In proportion to the poverty and misery of the population are the licences increased. In the Cowgate of Edinburgh there are 12 licences, and in the Canongate, 19. The same proportion applies to all our cities.
[[3]] The Drink Problem of To-day, p. 182.
[[4]] Micah ii. 11.
CHAPTER VI
THE GREAT REFUSAL
For the historian of the future who may essay the task of elucidating the moral progress or decay of the British Empire, one date will stand forth as a landmark—April 20, 1915. For it was on that day that the House of Commons refused to follow 'the King's lead.' On the 6th April it was announced that 'By the King's command no wines, spirits, or beer will be consumed in any of His Majesty's houses after to-day.' No announcement ever cheered the heart of a nation more than that. It was as if an electric current had suddenly passed through an inert mass, galvanising it into life. When Lord Kitchener and other leaders loyally followed the King's example, the men who fought a weary battle for the emancipation of the nation from the yoke of alcohol, and whose hearts were oft sickened by long-delayed hopes, felt that the day of moral victory had dawned at last. The nation, delivered from the enemy within its gates, would bring its full power to bear upon the enemy that threatened its destruction from without. In house and mess and restaurant alcohol was banished. But all these fair hopes were rudely shattered when the House of Commons at the end of fourteen days refused to banish alcohol from the precincts of Westminster. The dawn of hope ended once more in gloom.
I
It is only as yet possible to surmise as to the forces which led to the great refusal. The nation, with the almost unanimous voice of its wisest and best citizens, had called for the deliverance of the people from alcohol by its total prohibition. Employers of labour, who had no sympathy originally for the prohibition movement, were converted to it by the spectacle of the nation's marshalling of its forces being steadily hampered by drunkenness. The leaders of all the Churches pressed for it; the Press began to plead for it; Mr. Lloyd-George openly declared that 'drink is doing us more damage than all the German submarines put together'; and there is no doubt but that the King and Lord Kitchener expected that their example would give an impetus which would carry prohibition to victory. But the House of Commons shattered that hope. The forces of reaction immediately began to raise their head, and to the tables of the home and the mess alcohol slowly returned to resume its fell sway. The nation that had braced itself for social surgery was presented with soothing medicine in the form of the Central Control Board.