
+
+  A soldier who was wounded at La Bassée, a total abstainer until
+  then, was sentenced at the Old Bailey for killing his uncle while
+  drunk. He was a newsvendor, aged 21, and had no memory of the
+  tragedy in which he killed his uncle at a Christmas party.
+
+                        _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” January 13, 1916_
+
+  A private in the Royal Scots Fusileers, aged 17, was charged with
+  murdering a bugler boy, aged 16, in his regiment. The private became
+  mad drunk in the camp canteen, went back to his hut, locked himself
+  in and fired two shots, one of which entered another hut and killed
+  the bugler. “Was there no one with power to say how much drink
+  should be given?” asked the judge, and an officer said there was no
+  one. “Then it was high time power was given to the commanding
+  officer,” said the judge. “Was there to be no restraining hand to
+  prevent young boys from fuddling themselves in canteens?”
+
+                             _Facts in the “Times,” November 21, 1916_
+
+  An old man sat in a tram in great distress. He had lost his boy at
+  the Front. When he joined the Army he had never tasted alcohol, but
+  when he came home on leave to see his mother he was drunk every
+  night. He was drunk the night he went away, and in three days he was
+  dead. “The last we saw of him,” said the poor old man between his
+  sobs, “was his going away drunk, and his mother, who is
+  old-fashioned in her faith, cannot get it out of her mind that no
+  drunkard can enter the Kingdom of God.”
+
+                                    _Facts told by Dr. Norman Maclean_
+
+  Many young officers, called upon to share the wine bill at mess,
+  naturally say, “If I have to pay I may as well drink my share,” and
+  one man accounted for ten glasses of champagne. On a Guest night in
+  his mess several more “were under the table.”
+
+                        _Facts in “Dublin Daily Express,” April 1916._
+
+  A boy got his V.C., and came home wounded. The publican in his
+  street sounded his praises in the taproom, where they subscribed to
+  the bar for 120 pints for him when he arrived. He came home and
+  began to drink it, and was nearly dead with it before he was
+  rescued.
+
+                                  _Facts related by Bishop of Lincoln_
+
+  When the Scottish Horse Brigade were at Perth whisky was literally
+  forced down the men, and they were inundated with floods of bad
+  women.
+
+                                 _Brigadier-General Lord Tullibardine_
+
+  A teetotal household had two boys in an officers’ training camp, and
+  they gave pitiable accounts of drinking. Boys from school had a
+  drunken sergeant put over them, and a canteen in the midst of them.
+  “Our boys never saw drink before,” one father wrote.
+
+                                 _From a letter to Dr. Norman Maclean_
+
+  A boy of 17, discharged from the Navy, spent 8_s._ one night on beer
+  and rum, and created a disturbance in a workshop at Sheffield.
+
+                        _Facts in “Sheffield Star,” November 11, 1916_
+
+  Mr. Justice Atkin, charging the Grand Jury at Bristol, said that in
+  nearly every case where a soldier was tried in the Western Circuit
+  the defence was drink. One lad of 18 was treated to eight pints of
+  beer in two hours, and did not know what happened. That sort of
+  thing, said the judge, must seriously impair the efficiency of the
+  troops when sent to the Front.
+
+                              _Record of Bristol Assizes, Autumn 1914_
+
+  Two boys, 15 and 17, were fined for being drunk in munition works.
+  One was discovered just in time to save him from carrying molten
+  liquid.
+
+                            _Birmingham Munitions Tribunal, Dec. 1916_
+
+  “A boy joined the Royal Navy as a carpenter, living in barracks and
+  working on shore. Every day he was given ‘grog’ for his rations,
+  although he never asked for it and never took it.”
+
+                                       _Facts in letter to the Author_
+
+Such are the tragedies of boys handed over in our camps to drink and its
+temptations. What of the girls in our munition shops? They have learned
+to drink in thousands since the war began—respectable girls leaving home
+to go into munitions, respectable young wives alone at home. With no
+restraining hand upon them, with new companionships and pocket-money
+flowing freely, it is not surprising the temptation should be too strong
+for them. We can take only one or two cases.
+
+  The girl-wife of a Cardiff seaman died in the street from exposure
+  after drinking in publichouses with other girls.
+
+                    _Records of Pontypridd Coroner, December 27, 1916_
+
+  A publican at Lincoln was fined £5 for allowing children to be drunk
+  on his premises. Ruth Onyon, 14, and Rose Herrick, 16, were found in
+  his house with a soldier. They had been in five houses and had ten
+  drinks each and reached home helplessly drunk.
+
+                 _Facts in “Sheffield Daily Telegraph,” Sept. 1, 1916_
+
+  A number of cartridge workers were summoned for taking drink into a
+  munition works. One young woman was led to the surgery drunk at
+  half-past four in the morning; another was discharged because she
+  could not stand. Sixteen girls subscribed for four bottles of wine
+  and whisky.
+
+                 _Records of Leeds Munitions Tribunal, April 28, 1916_
+
+  Two girls of 16 and 17 were fined for being helplessly drunk in an
+  explosive works, the magistrates pointing out that their conduct
+  imperilled the lives of other workers.
+
+                _Records of Coventry Munitions Tribunal July 24, 1916_
+
+  The men and girls at a large armament works drank all night. Girls
+  would lurch into the dormitory dead drunk at 2 a. m.; one lady was
+  up till 4 a. m. letting in drunken girls. As a result of drunkenness
+  there was an explosion at these works, two men being killed and six
+  injured.
+
+                                 _Facts in “Spectator,” Jan. 20, 1917_
+
+  A Dublin publichouse was found full of girls and soldiers, all
+  drunk. Three drunken girls were taken away by six soldiers.
+
+                              _Facts in “Irish Times,” April 20, 1916_
+
+  In half an hour 367 girls entered Birmingham publichouses, scores
+  under 18. Stout and beer were chiefly drunk, but whisky and water
+  also, and some port wine. Ten young girls were quite drunk.
+
+                                    _Facts in “Birmingham Daily Post”_
+
+               Will some Member of Parliament please ask,
+
+=in view of the fact that American soldiers are not to touch alcohol,
+what arrangements the Government proposes to make for them in this
+country?=
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          Back to the Homeland
+
+
+Everywhere we hope and pray for peace, for the day when the men will
+come home; but we may dread the day if the men come home to drink and
+its temptations. The sudden release of millions of men, the certain
+reaction after the terrible stress of these three years, is fearful to
+contemplate with the door of the tap-room open. There would be an end of
+civilization itself for days and weeks and months, and for many a town
+at home the Peace would be worse than the War.
+
+We owe it to these men to listen to the warning of the Prison
+Commissioners who printed these words in their report last year:
+
+=When war is succeeded by peace there will come a time of trial for
+those who have never turned their backs to a bodily enemy. With the
+passing of military discipline our brave fellows will be tempted to
+forget the hardships and miseries of the trenches in a burst of
+uncontrolled pleasure and license, and, if trade be bad and work
+difficult to obtain, the lapse may, if not checked, become a step on a
+downward career.=
+
+It is not imagination merely. Judges, coroners, police, and all who face
+the crime and misery of life, know well the bitter things that happen
+when men come home without restraint. There are witnesses innumerable.
+Let us hear a few of them.
+
+  A captain in the Royal Flying Corps drove a motor-car through
+  London, knocked a man down, drove on, and ignored the police, who
+  eventually mounted the footboard and found the officer drunk.
+
+                             _Bow Street Police Records, June 3, 1916_
+
+  A lance-corporal on Chesterfield station was so drunk that he walked
+  off the platform and fell on the line as a passenger train came up.
+
+                           _Chesterfield Police Records, June 2, 1915_
+
+  A corporal of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, leaving the
+  Front with 150 rounds of ammunition and his service rifle, came out
+  drunk into the streets of West Ham and began firing his rifle.
+
+                           _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” July 10, 1915_
+
+  A soldier who had received a cartridge from his son at the Front,
+  put it in his rifle, and while drunk fired it in the streets of
+  Manchester.
+
+                         _Manchester Police Records, January 27, 1915_
+
+  In the early hours of the morning two unarmed soldiers were fired at
+  in Woolwich by a drunken soldier, who chased them for a long
+  distance, firing shots all the time, until he was arrested.
+
+                            _Facts in “Alliance News,” February, 1915_
+
+  Drunkenness among soldiers and sailors is appalling. Unoffending
+  travellers are delayed by drunken sentries. Sailors landing after
+  weeks of arduous toil in the North Sea find it easy to get so drunk
+  that some are drowned, some die from exposure, and many return to
+  their ships in a condition of helpless inebriety.
+
+                              _Facts in “Inverness Courier,” May 1915_
+
+  Two drunken soldiers entered the parish church at Codford, set fire
+  to the vestry, threw down the altar cross and candlestick, broke a
+  stained-glass window, and tore leaves out of a Bible 200 years old.
+
+                           _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” April 3, 1916_
+
+  A drunken soldier at Cannock was imprisoned for drawing his bayonet
+  in the streets. “If I meet a policeman I will murder the dog,” he
+  said, and, meeting one, he threatened to cut off his head.
+
+                               _Police Records at Cannock, March 1916_
+
+  400 soldiers tried to get a drunken man from the police in Grantham.
+
+                              _Facts in “Grimsby News,” July 30, 1915_
+
+  A drunken sergeant was found forcibly detaining a girl at Hornsey.
+  On the police interfering, the drunken soldier drew his bayonet.
+
+                            _Facts in “Daily News,” September 7, 1916_
+
+  Three splendid-looking fellows, minesweepers, were traveling on the
+  Highland Railway. “All were married men,” said a fellow passenger,
+  “happy and proud of their homes, and they spoke with ache still in
+  their hearts something of their lives and work. Well, these men
+  succumbed during the journey. A change of trains was their
+  opportunity, and I left them in a nearly helpless condition.”
+
+                             _Facts in “The Spectator,” April 8, 1916_
+
+  A lady visited a soldier’s wife and found her at home with all her
+  clothes in pawn. Her husband and brother had both been home from the
+  Front, and in one week had spent £8 on drink.
+
+                     _Facts in the “Cork Constitution,” Dec. 10, 1915_
+
+  A labourer, home from tunnelling work at the Front, was fined 13_s._
+  for drunkenness on his 33rd appearance, having spent £45 in seven
+  days.
+
+                                _Facts in “Daily News,” Oct. 11, 1916_
+
+  A disabled soldier was selling papers in Kingsway, London. He was
+  proud of his military record and the character his colonel gave him.
+  He was trying to compound for a pension; he thought he would settle
+  for £50. “Mind you,” said he “there is not a better character in
+  London than mine, and I shall get the £50. Then I shall have a
+  month’s booze.” “What, with that fine character of yours?” a
+  gentleman said to him. “Yes,” said the man, “when I came home, and
+  could leave the hospital, there was £50 due to me, and I had a
+  regular booze.”
+
+                                           _Facts known to the Author_
+
+  A soldier with twelve years’ clean record in the Army was sentenced
+  for felony after being made drunk by his friends.
+
+                        _Police Records of Southport, January 9, 1915_
+
+No Government has ever received more warnings than the three war
+Governments have received concerning drink. There is no room for them
+here, but we may call a few witnesses such as cannot be ignored by a
+nation looking forward to the day when millions of men will be home
+again.
+
+  A house in Westminster reeked with filth and drink and drunken
+  overseas soldiers, “and it would be better,” said the Crown
+  Solicitor, “if power were given to the police to sweep such places
+  off the earth.”
+
+                               _Westminster Police Records, Aug. 1916_
+
+  A sapper seaman was found dead at the quay. Another seaman said his
+  friend had seven drinks. They left the publichouse arm-in-arm, and
+  went to the quay. There he saw a corporal, who was boatswain for the
+  night, and was drunk. Leaving the sapper, he got the corporal into
+  the boat, and went back for his friend, but the sapper had
+  disappeared.
+
+  The lieutenant: “The deceased was one of the quietest boys who had
+  ever been on the ship, and one of the best oarsmen. The whole
+  trouble was that it was pay day.”
+
+  The Coroner: “Prohibition during the war would be a blessing to all.
+  It seems to be a very rotten state of affairs.”
+
+  The foreman: “Drink.”
+
+  The lieutenant: “Prohibition would be the best thing.”
+
+  The Coroner: “This poor man, unfortunately, is one of many.”
+
+                   _Facts in “Western Daily Mercury,” January 8, 1917_
+
+  A publican at Dover was fined £20 for selling a bottle of whisky to
+  a sailor. The Admiral said drink undermined the efficiency of the
+  patrol vessels, and those who supplied it directly assisted the
+  enemy, and might be the cause of the loss of very many lives.
+
+                            _Police Records of Dover, October 6, 1916_
+
+  A private in the Northumberland Fusiliers, aged 23, was charged with
+  burglary while drunk. His father and three brothers were in the
+  Army. He took part in the battle of Loos, was wounded at Salonika,
+  and was recommended for distinction for helping to save a wounded
+  officer.
+
+  During the whole of Christmas leave he was drinking, made drunk by
+  his friends who were probably proud of his having held part of a
+  trench against a German bombing party. His captain described him as
+  a good soldier in peace, and brave in action—a man whose disgrace
+  would be felt by the regiment.
+
+  Mr. Justice Rowlatt said everyone was hoping for the time when
+  millions of brave men would come home after facing incredible
+  dangers, and we must look forward almost with terror to having these
+  men exposed to drink and its temptations. What would be the state of
+  the country in such a case unless we could make a clean sweep of
+  drink? We should have to face this question over and over again, and
+  the sooner we faced it the better.
+
+                        _Records of Derbyshire Assizes, February 1917_
+
+  Whoever allowed soldiers or sailors to drink to excess, said the
+  Mayor of Tynemouth, should be tried by court-martial for treason. He
+  would be recreant in his duty to God, to himself, and to the
+  citizens, if he did not call attention to the brutalising of so many
+  townspeople and the callous conduct of the “waster” element in the
+  drink trade. He had no quarrel with those who conducted their
+  business properly.
+
+                           _Facts in Tynemouth papers, February, 1915_
+
+  The Aldershot command appealed for the closing of half the
+  publichouses, to save the men from temptation when the troops are
+  demobilised and return with their pockets full of money.
+
+                       _Record of Workingham Licensing Sessions, 1917_
+
+  The _Army and Navy Gazette_, in an article disapproving of the
+  Prohibition Campaign, issues a terrible warning which should be
+  printed on the door of the room in which the Army Council meets.
+  These are its words:
+
+  “It is on record that towards the end of the siege of Sebastopol rum
+  was made too regular an issue, with the result that almost every
+  soldier who survived to return home became a drunkard.”
+
+The siege of Sebastopol lasted less than a year, and that is the work of
+the rum issue for a few months. If rum does that in months, what will it
+do in years?
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          Into the Firing Line
+
+
+Lord Kitchener is dead, but there are two things that are with us
+still—that rare little note that he gave to his men as they went out,
+warning them of drink; and that infamous note sent out by a drink firm
+in London, begging our people to send out drink to our men. They can
+guarantee it right up to the firing line, they say, and even when our
+shells could not get there through drink, drink seems to have found its
+way. It can get on to transports when the Ministry of Munitions is
+waiting urgently for shipping space; it can commandeer our vans and
+horses and trains when these mean life or death to us; it seems to get
+past any regulation; it goes about with the power of a king, doing its
+work where it will.
+
+  It is regrettable that our troops at the Front cannot get more
+  British Beer.
+
+                          Managing Director of Allsopps, July 14, 1916
+
+  Dear Sir, In answer to your inquiry, the only limitation in the size
+  of cases consigned to officers in the Expeditionary Force is that
+  they must not exceed 1 cwt.
+
+  We can guarantee delivery right into the front trenches. The cases
+  are handed over at Southampton to the Military Forwarding Officer,
+  and the A.S.C. see them right through. We are shipping hundreds of
+  cases weekly. Yours faithfully,
+
+                        _Letter from a Wine and Spirit firm in London_
+
+So drink finds its way to the front, to weaken our troops, with all
+their matchless heroism. Let us call the witnesses who have seen the
+work it does.
+
+  Soldiers at the front, tried for drunkenness, have declared that
+  they have received drink from home. Men sometimes receive flasks in
+  the trenches. They are exhausted, the stimulant revives them for a
+  minute or two, and the harm is done. “And then (says Col. Crozier)
+  they get about two years’ hard labour.”
+
+      _Letter from Colonel Crozier, commanding 9th Royal Irish Rifles_
+
+  As a result of a Court-martial investigating charges of excessive
+  drinking among the officers of a regiment at the Front, the Army
+  Council removed the commanding officer from his post.
+
+                                     _Records of Court-martials, 1916_
+
+  In the torrid climate of Mesopotamia, in defiance of all military
+  medical history, rum was issued to the men instead of food and
+  sterile water, and the presence of cholera, dysentery and other
+  diseases, was attributed to this by Sir Victor Horsley. “Our gross
+  failures and stupidity,” he said, “are in my opinion due to whisky
+  affecting the intellectual organs and clearness of our leaders. They
+  do not realise that alcohol in small doses acts as a brake on the
+  brain.”
+
+             _Facts in a letter from Sir Victor Horsley, May 13, 1916_
+
+[Illustration: THE JUNKER’S LITTLE BROTHER]
+
+  Battalion Headquarters—colonel and chaplain present. Enter Adjutant:
+  “The rum ration is due tonight, sir; am I to distribute it?” The
+  colonel (nobly and in a voice audible all over the trench): “No!
+  Damn the rum! To hell with the rum!”
+
+                     _Chaplain’s letter in “Alliance News,” June 1916_
+
+  At a court-martial in Newcastle, a sergeant-major, charged with
+  misappropriating funds of the sergeant’s mess, pleaded that during
+  this period a resolution of the mess had come into effect, providing
+  free drinks during Christmas and the New Year.
+
+                               _Facts in “Daily News,” April 17, 1916_
+
+  “In the Flying Services one has seen more than one good man go to
+  the dogs through drink, or become fat and flabby and useless through
+  just the excess of alcohol which falls short of taking to drink in
+  the usual acceptance of the term. More men take to drink because of
+  the ‘have another’ custom than because they like or need alcohol,
+  and simple Prohibition would stop all this nonsense straight away.
+  This kindly note is not the outpouring of a teetotal fanatic, for I
+  suppose I have paid in my time rather more than my share of the
+  nation’s drink-bill; it is merely a perfectly sound argument in
+  favour of increasing the nation’s efficiency at the expense of its
+  chief bad habit.”
+
+                                       _The Editor of “The Aeroplane”_
+
+  A lieutenant in the trenches, knowing that the rum ration made him
+  cold, threw his rum on the ground. His captain saw him, and
+  threatened to report him. “You do, sir,” said the lieutenant, “and I
+  will report you for being drunk on duty.”
+
+                                   _Facts in possession of the Author_
+
+  A seaman serving on a ship in Cork Harbour died from alcohol. Found
+  drunk and unknown, he was put on a stretcher and died.
+
+                      _Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 9, 1915_
+
+  “Over three-quarters of the court-martials I have had anything to do
+  with are due directly or indirectly to drunkenness. Many thousands
+  of competent N.C.O.s and soldiers have been punished, and become
+  useless to the nation during their punishment, as a result of drink.
+
+  “I have never been a teetotaler, and have rather opposed the radical
+  temperance agitation, but am now changing my views as I see our
+  success over here hampered and our progress towards victory retarded
+  so obviously by drink.”
+
+       _Letter from a Lieut.-Colonel at the Front, seen by the Author_
+
+  The captain of a British merchant ship, drunk on the bridge, ordered
+  his chief gunner to fire 50 rounds of shell at nothing. The gunner
+  fired four rounds to appease him. Going through the Mediterranean,
+  the drunken captain ordered his gunner to fire at a British hospital
+  ship, and the incident led to a struggle for life, which ended in
+  the captain’s being put in irons, tried, and sentenced to five
+  years’ penal servitude.
+
+                   _Record of Devon Assizes, Exeter, February 2, 1917_
+
+  An officer was left in charge of a British ship. Mad with drink, he
+  went among the men and shot one dead. He is now in an asylum.
+
+                                      _Case reported to the Admiralty_
+
+  The crew of a Dutch ship arriving in the Tyne was placed under a
+  naval guard after a drunken riot in which three were killed.
+
+                           _Facts in “Daily News,” September 14, 1915_
+
+  The captain of a Norwegian barque mysteriously disappeared, and the
+  vessel arrived in port from the North Sea. The mate, who had been
+  drinking heavily, was seen, with a hammer in his hand, with the
+  captain in a corner, bleeding from wounds about the head.
+
+                                _Facts in “Daily News,” April 8, 1916_
+
+  A seaman ashore in Glasgow, “wild with drink and passion,” was
+  terribly wounded in a quarrel in a public-house, and died the same
+  night. A youth of 19 was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude.
+
+                          _Records of Edinburgh High Court, Dec. 1916_
+
+  A barge-loader at West India Docks died from alcohol, and three
+  other men were removed in an ambulance after drinking rum.
+
+                             _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” May 9, 1916_
+
+  Orders were given on a steamer for the boats to be swung out in
+  readiness for submarines. The first and second officer, having been
+  drinking, could not do their duty.
+
+                   _Records of Liverpool Marine Board, April 13, 1917_
+
+  The jury returned a verdict of murder against a youth of 19 who,
+  after drinking one night, went on to his ship and killed the second
+  officer.
+
+                             _Records of Hull Coroner, April 24, 1917_
+
+  A drunken captain in command of a drifter landed with an armed party
+  on the Isle of Man. He posted the men on the quay, and gave them
+  orders to allow no one to pass. Declaring he would shoot every
+  person who came within reach, he fired twice, and threatened to kill
+  two police officers.
+
+                                   _Facts in “Times,” October 6, 1916_
+
+Such is the work of drink wherever it finds a soldier to entrap—the
+drink the Navy carries free from Southampton to the trenches; and from
+America comes the news, as this page is being written, that the Army and
+the Navy of our Western Ally, like the Army and the Navy of our Eastern
+Ally, are to be under Total Prohibition.
+
+               Will some Member of Parliament please ask
+
+=how much bread is destroyed each week to make beer for German
+internment camps in this country?=
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                        Drink and the Red Cross
+
+
+If the full story could ever be told of the national tragedy of drink
+and the war there would be no more ghastly chapter than that which would
+tell how drink fought the Red Cross; how, without pity, it hindered the
+work of mercy that is the general consolation of the world in days like
+these.
+
+We are coming to a famine not only in food, but in doctors. The
+death-roll has been heavy beyond all parallel; the strain on the medical
+services has been almost too great to be borne, and we look anxiously
+round to know where the doctors and nurses will come from. With
+Prohibition the problem would be largely solved, for the ordinary burden
+of life would be largely lifted from our doctors and hospitals, and
+thousands of men and women would be free to give themselves to the war
+instead of mending up and patching up the sordid effects of drink. A
+rich brewer gave a donation for extending a hospital. “Ah! but we should
+not have to extend if he would shut up his public-houses,” said a
+doctor.
+
+It is easy to see how drink is telling all the time against our doctors,
+our nurses, and our hospitals everywhere. Let us call a few witnesses.
+
+  Somebody gave a glass of neat whisky to two wounded men at a garden
+  party in Tottenham. Both were drunk when the brake came to take them
+  home, and one died on the way.
+
+                   _Facts in “Sheffield Telegraph,” September 3, 1915_
+
+  Three wounded soldiers at Oxford were overcome by four bottles of
+  rum smuggled into the hospital by visitors, and one of the men died.
+
+                             _Records of Oxford Coroner, January 1916_
+
+  A wounded soldier asked for two hours’ leave, came back in four
+  hours drunk with whisky, and died after a terrible night in the
+  hospital.
+
+                                               _Facts in “Daily Mail”_
+
+  Two limbless soldiers were found helplessly drunk on the pavement at
+  Brighton. A publican was fined £20.
+
+                       _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” November 25, 1916_
+
+  A wounded soldier, mentioned in despatches, was charged with causing
+  the death of a soldier with whom he had been drinking. Reeling under
+  a heavy blow, the injured man was helped to bed, but when the bugle
+  sounded in the morning he was dead.
+
+                            _Facts in “Daily Mail,” December 21, 1915_
+
+  A soldier, aged 29, with a gunshot wound in his arm, died from
+  alcohol at Oxford. One Sunday night he and two other wounded
+  soldiers consumed four bottles of rum brought into the hospital.
+
+                         _Records of Oxford Coroner, January 10, 1916_
+
+  Three soldiers in hospital uniform were found lying helplessly drunk
+  on the tramlines of Sheffield. Two were back from the Dardanelles.
+
+                            _Facts in “Sheffield Star,” March 2, 1916_
+
+  Seamen on a ship bringing wounded to England from Boulogne were so
+  drunk that they interfered with the stretcher bearers, and one fell
+  across a wounded soldier lying on deck.
+
+                         _Police Records of Southampton, May 14, 1915_
+
+  There was a paralysed and helpless man who was found hopelessly
+  drunk in hospital after his friends had visited him.
+
+                    _Statement by Lieut.-Col. Sir Alfred Pearce Gould_
+
+  An officer who has trained hundreds of men for the ambulance corps
+  declared that a large percentage of wounded are in a very nervous
+  condition, in which alcohol means collapse and almost certain death.
+
+                                              _Quoted in “Daily Mail”_
+
+  Lying helpless at a London station, moaning on the ground in drunken
+  delirium, was a lad in hospital blue who had, in truth, been wounded
+  by his friends. Drink was taking him again through the worst of his
+  experiences, and his mental pain was pitiable to see.
+
+                                 _Facts in the “Globe,” January, 1917_
+
+  Two drunken soldiers from Gallipoli made what a doctor described as
+  the most savage attack he ever saw on a civilian. They held a young
+  man’s head against a wall and pounded him unmercifully.
+
+                              _Facts in “Daily News,” August 19, 1916_
+
+  A party of soldiers were seriously injured in a struggle to arrest a
+  drunken private at Pontefract. The publican called on the men in his
+  taproom to rescue the private, but the sergeants drove them off.
+
+                              _Facts in “Daily News,” October 5, 1914_
+
+  A sergeant of a Welsh regiment, invited to drink by friends in
+  Waterloo Road, was picked up as he lay senseless, his pulse beating
+  feebly, his eyes wide open, and his body starving with cold.
+
+                            _Facts in “Daily News,” February 14, 1916_
+
+  A drunken man rushed from a publichouse and kicked a soldier
+  unconscious. The military police, chasing the man, were stoned. Four
+  soldiers were injured, one having his head cut open, and the
+  military were ordered to clear the place with fixed bayonets.
+
+                              _Facts in “Daily News,” August 11, 1915_
+
+  The medical officer in charge of the Mental Block of a large
+  military hospital said to the Colonel: “I have the worst job of all,
+  and it is through Drink, Drink, Drink! Men recover fairly soon from
+  shell shock, but officers, especially the younger ones, who
+  habitually take wines and spirits, are subject to relapses every few
+  days. It is awful!”
+
+                  _Facts in “National Temperance Quarterly,” May 1917_
+
+  Of the thirty war hospitals in Hertfordshire, with 8000 men passing
+  through them in the first thirty months of the war, there is not one
+  that has not had trouble with drink.
+
+                                           _Facts known to the Author_
+
+  A doctor from a Canadian hospital said a large percentage of their
+  troops had had to be sent back to Canada rendered permanently insane
+  through the action of alcohol.
+
+                             _Facts in “Daily News,” October 31, 1916_
+
+One terrible truth remains to be told of the crime of drink against the
+Red Cross. The most blessed thing in all the world today is alcohol, for
+it makes chloroform and ether, which soothe the pain of men. We cannot
+get enough of either of these consoling drugs, yet we go on wasting
+precious food to make more alcohol _to add to the sum of misery and
+pain_.
+
+               Will some Member of Parliament please ask
+
+=whether the bread ration applies equally to all; or if it may be
+exceeded if the excess is drunk instead of being eaten?=
+
+                                  and
+
+=how many brewers’ vats have been imported this year on ships which had
+no room for urgent munitions of war?=
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                     Stabbing the Army in the Back
+
+
+All the world is learning now that the drink trade is the great
+confederate of venereal disease. It leads a man into temptation,
+destroys his power of resistance, and retards his chances of recovery.
+
+We can never know the truth about the extent of this disease, about the
+way in which the liquor trade, by breaking down tens of thousands of our
+men, has stabbed the Army in the back. But the number of soldiers
+incapacitated by this disease through drink is enormously greater than
+the number incapacitated by the most subtle or dramatic stroke devised
+by the German staff.
+
+The lost man-power of the Army through this disease must be equal to the
+whole of the original British Expeditionary Force. The Government has
+given us figures for the Army at home last year, and they are 43 per
+1,000—or over 100,000 cases for an army of 2,500,000 men. There were
+7,000 cases in one Canadian camp alone.
+
+Here are the black facts revealed in a debate in Parliament on April 23,
+1917, when two distinguished Army officers, speaking with great
+restraint, sought to open the eyes of the nation to this plague fostered
+in our camps by drink:
+
+  “During the war we have had admitted into the hospitals of England
+  over 70,000 cases of gonorrhœa, over 20,000 cases of syphilis, and
+  over 6000 cases of another disease somewhat similar. I am quite
+  openly prepared to state that of these 20,000 cases of syphilis you
+  do not get much work out of them under two and a half years. I know
+  from what I have seen of the modern conditions of this War that you
+  may absolutely wipe them out, except for a few handfuls.
+
+  “When you come to the great mass of casualties under this head ...
+  the figures mean that you have =a Division constantly out of
+  action=. If you have anything like 70,000 men enfeebled, you find
+  that you suffer to that extent also. It is not only that you lose
+  the men, and not only the men who are partially cured are suffering
+  for many months to come, but their chances of recovery from wounds
+  are not nearly so good.
+
+  “I know of a hospital for venereal cases which it was found
+  necessary to expand from its normal accommodation for 500 or 600 up
+  to 2,000 cases, and they are continually full. It is a British
+  hospital in France. A figure I should like to submit to challenge is
+  that during the course of the war between 40,000 and 50,000 cases of
+  syphilis have passed through our hospitals in France. When you come
+  to gonorrhœa, the figure given me which covers that is between
+  150,000 and 200,000 cases.”
+
+                         _Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917_
+
+  “Every Canadian soldier who comes to this country arrives here not
+  only a first-class specimen of a fine soldier, but as clean-limbed
+  and as clean a man as the Creator Himself could create. The fact
+  that in one only of the three Canadian camps in this country 7,000
+  of these clean Canadian boys went through the hospital for venereal
+  disease in fourteen months is not only a great discredit to any
+  Government in this country but has an effect in Canada which I can
+  assure the House does not make for a better feeling with the Home
+  Country, and does not make for what we all desire—Imperial Unity.”
+
+           _Colonel Sir Hamar Greenwood in Parliament, April 23, 1917_
+
+Those are unchallenged statements made in the House of Commons itself;
+they stand as a terrible indictment of this disease, and it is not to be
+denied that this evil could never have reached its present frightful
+proportions if Parliament had followed the King. Let us look at a few
+examples of the ravages of this vice allied so closely to the
+public-house.
+
+  It is not possible to tell the whole truth about drink; the language
+  in which it must be written would be offensive in a civilised
+  country. It must be said, simply, that soldiers in England have been
+  court-martialled for having been influenced by drink to commit
+  unspeakable offences against animals.
+
+                                  _Facts in Records of Court-Martials_
+
+  A special constable in a harlot-haunted district in London describes
+  how these harpies carry off lonely soldiers to their rooms, make
+  them drunk, and finally innoculate them, as likely as not, with
+  disease. Is it not possible to hold in check these women who prey
+  upon and poison our soldiers? asks Sir Conan Doyle.
+
+                                               _Letter in the “Times”_
+
+  One of the hot-beds of venereal disease to which drink leads our
+  soldiers, was kept by an Austrian woman in Lambeth, who was
+  receiving 15_s._ a week from the Austrian Government in April 1916,
+  and used to lure our soldiers when weakened by drink. All the men
+  seen to enter this house were either soldiers or sailors.
+
+                                           _Police Records of Lambeth_
+
+  A soldier from the Front with £18 was taken by a married woman to
+  her home, where he was found after a drunken bout with eight women,
+  all drunk. The woman’s children were terribly neglected.
+
+                     _Police Records of St. Helens, November 30, 1915_
+
+  If you describe the Waterloo Road and the back streets as an open
+  sewer you will be somewhere near the truth. Not a day goes by
+  without bringing some soldier who has been waylaid.
+
+                             _Facts in the “Times,” February 22, 1917_
+
+  A soldier came from the Front to go home to Scotland. He got drunk
+  near Waterloo, losing all his money and his railway pass. He spent
+  his leave living on charity, and returned to the Front without
+  having been near either his home or his friends.
+
+                            _Facts in “Daily News,” February 14, 1916_
+
+Here is the official proof of the relation of the drink trade to this
+traffic in disease. It is from the Report of the Royal Commission:
+
+  Abundant evidence was given as to the intimate relation between
+  alcohol and venereal diseases.
+
+  Alcohol renders a man liable to yield to temptations which he might
+  otherwise resist, and aggravates the disease by diminishing the
+  resistance of the individual.
+
+  Alcoholism makes latent syphilis and gonorrhœa active.
+
+  Our evidence tends to show that the communication in disease is
+  frequently due to indulgence in intoxicants, and there is no doubt
+  that the growth of temperance among the population would help to
+  bring about an amelioration of the very serious conditions which our
+  enquiry has revealed.
+
+  We desire, therefore, to place on record our opinion that action
+  should be taken without delay.
+
+               Will some Member of Parliament please ask
+
+=if, in view of Lord D’Abernon’s statement that Prohibition has failed
+in Canada, the Government will issue the figures showing the decrease of
+crime and the increase of wealth?=
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                       The Price the Empire Pays
+
+
+It is a bitter irony that while the men of the Empire have come to
+France to fight the enemy of mankind, this foe within our gates has
+struck a blow at the British Empire that generations will not heal. How
+many Empire men this private trade has slain we do not know, but we know
+beyond all challenge that it has weakened the bonds that bind our
+Dominions to the Motherland. This trade that throttles us at home can
+pull the Empire down, and it has started well. It has struck its blow at
+Canada.
+
+Let us look at the plain facts which in other days than these would have
+caused a storm of anger that Parliament could not have ignored. Canada
+has followed the King; arming herself with her full powers, flinging
+herself upon her enemies with her utmost strength, she has swept drink
+out of Canada almost from sea to sea. But even before she did this
+Canada saw that alcohol must go from her camps if her men were to be fit
+to fight for England, and long before the Prohibition wave swept across
+the country, the Canadian Government removed all alcohol from the
+training camps. It was the deliberate choice of a Government and its
+people, and from that day to this there has been no reason for regret.
+
+So the young manhood of Canada, rallying to the flag, was guarded from
+alcohol. She poured out her men in hundreds of thousands; they came to
+us from Prohibition camps; they came in Prohibition ships, and even here
+this trade that has us in its grip was not allowed at first in the
+Canadian camps; the only condition that Canada made—a condition implied
+but clearly understood—was properly regarded and obeyed.
+
+We respected the desire of Canada, and kept her soldiers free from drink
+in their own camps. But a soldier cannot keep in camp, and in the
+villages around the Drink Trade waits in every street. The military
+authorities were willing for the Canadian Government to have their way
+inside the camps, but drink was free outside, and in these public-houses
+there was sown the seed that may one day break this Empire. The Drink
+Trade was so rampant outside the Canadian camps that Prohibition inside
+was almost in vain. We had to decide between breaking the word of the
+Canadian Government to its people or dealing with this trade as Canada
+herself has done; as Russia has done; as France and America are doing.
+It was the Empire or the drink traffic, and the drink traffic won, as it
+always wins with us.
+
+It came about in October, down on Salisbury Plain. During one week-end a
+number of Canadian troops gave way to drinking in villages around the
+camps, and it was then that the grave decision was come to that the
+drink trade should be allowed to set up its horrible canteens in every
+Canadian camp. The change was made at the request of a British General,
+and we have the assurance of the Prime Minister of Canada that the
+approval of the Canadian Government was neither obtained nor asked. In
+handing the Canadian Army over to the drink canteens, in deliberately
+reversing the policy of the Canadian Government and its people, there
+was no consultation with Canada.
+
+It is important to remember that this decision, fraught with tragic and
+far-reaching consequences for the Empire, was a pure and simple English
+act. We may imagine the Canadian view from the remark of a Canadian
+General, who said, “I know drink is a hindrance, but I can do very
+little, because in military circles in this country drunkenness is not
+considered a very serious offense.”
+
+It would have been surprising if there had not poured in upon our
+Government a stream of protests, and from all parts of the Dominions
+they came. The Dominion of Canada, giving freely to the Motherland
+450,000 boys and men, was moved to passionate indignation that England
+should scorn her love for them, should ignore the pleadings of their
+mothers and sisters, and should put in their way the temptations from
+which they were saved at home. Canada does not want our drink trade; she
+lives side by side with the United States, she sees that great country
+building up its future free from drink, and she sees America, splendid
+ally in war, as a mighty rival in peace.
+
+And Canada is ready for the Reconstruction. She has followed the
+Prohibition lead of the United States, and already she has ceased to be
+a borrowing country. The very first year of Prohibition has seen this
+young Dominion, for the first time in her history, financially
+self-sustaining. Crime is disappearing; social gatherings are held in
+her gaols; she has set up vast munition workshops, and instead of
+borrowing money for her own support she has made hundreds of millions’
+worth of munitions for which this country need not pay until the war is
+over, and then need never pay at all for the munitions the Canadians
+have used. Canada is in deadly earliest. She kept her men away from
+drink to make them fit; she has swept it away to make a clean country
+for those who go back.
+
+And what is England’s contribution to this Imperial Reconstruction? _We
+have scorned it all._ The Prime Minister has said that this drink trade
+is so horrible that it is worth this horrible war to settle with it, yet
+we have sacrificed the love of Canada on our brewers’ altar. We can
+believe the Canadian who declares his profound conviction that but for
+this Canada would have sent us 100,000 more recruits; we can believe it
+is true that where responsible Canadians meet together in these days the
+talk is of how long the tie will last unbroken that binds the daughter
+to the Motherland. We can understand the passion that lies behind the
+resolutions that come to Downing Street from Nova Scotia; we know the
+depth of the yearning of those 64,000 mothers and wives of Toronto who
+signed that great petition to the Government of Canada begging it in the
+name of God to intervene.
+
+We can understand it all; but let us call the witnesses, and let us see
+the price the Dominion pays for our quailing before this Kaiser’s trade.
+
+
+                       Those Who Will Not Go Back
+
+It is the great consolation of Canada that, though their sons may fall
+before this tempter’s trade in Britain, they will go back to a Canada
+free from drink. But some will never go back, and they are not on the
+Roll of Honour. They have been destroyed by the enemy within our gate,
+this trade that traps men on their way to France and digs their graves.
+
+  A young Canadian who had never tasted alcohol came from a
+  Prohibition camp in Canada, came to England on a Prohibition ship,
+  and was put in a camp with a drink canteen. He started drinking and
+  contracted venereal disease. Ordered home as unfit, in fear and
+  shame he sought a friend’s advice about the girl he was to marry.
+  “You can never marry her,” said his friend, and that night in his
+  hut the young Canadian blew out his brains.
+
+                                   _Facts in possession of the Author_
+
+  A young Canadian officer was sent home disgraced. Sodden with
+  alcohol, he left the train and shot a railway clerk dead.
+
+                _Facts in Montreal “Weekly Witness,” October 24, 1916_
+
+  A Russian soldier in the Canadian forces, described as a clean,
+  soldierly man, with a splendid character from his officer, was
+  charged with the murder of a Canadian private who tried to separate
+  two quarrelling soldiers in a bar. The prisoner had drunk much
+  whisky and remembered nothing of his crime, and was sentenced to
+  twelve months’ hard labour for manslaughter. The judge hoped he
+  might be used as a soldier _in the Russian Army_.
+
+                          _Record of Hampshire Assizes, February 1916_
+
+  A man from Prohibition Russia enlisted in Prohibition Canada, and
+  came to England. He spent 9_s._ on drink one day, and that night he
+  crept from his bed and killed his corporal at Witley Camp.
+
+                          _Police Records of Godalming, February 1917_
+
+  A Canadian soldier, aged 26, after a publichouse quarrel with
+  another soldier, was found dying on the pavement in Hastings. His
+  throat had been cut, and he died on entering the hospital. The other
+  soldier was charged with murder, and sentenced to 15 years.
+
+                              _Record of Hastings Assizes, March 1917_
+
+  A young Canadian soldier, aged 20, died from alcohol while in
+  training at Witley. He had a bottle of stout followed by nine or ten
+  “double-headers” of neat whisky in about two hours. He was carried
+  back to camp, laid unconscious on his bed, and died.
+
+                          _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” March 22, 1917_
+
+  A Canadian lieutenant was tried for the murder of a canteen
+  sergeant. They arrived together at a house at Grayshott, where the
+  lieutenant asked for some strong drink and took a bottle of whisky
+  and two glasses. The sergeant was afterwards found dead in the
+  cellar, and the lieutenant carried the body into the stable.
+
+                         _Records of Grayshott Coroner, December 1915_
+
+  A man leaving a publichouse in company with a woman, with whom he
+  had been drinking, met a Canadian soldier not far from Charing
+  Cross. The soldier spoke, and the man struck him. The soldier was
+  carried to the hospital, where he died soon afterwards from a wound
+  two inches deep, caused by a knife.
+
+                       _Police Records of Bow Street, January 1, 1917_
+
+  The wife of a gunner in the South African Heavy Artillery died at
+  Bexhill from alcohol. The soldier said he bought 12 bottles of stout
+  and 12 bottles of beer, one of whisky, and one of port, which they
+  drank between Saturday night and Monday night.
+
+                           _Records of Bexhill Coroner, December 1915_
+
+  A soldier from Toronto, having been drinking away his pay in a
+  Carlisle publichouse, with another Canadian soldier and some married
+  women, failed to appear the next morning, and was found dead on a
+  footpath with a bottle of whisky in his pocket
+
+                         _Records of Carlisle Coroner, April 14, 1917_
+
+  A Canadian soldier, having drawn £20 from the Canadian office,
+  visited several publichouses, and was killed in a scuffle in London.
+
+                             _Facts in “Daily News,” December 2, 1916_
+
+
+                   The Men From the Prohibition Camps
+
+Again and again we have seen the peculiar temptations of drink among
+Canadians. Officers, chief-constables, chaplains, newspapers, the men
+themselves, have all borne witness that to these men from Prohibition
+Canada the sudden temptations of our drink trade come with terrible
+power, and often they fall not knowing. The finest manhood of the Empire
+our tap-rooms and canteens destroy, not in isolated cases, but in a host
+we dare not number.
+
+Of the soldiers who first came over from Canada, says a great Canadian
+paper, many were emigrants from England, not yet securely planted in
+Canada, and for their sakes especially drink should have been withheld
+from them. Of the larger number of Canadian troops that followed them,
+many were youths who had never known drink, and they were taken from
+home at the most social and reckless age, to face drink with all the
+temptations induced by the nervous strain, the hardships and social
+abandon of the camp and the trench, and the free pocket-money when on
+leave.
+
+  In an officers’ mess of two double companies of Canadians only one
+  officer drank on his arrival in a canteen camp in England; within
+  three months there was not an abstainer in the mess.
+
+         _Facts told at Society for Study of Inebriety, Jan. 10, 1916_
+
+  These men come mostly from districts in Canada where intoxicants are
+  prohibited by law, and many of them, being young lads, who perhaps
+  have never tasted liquor before their arrival, fall easy victims.
+
+                                        _Chief Constable of Godalming_
+
+  Overseas soldiers come to our hospitals astonishingly cheerful and
+  fit in a general sense, and wonderfully receptive to treatment. Only
+  three per thousand die in our great hospitals. This is largely due
+  to the hardy life of the men and the fact that they are removed from
+  the danger of taking too much alcohol. The home troops have a much
+  higher mortality, partly because their use of alcohol diminishes
+  their chances. Re-admissions are largely due to drink on furlough.
+
+          _Major Maclean, M.D., of the Third Western General Hospital_
+
+  A Canadian soldier, who had been wounded at the Front, was taken to
+  a house by women and left alone drunk. An officer gave him an
+  excellent character, and said he was on his way back to Canada.
+  These men experience temptations here (he said) that they would not
+  find in Canada, and there was too much of this going on.
+
+                          _Hastings Police Records, February 19, 1917_
+
+  I heard a sad account of the havoc of the wet canteen and a private
+  in a Canadian A.M.C. told us of a lad of 17 who is made so drunk
+  that there is rarely a night when he has not to be helped up to bed.
+  One of the soldiers here told me of his son in Canada being anxious
+  to join up, but after seeing the condition of things over here he
+  was doing all he could to discourage his son.
+
+                                                _Letter to the Author_
+
+  The Canadians in most cases are entirely lost when they arrive in
+  this country, and are much more liable to the temptation which is
+  thrown in their way, but when you give a figure such as this—that in
+  one camp during last year, and two months of the previous year,
+  there were 7,000 cases—it seems to me that it is about time we
+  realised the magnitude of the evil. I do not know what has happened
+  to them, except that I imagine a large number have gone back to
+  Canada, and have not been able to play the part they had hoped to
+  play.
+
+                         _Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917_
+
+
+                          In Camp and On Leave
+
+Everywhere we find the trail of drink among Canadians—in camp and on
+leave.
+
+  A Canadian corporal, wounded in the Battle of Ypres, was found
+  terribly drunk after being missing all day from hospital. Confronted
+  with the surgeon after violent acts of insubordination, the corporal
+  broke down and cried like a child.
+
+                          _Facts in “Western Mail,” February 18, 1916_
+
+  In the first weeks of the war 42 Canadian soldiers disgraced
+  themselves, by excessive drinking, insubordination, and disorderly
+  conduct, to such an extent that they had to be sent back to Canada.
+
+                       _Facts in “Canadian Pioneer,” December 4, 1914_
+
+  A Canadian soldier, helplessly drunk, was seen at King’s Cross
+  station eating, tearing, and crumpling up £1 notes, and would have
+  lost about fifteen pounds but for kindly help from passers by.
+
+                      _Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” September 28, 1916_
+
+  A gunner from Montreal, missing from camp for several days, drank
+  himself delirious, and cut his throat with a razor.
+
+                       _Facts in “Canadian Pioneer,” December 4, 1914_
+
+  A Canadian soldier spent £70 in three weeks on drink and bad
+  characters.
+
+                               _Facts in “Daily Mail” August 10, 1915_
+
+  A Sergeant-Major from Canada declared that he had lost 20 per cent.
+  of the men of his battery through venereal disease. They had a
+  little drink, and were captured by the swarm of bad women at
+  Folkestone.
+
+                                           _Facts in Letter to Author_
+
+  A woman was imprisoned for placing young children in moral danger.
+  Every night the girls brought soldiers home, and colonial soldiers
+  were frequently so drunk that they were carried in.
+
+                   _Records of Central Criminal Court, April 25, 1917_
+
+
+                       The Rising Storm in Canada
+
+  =The thing cannot be justified. It is the blackest tragedy of this
+  whole war that, in fighting for freedom in Europe, the free sons of
+  the British breed have to face this war-time record of waste at
+  home, with its inevitable toll of debauchery and crime.=
+
+                                        _Editorial in “Toronto Globe”_
+
+While this book was being written one of the greatest meetings ever held
+in Manchester was cheering a Canadian in khaki who declared that he was
+not going hungry while brewers were destroying food, and he went on to
+say, this soldier and sportsman well-known in the Dominion:
+
+  “Great numbers of our men never saw France. Canadian boys cried
+  because they had not munitions. England reeled and beer flowed like
+  water while thousands of our boys went down into their graves. We
+  will never forget it in Canada.”
+
+We may be sure Canada will not forget. She will not forget her dead: she
+will not forget that the Drink Traffic she has swept away at home struck
+down her sons in the land for which they fought. “We must know who is to
+blame,” says a Canadian paper; “we presume they will have no objection
+to have their names placarded before the country, that every mother may
+know.” Col. Sir Hamar Greenwood, M. P., has lately returned from Canada,
+and this is what he tells us:
+
+  “I met many fathers and mothers whose boys had been sent back to
+  Canada debilitated and ruined for life because they had been
+  enmeshed by harpies, and again and again these parents have said to
+  me, ‘We do not mind our boys dying on the field of battle for old
+  England, but to think that we sent our sons to England to come back
+  to us ruined in health, and a disgrace to us, to them, and to the
+  country, is something the Home Country should never ask us to
+  bear.’”
+
+  _Letter from a Solicitor in Ontario to the Author_:
+
+  I wonder if the advocates of the drink traffic in Britain appreciate
+  the contempt in which they are held in Canada. Before the war I had
+  a class of ten young men. Every one of them is now at the Front, and
+  one writes that when I told them of the drink conditions in England
+  he did not believe half of it; now he says I did not tell him half.
+  Letters from our Canadian soldiers are appearing in our papers, and
+  they are all amazed at the drinking habits of Britain.
+
+  _From a Resolution received by Mr. Lloyd George from the Social
+  Service Council of Nova Scotia_:
+
+  That we, representing the social, moral, and spiritual forces of
+  this part of the British Empire, who have proved our loyalty by the
+  thousands of men this small province has sent overseas, do record
+  our most earnest protest against Britain’s inaction in this matter,
+  which we are sure must result in longer and increased suffering for
+  the men we have sent to help her win the war; and do most
+  insistently plead with the British Government and the British
+  Parliament that they at once exercise the power vested in them to
+  strike the blow that will dispose of this enemy at home, and so give
+  mighty reinforcement to those who are bleeding and dying for Britain
+  and human liberties on the battlefields abroad.
+
+  _Sermon by Dr. Flanders in London, Ontario, Feb. 25, 1917_:
+
+  Canada has the right to make this demand on the Motherland from the
+  simple standpoint of political economics. That we might put the
+  Dominion into the best possible shape to give the utmost of our
+  strength in men and munitions, we have an almost Dominion-wide
+  Prohibition, and no intelligent person will deny that our
+  contributions to the war from the first have been multiplied and
+  intensified by that action. Why should little Johnnie Canuck abolish
+  drink that he might conserve his manhood and material resources in
+  the interest of the Empire’s war, and big John Bull refuse to
+  abolish the traffic to the great waste of his material resources and
+  the undoing of his efficiency?
+
+  _A public man with three soldier sons wrote to the Toronto Globe_:
+
+  Canada, for efficiency in war, casts out the drink evil. Is it too
+  much to expect Britain, in fairness, to do the same? Is it not a
+  mockery for the British Isles to face our common struggle with this
+  palsy in her frame?
+
+  Here is the bitter pill, the embittering thought for many a Canadian
+  parent. Let me be a type. Three of my sons are in khaki. I gave them
+  a father’s blessing when they enlisted. But this thought strains,
+  most of all, the ties of my loyalty to the cause—to see my sons
+  fight and fall for a Britain that at home is saddled by distillery
+  interests, and misguided by a Press silent as the grave on this
+  entrenched evil. Why should our sons go from a country where booze
+  is banished to spend months on the way to the trenches in England,
+  where the vices of the liquor traffic are legalised?
+
+  _We see the spirit of Canada in those great words of the Premier of
+  Ontario, Mr. Hearst, speaking of the giving up of drink_:
+
+  In this day of national peril, in this day when the future of the
+  British Empire, the freedom of the world, and the blessings of
+  democratic government hang in the balance, if I should fail to
+  listen to what I believe to be the call of duty, if I should neglect
+  to take every action that in my judgment will help to conserve the
+  financial strength and power and manhood of this province for the
+  great struggle in which we are engaged, I would be a traitor to my
+  country, a traitor to my own conscience, and unworthy of the brave
+  sons of Canada that are fighting, bleeding and dying for freedom and
+  for us.
+
+  _A letter from one of the most eminent public men in Canada_:
+
+  “British Canada is intensely loyal to the Empire and the Allied
+  Cause, but at present recruiting is almost at an end. Why? Partly
+  because of considerable dissatisfaction with many of the conditions
+  which prevail. Suffering, wounds, death, are expected as inevitable
+  in war, but the evil influences, the lavish temptations of liquor
+  and bad women which sweep down upon our boys in England, are not
+  felt to be necessary, and the hearts of multitudes of Canadian
+  parents are hot with indignation at the apparent indifference of the
+  authorities to the moral welfare of our troops.”
+
+  _Captain John MacNeill, with the Canadian troops in France_:
+
+  “I say to you solemnly, if England should lose this war because of
+  drink, or if England should unnecessarily prolong the war with great
+  sacrifice of life in her effort to protect drink, or even if England
+  should win the war in spite of drink, you will have put upon the
+  bonds of Empire such a strain as they have never known before, and
+  such a strain as we cannot promise they will be able to survive.”
+
+  _From the petition presented to the Prime Minister of Canada, signed
+  by 64,000 mothers and wives in Toronto_:
+
+  1. That Mothers and Wives of Canada in giving their sons and
+  husbands for King and Empire, asked and received from your Minister
+  of Militia this only assurance that, in sending them into the ranks,
+  we were not hereby irrevocably thrusting them into the temptation of
+  Strong Drink.
+
+  2. We appreciated from the depths of our hearts, your action in
+  abolishing the Wet Canteen from the Canadian Militia. We believe the
+  Wet Canteen established in the ranks of the front to be a double
+  danger, robbing our King of the success in arms which in these days
+  comes only to the brave heart that is controlled by a clear head,
+  and robbing us and our Canada of the Manhood which we gave into our
+  Empire’s keeping.
+
+  3. We do not believe that the King will refuse the aid of Canada’s
+  sons; nor that he will appreciate your patriotic efforts the less,
+  if you keep faith with us and make known to His Majesty, his
+  Ministers and Commanders, that our boys are sent forth on the one
+  condition that the dispensing of intoxicating liquors shall be
+  prohibited in the ranks.
+
+  _From a Sermon preached in Ontario, February 25, 1917_:
+
+  “Thank God, if any of our Canadian soldiers return to us with the
+  drink habit formed and raging, we can welcome them to a land nearly
+  purged of the liquor traffic, where they may have a chance to
+  recover their manhood.”
+
+  _Letter on the effects of Prohibition, from a business man in
+  Ontario, published in the “Spectator:”_
+
+  “Men I have known for years to be regular promenading tanks have
+  given it up, and are starting a decent life again. The Police Court
+  is empty. England should try it. It would be, after the first heavy
+  initial loss, the best thing that ever struck the nation. I cursed
+  these temperance guys as hard as any, but all the same it cannot
+  blind you from the truth.”
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                     Your Share in the Food Crisis
+
+
+         The Food and Money Wasted on Drink in Our Great Towns
+
+           ESTIMATED FROM AUGUST 1914 TO APRIL 1917 INCLUSIVE
+                       by GEORGE B. WILSON, B.A.,
+                  Compiler of the National Drink Bill
+
+   ───────────────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────┬──────────────
+                          │ Drink Bill  │ Grain Lost  │Sugar in Beer
+   ───────────────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼──────────────
+                          │             │    Tons     │     lb.
+   United Kingdom         │ £510,000,000│    4,400,000│   762,000,000
+   London                 │  £83,000,000│      693,000│   120,000,000
+   Edinburgh              │   £3,200,000│       31,000│     5,300,000
+   Dublin                 │   £2,600,000│       29,000│     5,000,000
+   Glasgow                │  £10,500,000│      101,000│    17,400,000
+   Manchester and Salford │  £11,000,000│       92,000│    15,900,000
+   Birmingham             │   £9,900,000│       82,000│    14,200,000
+   Liverpool              │   £8,800,000│       73,000│    12,600,000
+   Sheffield              │   £5,400,000│       45,000│     7,800,000
+   Leeds                  │   £5,300,000│       44,000│     7,600,000
+   Bristol                │   £4,200,000│       35,000│     6,000,000
+   West Ham               │   £3,400,000│       28,000│     4,900,000
+   Bradford               │   £3,300,000│       28,000│     4,800,000
+   Hull                   │   £3,300,000│       27,000│     4,700,000
+   Newcastle              │   £3,100,000│       26,000│     4,500,000
+   Nottingham             │   £3,100,000│       26,000│     4,500,000
+   Portsmouth             │   £2,800,000│       23,000│     4,400,000
+   Stoke                  │   £2,800,000│       23,000│     4,000,000
+   Leicester              │   £2,700,000│       22,000│     3,800,000
+   Cardiff                │   £2,100,000│       18,000│     3,100,000
+   Bolton                 │   £2,100,000│       18,000│     3,000,000
+   Croydon                │   £2,100,000│       17,000│     3,000,000
+   Sunderland             │   £1,700,000│       14,000│     2,500,000
+   Oldham                 │   £1,700,000│       14,000│     2,500,000
+   Birkenhead             │   £1,600,000│       13,000│     2,200,000
+   Blackburn              │   £1,500,000│       13,000│     2,200,000
+   Brighton               │   £1,500,000│       13,000│     2,200,000
+   Plymouth               │   £1,500,000│       12,000│     2,100,000
+   Derby                  │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,100,000
+   Middlesbrough          │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,100,000
+   Stockport              │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,100,000
+   Norwich                │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,100,000
+   Southampton            │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,000,000
+   Swansea                │   £1,400,000│       12,000│     2,000,000
+   Gateshead              │   £1,400,000│       11,000│     2,000,000
+   Preston                │   £1,400,000│       11,000│     1,900,000
+   Coventry               │   £1,300,000│       11,000│     1,900,000
+   Huddersfield           │   £1,300,000│       10,000│     1,800,000
+   Halifax                │   £1,200,000│       10,000│     1,700,000
+   ───────────────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────┴──────────────
+
+
+                             PLAY THE GAME
+
+           There is one week’s bread in      18 pints of beer
+           There is one week’s sugar in      16 pints of beer
+
+  The man who drinks 3 pints a day drinks another man’s rations.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                 THE FOOD PYRAMIDS DESTROYED FOR DRINK
+
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  The Great Pyramid of Egypt, the biggest construction in stone ever
+    made by the hands of man—80,000,000 cubic feet of masonry]
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  The Great Pyramids of Food, the biggest wilful destruction of food
+    ever known—180,000,000 cubic feet of food destroyed for the Drink
+    Trade during the war]
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                      How the Brewer Gets Our Food
+
+
+THE MEN WHO BRING IT
+
+It is easy to talk of a mine-sweeper. I wish the whole nation could
+understand what these men are doing. They are feeding the whole
+population, battling with the elements as well as with the enemy,
+battling with dangers overhead and dangers under the sea. The
+mine-sweeper is like the soldier daily over the parapet—he carries his
+life in his hand.
+
+                                          _First Lord of the Admiralty._
+
+
+THE PEOPLE WHO WAIT FOR IT
+
+A London caterer ordered a quantity of sugar from the Philippines. The
+mine-sweepers cleared the way for it and it reached the docks. The
+caterer sent for it, and was informed that it could only be delivered if
+it was for a brewer.
+
+A provincial caterer ordered sugar _and paid for it_, but was told by
+the Food Controller that it could only be released if _it was sold to a
+brewer_.
+
+A working man was discussing rations with his minister in the street.
+“It is very hard,” he said, “to keep to your rations when you have five
+strapping lads, but we are going to try it.” Then a drunken man lurched
+past. The workman pulled himself together, and said, in great passion:
+“I tell you what it is, sir, I am not going to let my boys starve as
+long as there is food to make beer for men like that.”
+
+
+THE PRICE WE PAY FOR IT
+
+Immense quantities of food are used for beer and spirits. All this grain
+is lost for food purposes. _If this grain were available for food, the
+prices of bread and meat would be lowered._
+
+                                                _War Savings Committee._
+
+
+THE POOR WHO SUFFER FOR IT
+
+“Rationing bread could not be undertaken without grave risk to the
+health of the poor.”
+
+                                                 _Capt. Bathurst, M. P._
+
+                   By what right does the Government
+
+use our mine-sweepers to bring in food for brewers to destroy? allow
+brewers to increase the cost of living for every household? and allow
+the willful destruction of food supplies to imperil the health of the
+poor?
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                       The Way for the Government
+
+
+We do not want to be amused by fiddlers while our heroes fight and die.
+
+What are the things we see? We see the Government silent in the presence
+of what the greatest paper in our greatest overseas Dominion calls “the
+blackest tragedy of the war.” We see a trade which the King declared to
+be prolonging the war in the crisis of 1915, prolonging it still in the
+crisis of 1917. We see our Prime Minister, who has declared this trade
+to be worse than Germany, allowing it to have its way. We see our Prime
+Minister, who has said we cannot settle with Germany until we have
+settled with drink, fearing to settle with drink. Then are we not to
+settle with Germany, and are we to surrender to the greatest enemy of
+the three?
+
+There is one clear way before the Government; it is the only way of
+straightness and patriotism and honour. It is to wind up this enemy
+trade and move from our path the greatest hindrance to the winning of
+the war. It is to take our side honourably with our great Allies, to
+bring to an end the shameful isolation of Great Britain in the drink map
+of the great free countries that appears on the back of this book.
+
+It is the sign of weakness everywhere that it seeks a scapegoat for its
+sins, and we hear the everlasting talk of Labour. But it will not do. It
+is time these slanders on our workmen ceased.
+
+If the Government is afraid of the working man, let it say so, or let it
+try him. If it is afraid of temperance people, let it rally them to its
+side as one man on the platform where they meet. If it is afraid of the
+Drink Trade, then the time has come to say so, for we who send out our
+millions to fight a foreign foe are not going to starve for bread
+through fear of enemies within our gate. The Prime Minister gave the
+Army its munitions; the Army will use them in vain unless the munitions
+of life come into our homes.
+
+Working men are tired of men who fool with food and liberty. They do not
+object to any equal sacrifice: they believe in the democratic policy of
+the King, who based Prohibition, not on class distinction as the
+Government did by closing tap-rooms 15 hours a day and leaving cellars
+and Parliamentary bars open always, but on the principle of the King’s
+own words that “no difference shall be made, so far as his Majesty is
+concerned, between the treatment of the rich and poor in this respect.”
+Let the Government follow the King, and the people will follow the
+Government.
+
+In the highest interests of the nation and the war let this be said as
+plain as words can make it—_that there is no body of temperance opinion
+anywhere standing in the way of Prohibition_, but that the united moral
+forces of the nation would rally to the Government instantly on an act
+of a few words such as this:
+
+=That the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages be totally
+prohibited in the United Kingdom for the period of the war and
+demobilization, and that a committee be appointed to deal with all the
+private and public interests concerned; and that it be resolved upon,
+here and now, that reconstruction be accompanied by universal local
+option.=
+
+There would be no opposition the Government need count to a proposal
+like that.
+
+[Illustration: TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION LABEL WESTERVILLE O.]
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s note:
+
+Obvious typographical and punctuation errors were corrected.
+
+Inconsistencies in hyphenation were retained.
+
+
+
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+<body>
+<h1 class="pg">The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Fiddlers, by Arthur Mee</h1>
+<p>This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
+and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
+restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
+under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+eBook or online at <a
+href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>.  If you are not
+located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this ebook.</p>
+<p>Title: The Fiddlers</p>
+<p>       Drink in the Witness Box </p>
+<p>Author: Arthur Mee</p>
+<p>Release Date: December 15, 2016  [eBook #53733]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: UTF-8</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIDDLERS***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>E-text prepared by MWS, ellinora,<br />
+    and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br />
+    from page images generously made available by<br />
+    Internet Archive<br />
+    (<a href="https://archive.org">https://archive.org</a>)</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      <a href="https://archive.org/details/fiddlersdrinkinw00meea">
+      https://archive.org/details/fiddlersdrinkinw00meea</a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<div class="body">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='cover' class='ig001' />
+</div>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+
+<div>
+  <h1 class='c001'><span class='xxlarge'>The Fiddlers</span> <br /> <span class='xlarge'>Drink in the <br /> Witness Box</span></h1>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c1'>
+<div class='nf-center c000'>
+    <div><i>By</i> ARTHUR MEE</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='lg-container-l c002'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><i>If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain;</i></div>
+      <div class='line'><i>If thou sayest, “Behold, we knew it not;” doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it?</i></div>
+      <div class='line'><i>And shall not He render to every man according to his works?</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c1'>
+<div class='nf-center c003'>
+    <div>Published by MORGAN &amp; SCOTT, <span class='sc'>Ltd</span></div>
+    <div>12 Paternoster Buildings, London, E. C. 4</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<table class='table0' summary=''>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c004'>First Hundred Thousand</td>
+    <td class='c005'>May 15, 1917</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c004'>Second Hundred Thousand</td>
+    <td class='c005'>June 1, 1917</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c1'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>Reprinted in the United States by</div>
+    <div>THE AMERICAN ISSUE PUBLISHING COMPANY</div>
+    <div>Westerville, Ohio</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/image002.jpg' alt='Old man in suit with skeleton crouching behind his back' class='ig001' />
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>DRINK LEADING FAMINE IN</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p class='c006'>The Drink Trade gave Germany her greatest weapon in the war by
+helping to make the bread famine.</p>
+
+<p class='c006'>It was the wilful destruction of 4,800,000 tons of food, depriving the
+nation of her reserves, that led to the appalling gravity of the submarine
+menace.</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/image003.jpg' alt='woman in dress and helmet holding sword' class='ig001' />
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Drink, What did You do in the Great War?</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>This impressive picture of Britannia is from</div>
+      <div class='line'>the splendid 1916 issue of Bibby’s Annual</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/image004.jpg' alt='map of four countries' class='ig001' />
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>THE ALLIES AND PROHIBITION—STOPPING DRINK TO WIN THE WAR<br />The Drink Map before the War and on the 1000th day of the War</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>CANADA—Prohibition almost from Sea to Sea</div>
+      <div class='line'>FRANCE—Total Prohibition of Absinthe</div>
+      <div class='line'>RUSSIA—Prohibition Everywhere</div>
+      <div class='line'>BRITAIN—120,000 Drink shops open daily</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Wages of Sin</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>The time has come when it should be said that those responsible
+for our country now stand on the very threshold of eternal glory or
+eternal shame. They play and palter with the greatest enemy force
+outside Berlin. The news from Vimy Ridge comes to a land whose
+rulers quail before a foe within the gate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Not for one hour has the full strength of Britain been turned against
+her enemies. From the first day of the war, while our mighty Allies
+have been striking down this foe within their gates, Britain has let this
+trade stalk through her streets, serving the Kaiser’s purposes, and paying
+the Government £1,000,000 a week for the right to do it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She has let this trade destroy our food and bring us to the verge
+of famine; she has let it keep back guns and shells and hold up ships;
+she has let it waste our people’s wealth in hundreds of millions of
+pounds; she has let it put its callous brake on the merciful Red Cross;
+she has let it jeopardize the unity and safety of the Empire—for it may
+yet be found, as Dr. Stuart Holden has so finely said, that the links that
+bind the Pax Britannica are solvable in that great chemist’s solvent,
+alcohol.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The witnesses are too great to number; we can only call a few.
+There is no room for all those witnesses whose evidence is in the House
+of Commons Return 220 (1915), showing the part drink played in the
+great shell famine, in delaying ships and guns, and imperiling the Army
+and the Fleet.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But the indictment is heavy. I charge this trade with the crime
+the King laid at its door two years ago, the crime of prolonging the war;
+and the witnesses are here at the bar of the people. The verdict is with
+them, and the judgment is with those who rule.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>The wages of sin is death: What are the wages of those who fail in
+an hour like this?</i></p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>Fiddling to Disaster</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c008'>We are not going to lose the war through the submarines if we all behave
+like reasonable human beings who want to save their country from disaster, privation
+and distress.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='small'>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>The Prime Minister</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'><i>What are we to say of a Government that plays with war and drink
+and famine while these brave words are ringing in our ears?</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>If the situation is so desperate that we must all go short of food, it
+is desperate enough for the Government to be in earnest. But what are
+the plain facts? No reasonable man who knows them can say that the
+Government is in earnest.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is not denied by anybody who knows the facts that drink has been
+the greatest hindrance of the war. There is not a doubt that it has prolonged
+the war for months and cost us countless lives. It is the duty
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_6'>6</span>of the Government to face a dangerous thing like this; it is its duty to
+pursue the war with a single eye to the speediest possible victory. But
+the records of our war Governments in dealing with drink have been
+records of fiddling and failure, and we stand in the third year of the war
+with a Government fiddling still.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>One thing will be perfectly clear if disaster and famine come. It
+will be known to all the world that the Government knew the facts in
+time to save us. We are in the war because we would not listen in
+times of peace. We are in the third year of the war because we would
+not listen in the first. We are faced with famine because we would not
+listen in times of plenty, when drink was breaking down our food reserves.
+And we are drifting now, nearer to disaster every day, because
+the Government surrenders to the enemy worse than Germany.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It does not matter where you look, or when; the evidence of the
+fiddling is everywhere about you. Take the week before the Prime
+Minister’s grave speech about submarines—ending May 19.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>Submarines destroyed 27 British cargoes, mostly over 1600 tons.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>Brewers destroyed 27 British food cargoes, totaling 9000 tons.</b></p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>The granaries of Canada were crammed with wheat waiting for British ships,
+but there were no ships to bring this people’s food.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>The rum quay at London Docks was crammed with casks of rum to last
+till 1920, but a ship arrived with 1000 Casks more.</b></p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>A woman was fined £5 for destroying a quartern loaf.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>Brewers were fined nothing for destroying millions of loaves.</b></p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>Poor people waited in queues to buy sugar in London.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>Cartloads of sugar were destroyed in London breweries.</b></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>And so we might go on, looking on this picture and on that till
+the mind almost reels with the solemn farce. The Prime Minister has
+suggested that the farce does not end because those who demand its
+end cannot make up their mind. It is the Government that cannot make
+up its mind.</p>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c009'>It tells Parliament that no more rum is to be imported, and goes on importing
+rum for years ahead.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It forbids the use of spirits less than three years old, and reduces the three
+years to 18 months.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It restricts beer to 10,000,000 barrels, and tells us one day that it is all-inclusive,
+and the next day that the Army Council can order as much extra beer as it likes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It issues a report saying that hops are not food, and gives up hundreds of thousands
+of feet to shipping them; 23,000 cubic feet the other week.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It tells us that not an inch of shipping is wasted, and wastes shipping on bringing
+brewers’ vats from America and taking gin to Africa.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It tells us that the Drink Trade gave up its distilleries patriotically, and leaves
+us to discover that it was made the subject of a bargain by which bread was being
+destroyed for whisky as late as May this year.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is quite clear that the Government is desperately in need of a
+scapegoat, and desperately in need of a defense. Prohibition Russia
+is not mightily impressed with our drinking; serious Canadians are
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>asking how long they are to sacrifice their manhood to our brewers;
+America is asking already why she should go short of bread in order
+that England may drink more beer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A Government must clearly say something in view of these things,
+and it has put its defense in the care of one of the sanest and cleverest
+men in the United Kingdom, Mr. Kennedy Jones. If Mr. Jones does
+not make out a case for it, there is no case to make. What does he say?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>1. <i>We are told that only five per cent. of malt can be mixed with
+flour for bread.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All over the country this explanation is supposed to satisfy those
+simple, honest people who know little about percentages but ask plain
+questions at Food Economy meetings. It is preposterous nonsense.
+If we have 200,000 tons of malted barley, what on earth does it matter
+whether we mix it at fifty, or five, or two per cent., so long as we do
+mix it? <i>It adds 200,000 tons to our bread in any case.</i> This talk of five
+per cent., puzzling to people who think it means that only one-twentieth
+of this malted barley can be used, is pitiful evidence, surely, of the straits
+to which the Food Controller’s Defense Department is reduced.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>2. <i>We are told that the barley destroyed for beer would give the nation
+only ten days’ bread.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It would actually last us a fortnight. Drink, which has taken a
+quartern loaf from every British cupboard in every week of the war,
+is taking still a quartern loaf a month from every cupboard, and the
+desperate appeals of Mr. Kennedy Jones will be more effective in saving
+crumbs when he can tell us that he has stopped this monstrous
+destruction of over 1,000 tons of grain a day.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>3. <i>We are told that our munition workers are dependent on beer.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is an astounding slander. However true it may be of Governments,
+it is not true of our workmen. For four months the workman
+has been the scapegoat of this Government in its surrender to this trade,
+and we are asked at last to believe that these men who saved us from
+the Shell Famine are willing to drink us into a Bread Famine. Does
+the Government never pause to ask how millions of munition workers
+in America and Canada and the United Kingdom manage without beer?
+Does nobody in the Government know that the greatest steel furnaces
+in America are under total Prohibition, and that two million American
+railwaymen are subject to instant dismissal if they touch drink while
+on duty? Has the Government not read its own report of the Royal
+Society Committee which had this point in mind six months ago, and
+told us, on the highest authority in this country, that soldiers march
+better and keep fitter without alcohol; that men do more work on less
+energy without alcohol; and that “the records of American industrial
+experience are significant in showing a better output when no alcohol
+is taken by the workmen”?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>4. <i>We are told we need this trade for yeast.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We need not bother overmuch about that. Industrial alcohol will
+give us all we want, and there is no need to carry on this dangerous
+trade for the sake of yeast. We do not need a single ounce of brewer’s
+yeast, and we can do without distiller’s yeast as well by setting up a
+thousandth part of the machinery we have set up in the last two years.
+Or, while we must have yeast, we need about 30,000 tons a year for the
+whole United Kingdom, and since the prohibition of hops in June last
+year <i>we have given enough shipping to hops every fortnight to bring in
+enough yeast for a year</i>. A Government with shipping to spare like
+that, with room on its ships for mountains of hops, for enormous brewers’
+vats, and for rum for 1921, can find room for 100 tons a day of the
+people’s bread. It is a monstrous perversion of the facts to suggest that
+we must maintain this food-destroying trade, with all its hideous
+tragedy and ruin, in order to make bread.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It cannot be said that a Government with such desperate excuses
+is in earnest. We do not wonder that a great American farmers’ paper,
+with no axe to grind except that it is sane and patriotic and believes in
+the war, is asking plain questions as America prepares her Prohibition
+Army, her Prohibition Navy, and stops the destruction of grain for
+drink in order to enter the war at full strength.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Let the Food Controller, the Prime Minister, and every responsible
+citizen of the United Kingdom read this—it is from the most influential
+flour-milling paper in the world, the “North Western Miller,” published
+in Minneapolis:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“<b>Since the United States will be called upon to make food sacrifices
+on behalf of the Allies, it is certainly in order to call to account the
+stewardship of Great Britain in regard to food supplies. Ordinarily
+America would have no right to demand such an account, but Americans
+are now asked to deny themselves that Britain may have sufficient.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“<b>Britain has not seen fit to prohibit the use of cereals in the manufacture
+of drink, notwithstanding that the world’s food supply was obviously
+short. Are Americans required to forego a part of their accustomed
+ration of bread in order that their British Allies can continue
+to have a plentiful supply of beer and whisky? If not, then Britain
+should lose no time in putting its house in order, quitting the drink to
+add to the common store of food upon which the safety of all the Allies
+depends.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“<b>The food supply for the Allies is no longer a purely local proposition,
+to be used as a football in British politics; it deeply concerns the
+people of the United States, who are certainly not called upon to deny
+themselves bread in order that Britain shall have drink.</b>”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>What is the Government’s answer to this? “We owe a very considerable
+debt of gratitude to the great American people for the effective
+assistance they are rendering us,” says the Prime Minister.
+<i>Is this the way we pay them back?</i> It is an ugly question for our great
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>Ally to have to raise as she comes into the war, flinging her Prohibition
+Navy in to smash the drink-made menace of the submarine. It is unthinkable
+that the Government can read these bitter words unmoved,
+or can leave this stain on our history in the face of all these questionings.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There is another question, too, that comes across the Atlantic.
+What is the Government going to do with the soldiers of America’s
+Prohibition Army, and the sailors of America’s Prohibition Navy, when
+they come over here? Are they to be broken in their thousands, made
+useless and degraded as thousands of men from Prohibition Canada have
+been, by the enemy that traps them before they reach the war?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They are questions for the Government and the nation, and they
+must be answered in the interests of the nation, and not to please the
+trade that helps the Germans every day. We cannot afford to pay the
+appalling price the future will demand unless our fiddlers change their
+tune.</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Drink Trade and Our War Services</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'><b>It is not possible to measure the strain the Drink Traffic has imposed
+on our war services.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Food Controller’s Organization, with its great offices and
+staffs, would not have been needed had we saved the food destroyed
+by drink.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Rationing already involves 1,200 committees, and may mean 50,000
+officials and 50,000,000 tickets weekly. It could all be avoided. Prohibition
+would save more bread without food controlling than all the
+food controlling can save without Prohibition.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The National Service, with its network of officials, its costly advertising,
+its absorption of paper and printing, could all have been avoided
+under Prohibition. About 200,000 men have enrolled, but Prohibition
+would give us twice that man-power any day.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The strain on a host of men and women looking after soldiers’ children
+neglected through drink, soldiers’ wives spending allowances on
+drink, is incalculable.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The strain on war charities and the strain on the police arising
+from drink are both very great.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The strain of drink on doctors, nurses, and hospitals is beyond belief.
+Prohibition would set free for the Red Cross thousands who waste
+their time on the great drink trail.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The strain on transport is seen in the long lines of wagons drawn
+by strong horses carting beer to public-houses. This year alone the
+handling of drink must equal the lifting of at least 9,000,000 tons, and
+the barrels of beer would fill nearly all the railway wagons in the kingdom.
+As to ships, drink materials during the war have used up 60
+ships of 5,000 tons working all the time.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>On Lord Milner’s estimate of 19 barrels to the truck it would require
+4,500,000 railway trucks to carry the 17,000,000 tons of beer manufactured
+in the United Kingdom during the war.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>It can be proved from official figures that the weight of drink-stuff
+carried about since war began has been equal to the weight of solid
+material carried by the Navy to all our fighting fronts.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is a crying shame that the strength of Britain should be destroyed
+like this in such an hour as this.</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The War-Work of the Food Destroyers</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>There are hundreds of great Food Destructors in the United Kingdom.
+The man-power at their service, spread over our breweries and
+distilleries, numbers hundreds of thousands of men; their capital is
+hundreds of millions. This is a summary of the work they did in the
+first 1,000 days of the war:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>They sacrificed 4,400,000 tons of grain and 340,000 tons of sugar,
+enough to ration the whole United Kingdom with bread for 43 weeks
+and sugar for 33 weeks.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>They took from every kitchen cupboard in the land 600 pounds of
+bread and 76 pounds of sugar.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>They destroyed bread and sugar to last every child under fifteen
+for every day of the war.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>They took from our people over £512,000,000.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>They used up labour and transport for lifting over 50,000,000 tons.
+By sea they used up 60 ships of 5,000 tons; by rail their raw materials
+and the finished products would make up a train long enough to reach
+nearly round the world.</b></p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Food Now Being Destroyed for Beer</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Look at the actual facts about beer alone. We will ignore distilling,
+as it gives us munitions and yeast. Had the Government tried to solve
+the yeast question it could have solved it easily in these three years;
+it would have had no more trouble with that problem than Russia and
+Canada and America have had. But as the Government is still investigating
+the yeast question, we will confine our figures to beer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>Brewers are destroying 450,000 4-lb. loaves a day.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>This year’s food destruction for beer alone will equal five weeks’
+bread rations and four weeks’ sugar rations for the whole United
+Kingdom.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>We have seven critical weeks in this summer, and this year’s destruction
+of food would carry us through.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>Beer alone is taking 10 pounds of sugar a year from every kitchen
+cupboard, and an ounce of sugar a day from every soldier.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>That is what drink is doing at this moment with the shadow of
+famine creeping on.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>“<i>He who withholdeth the corn the people shall curse him.</i>” Proverbs.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Shadow of Famine</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>The Government came into office with the food shortage in sight;
+it was its first duty to build up the great reserve of food we might have
+had now in our granaries if the drink trade had not destroyed it. We
+could have laughed at submarines, for our barns would have been filled
+to overflowing, and we could have lived in comfort for a year if no
+ship reached us.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Let us see how much food drink has destroyed during the war.
+We will take it from August 4, 1914, to April 30, 1917. It is 999 days
+of the war. The grain and sugar destroyed for drink have been:</p>
+
+<table class='table0' summary=''>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c004'>Grain</td>
+    <td class='c005'>4,400,000 tons</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c004'>Sugar (for beer alone)</td>
+    <td class='c005'>340,000 tons</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id004'>
+<img src='images/image011.jpg' alt='Scales with bread on the left outweighed by beer and whisky on the right' class='ig001' />
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>How Canada sees it—A Canadian cartoon of the callous destruction of bread  for beer and whisky</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is not easy to realize what this means, but it will help us if we
+think of one or two examples.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>The biggest thing ever set up on earth is the Great Pyramid. It is
+80,000,000 cubic feet. The food destroyed by drink during the war
+would make two Great Pyramids, each bigger than the Pyramid of
+Egypt.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>The longest British railway is the Great Western; it is over 3,000
+miles, but it would not hold the food destroyed by drink since war began.
+If every inch of it were crammed with wagons, the Great Western
+Railway would need hundreds of miles more line to hold the train-loads
+of food destroyed.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span><b>There are about 750,000 railway wagons in the United Kingdom,
+but if the Drink Trade had them all they would not hold the food it
+has destroyed.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>There are about 30,000 engines on our British railways, and if the
+food destroyed were made up in trains of 125 tons apiece, all our engines
+would not pull them; we should still want 10,000 more.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So vast is this incredible quantity of food destroyed by an enemy
+trade while famine has been coming on. We should have saved it all
+if Parliament had followed the King, and it would have given the
+whole United Kingdom its flour rations for nearly a year. Take it at
+its minimum scientific human food value, and on the basis of our rations
+in May, 1917, it would have given us:</p>
+
+<table class='table0' summary=''>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c004'>Flour for the whole United Kingdom</td>
+    <td class='c005'>43 weeks</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c004'>Sugar for the whole United Kingdom</td>
+    <td class='c005'>33 weeks</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class='c009'>Our three war Governments, confronted with the increasing certainty
+of at least a three-years’ war, have allowed the Drink Trade to
+destroy this vast reserve of food.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The full toll of this trade upon our scanty food supply, growing
+shorter and shorter while the queues outside our food shops grow longer
+and longer, is staggering indeed, even now with drink about three-quarters
+stopped. We must remember that it makes no difference that
+the barley has been malted; it is still good human food, and every ounce
+of it should be mixed with grain for making bread. Let us remember,
+also, that <i>brewer’s sugar is a good pure sugar</i>, the objection to it being
+largely the objection most of us have to standard bread—its colour.
+Malt or sugar, every ounce a brewer destroys is food stolen from the
+people. Let us take expert opinion on the subject.</p>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>The Food Value of Brewer’s Sugar</h3>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c012'>We do not, of course, use this dark sugar when white sugar is cheap and easily
+procurable, but during the war we have used it for coffee, cocoa, and tea; and for
+puddings where colour did not matter. We have used it a good deal in our bakeries
+for chocolate goods, where colour again does not matter. It is a good, pure sugar,
+and the colour is the principal drawback.</p>
+<div class='c010'><i>Letter to Arthur Mee from a London caterer</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>The Food Value of Brewer’s Malt</h3>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c012'>Malt flour can be used to make excellent cake with 50 per cent. wheat flour. It is
+sweet and pleasant to taste without the need of any sugar. Good scones can be made
+with 25 per cent. of malt flour. Its use in bread made with yeast causes too much
+fermentation in the bread, but it has no effect on baking-powder. The Food Controller’s
+Department is aware of the practicability of using malt flour, but the sale is
+restricted in order to limit its use for making beer. Brewers and maltsters are too
+patriotic to wish to use for beer what could be applied to food in case of a serious
+shortage, and the large stocks of barley and malt can supplement the supply of wheat
+flour.</p>
+<div class='c010'><i>Letter from a Brewer in the “Times,” April 11, 1917</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Yet we have seen our Government holding up sugar for brewers;
+we have seen our Food Controller refuse to release a caterer’s sugar
+unless it were sold to a brewer; we have seen a Government short of
+food-ships bringing in brewers’ vats and casks of rum; and we see the
+Government still holding up this malt that would feed a people asking
+for more bread.</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Tunes They Play</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Strange tunes we hear the fiddlers play, but their music does not
+charm away the troubles of a famine-threatened land. From morning
+till night the prayer of the people rises, “Give us this day our daily
+bread,” but the heart of Downing Street is hardened, and the nation’s
+bread goes day by day to the destroyer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But all the time we see the measure of the courage of our rulers on
+the hoardings in the streets. We know their posters by heart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>Defeat the enemy’s attempt to starve you</i>, by—not by stopping the destruction
+of food, but by joining the National Service, and probably
+helping to pick hops. There was a man in a co-operative store who
+volunteered for National Service, and last month he received instructions
+<i>to leave the grocery store and take up duty in a brewery</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>Sow your window-boxes and plant your back gardens</i>—and Mr. Prothero
+will see that the soil of a million back gardens is wasted on hops.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>We have not enough food to last till the harvest</i>—why not go out and
+catch rabbits, asks Lord Devonport—and sit and wait for sparrows?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>We must save every pound of bread we can to get over our critical
+weeks</i>—not by saving the quartern loaf that beer is taking every month
+from every British cupboard now, but by going hungry so that drinkers
+may not thirst.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>We must not eat more than our share, on our honour</i>—but the man
+across the table can eat his share of bread and drink somebody
+else’s too.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>We must eat less and eat slowly</i>—so that brewers may waste more
+and waste quickly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>We must keep back famine</i>—but not by using malt, says Captain
+Bathurst: that would cost three times as much as letting famine come.
+<i>But why not keep the malt till bread is as dear as gold?</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>Let all heads of households abstain from using grain except in bread</i>,
+says the King’s Proclamation. But let the brewers waste 8,000 tons
+a day for beer, says the Government.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>God speed the plough and the woman who drives it</i>—yes, and God help
+the woman who drives the plough to feed the brewer while her little
+ones cry for bread.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>Let us fine £5 whoever wastes a loaf</i>, says the Food Controller—but
+not, of course, the brewers who waste 450,000 quartern loaves a day.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Hops are no use as food to anybody, says the Board of Trade Scientific
+Committee. “<i>Then let us grow only half as many</i>,” said Mr. Prothero.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Lloyd George says Mr. Prothero is working “in a continuous
+rattle of mocking laughter and gibes.” Yes, it is the mocking laughter
+of a nation that is not really amused by sights like this. The nation
+does not like to see the bread rations of 70,000 men in France cut down
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>while the Drink Trade is destroying every week bread enough to last
+these men a year. It does not like to see the Government sending letters
+out to managers of factory canteens, begging them to be careful
+of bread, while food flows through our beer canteens like a river running
+to waste. It does not like to see Y. M. C. A. canteens denied
+supplies of sugar while barrels of beer are stacked in great piles outside.
+It does not like the calling up of discharged soldiers while thousands
+of strong men are working hard all day destroying food or carting
+beer about the streets; and it does net like the tragic comedies of Captain
+Bathurst, who warns us that it really may become necessary in the
+national interest—and then, perhaps, he drops his voice to break it very
+gently—it really may become necessary, if these cake shops are not
+very careful, <i>to whitewash the lower part of their windows</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Oh, these fiddlers! And now we have a new idea from the Food
+Control Department; it is a coloured poster of a Union Jack and a big
+loaf on it, and “Waste not, Want not,” printed in big type. It was
+being printed on the day the Prime Minister told the nation that America
+had found it is no use waving a neutral flag in the teeth of a shark.
+It is an eloquent and true saying, but it is also true, that it is no use
+waving platitudes from copybooks in the teeth of a wolf at the door.
+The Prime Minister says he is taking no chances. Let us be quite sure.
+We once had a Government of which men said its motto was “Wait and
+See.” <i>Are we better off, or are we worse, with a Government that Sees
+and Waits?</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But there is no end to the fiddling. With Food Controllers who
+hold up food for Food Destroyers; with Food Economy Handbooks that
+cry out loud to save the crumbs but have no word to say about the
+tons we fling away; with a Prime Minister praying for window-boxes
+and a Board of Agriculture consecrating hopfields, we need not be
+surprised if the nation is not mightily impressed.</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>How the Allies Did It</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>All the world knows, except, apparently, the world that goes round
+at Westminster, how Prohibition has helped the Allies.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>With the Shell Famine at its height—largely made by Drink—the
+Prohibition Army on the East held up the enemy while Britain fought the
+Drink Trade for her shells.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'><i>With the Bread Famine looming in sight—largely made by Drink—the
+Prohibition Navy from the West flings in her power against the submarines.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Oh, for the spirit of our Allies in this land! If France wants to
+rouse the spirit of Verdun she strikes down her foe at home and puts
+absinthe away. If Russia wants to be great and free she stops this
+drink and orders out the Romanoffs. If Canada wants to give her utmost
+help to Britain she stops this drink from sea to sea. If Australia
+wants to make her soldiers fit she trains them in her Prohibition camps.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>If America wants to beat the whole world at making shells she drives
+drink from her workshops. If San Francisco has an earthquake she
+stops drink while she pulls herself together. If Liverpool has a dangerous
+strike she shuts up public-houses and keeps the city quiet. Oh,
+for a Government of Britain that will see what all the world can see!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>History will do justice to the part the Prohibition policy of the
+Allies has played in saving Europe, but a pamphlet has no room for
+these things. We can take only one or two great witnesses to the
+mighty achievements of our Prohibition Allies. Let us begin with
+France, and call our own Prime Minister to tell us what they did. Mr.
+Lloyd George:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>One afternoon we had to postpone our conference in Paris, and the French Minister
+of Finance said, “I have to go to the Chamber of Deputies, because I am proposing
+a bill to abolish absinthe.” Absinthe plays the same part in France that whisky
+plays in this country, and they abolished it by a majority of something like ten to one
+that afternoon.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>And how did Paris take this prohibition that men said would cause
+a revolution? Let us ask Mr. Philip Gibbs, whose splendid letters home
+have made his name a household word. Mr. Philip Gibbs:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>Absinthe was banned by a thunderstroke, and Parisians who had acquired the
+absinthe habit trembled in every limb at this judgment which would reduce them to
+physical and moral wrecks. But the edict was given and Paris obeyed, loyally and
+with resignation.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>And now we come to Russia, to these mighty Russian people who
+in the last year of vodka saved £6,000,000 or £7,000,000, and in the last
+full year of Prohibition saved £177,000,000. We will call our own
+Prime Minister again:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>Russia, knowing her deficiency, knowing how unprepared she was, said, “I must
+pull myself together. I am not going to be trampled upon, unready as I am. I will
+use all my resources.” What is the first thing she does? She stops drink.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>I was talking to M. Bark, the Russian Minister of Finance, and I asked, “What
+has been the result?” He said, “The productivity of labour, the amount of work
+which is put out by the workmen, has gone up between 30 and 50 per cent.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>I said, “How do they stand it without their liquor?” and he replied, “Stand it?
+I have lost revenue over it up to £65,000,000 a year and we certainly cannot afford it,
+but if I proposed to put it back there would be a revolution in Russia.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>How completely teetotal Russia became we read long ago in the
+<i>Daily Mail</i>, to which Mr. Hamilton Fyfe sent this message from Petrograd:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>Try to imagine all the publichouses in the British Isles closed; all the restaurants
+putting away their wine cards and offering nothing stronger than cider or ginger ale.
+That is the state of things in Russia. Strange it seems indeed, yet there is one thing
+stranger. Nobody makes any audible complaint.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>Everywhere in Russia it was the same: a nation was made sober
+by Act of Parliament.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Without a murmur of protest,” said the Moscow correspondent of the <i>Times</i>,
+“the most drunken city in Europe was transformed into a temple of sobriety, and we
+felt that if Russia could thus conquer herself in a night, there was indeed nothing
+that might not be accomplished.” And two years later, when the revolution came, we
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>read in the <i>Times</i> this note from Odessa: “Perfect tranquillity continues to prevail
+here, although for the moment Odessa is practically without police. The satisfactory
+absence of crime may largely be attributed to the sealing up of spirituous liquors.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>We need not be afraid of Drinkless Revolutions.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But the truth about Russia is almost too incredible to believe, for
+it is Prohibition that made the revolution possible; it was stopping drink
+that set 170,000,000 people free. We will let a business correspondent
+of the <i>Times</i> give evidence; here is what he said on April 21, 1917:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>In one respect it must be said that the Reactionaries saw clearly. They always
+claimed that the Tsar had ruined himself by decreeing the abolition of vodka. None
+but a sober people could have carried out the Russian Revolution.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The police were, on the other hand, the victims of drink. They had seized the
+vodka at the order of the Government, and had kept plentiful supplies for themselves.
+Thus the Revolution was in part a struggle between drunken reaction and sober citizens.
+Sobriety triumphed.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Russian people will not bow down and tie their hands to the
+thrones of Europe: do we wonder if they scorn our quailing before
+this trade?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Free Russia flings off the dynastic yoke: do we wonder Prohibition
+Russia is not much impressed by a nation with a Drink Trade round
+its neck?</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Soldier’s Home</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>The things that will be told against this trade when all the truth
+is known will break the heart of those who read. It is well for us that
+we cannot know the full truth now; the burden would be too grievous
+to be borne in days like these. But if you will go into your street, or
+will talk of these things with the next man you meet from one of our
+pitiful slums, or will pick up one of those local papers that still have
+space to print the truth, you will find the evidence close about you.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We are the guardians of our soldiers’ homes; we are the trustees
+of the hope and happiness of their little children; but we let this drink
+trade, that takes our people’s food out of their cupboards, turn that
+food into the means of death, and sow ruin and destruction through
+the land.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But we will call the witnesses to these drink-ruined soldiers’ homes,
+these homes that the enemy worse than Germany has shattered and
+broken while our men have been fighting for your home and mine. We
+will call a few here and there, knowing that for every one called are
+hundreds more that can be called, and that beyond all these that are
+known there is in this little land a countless host of tragedies as secret
+as the grave.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>A Tooting soldier whose wife had sent him loving letters to the trenches came
+back to surprise her after 18 months. He found another man in possession of his home
+and a new baby; and, overcome by the discovery, he gave way to drink and killed
+himself.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Balham Coroner, March 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier who had left a comfortable home behind returned from the Front to
+find it ruined, with not a bed to lie on, his children never sent to school, his wife all
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>the time in publichouses. “I wish I had been shot in the trenches,” he said when he
+arrived.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 10, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Outside a publichouse in Liverpool a man was dragging home his drunken wife,
+the mother of eleven children. They rolled over and over on the ground, the drunken
+women violently resisting the maddened man. Then came up the eldest son, home
+from the Front, with five wounds in his body.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Liverpool Post,” March 2, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier came back to his home in London to find his wife drinking his money
+away, harbouring another man; one of his children cruelly neglected and the other in
+its grave, perished from neglect; and a drunken carman’s baby about to be born in
+his home.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Shaftesbury Society Report</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Lance-Corporal heard in the trenches of his wife’s misconduct. His commanding
+officer wrote to make inquiries, and the soldier wrote to the Chief Constable a
+pitiful letter: “What have I to look forward to at the end of the war?” he said.
+“Nothing, only sorrow. I never get a letter to know how my loving son is getting on;
+I think it will drive me mad.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He came home, opened the door of his house, threw his kit on the floor, and declared
+that he would kill his wife. He put a razor on the table, and his little boy
+hid it in a cupboard, but a week later this boy of 12 went home and found his father
+and mother lying on the floor, the father drunk, the mother dead. The soldier, drowning
+his misery in drink, had strangled his wife. Rousing himself beside her, he said,
+as the police found them, “Kiss me, Sally. Aye, but tha are poorly.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He had been the best of fathers, said the little boy; the best of soldiers, said his
+commanding officer; and the judge declared that such a man, with such a character,
+ought not to be with criminals.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Record of Huddersfield Assizes, Autumn 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier asked a London magistrate if he could draw the allowance instead of his
+wife, who was in prison for drunkenness and was neglecting his four children. The
+magistrate said the only thing was to send the children to the workhouse.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Soldier: “So I am to be a soldier for my King and country while my children
+go to the workhouse?” The Magistrate: “That is so, because you have a drunken
+wife. I am sorry for you.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sunday Herald,” June 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A seaman gunner, who had been torpedoed and had fought in the trenches,
+arrived home to find his wife, in his own words, “filthy drunk,” and his children
+utterly deplorable. He reclothed them, but his wife pawned the clothes, though she
+had £7 a month. He took his children away, but a crowd of women interfered with
+him, and the police were powerless against the mob.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Western Daily Mercury,” July 23, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier just back from the Front was found in the street weeping bitterly on
+discovering that his wife was in gaol through drink, and his child, through her neglect,
+had been burned.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Statement by Marchioness of Waterford</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier came home from the Front to find that drink had ruined his home, and
+his children were being cared for by Glasgow Parish Council. “Hour after hour we
+sit on this council,” says the chairman, “listening to case after case, and the cause is
+drunkenness, drunkenness, drunkenness. There are 2300 children under the council,
+and two thousand of them have parents living.” “Our raw material is the finished
+product of the public-house,” says one of these workers.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts from Glasgow Councillors</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A motor mechanic at the Front, hearing that his wife, hitherto a sober woman,
+had given way to drink, obtained leave to come home. He found his wife, very drunk,
+struggling home with the help of the railings in the street, and neighbours described
+her horrible life with other soldiers. The husband obtained a separation for the sake
+of his children, and went back to France.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Full facts in “Kent Messenger,” July 31, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A young soldier came from the trenches to spend Christmas in his home in
+Sheffield—a teetotal home before the war. He found that his wife had given way to
+drink, had deserted one child and disappeared with the other, and that a baby was
+to be born which was not his.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts known to the Author</i></div>
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>A miner fighting at the Front came home to find his wife at a publichouse, his
+home filthy, and his children cruelly neglected. He was heartbroken. His young wife
+frequently left the house from tea-time till midnight, and in order to keep the children
+from the fire she had burned them severely with a piece of iron. A respectable-looking
+woman, the mother pleaded for a chance, and was led from the dock sobbing
+bitterly.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Independent,” February 21, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A young Yorkshire miner enlisted and left his wife, hitherto sober, with three
+children. She took to drink, neglected the home, and is now a dipsomaniac, with two
+children not her husband’s.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts known to the Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier came home ill from France, hurried from Waterloo to his home, and
+found the door locked. He knocked, and his little boy’s voice came—“Is that you,
+mother, and are you drunk?” Hearing his father’s voice the excited lad opened the
+door. “Where’s mother?” asked his father. “Mother?” said the boy; “she’s drinking.
+She comes home drunk night after night now and knocks the kids about. She daren’t
+hit <i>me</i>; I’m fair strong, dad; but the other.... And as for baby, she never does
+nothing for her. I and Freddy takes turns, but I dunno what to give her to eat
+sometimes.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Midnight passed before the mother appeared, helplessly drunk. “Did you expect
+me to sit at home weeping for you?” she said. The next morning, broken with tears,
+she promised to mend her ways. The soldier went into hospital, and there he had a
+letter from his boy. This is part of it:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Dear Dad, I write to let you know mother is going on awful. She has took all
+Fred and Timmy’s clothes to the pawnshop, and she hit Selina on Saturday with the
+toasterfork and cut her face. She cried all night, it hurt her so. She is drunk every
+night and some nights dussent come back at all. She daren’t hit me, but I am getting
+afraid about baby. We are all very hungry and miserable.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The soldier got leave, found his wife had disappeared, and, finding charity for his
+four little ones, he left his ruined home and went back to the hospital.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in possession of the Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A working-man at Gravesend went to the Front, leaving behind a wife and three
+children, the baby lately born. His wife started drinking away her allowance, neglected
+her home, and, full of remorse and shame for the disgrace she had brought on the man
+who was in the trenches, she hanged herself. The man came home to find waiting for
+him three motherless children, and one of the most pathetic letters a man has ever
+had to read.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Gravesend Coroner, 1916</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>Mothers and Children</h3>
+
+<p class='c012'>It is easy to understand the pitiful appeal of 500 women out of
+Holloway Prison who begged the Duchess of Bedford to help to close
+all public-houses during the war. They know in their hearts of tragedies
+such as these, in which mothers and children die while the fathers
+fight and the Drink Trade goes on merrily.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>A soldier’s wife in Sunderland drew £12 arrears of Army pay, and she and her
+mother began to drink it away. She drew her pay on Friday, was carried home drunk
+on Saturday, gave birth to twins on Sunday morning, and died on Sunday night. The
+twins died a week or two after, and a week or two after that the soldier came home
+from the trenches to find his family in the grave.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Sunderland papers, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Two women went drinking in Chester on a Sunday night, a soldier’s mother and a
+soldier’s wife. They had five whiskies each, and fell drunk in the street. One slept
+all night on a sofa, and the other lay on the floor, shouting and swearing. Her husband
+propped her up with a mat, and for hours she lay shrieking. In the morning she
+was dead. The publican was fined £5.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Chester Chronicle,” February 17, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The wife of a Yorkshire soldier was drowned while drunk at Sheffield. She
+started drinking with another soldier’s wife disappeared with a drunken man, and her
+death was a mystery.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Independent,” April 26, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>At an inquest on the bodies of a soldier’s twin children, both dead from chronic
+wasting, it was stated that the mother had 34<i>s.</i> a week, and both she and her husband
+drank. The mother had had four children in fifteen months, and all were dead.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Battersea Coroner, October 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>In one street in London where there were one day four convictions for drunkenness,
+a woman carried a sick baby into a public house. As she stood at the bar the
+little baby died, but the mother went on drinking, with the dead child in her arms.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Charity Organisation Society</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The wife of a highly-esteemed sergeant-major fighting in France was found lying
+drunk. Her four children, shockingly neglected, were put in a home, but she took
+them out, went on drinking, and received soldiers at her house. In a few weeks her
+husband heard in the trenches that his wife had died from drinking.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of West Surrey Coroner, March 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier left three children at home. He had been earning £1 a week, but his
+wife received 32<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> a week. She drank it away, neglected the children, and died in
+an asylum while her husband was in France.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Claybury Asylum</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The little child of a soldier in France died in Guy’s Hospital from burns. The
+mother said she could not buy a fireguard. While she was absent the baby was burned,
+and the mother, returning in a drunken state carrying a can of beer, said, “A good job!”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Southwark Coroner, December 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier’s widow with six children, an Army pension of 30<i>s.</i> a week, and her
+eldest boy’s wages of 30<i>s.</i>, drinks every night with a married man who has a respectable,
+clean, and sober wife with eight children and a ninth lately born—born prematurely
+as a result of her husband’s beating her. The child bore the marks of his
+violence, and died in two months.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Shaftesbury Society</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The young wife of a soldier was brought from prison to be tried for manslaughter
+of her baby, who had died in the infirmary from neglect. She spent her time in the
+publichouses, and laughed when the children were taken to the infirmary. She went
+out one day to fetch a bottle of whisky and as she drank with a neighbour she said
+she knew the baby would die. The doctor said the child’s skin was hanging in folds
+on the bones.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in the “Observer,” January 23, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier’s wife drank continuously while her child wasted away, left the tiny baby
+alone in the house while she went for beer, and a policeman found her lying drunk
+across the dead child’s body.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Barnsley Coroner, November, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The mother of two children whose father was fighting in France gave way to
+drink in his absence, neglected her children and left them in grave moral danger, and
+committed suicide.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of an Orphan Home</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier’s baby starved slowly to death as the mother drank away his pay, and
+while the child lay in its coffin the mother was out drinking.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>West Bromwich Police Records, June 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A munition worker at Newcastle was grievously upset by the drinking habits of
+his wife. The police left a summons for her and she disappeared. Two days later
+her body was found in the Tyne. The man broke down at the inquest, saying, between
+his sobs: “She was such a good wife to me for 20 years, and reared a good family
+before she took to drink.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Newcastle Coroner, Summer 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The wife of a corporation workman at Sheffield, home from the trenches with
+six gunshot wounds and three pieces of shell in his body, found that his wife had given
+way to drink and starved her five children. She was sent to prison for six months.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Sheffield, November 3, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier’s wife who had spent the greater part of £100 Army money in drink was
+sent to prison for neglecting her children. Almost everything in the house was pawned,
+including the children’s clothes; and the woman began to drink at five o’clock in the
+morning, and went on drinking all day.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 10, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier’s wife in Monmouthshire, with £3 9<i>s.</i> a week, was found sodden with
+drink, while the soldier’s eight children were in rags starving by day and huddling up
+in one bed by night.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Westminster Gazette,” July 22, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>A smart tidy woman in a London suburb, whose husband is fighting in Mesopotamia,
+has £2 10<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> a week. She used to love her children and had a happy home,
+but she drinks away her Army pay, lives with a married man who has six children,
+and has become a drunken slattern. The other wife is beaten and neglected, and the
+soldier’s children have gone to the workhouse.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Shaftesbury Society</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The four children of a soldier in Dublin were found hungry and shivering with cold
+while the mother was drinking. Several times she had let her baby fall while reeling
+with it in the street.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Dublin Evening Herald,” October 20, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>At the trial of a soldier’s wife for drinking and neglecting seven children, it was
+stated that a child of eleven was left in charge of a baby a fortnight old while the
+mother was drinking. At night all the children were heard screaming. The house was
+in utter darkness, and there was an escape of gas. Some men went in and turned off
+the gas, and at last the mother came stumbling out of a publichouse across the road.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Star,” November 25, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>“Your husband is fighting for his country, and his children have the right to be
+protected,” said the Chairman of the Chesterfield Bench to a soldier’s wife. Her
+children were found starving while she was drinking, and one day the little boy of
+three was found crouching naked inside the fender, trying to get warm. The police
+described the house as foul from top to bottom, with a heap of horrible rags for a bed,
+and a food cupboard that made the house unendurable when the door was opened.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Yorkshire Telegraph,” March 24, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The wife of a missing soldier was sent to prison at Chesterfield for neglecting
+three children between 13 years and 16 weeks old. She had gone astray through drink,
+and the youngest child, born under terrible conditions, was not her husband’s. It was
+found lying on a filthy bed, and its drunken mother, to satisfy its pangs of hunger, had
+given it pennyworths of laudanum. Eleven people slept in two foul bedrooms.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Chesterfield Police Records, October 9, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Five hundred children of soldiers are being cared for in the great Homes founded
+by Mr. Quarrier in Scotland, and most of them are there because of drinking mothers.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Reports</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier’s wife at Biggleswade spent her allowance on drink and left her three
+children locked up in the house for days at a time.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Court Records of Biggleswade, September 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier’s wife was found reeling in the streets of Dublin with a baby in her
+arms. At her home were found four other children, cruelly neglected.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Dublin Mail,” August 16, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Nineteen hundred children of soldiers have come into the care of the N.S.P.C.C.,
+mainly through drink, since the war began.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of the N.S.P.C.C.</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>The Ruined Wives</h3>
+
+<p class='c012'>Who does not remember the terrible rush for the last drop of drink
+when Prohibition seemed to be coming with the New Year? Long
+queues of women besieged the whisky shops in Glasgow. There were
+women of all ages, said the <i>Daily Mail</i>, tottering in grey hairs, young
+wives with babies in their arms, and men of the loafer type. “There
+was not a respectable citizen,” says the <i>Mail</i>, “who did not deplore this
+discreditable scene, but the remarks of passers-by provoked only torrents
+of insult.” The promise of the new year and the new Government,
+alas, was not fulfilled, and now in place of Drink Queues we have Food
+Queues. Let us see what drink is doing among our soldiers’ wives:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>Of 3000 soldiers’ wives being cared for in South London, 2000 are splendid, while
+1000 are sinking daily to lower and lower levels through drink.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Shaftesbury Society</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>A soldier’s wife, with a separation allowance of 32<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> a week, drank most of it
+away, ruined her home, neglected her children, and became a lunatic.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Claybury Asylum</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A young soldier’s wife, hitherto “quite an elegant type,” is rapidly becoming a
+drunkard. Women hitherto sober have not the courage to keep from women’s drinking
+parties, and young girls come out of factories and go to publichouses in little groups.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Charity Organisation Society</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Outside a public house in Dublin 15 small children were crying in the cold, waiting
+for their mothers. Ninety-four drunken women came out in 25 minutes. There were
+ten drunken soldiers, and two girls of 15 were thrown into the street hopelessly drunk.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Irish Times,” April 20, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>In Dundee over 170 wives of soldiers gave way to drink last year, and cruelly
+neglected their homes.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of the N. S. P. C. C.</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier in the trenches received a letter from his little boy, which he sent to
+London with a pitiful appeal for help.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Kindly do what you can for me and the well-being and welfare of my four beautiful
+children,” the poor soldier wrote. “I am enclosing a fearful letter I have received
+from my poor little lad, 14-1/2, the first and only letter I have received from him.
+Sir, I shall be most anxiously awaiting your reply, for this letter is the greatest blow
+I have ever received.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This is the little boy’s letter:</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>Dear Dad: Just a line to let you know how everything is at home.
+Mother is drunk for a fortnight and sober for a week for months and
+months. I’ve stuck it now for seven months, and can’t stick it any
+longer. I tried to get into the Navy and passed all the tests, but mother
+would not sign the papers, for which I am sorry. If mum would sign
+I could go away to Portsmouth on Thursday, but she will not. At
+the present moment she is half drunk and keeps jawing me so that I
+could knife meself. I’ve lost my new job because mum would not wake
+me in the morning, and nothing for breakfast, and had to get mine and
+the children’s tea at tea-time. It pains me to write like this, but I
+can’t help it. I now seek your advice as to what to do. I hope <i>you</i>
+will enjoy Xmas, although there is not much hope for us. I now conclude
+with fondest love, X. Your heartbroken Son, Leslie.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>A stream of nearly 15,000 men and women poured into 58 publichouses in Birmingham
+in less than four hours; over 6,000 were women. Into one house the people
+streamed at nearly 500 an hour.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Review of Reviews,” October 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>For months some wives of soldiers and sailors in Scotland were never really
+sober. “We have done our best,” says a worker among them, “going to their homes
+and doing all in our power, but it beats us.” In 23 families, with 178 children born,
+61 were dead.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts told to Secretary for Scotland, July 1916</i></div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c000'>
+    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>whether the ships that have brought in food for destruction by the drink
+trade could not have brought in a large proportion of the 3,500,000 tons
+of wheat now waiting for ships in Australia and the 2,000,000 tons waiting
+in Canada?</b></p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Roll of the Dead</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>No more pitiful record of the war is there than that unnumbered
+roll of men lured from our armies by this liquor trade, and cast into
+dishonoured graves. We can take only a few of them.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>A number of soldiers at Ormskirk came into camp drunk on Christmas night. A
+request for quiet led to a fight, and one of the men was struck two blows and was
+dead the next morning.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Mail,” December 28, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Liverpool soldier, drinking continuously, had overstayed his leave, and in a
+quarrel about this he stabbed his brother dead.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Liverpool Courier,” April 20, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier invalided from France, having recovered from his wounds, gave way to
+drink, assaulted an officer, and hanged himself in his prison cell.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” April 11, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A young lieutenant shot himself in an hotel near Trafalgar Square, and among
+the documents read at the inquest was a letter striking him off his battalion for
+drinking and gross carelessness.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” October 27, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A captain in the Army ruined by drink, with a fine record of military service,
+started drinking on his way to a shooting range in London, and in a struggle he shot
+a detective dead.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” September 20, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>In the Scottish Express, between Doncaster and Selby, a drunken corporal of the
+Coldstream Guards was showing his rifle to a friend when it went off, the bullet killing
+a munitions works director in the next compartment, and narrowly escaping a lady in
+the compartment beyond. The corporal had in his pocket a bottle of whisky, which
+was freely handed round.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” December 3, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier who had been drinking heavily was placed in the guard room, and died
+after a night of groaning, evidently as the result of a fall.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Greenwich Coroner, January 1, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A young soldier arriving from India on Christmas morning was arrested three
+days later, after a drunken fight in which a man was killed.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Westminster Police Records, December 28, 1914</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier spent a day’s leave in Manchester, ate and drank very heavily, and was
+found dead the next morning from choking.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Manchester Coroner, December 28, 1914</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier home on leave was found drunk with his wife. They had been throwing
+pots at one another, and on Christmas morning the woman was found dead with a
+wound in her head.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Oldham Coroner, December 24, 1914</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Three gunners had four drinks each of rum, and at midnight lay down to sleep in
+a garden at Lee, where one was found dying from alcohol.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Local Papers at Lee, June 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier died from alcohol in a house where drink was unlawfully sold.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Manchester Guardian,” April 8, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A private in the Welsh Fusiliers died from alcohol, cold and exposure. He left a
+publichouse with a 4<i>s.</i> bottle of whisky, and was found dead on the roadside next
+morning, with the bottle almost empty.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” April 13, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>An old man who was said to be in a drunken condition was wounded in a fall with
+a soldier from Gallipoli, and died a few days after.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Mail,” January 17, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>An elderly man, seeing a drunken soldier lying in the street, went to his assistance,
+and was killed in a disturbance that followed.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Record of Yorkshire Assizes, November 21, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier was found drowned in the Trent. He was described as a good man at
+his work, but not steady, and had been drinking.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Newark Advertiser,” August 4, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>A terrible disturbance occurred in a camp at Portland Reservoir after the closing
+of the canteen one Sunday night. A large number of men who had been drinking
+created a disturbance, in which bricks and stones were used, a tent collapsed, and the
+officers were called to quell the riot. The captain, drawing his revolver, rushed with
+two lieutenants into a hut where men were shouting and struggling, but appeals had no
+effect—the men “did not appear to hear or recognize their officers,” and one man raised
+his rifle and took aim at them. At least fifty shots were fired, and a young corporal
+fired many shots through the window into the darkness. In the morning a soldier was
+found dead. Nobody knew who shot him, but the corporal thought he must have done.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Dorset Assizes, Spring 1915</i></div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c000'>
+    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>whether it is true that more food is being destroyed each week in breweries
+and distilleries than by submarines?</b></p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The New Drinkers</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>“<i>No complaints have reached the War Office of youths who were
+total abstainers having become confirmed drunkards since enlistment.</i>”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So we are told in the House of Commons. The records of the War
+Office are clearly incomplete, and the information from the camps may
+here be supplemented by unchallengeable witnesses of what happens
+in the horrible drink canteens run by the Army Council.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>A soldier who was wounded at La Bassée, a total abstainer until then, was sentenced
+at the Old Bailey for killing his uncle while drunk. He was a newsvendor,
+aged 21, and had no memory of the tragedy in which he killed his uncle at a Christmas
+party.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” January 13, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A private in the Royal Scots Fusileers, aged 17, was charged with murdering a
+bugler boy, aged 16, in his regiment. The private became mad drunk in the camp
+canteen, went back to his hut, locked himself in and fired two shots, one of which
+entered another hut and killed the bugler. “Was there no one with power to say how
+much drink should be given?” asked the judge, and an officer said there was no one.
+“Then it was high time power was given to the commanding officer,” said the judge.
+“Was there to be no restraining hand to prevent young boys from fuddling themselves
+in canteens?”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in the “Times,” November 21, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>An old man sat in a tram in great distress. He had lost his boy at the Front.
+When he joined the Army he had never tasted alcohol, but when he came home on
+leave to see his mother he was drunk every night. He was drunk the night he went
+away, and in three days he was dead. “The last we saw of him,” said the poor old
+man between his sobs, “was his going away drunk, and his mother, who is old-fashioned
+in her faith, cannot get it out of her mind that no drunkard can enter the
+Kingdom of God.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts told by Dr. Norman Maclean</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Many young officers, called upon to share the wine bill at mess, naturally say, “If I
+have to pay I may as well drink my share,” and one man accounted for ten glasses of
+champagne. On a Guest night in his mess several more “were under the table.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Dublin Daily Express,” April 1916.</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A boy got his V.C., and came home wounded. The publican in his street sounded
+his praises in the taproom, where they subscribed to the bar for 120 pints for him
+when he arrived. He came home and began to drink it, and was nearly dead with it
+before he was rescued.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts related by Bishop of Lincoln</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>When the Scottish Horse Brigade were at Perth whisky was literally forced down
+the men, and they were inundated with floods of bad women.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Brigadier-General Lord Tullibardine</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A teetotal household had two boys in an officers’ training camp, and they gave
+pitiable accounts of drinking. Boys from school had a drunken sergeant put over
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>them, and a canteen in the midst of them. “Our boys never saw drink before,” one
+father wrote.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>From a letter to Dr. Norman Maclean</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A boy of 17, discharged from the Navy, spent 8<i>s.</i> one night on beer and rum, and
+created a disturbance in a workshop at Sheffield.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Star,” November 11, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Mr. Justice Atkin, charging the Grand Jury at Bristol, said that in nearly every
+case where a soldier was tried in the Western Circuit the defence was drink. One lad
+of 18 was treated to eight pints of beer in two hours, and did not know what happened.
+That sort of thing, said the judge, must seriously impair the efficiency of the troops
+when sent to the Front.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Record of Bristol Assizes, Autumn 1914</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Two boys, 15 and 17, were fined for being drunk in munition works. One was discovered
+just in time to save him from carrying molten liquid.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Birmingham Munitions Tribunal, Dec. 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>“A boy joined the Royal Navy as a carpenter, living in barracks and working on
+shore. Every day he was given ‘grog’ for his rations, although he never asked for it
+and never took it.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in letter to the Author</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Such are the tragedies of boys handed over in our camps to drink
+and its temptations. What of the girls in our munition shops? They
+have learned to drink in thousands since the war began—respectable
+girls leaving home to go into munitions, respectable young wives alone
+at home. With no restraining hand upon them, with new companionships
+and pocket-money flowing freely, it is not surprising the temptation
+should be too strong for them. We can take only one or two cases.</p>
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c012'>The girl-wife of a Cardiff seaman died in the street from exposure after drinking
+in publichouses with other girls.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Pontypridd Coroner, December 27, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A publican at Lincoln was fined £5 for allowing children to be drunk on his
+premises. Ruth Onyon, 14, and Rose Herrick, 16, were found in his house with a
+soldier. They had been in five houses and had ten drinks each and reached home helplessly
+drunk.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Daily Telegraph,” Sept. 1, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A number of cartridge workers were summoned for taking drink into a munition
+works. One young woman was led to the surgery drunk at half-past four in the
+morning; another was discharged because she could not stand. Sixteen girls subscribed
+for four bottles of wine and whisky.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Leeds Munitions Tribunal, April 28, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Two girls of 16 and 17 were fined for being helplessly drunk in an explosive
+works, the magistrates pointing out that their conduct imperilled the lives of other
+workers.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Coventry Munitions Tribunal July 24, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The men and girls at a large armament works drank all night. Girls would lurch
+into the dormitory dead drunk at 2 a. m.; one lady was up till 4 a. m. letting in drunken
+girls. As a result of drunkenness there was an explosion at these works, two men
+being killed and six injured.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Spectator,” Jan. 20, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Dublin publichouse was found full of girls and soldiers, all drunk. Three
+drunken girls were taken away by six soldiers.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Irish Times,” April 20, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>In half an hour 367 girls entered Birmingham publichouses, scores under 18. Stout
+and beer were chiefly drunk, but whisky and water also, and some port wine. Ten
+young girls were quite drunk.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Birmingham Daily Post”</i></div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c000'>
+    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask,</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>in view of the fact that American soldiers are not to touch alcohol, what
+arrangements the Government proposes to make for them in this
+country?</b></p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>Back to the Homeland</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Everywhere we hope and pray for peace, for the day when the men
+will come home; but we may dread the day if the men come home to
+drink and its temptations. The sudden release of millions of men, the
+certain reaction after the terrible stress of these three years, is fearful
+to contemplate with the door of the tap-room open. There would be
+an end of civilization itself for days and weeks and months, and for
+many a town at home the Peace would be worse than the War.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We owe it to these men to listen to the warning of the Prison Commissioners
+who printed these words in their report last year:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>When war is succeeded by peace there will come a time of trial
+for those who have never turned their backs to a bodily enemy. With
+the passing of military discipline our brave fellows will be tempted to
+forget the hardships and miseries of the trenches in a burst of uncontrolled
+pleasure and license, and, if trade be bad and work difficult to
+obtain, the lapse may, if not checked, become a step on a downward
+career.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is not imagination merely. Judges, coroners, police, and all who
+face the crime and misery of life, know well the bitter things that happen
+when men come home without restraint. There are witnesses innumerable.
+Let us hear a few of them.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>A captain in the Royal Flying Corps drove a motor-car through London, knocked
+a man down, drove on, and ignored the police, who eventually mounted the footboard
+and found the officer drunk.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Bow Street Police Records, June 3, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A lance-corporal on Chesterfield station was so drunk that he walked off the platform
+and fell on the line as a passenger train came up.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Chesterfield Police Records, June 2, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A corporal of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, leaving the Front with 150
+rounds of ammunition and his service rifle, came out drunk into the streets of West
+Ham and began firing his rifle.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” July 10, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier who had received a cartridge from his son at the Front, put it in his rifle,
+and while drunk fired it in the streets of Manchester.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Manchester Police Records, January 27, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>In the early hours of the morning two unarmed soldiers were fired at in Woolwich
+by a drunken soldier, who chased them for a long distance, firing shots all the time,
+until he was arrested.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Alliance News,” February, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Drunkenness among soldiers and sailors is appalling. Unoffending travellers are
+delayed by drunken sentries. Sailors landing after weeks of arduous toil in the North
+Sea find it easy to get so drunk that some are drowned, some die from exposure, and
+many return to their ships in a condition of helpless inebriety.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Inverness Courier,” May 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Two drunken soldiers entered the parish church at Codford, set fire to the vestry,
+threw down the altar cross and candlestick, broke a stained-glass window, and tore
+leaves out of a Bible 200 years old.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” April 3, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A drunken soldier at Cannock was imprisoned for drawing his bayonet in the
+streets. “If I meet a policeman I will murder the dog,” he said, and, meeting one, he
+threatened to cut off his head.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records at Cannock, March 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>400 soldiers tried to get a drunken man from the police in Grantham.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Grimsby News,” July 30, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>A drunken sergeant was found forcibly detaining a girl at Hornsey. On the
+police interfering, the drunken soldier drew his bayonet.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” September 7, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Three splendid-looking fellows, minesweepers, were traveling on the Highland
+Railway. “All were married men,” said a fellow passenger, “happy and proud of their
+homes, and they spoke with ache still in their hearts something of their lives and work.
+Well, these men succumbed during the journey. A change of trains was their opportunity,
+and I left them in a nearly helpless condition.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “The Spectator,” April 8, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A lady visited a soldier’s wife and found her at home with all her clothes in pawn.
+Her husband and brother had both been home from the Front, and in one week had
+spent £8 on drink.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in the “Cork Constitution,” Dec. 10, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A labourer, home from tunnelling work at the Front, was fined 13<i>s.</i> for drunkenness
+on his 33rd appearance, having spent £45 in seven days.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” Oct. 11, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A disabled soldier was selling papers in Kingsway, London. He was proud of his
+military record and the character his colonel gave him. He was trying to compound
+for a pension; he thought he would settle for £50. “Mind you,” said he “there is not
+a better character in London than mine, and I shall get the £50. Then I shall have a
+month’s booze.” “What, with that fine character of yours?” a gentleman said to him.
+“Yes,” said the man, “when I came home, and could leave the hospital, there was £50
+due to me, and I had a regular booze.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts known to the Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier with twelve years’ clean record in the Army was sentenced for felony
+after being made drunk by his friends.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Southport, January 9, 1915</i></div>
+
+</div>
+<p class='c012'>No Government has ever received more warnings than the three
+war Governments have received concerning drink. There is no room
+for them here, but we may call a few witnesses such as cannot be ignored
+by a nation looking forward to the day when millions of men
+will be home again.</p>
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c012'>A house in Westminster reeked with filth and drink and drunken overseas soldiers,
+“and it would be better,” said the Crown Solicitor, “if power were given to the police
+to sweep such places off the earth.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Westminster Police Records, Aug. 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A sapper seaman was found dead at the quay. Another seaman said his friend had
+seven drinks. They left the publichouse arm-in-arm, and went to the quay. There he
+saw a corporal, who was boatswain for the night, and was drunk. Leaving the sapper,
+he got the corporal into the boat, and went back for his friend, but the sapper had
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The lieutenant: “The deceased was one of the quietest boys who had ever been
+on the ship, and one of the best oarsmen. The whole trouble was that it was pay day.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Coroner: “Prohibition during the war would be a blessing to all. It seems
+to be a very rotten state of affairs.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The foreman: “Drink.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The lieutenant: “Prohibition would be the best thing.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Coroner: “This poor man, unfortunately, is one of many.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Western Daily Mercury,” January 8, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A publican at Dover was fined £20 for selling a bottle of whisky to a sailor. The
+Admiral said drink undermined the efficiency of the patrol vessels, and those who
+supplied it directly assisted the enemy, and might be the cause of the loss of very
+many lives.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Dover, October 6, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A private in the Northumberland Fusiliers, aged 23, was charged with burglary
+while drunk. His father and three brothers were in the Army. He took part in the
+battle of Loos, was wounded at Salonika, and was recommended for distinction for
+helping to save a wounded officer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>During the whole of Christmas leave he was drinking, made drunk by his friends
+who were probably proud of his having held part of a trench against a German
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>bombing party. His captain described him as a good soldier in peace, and brave in
+action—a man whose disgrace would be felt by the regiment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Justice Rowlatt said everyone was hoping for the time when millions of brave
+men would come home after facing incredible dangers, and we must look forward
+almost with terror to having these men exposed to drink and its temptations. What
+would be the state of the country in such a case unless we could make a clean sweep
+of drink? We should have to face this question over and over again, and the sooner
+we faced it the better.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Derbyshire Assizes, February 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Whoever allowed soldiers or sailors to drink to excess, said the Mayor of Tynemouth,
+should be tried by court-martial for treason. He would be recreant in his duty
+to God, to himself, and to the citizens, if he did not call attention to the brutalising of
+so many townspeople and the callous conduct of the “waster” element in the drink
+trade. He had no quarrel with those who conducted their business properly.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Tynemouth papers, February, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The Aldershot command appealed for the closing of half the publichouses, to save
+the men from temptation when the troops are demobilised and return with their
+pockets full of money.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Record of Workingham Licensing Sessions, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The <i>Army and Navy Gazette</i>, in an article disapproving of the Prohibition Campaign,
+issues a terrible warning which should be printed on the door of the room in
+which the Army Council meets. These are its words:</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is on record that towards the end of the siege of Sebastopol rum was made
+too regular an issue, with the result that almost every soldier who survived to
+return home became a drunkard.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>The siege of Sebastopol lasted less than a year, and that is the
+work of the rum issue for a few months. If rum does that in months,
+what will it do in years?</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>Into the Firing Line</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Lord Kitchener is dead, but there are two things that are with us
+still—that rare little note that he gave to his men as they went out,
+warning them of drink; and that infamous note sent out by a drink
+firm in London, begging our people to send out drink to our men. They
+can guarantee it right up to the firing line, they say, and even when
+our shells could not get there through drink, drink seems to have found
+its way. It can get on to transports when the Ministry of Munitions
+is waiting urgently for shipping space; it can commandeer our vans
+and horses and trains when these mean life or death to us; it seems
+to get past any regulation; it goes about with the power of a king, doing
+its work where it will.</p>
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c012'>It is regrettable that our troops at the Front cannot get more British Beer.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<div class='c010'>Managing Director of Allsopps, July 14, 1916</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Dear Sir, In answer to your inquiry, the only limitation in the size of cases consigned
+to officers in the Expeditionary Force is that they must not exceed 1 cwt.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We can guarantee delivery right into the front trenches. The cases are handed
+over at Southampton to the Military Forwarding Officer, and the A.S.C. see them
+right through. We are shipping hundreds of cases weekly. Yours faithfully,</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Letter from a Wine and Spirit firm in London</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>So drink finds its way to the front, to weaken our troops, with all
+their matchless heroism. Let us call the witnesses who have seen the
+work it does.</p>
+
+<div><span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span></div>
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>Soldiers at the front, tried for drunkenness, have declared that they have received
+drink from home. Men sometimes receive flasks in the trenches. They are exhausted,
+the stimulant revives them for a minute or two, and the harm is done. “And then
+(says Col. Crozier) they get about two years’ hard labour.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Letter from Colonel Crozier, commanding 9th Royal Irish Rifles</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>As a result of a Court-martial investigating charges of excessive drinking among
+the officers of a regiment at the Front, the Army Council removed the commanding
+officer from his post.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Court-martials, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>In the torrid climate of Mesopotamia, in defiance of all military medical history,
+rum was issued to the men instead of food and sterile water, and the presence of
+cholera, dysentery and other diseases, was attributed to this by Sir Victor Horsley.
+“Our gross failures and stupidity,” he said, “are in my opinion due to whisky affecting
+the intellectual organs and clearness of our leaders. They do not realise that alcohol
+in small doses acts as a brake on the brain.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in a letter from Sir Victor Horsley, May 13, 1916</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id004'>
+<img src='images/image028.jpg' alt='THE JUNKER’S LITTLE BROTHER' class='ig001' />
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>THE JUNKER’S LITTLE BROTHER</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c012'>Battalion Headquarters—colonel and chaplain present. Enter Adjutant: “The
+rum ration is due tonight, sir; am I to distribute it?” The colonel (nobly and in a
+voice audible all over the trench): “No! Damn the rum! To hell with the rum!”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Chaplain’s letter in “Alliance News,” June 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>At a court-martial in Newcastle, a sergeant-major, charged with misappropriating
+funds of the sergeant’s mess, pleaded that during this period a resolution of the mess
+had come into effect, providing free drinks during Christmas and the New Year.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” April 17, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>“In the Flying Services one has seen more than one good man go to the dogs
+through drink, or become fat and flabby and useless through just the excess of alcohol
+which falls short of taking to drink in the usual acceptance of the term. More men
+take to drink because of the ‘have another’ custom than because they like or need
+alcohol, and simple Prohibition would stop all this nonsense straight away. This
+kindly note is not the outpouring of a teetotal fanatic, for I suppose I have paid in
+my time rather more than my share of the nation’s drink-bill; it is merely a perfectly
+sound argument in favour of increasing the nation’s efficiency at the expense of its
+chief bad habit.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>The Editor of “The Aeroplane”</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A lieutenant in the trenches, knowing that the rum ration made him cold, threw
+his rum on the ground. His captain saw him, and threatened to report him. “You
+do, sir,” said the lieutenant, “and I will report you for being drunk on duty.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in possession of the Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A seaman serving on a ship in Cork Harbour died from alcohol. Found drunk
+and unknown, he was put on a stretcher and died.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 9, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>“Over three-quarters of the court-martials I have had anything to do with are due
+directly or indirectly to drunkenness. Many thousands of competent N.C.O.s and
+soldiers have been punished, and become useless to the nation during their punishment,
+as a result of drink.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have never been a teetotaler, and have rather opposed the radical temperance
+agitation, but am now changing my views as I see our success over here hampered
+and our progress towards victory retarded so obviously by drink.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Letter from a Lieut.-Colonel at the Front, seen by the Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The captain of a British merchant ship, drunk on the bridge, ordered his chief
+gunner to fire 50 rounds of shell at nothing. The gunner fired four rounds to appease
+him. Going through the Mediterranean, the drunken captain ordered his gunner to
+fire at a British hospital ship, and the incident led to a struggle for life, which ended
+in the captain’s being put in irons, tried, and sentenced to five years’ penal servitude.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Record of Devon Assizes, Exeter, February 2, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>An officer was left in charge of a British ship. Mad with drink, he went among
+the men and shot one dead. He is now in an asylum.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Case reported to the Admiralty</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The crew of a Dutch ship arriving in the Tyne was placed under a naval guard
+after a drunken riot in which three were killed.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” September 14, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The captain of a Norwegian barque mysteriously disappeared, and the vessel
+arrived in port from the North Sea. The mate, who had been drinking heavily, was
+seen, with a hammer in his hand, with the captain in a corner, bleeding from wounds
+about the head.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” April 8, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A seaman ashore in Glasgow, “wild with drink and passion,” was terribly wounded
+in a quarrel in a public-house, and died the same night. A youth of 19 was sentenced
+to five years’ penal servitude.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Edinburgh High Court, Dec. 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A barge-loader at West India Docks died from alcohol, and three other men were
+removed in an ambulance after drinking rum.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” May 9, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Orders were given on a steamer for the boats to be swung out in readiness for
+submarines. The first and second officer, having been drinking, could not do their duty.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Liverpool Marine Board, April 13, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The jury returned a verdict of murder against a youth of 19 who, after drinking
+one night, went on to his ship and killed the second officer.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Hull Coroner, April 24, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A drunken captain in command of a drifter landed with an armed party on the
+Isle of Man. He posted the men on the quay, and gave them orders to allow no one
+to pass. Declaring he would shoot every person who came within reach, he fired twice,
+and threatened to kill two police officers.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Times,” October 6, 1916</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Such is the work of drink wherever it finds a soldier to entrap—the
+drink the Navy carries free from Southampton to the trenches; and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>from America comes the news, as this page is being written, that the
+Army and the Navy of our Western Ally, like the Army and the Navy
+of our Eastern Ally, are to be under Total Prohibition.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>how much bread is destroyed each week to make beer for German internment
+camps in this country?</b></p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>Drink and the Red Cross</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>If the full story could ever be told of the national tragedy of drink
+and the war there would be no more ghastly chapter than that which
+would tell how drink fought the Red Cross; how, without pity, it hindered
+the work of mercy that is the general consolation of the world
+in days like these.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We are coming to a famine not only in food, but in doctors. The
+death-roll has been heavy beyond all parallel; the strain on the medical
+services has been almost too great to be borne, and we look anxiously
+round to know where the doctors and nurses will come from. With
+Prohibition the problem would be largely solved, for the ordinary burden
+of life would be largely lifted from our doctors and hospitals, and thousands
+of men and women would be free to give themselves to the war
+instead of mending up and patching up the sordid effects of drink. A
+rich brewer gave a donation for extending a hospital. “Ah! but we
+should not have to extend if he would shut up his public-houses,” said
+a doctor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is easy to see how drink is telling all the time against our doctors,
+our nurses, and our hospitals everywhere. Let us call a few
+witnesses.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>Somebody gave a glass of neat whisky to two wounded men at a garden party in
+Tottenham. Both were drunk when the brake came to take them home, and one died
+on the way.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Telegraph,” September 3, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Three wounded soldiers at Oxford were overcome by four bottles of rum smuggled
+into the hospital by visitors, and one of the men died.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Oxford Coroner, January 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A wounded soldier asked for two hours’ leave, came back in four hours drunk with
+whisky, and died after a terrible night in the hospital.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Mail”</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Two limbless soldiers were found helplessly drunk on the pavement at Brighton.
+A publican was fined £20.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” November 25, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A wounded soldier, mentioned in despatches, was charged with causing the death
+of a soldier with whom he had been drinking. Reeling under a heavy blow, the injured
+man was helped to bed, but when the bugle sounded in the morning he was dead.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Mail,” December 21, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier, aged 29, with a gunshot wound in his arm, died from alcohol at Oxford.
+One Sunday night he and two other wounded soldiers consumed four bottles of rum
+brought into the hospital.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Oxford Coroner, January 10, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Three soldiers in hospital uniform were found lying helplessly drunk on the tramlines
+of Sheffield. Two were back from the Dardanelles.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Sheffield Star,” March 2, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Seamen on a ship bringing wounded to England from Boulogne were so drunk
+that they interfered with the stretcher bearers, and one fell across a wounded soldier
+lying on deck.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Southampton, May 14, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>There was a paralysed and helpless man who was found hopelessly drunk in
+hospital after his friends had visited him.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Statement by Lieut.-Col. Sir Alfred Pearce Gould</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>An officer who has trained hundreds of men for the ambulance corps declared that
+a large percentage of wounded are in a very nervous condition, in which alcohol means
+collapse and almost certain death.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Quoted in “Daily Mail”</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Lying helpless at a London station, moaning on the ground in drunken delirium,
+was a lad in hospital blue who had, in truth, been wounded by his friends. Drink was
+taking him again through the worst of his experiences, and his mental pain was pitiable
+to see.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in the “Globe,” January, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Two drunken soldiers from Gallipoli made what a doctor described as the most
+savage attack he ever saw on a civilian. They held a young man’s head against a wall
+and pounded him unmercifully.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” August 19, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A party of soldiers were seriously injured in a struggle to arrest a drunken private
+at Pontefract. The publican called on the men in his taproom to rescue the private, but
+the sergeants drove them off.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” October 5, 1914</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A sergeant of a Welsh regiment, invited to drink by friends in Waterloo Road,
+was picked up as he lay senseless, his pulse beating feebly, his eyes wide open, and his
+body starving with cold.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” February 14, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A drunken man rushed from a publichouse and kicked a soldier unconscious. The
+military police, chasing the man, were stoned. Four soldiers were injured, one having
+his head cut open, and the military were ordered to clear the place with fixed bayonets.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” August 11, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The medical officer in charge of the Mental Block of a large military hospital said
+to the Colonel: “I have the worst job of all, and it is through Drink, Drink, Drink!
+Men recover fairly soon from shell shock, but officers, especially the younger ones, who
+habitually take wines and spirits, are subject to relapses every few days. It is awful!”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “National Temperance Quarterly,” May 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Of the thirty war hospitals in Hertfordshire, with 8000 men passing through them
+in the first thirty months of the war, there is not one that has not had trouble with
+drink.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts known to the Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A doctor from a Canadian hospital said a large percentage of their troops had had
+to be sent back to Canada rendered permanently insane through the action of alcohol.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” October 31, 1916</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>One terrible truth remains to be told of the crime of drink against
+the Red Cross. The most blessed thing in all the world today is alcohol,
+for it makes chloroform and ether, which soothe the pain of men.
+We cannot get enough of either of these consoling drugs, yet we go
+on wasting precious food to make more alcohol <i>to add to the sum of
+misery and pain</i>.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>whether the bread ration applies equally to all; or if it may be exceeded
+if the excess is drunk instead of being eaten?</b></p>
+
+<div class='smaller'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>and</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>how many brewers’ vats have been imported this year on ships which
+had no room for urgent munitions of war?</b></p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>Stabbing the Army in the Back</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>All the world is learning now that the drink trade is the great confederate
+of venereal disease. It leads a man into temptation, destroys
+his power of resistance, and retards his chances of recovery.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We can never know the truth about the extent of this disease, about
+the way in which the liquor trade, by breaking down tens of thousands
+of our men, has stabbed the Army in the back. But the number of soldiers
+incapacitated by this disease through drink is enormously greater
+than the number incapacitated by the most subtle or dramatic stroke
+devised by the German staff.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The lost man-power of the Army through this disease must be equal
+to the whole of the original British Expeditionary Force. The Government
+has given us figures for the Army at home last year, and they are
+43 per 1,000—or over 100,000 cases for an army of 2,500,000 men. There
+were 7,000 cases in one Canadian camp alone.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Here are the black facts revealed in a debate in Parliament on April
+23, 1917, when two distinguished Army officers, speaking with great
+restraint, sought to open the eyes of the nation to this plague fostered
+in our camps by drink:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>“During the war we have had admitted into the hospitals of England over 70,000
+cases of gonorrhœa, over 20,000 cases of syphilis, and over 6000 cases of another disease
+somewhat similar. I am quite openly prepared to state that of these 20,000 cases of
+syphilis you do not get much work out of them under two and a half years. I know
+from what I have seen of the modern conditions of this War that you may absolutely
+wipe them out, except for a few handfuls.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“When you come to the great mass of casualties under this head ... the figures
+mean that you have <b>a Division constantly out of action</b>. If you have anything
+like 70,000 men enfeebled, you find that you suffer to that extent also. It is not only
+that you lose the men, and not only the men who are partially cured are suffering for
+many months to come, but their chances of recovery from wounds are not nearly
+so good.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I know of a hospital for venereal cases which it was found necessary to expand
+from its normal accommodation for 500 or 600 up to 2,000 cases, and they are continually
+full. It is a British hospital in France. A figure I should like to submit to
+challenge is that during the course of the war between 40,000 and 50,000 cases of
+syphilis have passed through our hospitals in France. When you come to gonorrhœa,
+the figure given me which covers that is between 150,000 and 200,000 cases.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>“Every Canadian soldier who comes to this country arrives here not only a first-class
+specimen of a fine soldier, but as clean-limbed and as clean a man as the Creator
+Himself could create. The fact that in one only of the three Canadian camps in this
+country 7,000 of these clean Canadian boys went through the hospital for venereal
+disease in fourteen months is not only a great discredit to any Government in this
+country but has an effect in Canada which I can assure the House does not make for
+a better feeling with the Home Country, and does not make for what we all desire—Imperial
+Unity.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Colonel Sir Hamar Greenwood in Parliament, April 23, 1917</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Those are unchallenged statements made in the House of Commons
+itself; they stand as a terrible indictment of this disease, and it is not
+to be denied that this evil could never have reached its present frightful
+proportions if Parliament had followed the King. Let us look at a few
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>examples of the ravages of this vice allied so closely to the public-house.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is not possible to tell the whole truth about drink; the language in which it
+must be written would be offensive in a civilised country. It must be said, simply, that
+soldiers in England have been court-martialled for having been influenced by drink to
+commit unspeakable offences against animals.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Records of Court-Martials</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A special constable in a harlot-haunted district in London describes how these
+harpies carry off lonely soldiers to their rooms, make them drunk, and finally innoculate
+them, as likely as not, with disease. Is it not possible to hold in check these
+women who prey upon and poison our soldiers? asks Sir Conan Doyle.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Letter in the “Times”</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>One of the hot-beds of venereal disease to which drink leads our soldiers, was
+kept by an Austrian woman in Lambeth, who was receiving 15<i>s.</i> a week from the
+Austrian Government in April 1916, and used to lure our soldiers when weakened by
+drink. All the men seen to enter this house were either soldiers or sailors.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Lambeth</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier from the Front with £18 was taken by a married woman to her home,
+where he was found after a drunken bout with eight women, all drunk. The woman’s
+children were terribly neglected.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of St. Helens, November 30, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>If you describe the Waterloo Road and the back streets as an open sewer you
+will be somewhere near the truth. Not a day goes by without bringing some soldier
+who has been waylaid.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in the “Times,” February 22, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier came from the Front to go home to Scotland. He got drunk near
+Waterloo, losing all his money and his railway pass. He spent his leave living on
+charity, and returned to the Front without having been near either his home or his
+friends.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” February 14, 1916</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Here is the official proof of the relation of the drink trade to this
+traffic in disease. It is from the Report of the Royal Commission:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>Abundant evidence was given as to the intimate relation between alcohol and
+venereal diseases.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Alcohol renders a man liable to yield to temptations which he might otherwise
+resist, and aggravates the disease by diminishing the resistance of the individual.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Alcoholism makes latent syphilis and gonorrhœa active.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Our evidence tends to show that the communication in disease is frequently due to
+indulgence in intoxicants, and there is no doubt that the growth of temperance among
+the population would help to bring about an amelioration of the very serious conditions
+which our enquiry has revealed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We desire, therefore, to place on record our opinion that action should be taken
+without delay.</p>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>Will some Member of Parliament please ask</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'><b>if, in view of Lord D’Abernon’s statement that Prohibition has failed
+in Canada, the Government will issue the figures showing the decrease
+of crime and the increase of wealth?</b></p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Price the Empire Pays</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>It is a bitter irony that while the men of the Empire have come to
+France to fight the enemy of mankind, this foe within our gates has
+struck a blow at the British Empire that generations will not heal.
+How many Empire men this private trade has slain we do not know,
+but we know beyond all challenge that it has weakened the bonds that
+bind our Dominions to the Motherland. This trade that throttles us
+at home can pull the Empire down, and it has started well. It has
+struck its blow at Canada.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>Let us look at the plain facts which in other days than these would
+have caused a storm of anger that Parliament could not have ignored.
+Canada has followed the King; arming herself with her full powers,
+flinging herself upon her enemies with her utmost strength, she has
+swept drink out of Canada almost from sea to sea. But even before
+she did this Canada saw that alcohol must go from her camps if her
+men were to be fit to fight for England, and long before the Prohibition
+wave swept across the country, the Canadian Government removed all
+alcohol from the training camps. It was the deliberate choice of a
+Government and its people, and from that day to this there has been
+no reason for regret.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So the young manhood of Canada, rallying to the flag, was guarded
+from alcohol. She poured out her men in hundreds of thousands; they
+came to us from Prohibition camps; they came in Prohibition ships, and
+even here this trade that has us in its grip was not allowed at first in
+the Canadian camps; the only condition that Canada made—a condition
+implied but clearly understood—was properly regarded and obeyed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We respected the desire of Canada, and kept her soldiers free from
+drink in their own camps. But a soldier cannot keep in camp, and in
+the villages around the Drink Trade waits in every street. The military
+authorities were willing for the Canadian Government to have their
+way inside the camps, but drink was free outside, and in these public-houses
+there was sown the seed that may one day break this Empire.
+The Drink Trade was so rampant outside the Canadian camps that
+Prohibition inside was almost in vain. We had to decide between
+breaking the word of the Canadian Government to its people or dealing
+with this trade as Canada herself has done; as Russia has done; as
+France and America are doing. It was the Empire or the drink traffic,
+and the drink traffic won, as it always wins with us.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It came about in October, down on Salisbury Plain. During one
+week-end a number of Canadian troops gave way to drinking in villages
+around the camps, and it was then that the grave decision was come
+to that the drink trade should be allowed to set up its horrible canteens
+in every Canadian camp. The change was made at the request of a
+British General, and we have the assurance of the Prime Minister of
+Canada that the approval of the Canadian Government was neither obtained
+nor asked. In handing the Canadian Army over to the drink
+canteens, in deliberately reversing the policy of the Canadian Government
+and its people, there was no consultation with Canada.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is important to remember that this decision, fraught with tragic
+and far-reaching consequences for the Empire, was a pure and simple
+English act. We may imagine the Canadian view from the remark of
+a Canadian General, who said, “I know drink is a hindrance, but I can
+do very little, because in military circles in this country drunkenness is
+not considered a very serious offense.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It would have been surprising if there had not poured in upon our
+Government a stream of protests, and from all parts of the Dominions
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>they came. The Dominion of Canada, giving freely to the Motherland
+450,000 boys and men, was moved to passionate indignation that England
+should scorn her love for them, should ignore the pleadings of
+their mothers and sisters, and should put in their way the temptations
+from which they were saved at home. Canada does not want our drink
+trade; she lives side by side with the United States, she sees that great
+country building up its future free from drink, and she sees America,
+splendid ally in war, as a mighty rival in peace.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And Canada is ready for the Reconstruction. She has followed the
+Prohibition lead of the United States, and already she has ceased to
+be a borrowing country. The very first year of Prohibition has seen
+this young Dominion, for the first time in her history, financially self-sustaining.
+Crime is disappearing; social gatherings are held in her
+gaols; she has set up vast munition workshops, and instead of borrowing
+money for her own support she has made hundreds of millions’
+worth of munitions for which this country need not pay until the war
+is over, and then need never pay at all for the munitions the Canadians
+have used. Canada is in deadly earliest. She kept her men away from
+drink to make them fit; she has swept it away to make a clean country
+for those who go back.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And what is England’s contribution to this Imperial Reconstruction?
+<i>We have scorned it all.</i> The Prime Minister has said that this
+drink trade is so horrible that it is worth this horrible war to settle
+with it, yet we have sacrificed the love of Canada on our brewers’ altar.
+We can believe the Canadian who declares his profound conviction that
+but for this Canada would have sent us 100,000 more recruits; we can
+believe it is true that where responsible Canadians meet together in
+these days the talk is of how long the tie will last unbroken that binds
+the daughter to the Motherland. We can understand the passion that
+lies behind the resolutions that come to Downing Street from Nova
+Scotia; we know the depth of the yearning of those 64,000 mothers and
+wives of Toronto who signed that great petition to the Government of
+Canada begging it in the name of God to intervene.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>We can understand it all; but let us call the witnesses, and let us
+see the price the Dominion pays for our quailing before this Kaiser’s
+trade.</p>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>Those Who Will Not Go Back</h3>
+
+<p class='c012'>It is the great consolation of Canada that, though their sons may
+fall before this tempter’s trade in Britain, they will go back to a Canada
+free from drink. But some will never go back, and they are not on
+the Roll of Honour. They have been destroyed by the enemy within
+our gate, this trade that traps men on their way to France and digs
+their graves.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>A young Canadian who had never tasted alcohol came from a Prohibition camp
+in Canada, came to England on a Prohibition ship, and was put in a camp with a
+drink canteen. He started drinking and contracted venereal disease. Ordered home
+as unfit, in fear and shame he sought a friend’s advice about the girl he was to marry.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>“You can never marry her,” said his friend, and that night in his hut the young
+Canadian blew out his brains.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in possession of the Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A young Canadian officer was sent home disgraced. Sodden with alcohol, he left
+the train and shot a railway clerk dead.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Montreal “Weekly Witness,” October 24, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Russian soldier in the Canadian forces, described as a clean, soldierly man, with
+a splendid character from his officer, was charged with the murder of a Canadian
+private who tried to separate two quarrelling soldiers in a bar. The prisoner had
+drunk much whisky and remembered nothing of his crime, and was sentenced to
+twelve months’ hard labour for manslaughter. The judge hoped he might be used as
+a soldier <i>in the Russian Army</i>.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Record of Hampshire Assizes, February 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A man from Prohibition Russia enlisted in Prohibition Canada, and came to
+England. He spent 9<i>s.</i> on drink one day, and that night he crept from his bed and
+killed his corporal at Witley Camp.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Godalming, February 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Canadian soldier, aged 26, after a publichouse quarrel with another soldier, was
+found dying on the pavement in Hastings. His throat had been cut, and he died on
+entering the hospital. The other soldier was charged with murder, and sentenced to
+15 years.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Record of Hastings Assizes, March 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A young Canadian soldier, aged 20, died from alcohol while in training at Witley.
+He had a bottle of stout followed by nine or ten “double-headers” of neat whisky in
+about two hours. He was carried back to camp, laid unconscious on his bed, and died.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” March 22, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Canadian lieutenant was tried for the murder of a canteen sergeant. They
+arrived together at a house at Grayshott, where the lieutenant asked for some strong
+drink and took a bottle of whisky and two glasses. The sergeant was afterwards
+found dead in the cellar, and the lieutenant carried the body into the stable.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Grayshott Coroner, December 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A man leaving a publichouse in company with a woman, with whom he had been
+drinking, met a Canadian soldier not far from Charing Cross. The soldier spoke, and
+the man struck him. The soldier was carried to the hospital, where he died soon
+afterwards from a wound two inches deep, caused by a knife.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Police Records of Bow Street, January 1, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The wife of a gunner in the South African Heavy Artillery died at Bexhill from
+alcohol. The soldier said he bought 12 bottles of stout and 12 bottles of beer, one of
+whisky, and one of port, which they drank between Saturday night and Monday night.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Bexhill Coroner, December 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A soldier from Toronto, having been drinking away his pay in a Carlisle publichouse,
+with another Canadian soldier and some married women, failed to appear the
+next morning, and was found dead on a footpath with a bottle of whisky in his pocket</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Carlisle Coroner, April 14, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Canadian soldier, having drawn £20 from the Canadian office, visited several
+publichouses, and was killed in a scuffle in London.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily News,” December 2, 1916</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>The Men From the Prohibition Camps</h3>
+
+<p class='c012'>Again and again we have seen the peculiar temptations of drink
+among Canadians. Officers, chief-constables, chaplains, newspapers,
+the men themselves, have all borne witness that to these men from
+Prohibition Canada the sudden temptations of our drink trade come with
+terrible power, and often they fall not knowing. The finest manhood
+of the Empire our tap-rooms and canteens destroy, not in isolated cases,
+but in a host we dare not number.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Of the soldiers who first came over from Canada, says a great Canadian
+paper, many were emigrants from England, not yet securely planted
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>in Canada, and for their sakes especially drink should have been withheld
+from them. Of the larger number of Canadian troops that followed
+them, many were youths who had never known drink, and they
+were taken from home at the most social and reckless age, to face drink
+with all the temptations induced by the nervous strain, the hardships
+and social abandon of the camp and the trench, and the free pocket-money
+when on leave.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>In an officers’ mess of two double companies of Canadians only one officer drank
+on his arrival in a canteen camp in England; within three months there was not an
+abstainer in the mess.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts told at Society for Study of Inebriety, Jan. 10, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>These men come mostly from districts in Canada where intoxicants are prohibited
+by law, and many of them, being young lads, who perhaps have never tasted liquor
+before their arrival, fall easy victims.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Chief Constable of Godalming</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>Overseas soldiers come to our hospitals astonishingly cheerful and fit in a general
+sense, and wonderfully receptive to treatment. Only three per thousand die in our
+great hospitals. This is largely due to the hardy life of the men and the fact that
+they are removed from the danger of taking too much alcohol. The home troops have
+a much higher mortality, partly because their use of alcohol diminishes their chances.
+Re-admissions are largely due to drink on furlough.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Major Maclean, M.D., of the Third Western General Hospital</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Canadian soldier, who had been wounded at the Front, was taken to a house
+by women and left alone drunk. An officer gave him an excellent character, and said
+he was on his way back to Canada. These men experience temptations here (he said)
+that they would not find in Canada, and there was too much of this going on.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Hastings Police Records, February 19, 1917</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>I heard a sad account of the havoc of the wet canteen and a private in a Canadian
+A.M.C. told us of a lad of 17 who is made so drunk that there is rarely a night when
+he has not to be helped up to bed. One of the soldiers here told me of his son in
+Canada being anxious to join up, but after seeing the condition of things over here
+he was doing all he could to discourage his son.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Letter to the Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>The Canadians in most cases are entirely lost when they arrive in this country,
+and are much more liable to the temptation which is thrown in their way, but when
+you give a figure such as this—that in one camp during last year, and two months of
+the previous year, there were 7,000 cases—it seems to me that it is about time we
+realised the magnitude of the evil. I do not know what has happened to them, except
+that I imagine a large number have gone back to Canada, and have not been able to
+play the part they had hoped to play.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>In Camp and On Leave</h3>
+
+<p class='c012'>Everywhere we find the trail of drink among Canadians—in camp
+and on leave.</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>A Canadian corporal, wounded in the Battle of Ypres, was found terribly drunk
+after being missing all day from hospital. Confronted with the surgeon after violent
+acts of insubordination, the corporal broke down and cried like a child.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Western Mail,” February 18, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>In the first weeks of the war 42 Canadian soldiers disgraced themselves, by excessive
+drinking, insubordination, and disorderly conduct, to such an extent that they
+had to be sent back to Canada.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Canadian Pioneer,” December 4, 1914</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Canadian soldier, helplessly drunk, was seen at King’s Cross station eating,
+tearing, and crumpling up £1 notes, and would have lost about fifteen pounds but for
+kindly help from passers by.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” September 28, 1916</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A gunner from Montreal, missing from camp for several days, drank himself
+delirious, and cut his throat with a razor.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Canadian Pioneer,” December 4, 1914</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>A Canadian soldier spent £70 in three weeks on drink and bad characters.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in “Daily Mail” August 10, 1915</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A Sergeant-Major from Canada declared that he had lost 20 per cent. of the men
+of his battery through venereal disease. They had a little drink, and were captured
+by the swarm of bad women at Folkestone.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Facts in Letter to Author</i></div>
+
+<p class='c012'>A woman was imprisoned for placing young children in moral danger. Every
+night the girls brought soldiers home, and colonial soldiers were frequently so drunk
+that they were carried in.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Records of Central Criminal Court, April 25, 1917</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>The Rising Storm in Canada</h3>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<p class='c012'><b>The thing cannot be justified. It is the blackest tragedy of this whole war that,
+in fighting for freedom in Europe, the free sons of the British breed have to face
+this war-time record of waste at home, with its inevitable toll of debauchery and
+crime.</b></p>
+
+</div>
+<div class='small'>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Editorial in “Toronto Globe”</i></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>While this book was being written one of the greatest meetings
+ever held in Manchester was cheering a Canadian in khaki who declared
+that he was not going hungry while brewers were destroying food, and
+he went on to say, this soldier and sportsman well-known in the
+Dominion:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Great numbers of our men never saw France. Canadian boys cried because they
+had not munitions. England reeled and beer flowed like water while thousands of
+our boys went down into their graves. We will never forget it in Canada.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>We may be sure Canada will not forget. She will not forget her
+dead: she will not forget that the Drink Traffic she has swept away at
+home struck down her sons in the land for which they fought. “We
+must know who is to blame,” says a Canadian paper; “we presume they
+will have no objection to have their names placarded before the country,
+that every mother may know.” Col. Sir Hamar Greenwood, M. P., has
+lately returned from Canada, and this is what he tells us:</p>
+
+<div class='small'>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I met many fathers and mothers whose boys had been sent back to Canada
+debilitated and ruined for life because they had been enmeshed by harpies, and again
+and again these parents have said to me, ‘We do not mind our boys dying on the
+field of battle for old England, but to think that we sent our sons to England to come
+back to us ruined in health, and a disgrace to us, to them, and to the country, is
+something the Home Country should never ask us to bear.’”</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>Letter from a Solicitor in Ontario to the Author</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>I wonder if the advocates of the drink traffic in Britain appreciate the contempt in
+which they are held in Canada. Before the war I had a class of ten young men.
+Every one of them is now at the Front, and one writes that when I told them of the
+drink conditions in England he did not believe half of it; now he says I did not tell
+him half. Letters from our Canadian soldiers are appearing in our papers, and they
+are all amazed at the drinking habits of Britain.</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>From a Resolution received by Mr. Lloyd George from the
+Social Service Council of Nova Scotia</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>That we, representing the social, moral, and spiritual forces of this part of the
+British Empire, who have proved our loyalty by the thousands of men this small
+province has sent overseas, do record our most earnest protest against Britain’s inaction
+in this matter, which we are sure must result in longer and increased suffering for the
+men we have sent to help her win the war; and do most insistently plead with the
+British Government and the British Parliament that they at once exercise the power
+vested in them to strike the blow that will dispose of this enemy at home, and so
+give mighty reinforcement to those who are bleeding and dying for Britain and human
+liberties on the battlefields abroad.</p>
+<p class='c014'><span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span><i>Sermon by Dr. Flanders in London, Ontario, Feb. 25, 1917</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Canada has the right to make this demand on the Motherland from the simple
+standpoint of political economics. That we might put the Dominion into the best
+possible shape to give the utmost of our strength in men and munitions, we have an
+almost Dominion-wide Prohibition, and no intelligent person will deny that our contributions
+to the war from the first have been multiplied and intensified by that action.
+Why should little Johnnie Canuck abolish drink that he might conserve his manhood
+and material resources in the interest of the Empire’s war, and big John Bull refuse
+to abolish the traffic to the great waste of his material resources and the undoing of
+his efficiency?</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>A public man with three soldier sons wrote to the Toronto Globe</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Canada, for efficiency in war, casts out the drink evil. Is it too much to expect
+Britain, in fairness, to do the same? Is it not a mockery for the British Isles to face
+our common struggle with this palsy in her frame?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Here is the bitter pill, the embittering thought for many a Canadian parent. Let
+me be a type. Three of my sons are in khaki. I gave them a father’s blessing when
+they enlisted. But this thought strains, most of all, the ties of my loyalty to the cause—to
+see my sons fight and fall for a Britain that at home is saddled by distillery
+interests, and misguided by a Press silent as the grave on this entrenched evil. Why
+should our sons go from a country where booze is banished to spend months on the
+way to the trenches in England, where the vices of the liquor traffic are legalised?</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>We see the spirit of Canada in those great words of the Premier of Ontario, Mr. Hearst,
+speaking of the giving up of drink</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In this day of national peril, in this day when the future of the British Empire,
+the freedom of the world, and the blessings of democratic government hang in the
+balance, if I should fail to listen to what I believe to be the call of duty, if I should
+neglect to take every action that in my judgment will help to conserve the financial
+strength and power and manhood of this province for the great struggle in which we
+are engaged, I would be a traitor to my country, a traitor to my own conscience, and
+unworthy of the brave sons of Canada that are fighting, bleeding and dying for freedom
+and for us.</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>A letter from one of the most eminent public men in Canada</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“British Canada is intensely loyal to the Empire and the Allied Cause, but at
+present recruiting is almost at an end. Why? Partly because of considerable dissatisfaction
+with many of the conditions which prevail. Suffering, wounds, death, are
+expected as inevitable in war, but the evil influences, the lavish temptations of liquor
+and bad women which sweep down upon our boys in England, are not felt to be
+necessary, and the hearts of multitudes of Canadian parents are hot with indignation
+at the apparent indifference of the authorities to the moral welfare of our troops.”</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>Captain John MacNeill, with the Canadian troops in France</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I say to you solemnly, if England should lose this war because of drink, or if
+England should unnecessarily prolong the war with great sacrifice of life in her effort
+to protect drink, or even if England should win the war in spite of drink, you will
+have put upon the bonds of Empire such a strain as they have never known before,
+and such a strain as we cannot promise they will be able to survive.”</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>From the petition presented to the Prime Minister of Canada,
+signed by 64,000 mothers and wives in Toronto</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>1. That Mothers and Wives of Canada in giving their sons and husbands for
+King and Empire, asked and received from your Minister of Militia this only assurance
+that, in sending them into the ranks, we were not hereby irrevocably thrusting
+them into the temptation of Strong Drink.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>2. We appreciated from the depths of our hearts, your action in abolishing the
+Wet Canteen from the Canadian Militia. We believe the Wet Canteen established in
+the ranks of the front to be a double danger, robbing our King of the success in arms
+which in these days comes only to the brave heart that is controlled by a clear head,
+and robbing us and our Canada of the Manhood which we gave into our Empire’s
+keeping.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>3. We do not believe that the King will refuse the aid of Canada’s sons; nor that
+he will appreciate your patriotic efforts the less, if you keep faith with us and make
+known to His Majesty, his Ministers and Commanders, that our boys are sent forth
+on the one condition that the dispensing of intoxicating liquors shall be prohibited in
+the ranks.</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>From a Sermon preached in Ontario, February 25, 1917</i>:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank God, if any of our Canadian soldiers return to us with the drink habit
+formed and raging, we can welcome them to a land nearly purged of the liquor traffic,
+where they may have a chance to recover their manhood.”</p>
+
+<p class='c014'><i>Letter on the effects of Prohibition, from a business man in Ontario,
+published in the “Spectator:”</i></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Men I have known for years to be regular promenading tanks have given it up,
+and are starting a decent life again. The Police Court is empty. England should try it.
+It would be, after the first heavy initial loss, the best thing that ever struck the nation.
+I cursed these temperance guys as hard as any, but all the same it cannot blind you
+from the truth.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>Your Share in the Food Crisis</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>The Food and Money Wasted on Drink in Our Great Towns</h3>
+
+<div class='c000'></div>
+<div class="centerwide">
+<span class='sc'>Estimated from August 1914 to April 1917 inclusive</span> by <span class='sc'>George B. Wilson</span>, B.A.,
+Compiler of the National Drink Bill
+</div>
+
+<table class='table1' summary=''>
+  <tr>
+ <th class='btt bbt brt c015'>&nbsp;</th>
+ <th class='btt bbt brt c015'>Drink Bill</th>
+ <th class='btt bbt brt c015'>Grain Lost</th>
+ <th class='btt bbt c015'>Sugar in Beer</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c016'></td>
+ <td class='brt c017'></td>
+ <td class='brt c015'>Tons</td>
+    <td class='c015'>lb.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>United Kingdom</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£510,000,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>4,400,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>762,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>London</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£83,000,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>693,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>120,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Edinburgh</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£3,200,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>31,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>5,300,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Dublin</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£2,600,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>29,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>5,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Glasgow</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£10,500,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>101,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>17,400,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Manchester and Salford</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£11,000,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>92,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>15,900,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Birmingham</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£9,900,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>82,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>14,200,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Liverpool</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£8,800,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>73,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>12,600,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Sheffield</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£5,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>45,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>7,800,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Leeds</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£5,300,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>44,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>7,600,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Bristol</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£4,200,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>35,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>6,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>West Ham</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£3,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>28,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>4,900,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Bradford</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£3,300,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>28,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>4,800,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Hull</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£3,300,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>27,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>4,700,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Newcastle</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£3,100,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>26,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>4,500,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Nottingham</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£3,100,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>26,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>4,500,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Portsmouth</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£2,800,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>23,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>4,400,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Stoke</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£2,800,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>23,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>4,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Leicester</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£2,700,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>22,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>3,800,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Cardiff</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£2,100,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>18,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>3,100,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Bolton</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£2,100,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>18,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>3,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Croydon</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£2,100,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>17,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>3,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Sunderland</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,700,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>14,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,500,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Oldham</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,700,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>14,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,500,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Birkenhead</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,600,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>13,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,200,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Blackburn</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,500,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>13,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,200,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Brighton</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,500,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>13,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,200,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Plymouth</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,500,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,100,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Derby</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,100,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Middlesbrough</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,100,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Stockport</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,100,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Norwich</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,100,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Southampton</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Swansea</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>12,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Gateshead</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>11,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>2,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Preston</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,400,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>11,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>1,900,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Coventry</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,300,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>11,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>1,900,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c018'>Huddersfield</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>£1,300,000</td>
+ <td class='brt c019'>10,000</td>
+    <td class='c019'>1,800,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='bbt brt c018'>Halifax</td>
+ <td class='bbt brt c019'>£1,200,000</td>
+ <td class='bbt brt c019'>10,000</td>
+ <td class='bbt c019'>1,700,000</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<h3 class='c011'>PLAY THE GAME</h3>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<table class='table2' summary=''>
+  <tr><td class='c020' colspan='2'>There is one week’s bread in      18 pints of beer</td></tr>
+  <tr><td class='c020' colspan='2'>There is one week’s sugar in      16 pints of beer</td></tr>
+</table>
+<p class='c009'>The man who drinks 3 pints a day drinks another man’s rations.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>THE FOOD PYRAMIDS DESTROYED FOR DRINK</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id004'>
+<img src='images/image041a.jpg' alt='The Great Pyramid of Egypt' class='ig001' />
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>The Great Pyramid of Egypt, the biggest construction in stone ever made by the  hands of man—80,000,000 cubic feet of masonry</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id004'>
+<img src='images/image041b.jpg' alt='The Great Pyramids of Food' class='ig001' />
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>The Great Pyramids of Food, the biggest wilful destruction of food ever known—180,000,000  cubic feet of food destroyed for the Drink Trade during the war</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>How the Brewer Gets Our Food</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<h3 class='c021'>THE MEN WHO BRING IT</h3>
+
+</div>
+<p class='c012'>It is easy to talk of a mine-sweeper. I wish the whole nation could
+understand what these men are doing. They are feeding the whole
+population, battling with the elements as well as with the enemy, battling
+with dangers overhead and dangers under the sea. The mine-sweeper
+is like the soldier daily over the parapet—he carries his life in
+his hand.</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>First Lord of the Admiralty.</i></div>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<h3 class='c021'>THE PEOPLE WHO WAIT FOR IT</h3>
+
+</div>
+<p class='c012'>A London caterer ordered a quantity of sugar from the Philippines.
+The mine-sweepers cleared the way for it and it reached the docks. The
+caterer sent for it, and was informed that it could only be delivered if
+it was for a brewer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A provincial caterer ordered sugar <i>and paid for it</i>, but was told by
+the Food Controller that it could only be released if <i>it was sold to a
+brewer</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A working man was discussing rations with his minister in the
+street. “It is very hard,” he said, “to keep to your rations when you
+have five strapping lads, but we are going to try it.” Then a drunken
+man lurched past. The workman pulled himself together, and said, in
+great passion: “I tell you what it is, sir, I am not going to let my
+boys starve as long as there is food to make beer for men like that.”</p>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<h3 class='c021'>THE PRICE WE PAY FOR IT</h3>
+
+</div>
+<p class='c012'>Immense quantities of food are used for beer and spirits. All this
+grain is lost for food purposes. <i>If this grain were available for food, the
+prices of bread and meat would be lowered.</i></p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>War Savings Committee.</i></div>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<h3 class='c021'>THE POOR WHO SUFFER FOR IT</h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'>“Rationing bread could not be undertaken without grave risk to
+the health of the poor.”</p>
+
+<div class='c010'><i>Capt. Bathurst, M. P.</i></div>
+
+<div class='sansserif'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c000'>
+    <div>By what right does the Government</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+<p class='c009'>use our mine-sweepers to bring in food for brewers to destroy? allow
+brewers to increase the cost of living for every household? and allow
+the willful destruction of food supplies to imperil the health of the poor?</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>The Way for the Government</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>We do not want to be amused by fiddlers while our heroes fight
+and die.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>What are the things we see? We see the Government silent in
+the presence of what the greatest paper in our greatest overseas Dominion
+calls “the blackest tragedy of the war.” We see a trade which the
+King declared to be prolonging the war in the crisis of 1915, prolonging
+it still in the crisis of 1917. We see our Prime Minister, who has
+declared this trade to be worse than Germany, allowing it to have its
+way. We see our Prime Minister, who has said we cannot settle with
+Germany until we have settled with drink, fearing to settle with drink.
+Then are we not to settle with Germany, and are we to surrender to
+the greatest enemy of the three?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There is one clear way before the Government; it is the only way
+of straightness and patriotism and honour. It is to wind up this enemy
+trade and move from our path the greatest hindrance to the winning of
+the war. It is to take our side honourably with our great Allies, to
+bring to an end the shameful isolation of Great Britain in the drink map
+of the great free countries that appears on the back of this book.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is the sign of weakness everywhere that it seeks a scapegoat for
+its sins, and we hear the everlasting talk of Labour. But it will not do.
+It is time these slanders on our workmen ceased.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>If the Government is afraid of the working man, let it say so, or
+let it try him. If it is afraid of temperance people, let it rally them
+to its side as one man on the platform where they meet. If it is afraid
+of the Drink Trade, then the time has come to say so, for we who send
+out our millions to fight a foreign foe are not going to starve for bread
+through fear of enemies within our gate. The Prime Minister gave the
+Army its munitions; the Army will use them in vain unless the munitions
+of life come into our homes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Working men are tired of men who fool with food and liberty.
+They do not object to any equal sacrifice: they believe in the democratic
+policy of the King, who based Prohibition, not on class distinction
+as the Government did by closing tap-rooms 15 hours a day and
+leaving cellars and Parliamentary bars open always, but on the principle
+of the King’s own words that “no difference shall be made, so far
+as his Majesty is concerned, between the treatment of the rich and poor
+in this respect.” Let the Government follow the King, and the people
+will follow the Government.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the highest interests of the nation and the war let this be said
+as plain as words can make it—<i>that there is no body of temperance opinion
+anywhere standing in the way of Prohibition</i>, but that the united moral
+forces of the nation would rally to the Government instantly on an act
+of a few words such as this:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span><b>That the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages be totally prohibited
+in the United Kingdom for the period of the war and demobilization,
+and that a committee be appointed to deal with all the private
+and public interests concerned; and that it be resolved upon, here and
+now, that reconstruction be accompanied by universal local option.</b></p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There would be no opposition the Government need count to a proposal
+like that.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id005'>
+<img src='images/image044.jpg' alt='TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION LABEL WESTERVILLE O.' class='ig001' />
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class='tnote'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c1'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>Transcriber’s Note</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+  <ul  class='ul_1'>
+    <li>Obvious typographical and punctuation errors were corrected.
+    </li>
+    <li class='c000'>Inconsistencies in hyphenation were retained.
+    </li>
+  </ul>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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