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?