Chapter III: Part 3

_Facts in Montreal “Weekly Witness,” October 24, 1916_

A Russian soldier in the Canadian forces, described as a clean,
soldierly man, with a splendid character from his officer, was
charged with the murder of a Canadian private who tried to separate
two quarrelling soldiers in a bar. The prisoner had drunk much
whisky and remembered nothing of his crime, and was sentenced to
twelve months’ hard labour for manslaughter. The judge hoped he
might be used as a soldier _in the Russian Army_.

_Record of Hampshire Assizes, February 1916_

A man from Prohibition Russia enlisted in Prohibition Canada, and
came to England. He spent 9_s._ on drink one day, and that night he
crept from his bed and killed his corporal at Witley Camp.

_Police Records of Godalming, February 1917_

A Canadian soldier, aged 26, after a publichouse quarrel with
another soldier, was found dying on the pavement in Hastings. His
throat had been cut, and he died on entering the hospital. The other
soldier was charged with murder, and sentenced to 15 years.

_Record of Hastings Assizes, March 1917_

A young Canadian soldier, aged 20, died from alcohol while in
training at Witley. He had a bottle of stout followed by nine or ten
“double-headers” of neat whisky in about two hours. He was carried
back to camp, laid unconscious on his bed, and died.

_Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” March 22, 1917_

A Canadian lieutenant was tried for the murder of a canteen
sergeant. They arrived together at a house at Grayshott, where the
lieutenant asked for some strong drink and took a bottle of whisky
and two glasses. The sergeant was afterwards found dead in the
cellar, and the lieutenant carried the body into the stable.

_Records of Grayshott Coroner, December 1915_

A man leaving a publichouse in company with a woman, with whom he
had been drinking, met a Canadian soldier not far from Charing
Cross. The soldier spoke, and the man struck him. The soldier was
carried to the hospital, where he died soon afterwards from a wound
two inches deep, caused by a knife.

_Police Records of Bow Street, January 1, 1917_

The wife of a gunner in the South African Heavy Artillery died at
Bexhill from alcohol. The soldier said he bought 12 bottles of stout
and 12 bottles of beer, one of whisky, and one of port, which they
drank between Saturday night and Monday night.

_Records of Bexhill Coroner, December 1915_

A soldier from Toronto, having been drinking away his pay in a
Carlisle publichouse, with another Canadian soldier and some married
women, failed to appear the next morning, and was found dead on a
footpath with a bottle of whisky in his pocket

_Records of Carlisle Coroner, April 14, 1917_

A Canadian soldier, having drawn £20 from the Canadian office,
visited several publichouses, and was killed in a scuffle in London.

_Facts in “Daily News,” December 2, 1916_

The Men From the Prohibition Camps

Again and again we have seen the peculiar temptations of drink among Canadians. Officers, chief-constables, chaplains, newspapers, the men themselves, have all borne witness that to these men from Prohibition Canada the sudden temptations of our drink trade come with terrible power, and often they fall not knowing. The finest manhood of the Empire our tap-rooms and canteens destroy, not in isolated cases, but in a host we dare not number.

Of the soldiers who first came over from Canada, says a great Canadian paper, many were emigrants from England, not yet securely planted in Canada, and for their sakes especially drink should have been withheld from them. Of the larger number of Canadian troops that followed them, many were youths who had never known drink, and they were taken from home at the most social and reckless age, to face drink with all the temptations induced by the nervous strain, the hardships and social abandon of the camp and the trench, and the free pocket-money when on leave.

In an officers’ mess of two double companies of Canadians only one
officer drank on his arrival in a canteen camp in England; within
three months there was not an abstainer in the mess.

_Facts told at Society for Study of Inebriety, Jan. 10, 1916_

These men come mostly from districts in Canada where intoxicants are
prohibited by law, and many of them, being young lads, who perhaps
have never tasted liquor before their arrival, fall easy victims.

_Chief Constable of Godalming_

Overseas soldiers come to our hospitals astonishingly cheerful and
fit in a general sense, and wonderfully receptive to treatment. Only
three per thousand die in our great hospitals. This is largely due
to the hardy life of the men and the fact that they are removed from
the danger of taking too much alcohol. The home troops have a much
higher mortality, partly because their use of alcohol diminishes
their chances. Re-admissions are largely due to drink on furlough.

_Major Maclean, M.D., of the Third Western General Hospital_

A Canadian soldier, who had been wounded at the Front, was taken to
a house by women and left alone drunk. An officer gave him an
excellent character, and said he was on his way back to Canada.
These men experience temptations here (he said) that they would not
find in Canada, and there was too much of this going on.

_Hastings Police Records, February 19, 1917_

I heard a sad account of the havoc of the wet canteen and a private
in a Canadian A.M.C. told us of a lad of 17 who is made so drunk
that there is rarely a night when he has not to be helped up to bed.
One of the soldiers here told me of his son in Canada being anxious
to join up, but after seeing the condition of things over here he
was doing all he could to discourage his son.

_Letter to the Author_

The Canadians in most cases are entirely lost when they arrive in
this country, and are much more liable to the temptation which is
thrown in their way, but when you give a figure such as this—that in
one camp during last year, and two months of the previous year,
there were 7,000 cases—it seems to me that it is about time we
realised the magnitude of the evil. I do not know what has happened
to them, except that I imagine a large number have gone back to
Canada, and have not been able to play the part they had hoped to
play.

_Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917_

In Camp and On Leave

Everywhere we find the trail of drink among Canadians—in camp and on leave.

A Canadian corporal, wounded in the Battle of Ypres, was found
terribly drunk after being missing all day from hospital. Confronted
with the surgeon after violent acts of insubordination, the corporal
broke down and cried like a child.

_Facts in “Western Mail,” February 18, 1916_

In the first weeks of the war 42 Canadian soldiers disgraced
themselves, by excessive drinking, insubordination, and disorderly
conduct, to such an extent that they had to be sent back to Canada.

_Facts in “Canadian Pioneer,” December 4, 1914_

A Canadian soldier, helplessly drunk, was seen at King’s Cross
station eating, tearing, and crumpling up £1 notes, and would have
lost about fifteen pounds but for kindly help from passers by.

_Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” September 28, 1916_

A gunner from Montreal, missing from camp for several days, drank
himself delirious, and cut his throat with a razor.

_Facts in “Canadian Pioneer,” December 4, 1914_

A Canadian soldier spent £70 in three weeks on drink and bad
characters.

_Facts in “Daily Mail” August 10, 1915_

A Sergeant-Major from Canada declared that he had lost 20 per cent.
of the men of his battery through venereal disease. They had a
little drink, and were captured by the swarm of bad women at
Folkestone.

_Facts in Letter to Author_

A woman was imprisoned for placing young children in moral danger.
Every night the girls brought soldiers home, and colonial soldiers
were frequently so drunk that they were carried in.

_Records of Central Criminal Court, April 25, 1917_

The Rising Storm in Canada

=The thing cannot be justified. It is the blackest tragedy of this
whole war that, in fighting for freedom in Europe, the free sons of
the British breed have to face this war-time record of waste at
home, with its inevitable toll of debauchery and crime.=

_Editorial in “Toronto Globe”_

While this book was being written one of the greatest meetings ever held in Manchester was cheering a Canadian in khaki who declared that he was not going hungry while brewers were destroying food, and he went on to say, this soldier and sportsman well-known in the Dominion:

“Great numbers of our men never saw France. Canadian boys cried
because they had not munitions. England reeled and beer flowed like
water while thousands of our boys went down into their graves. We
will never forget it in Canada.”

We may be sure Canada will not forget. She will not forget her dead: she will not forget that the Drink Traffic she has swept away at home struck down her sons in the land for which they fought. “We must know who is to blame,” says a Canadian paper; “we presume they will have no objection to have their names placarded before the country, that every mother may know.” Col. Sir Hamar Greenwood, M. P., has lately returned from Canada, and this is what he tells us:

“I met many fathers and mothers whose boys had been sent back to
Canada debilitated and ruined for life because they had been
enmeshed by harpies, and again and again these parents have said to
me, ‘We do not mind our boys dying on the field of battle for old
England, but to think that we sent our sons to England to come back
to us ruined in health, and a disgrace to us, to them, and to the
country, is something the Home Country should never ask us to
bear.’”

_Letter from a Solicitor in Ontario to the Author_:

I wonder if the advocates of the drink traffic in Britain appreciate
the contempt in which they are held in Canada. Before the war I had
a class of ten young men. Every one of them is now at the Front, and
one writes that when I told them of the drink conditions in England
he did not believe half of it; now he says I did not tell him half.
Letters from our Canadian soldiers are appearing in our papers, and
they are all amazed at the drinking habits of Britain.

_From a Resolution received by Mr. Lloyd George from the Social
Service Council of Nova Scotia_:

That we, representing the social, moral, and spiritual forces of
this part of the British Empire, who have proved our loyalty by the
thousands of men this small province has sent overseas, do record
our most earnest protest against Britain’s inaction in this matter,
which we are sure must result in longer and increased suffering for
the men we have sent to help her win the war; and do most
insistently plead with the British Government and the British
Parliament that they at once exercise the power vested in them to
strike the blow that will dispose of this enemy at home, and so give
mighty reinforcement to those who are bleeding and dying for Britain
and human liberties on the battlefields abroad.

_Sermon by Dr. Flanders in London, Ontario, Feb. 25, 1917_:

Canada has the right to make this demand on the Motherland from the
simple standpoint of political economics. That we might put the
Dominion into the best possible shape to give the utmost of our
strength in men and munitions, we have an almost Dominion-wide
Prohibition, and no intelligent person will deny that our
contributions to the war from the first have been multiplied and
intensified by that action. Why should little Johnnie Canuck abolish
drink that he might conserve his manhood and material resources in
the interest of the Empire’s war, and big John Bull refuse to
abolish the traffic to the great waste of his material resources and
the undoing of his efficiency?

_A public man with three soldier sons wrote to the Toronto Globe_:

Canada, for efficiency in war, casts out the drink evil. Is it too
much to expect Britain, in fairness, to do the same? Is it not a
mockery for the British Isles to face our common struggle with this
palsy in her frame?

Here is the bitter pill, the embittering thought for many a Canadian
parent. Let me be a type. Three of my sons are in khaki. I gave them
a father’s blessing when they enlisted. But this thought strains,
most of all, the ties of my loyalty to the cause—to see my sons
fight and fall for a Britain that at home is saddled by distillery
interests, and misguided by a Press silent as the grave on this
entrenched evil. Why should our sons go from a country where booze
is banished to spend months on the way to the trenches in England,
where the vices of the liquor traffic are legalised?

_We see the spirit of Canada in those great words of the Premier of
Ontario, Mr. Hearst, speaking of the giving up of drink_:

In this day of national peril, in this day when the future of the
British Empire, the freedom of the world, and the blessings of
democratic government hang in the balance, if I should fail to
listen to what I believe to be the call of duty, if I should neglect
to take every action that in my judgment will help to conserve the
financial strength and power and manhood of this province for the
great struggle in which we are engaged, I would be a traitor to my
country, a traitor to my own conscience, and unworthy of the brave
sons of Canada that are fighting, bleeding and dying for freedom and
for us.

_A letter from one of the most eminent public men in Canada_:

“British Canada is intensely loyal to the Empire and the Allied
Cause, but at present recruiting is almost at an end. Why? Partly
because of considerable dissatisfaction with many of the conditions
which prevail. Suffering, wounds, death, are expected as inevitable
in war, but the evil influences, the lavish temptations of liquor
and bad women which sweep down upon our boys in England, are not
felt to be necessary, and the hearts of multitudes of Canadian
parents are hot with indignation at the apparent indifference of the
authorities to the moral welfare of our troops.”

_Captain John MacNeill, with the Canadian troops in France_:

“I say to you solemnly, if England should lose this war because of
drink, or if England should unnecessarily prolong the war with great
sacrifice of life in her effort to protect drink, or even if England
should win the war in spite of drink, you will have put upon the
bonds of Empire such a strain as they have never known before, and
such a strain as we cannot promise they will be able to survive.”

_From the petition presented to the Prime Minister of Canada, signed
by 64,000 mothers and wives in Toronto_:

1. That Mothers and Wives of Canada in giving their sons and
husbands for King and Empire, asked and received from your Minister
of Militia this only assurance that, in sending them into the ranks,
we were not hereby irrevocably thrusting them into the temptation of
Strong Drink.

2. We appreciated from the depths of our hearts, your action in
abolishing the Wet Canteen from the Canadian Militia. We believe the
Wet Canteen established in the ranks of the front to be a double
danger, robbing our King of the success in arms which in these days
comes only to the brave heart that is controlled by a clear head,
and robbing us and our Canada of the Manhood which we gave into our
Empire’s keeping.

3. We do not believe that the King will refuse the aid of Canada’s
sons; nor that he will appreciate your patriotic efforts the less,
if you keep faith with us and make known to His Majesty, his
Ministers and Commanders, that our boys are sent forth on the one
condition that the dispensing of intoxicating liquors shall be
prohibited in the ranks.

_From a Sermon preached in Ontario, February 25, 1917_:

“Thank God, if any of our Canadian soldiers return to us with the
drink habit formed and raging, we can welcome them to a land nearly
purged of the liquor traffic, where they may have a chance to
recover their manhood.”

_Letter on the effects of Prohibition, from a business man in
Ontario, published in the “Spectator:”_

“Men I have known for years to be regular promenading tanks have
given it up, and are starting a decent life again. The Police Court
is empty. England should try it. It would be, after the first heavy
initial loss, the best thing that ever struck the nation. I cursed
these temperance guys as hard as any, but all the same it cannot
blind you from the truth.”

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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.