Let any one who thinks that we are on the verge of a great social or religious revival consider the facts. (The difficulty is that we fail to face facts and delude ourselves with vain imaginings.) The great fact to which we blind ourselves is that the manhood of the nation, for the first time in its history, has been brought into the atmosphere of alcohol, and acclimatised to that atmosphere to the number of between four and five millions. In that remote period before August 1914, the British army was a volunteer force mainly recruited from 'the adventurous and the derelict.' The recruiting area was largely the congested wards of our great cities. The men who enlisted did so, in the great majority, after they had already acquired a taste for the exhilaration of alcohol. It was in the circumstances expedient that in the canteen provision should be made, under military supervision, for their being supplied with a purer alcohol than the public-houses provided. The results were beneficial rather than otherwise.
The strange thing, however, is that the canteen system which was necessary for the small voluntary army should have also been imposed by the Army Authorities upon the full manhood of the nation when they sprang to arms in defence of King and country. Though no trainer would ever allow the use of alcohol by those preparing for any athletic sport, though the man who would excel at football or racing or boxing or shooting, as a first step eschewed all alcohol, the Government of this country provided alcohol as an integral part of every camp where the heroic of the race set themselves to endure hardness. 'The greater endurance of the non-alcoholic soldier or worker is now not a matter on which there can be or is any difference of opinion.'[[1]] For the youth of the nation, wearied with the hardness of unwonted exercise, away from the influence of mothers and loved ones, warned by the Secretary of State for War against alcohol, the Government provided the narcotic of alcohol. Millions came within the sphere of its baneful influence who never would have been so exposed in days of peace. And not only so, but though it has been scientifically established that alcohol lowers the vitality, a paternal Government, in the mud and misery of the trenches in Flanders, provided for each soldier the sustenance of rum, though from such a stimulus no benefit could accrue. 'Small doses of alcohol ... cause ... a distinct flushing of the skin due to dilation of the cutaneous capillaries, the skin becoming first warmer and the blood in the internal organs cooler than before the alcohol was taken. After a time the skin temperature falls, but there is no corresponding increase of temperature of the blood in the internal organs. This means that the body has lost heat by the skin. The evaporating moisture of wet putties and stockings carries away a further amount of heat, whilst the contracting wet materials exerting pressure on the lower limbs, after a time tend to compress vessels in the skin, and especially to interfere with the return of venous blood and lymph to the larger veins and lymph channels. The lowered temperature and the impaired nutrition due to this obstructed circulation together are accountable for the "trench foot." ... A man is not at his best, whether working or fighting against enemies or diseases, if he is taking alcohol. Lord Roberts knew this, and His Majesty the King, Admiral Jellicoe, and Lord Kitchener appreciate it. How soon will the nation realise it?'[[2]]
The Government supplied the soldiers in the camp and in the trench with the means of decreasing their fighting efficiency. To the 'tot of rum' can be traced a proportion of the cases of unstable nervous equilibrium which the war has produced. Men who were total abstainers, pledged Rechabites, and others were swept by a paternal Government into the ranks of those who derive from alcohol a false exhilaration. 'The national conscience,' writes Lieut.-Colonel Woodhead, 'has not yet been thoroughly aroused to the importance of the issues at stake—that in peace or in war intemperance is the link in the chain of our national life which gives greatest evidence of weakness and most cause for anxiety.' Against stupidity the gods themselves fight in vain. Though every laboratory worker and every physiological chemist tells us, with the cold precision of science, that alcohol is not a stimulant but a depresser, that the elation it produces is simply that of a narcotic, that it diminishes the energy and dulls the enthusiasm of man, that it leaves the mind and body more exhausted than before—yet the stupidity entrenched in high places cannot learn the lesson. It trains the armies on alcohol; it seeks to sustain the embattled hosts with alcohol.
IV
The great refusal of April 20, 1915, meant that this national organisation for the training of the manhood of the race in the use of alcohol went on unhindered. Of all the products of the great war this is the most amazing. Let any one consider the situation and judge. In every camp and barracks the visitor will find the State-established monopoly of the canteen. The canteen is set up by the State, and the taxpayer provides the building, rent and rate and tax free, for the contractor, who runs the canteen. Abroad, the canteens are almost exclusively in the hands of one co-operative society, whose board of management is mainly composed of officers in the Service and some of them recently heads of regimental institutes. 'Clearly there is a great deal of "military" money invested in it. Surely it is not a good thing that a society of this kind should have the privilege of making a good deal of money out of supplies to the private soldier.'[[3]] Whatever be the system of administering the canteen, whether by the regimental officers or by contractors, the fact remains that behind the canteen are the resources of the nation. And the contractors of the canteen supply in some cases amusements. 'I know of a camp where the contractor supplied the singers, and not very desirable ones either.'[[4]] Recreation is thus used to encourage the consumption of alcohol by the army.
While the taxpayer is thus behind and supporting the canteen, the counteracting forces are left to the support of the charitable. The Y.M.C.A. or Church huts are there not by right but by favour, and whatever attractions they provide are provided by means of voluntary contributions. The State provides the means of degeneration; it is left to the voluntary effort of private citizens to provide the means of healthful recreation. It is truly a strange world.
Do the parents of the youth of this country realise the situation? Henceforth every boy when he reaches the age of eighteen is drafted into a camp. And there the State makes provision for acclimatising him to the atmosphere of alcohol. To frequent the canteen is manly, and few will be able to resist. It means that by the million the future citizens of this country will acquire a liking for alcohol. They find there the door of escape from weariness and monotony, a false joy of life and a meretricious colour lighting up drab and grey days. Hitherto the youths of this country were protected by the slow evolution of beneficial restrictions. In Scotland the public-houses were shut on Sundays. The young men were protected on at least one day in seven. But when at the age of eighteen they put on the King's uniform that protection ceases. The public-house is shut, but the canteen is open on Sunday. Not even on one day in seven is there protection from temptation for the youths of this country now conscripted. The fathers and mothers who give their sons to their country do not realise the provision a grateful country is making for darkening their souls by the fumes of alcohol. If they realised it, there would arise a demand before which even those who refused to follow their King would bow. Without that national demand there will be no escape from the consequences of the great refusal. Those who delude themselves with the hope that out of the great war will come a moral and religious revival will have a rude awakening. Out of the social conditions now upheld by a beneficent Government there cannot emerge any ethical revival. The ranks of those who have learned the narcotising benefit of alcohol and who will naturally turn to the same comfort, will be greatly multiplied.
V
Let me conclude with a personal experience. On a car in one of our great cities in this last summer, a man sitting beside me began a conversation. Though he was a stranger to me, he began to speak out of a heart sore distressed. His son had been home on leave. 'Every night he was at home he was under the influence of drink. Before he enlisted he did not know the taste of alcohol.... When he went away back, he was drunk leaving the station.... A few days later word came that he was killed.... The last we saw of him was his going away drunk.... His mother is in sore distress.... She is old-fashioned in her faith and she cannot get out of her mind the words that drunkards cannot enter the kingdom of God. What do you say?' Thus he spoke in disjointed sentences, palpitating with emotion. All I could say was that hell was not for such as his son, in my opinion; but that hell was essential for the due disciplining of those who maintained the conditions which made his son a drunkard. But how many are there to-day in this country like that poor father and mother? They gave their all: this is their reward.