Records of Hull Coroner, April 24, 1917
A drunken captain in command of a drifter landed with an armed party on the Isle of Man. He posted the men on the quay, and gave them orders to allow no one to pass. Declaring he would shoot every person who came within reach, he fired twice, and threatened to kill two police officers.
Facts in “Times,” October 6, 1916
Such is the work of drink wherever it finds a soldier to entrap—the drink the Navy carries free from Southampton to the trenches; and from America comes the news, as this page is being written, that the Army and the Navy of our Western Ally, like the Army and the Navy of our Eastern Ally, are to be under Total Prohibition.
Will some Member of Parliament please ask
how much bread is destroyed each week to make beer for German internment camps in this country?
Drink and the Red Cross
If the full story could ever be told of the national tragedy of drink and the war there would be no more ghastly chapter than that which would tell how drink fought the Red Cross; how, without pity, it hindered the work of mercy that is the general consolation of the world in days like these.
We are coming to a famine not only in food, but in doctors. The death-roll has been heavy beyond all parallel; the strain on the medical services has been almost too great to be borne, and we look anxiously round to know where the doctors and nurses will come from. With Prohibition the problem would be largely solved, for the ordinary burden of life would be largely lifted from our doctors and hospitals, and thousands of men and women would be free to give themselves to the war instead of mending up and patching up the sordid effects of drink. A rich brewer gave a donation for extending a hospital. “Ah! but we should not have to extend if he would shut up his public-houses,” said a doctor.