The Fiddlers; Drink in the Witness Box

by Arthur Mee

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.