A woman was imprisoned for placing young children in moral danger. Every night the girls brought soldiers home, and colonial soldiers were frequently so drunk that they were carried in.
Records of Central Criminal Court, April 25, 1917
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: