The Fiddlers; Drink in the Witness Box
Date: 2016-12-15T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: World War; 1914-1918; Alcoholism

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Title: The Fiddlers; Drink in the Witness Box

Author: Arthur Mee

Release date: December 15, 2016 [eBook #53733]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIDDLERS; DRINK IN THE WITNESS BOX ***

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Fiddlers, by Arthur Mee

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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

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.

Drink, What did You do in the Great War?

This impressive picture of Britannia is from
the splendid 1916 issue of Bibby’s Annual

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

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 34s. 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 32s. 6d. 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 30s. a week, and her eldest boy’s wages of 30s., 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 9s. 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 10s. 6d. 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 32s. 6d. 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 4s. 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 8s. 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 13s. 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

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 15s. 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 9s. 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

The Great Pyramid of Egypt, the biggest construction in stone ever made by the hands of man—80,000,000 cubic feet of masonry

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.

Transcriber’s Note

- Obvious typographical and punctuation errors were corrected.

- Inconsistencies in hyphenation were retained.

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Table of Contents

- The Fiddlers Drink in the Witness Box
- The Wages of Sin
- Fiddling to Disaster
- The Drink Trade and Our War Services
- The War-Work of the Food Destroyers
- The Food Now Being Destroyed for Beer

- The Shadow of Famine

- The Food Value of Brewer’s Sugar

- The Food Value of Brewer’s Malt

- The Tunes They Play

- How the Allies Did It

- The Soldier’s Home

- Mothers and Children

- The Ruined Wives

- The Roll of the Dead
- The New Drinkers
- Back to the Homeland
- Into the Firing Line
- Drink and the Red Cross
- Stabbing the Army in the Back

- The Price the Empire Pays

- Those Who Will Not Go Back
- The Men From the Prohibition Camps
- In Camp and On Leave
- The Rising Storm in Canada

- Your Share in the Food Crisis

- The Food and Money Wasted on Drink in Our Great Towns

- PLAY THE GAME

- THE FOOD PYRAMIDS DESTROYED FOR DRINK

- How the Brewer Gets Our Food

- THE MEN WHO BRING IT
- THE PEOPLE WHO WAIT FOR IT
- THE PRICE WE PAY FOR IT
- THE POOR WHO SUFFER FOR IT

- The Way for the Government

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE