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?”