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.