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.”