The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Fiddlers, by Arthur Mee

The Fiddlers
Drink in the
Witness Box

By ARTHUR MEE

If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain;

If thou sayest, “Behold, we knew it not;” doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it?

And shall not He render to every man according to his works?

Published by MORGAN & SCOTT, Ltd

12 Paternoster Buildings, London, E. C. 4

Reprinted in the United States by

THE AMERICAN ISSUE PUBLISHING COMPANY

Westerville, Ohio

DRINK LEADING FAMINE IN

The Drink Trade gave Germany her greatest weapon in the war by helping to make the bread famine.

It was the wilful destruction of 4,800,000 tons of food, depriving the nation of her reserves, that led to the appalling gravity of the submarine menace.

Drink, What did You do in the Great War?

This impressive picture of Britannia is from

the splendid 1916 issue of Bibby’s Annual

THE ALLIES AND PROHIBITION—STOPPING DRINK TO WIN THE WAR
The Drink Map before the War and on the 1000th day of the War

CANADA—Prohibition almost from Sea to Sea

FRANCE—Total Prohibition of Absinthe

RUSSIA—Prohibition Everywhere

BRITAIN—120,000 Drink shops open daily

The Wages of Sin

The time has come when it should be said that those responsible for our country now stand on the very threshold of eternal glory or eternal shame. They play and palter with the greatest enemy force outside Berlin. The news from Vimy Ridge comes to a land whose rulers quail before a foe within the gate.

Not for one hour has the full strength of Britain been turned against her enemies. From the first day of the war, while our mighty Allies have been striking down this foe within their gates, Britain has let this trade stalk through her streets, serving the Kaiser’s purposes, and paying the Government £1,000,000 a week for the right to do it.

She has let this trade destroy our food and bring us to the verge of famine; she has let it keep back guns and shells and hold up ships; she has let it waste our people’s wealth in hundreds of millions of pounds; she has let it put its callous brake on the merciful Red Cross; she has let it jeopardize the unity and safety of the Empire—for it may yet be found, as Dr. Stuart Holden has so finely said, that the links that bind the Pax Britannica are solvable in that great chemist’s solvent, alcohol.

The witnesses are too great to number; we can only call a few. There is no room for all those witnesses whose evidence is in the House of Commons Return 220 (1915), showing the part drink played in the great shell famine, in delaying ships and guns, and imperiling the Army and the Fleet.

But the indictment is heavy. I charge this trade with the crime the King laid at its door two years ago, the crime of prolonging the war; and the witnesses are here at the bar of the people. The verdict is with them, and the judgment is with those who rule.

The wages of sin is death: What are the wages of those who fail in an hour like this?

Fiddling to Disaster

We are not going to lose the war through the submarines if we all behave like reasonable human beings who want to save their country from disaster, privation and distress.

The Prime Minister

What are we to say of a Government that plays with war and drink and famine while these brave words are ringing in our ears?

If the situation is so desperate that we must all go short of food, it is desperate enough for the Government to be in earnest. But what are the plain facts? No reasonable man who knows them can say that the Government is in earnest.

It is not denied by anybody who knows the facts that drink has been the greatest hindrance of the war. There is not a doubt that it has prolonged the war for months and cost us countless lives. It is the duty of the Government to face a dangerous thing like this; it is its duty to pursue the war with a single eye to the speediest possible victory. But the records of our war Governments in dealing with drink have been records of fiddling and failure, and we stand in the third year of the war with a Government fiddling still.

One thing will be perfectly clear if disaster and famine come. It will be known to all the world that the Government knew the facts in time to save us. We are in the war because we would not listen in times of peace. We are in the third year of the war because we would not listen in the first. We are faced with famine because we would not listen in times of plenty, when drink was breaking down our food reserves. And we are drifting now, nearer to disaster every day, because the Government surrenders to the enemy worse than Germany.

It does not matter where you look, or when; the evidence of the fiddling is everywhere about you. Take the week before the Prime Minister’s grave speech about submarines—ending May 19.

Submarines destroyed 27 British cargoes, mostly over 1600 tons.

Brewers destroyed 27 British food cargoes, totaling 9000 tons.

The granaries of Canada were crammed with wheat waiting for British ships, but there were no ships to bring this people’s food.

The rum quay at London Docks was crammed with casks of rum to last till 1920, but a ship arrived with 1000 Casks more.

A woman was fined £5 for destroying a quartern loaf.

Brewers were fined nothing for destroying millions of loaves.

Poor people waited in queues to buy sugar in London.

Cartloads of sugar were destroyed in London breweries.

And so we might go on, looking on this picture and on that till the mind almost reels with the solemn farce. The Prime Minister has suggested that the farce does not end because those who demand its end cannot make up their mind. It is the Government that cannot make up its mind.

It tells Parliament that no more rum is to be imported, and goes on importing rum for years ahead.

It forbids the use of spirits less than three years old, and reduces the three years to 18 months.

It restricts beer to 10,000,000 barrels, and tells us one day that it is all-inclusive, and the next day that the Army Council can order as much extra beer as it likes.

It issues a report saying that hops are not food, and gives up hundreds of thousands of feet to shipping them; 23,000 cubic feet the other week.

It tells us that not an inch of shipping is wasted, and wastes shipping on bringing brewers’ vats from America and taking gin to Africa.

It tells us that the Drink Trade gave up its distilleries patriotically, and leaves us to discover that it was made the subject of a bargain by which bread was being destroyed for whisky as late as May this year.

It is quite clear that the Government is desperately in need of a scapegoat, and desperately in need of a defense. Prohibition Russia is not mightily impressed with our drinking; serious Canadians are asking how long they are to sacrifice their manhood to our brewers; America is asking already why she should go short of bread in order that England may drink more beer.

A Government must clearly say something in view of these things, and it has put its defense in the care of one of the sanest and cleverest men in the United Kingdom, Mr. Kennedy Jones. If Mr. Jones does not make out a case for it, there is no case to make. What does he say?

1. We are told that only five per cent. of malt can be mixed with flour for bread.

All over the country this explanation is supposed to satisfy those simple, honest people who know little about percentages but ask plain questions at Food Economy meetings. It is preposterous nonsense. If we have 200,000 tons of malted barley, what on earth does it matter whether we mix it at fifty, or five, or two per cent., so long as we do mix it? It adds 200,000 tons to our bread in any case. This talk of five per cent., puzzling to people who think it means that only one-twentieth of this malted barley can be used, is pitiful evidence, surely, of the straits to which the Food Controller’s Defense Department is reduced.

2. We are told that the barley destroyed for beer would give the nation only ten days’ bread.

It would actually last us a fortnight. Drink, which has taken a quartern loaf from every British cupboard in every week of the war, is taking still a quartern loaf a month from every cupboard, and the desperate appeals of Mr. Kennedy Jones will be more effective in saving crumbs when he can tell us that he has stopped this monstrous destruction of over 1,000 tons of grain a day.

3. We are told that our munition workers are dependent on beer.

It is an astounding slander. However true it may be of Governments, it is not true of our workmen. For four months the workman has been the scapegoat of this Government in its surrender to this trade, and we are asked at last to believe that these men who saved us from the Shell Famine are willing to drink us into a Bread Famine. Does the Government never pause to ask how millions of munition workers in America and Canada and the United Kingdom manage without beer? Does nobody in the Government know that the greatest steel furnaces in America are under total Prohibition, and that two million American railwaymen are subject to instant dismissal if they touch drink while on duty? Has the Government not read its own report of the Royal Society Committee which had this point in mind six months ago, and told us, on the highest authority in this country, that soldiers march better and keep fitter without alcohol; that men do more work on less energy without alcohol; and that “the records of American industrial experience are significant in showing a better output when no alcohol is taken by the workmen”?

4. We are told we need this trade for yeast.

We need not bother overmuch about that. Industrial alcohol will give us all we want, and there is no need to carry on this dangerous trade for the sake of yeast. We do not need a single ounce of brewer’s yeast, and we can do without distiller’s yeast as well by setting up a thousandth part of the machinery we have set up in the last two years. Or, while we must have yeast, we need about 30,000 tons a year for the whole United Kingdom, and since the prohibition of hops in June last year we have given enough shipping to hops every fortnight to bring in enough yeast for a year. A Government with shipping to spare like that, with room on its ships for mountains of hops, for enormous brewers’ vats, and for rum for 1921, can find room for 100 tons a day of the people’s bread. It is a monstrous perversion of the facts to suggest that we must maintain this food-destroying trade, with all its hideous tragedy and ruin, in order to make bread.

It cannot be said that a Government with such desperate excuses is in earnest. We do not wonder that a great American farmers’ paper, with no axe to grind except that it is sane and patriotic and believes in the war, is asking plain questions as America prepares her Prohibition Army, her Prohibition Navy, and stops the destruction of grain for drink in order to enter the war at full strength.

Let the Food Controller, the Prime Minister, and every responsible citizen of the United Kingdom read this—it is from the most influential flour-milling paper in the world, the “North Western Miller,” published in Minneapolis:

“Since the United States will be called upon to make food sacrifices on behalf of the Allies, it is certainly in order to call to account the stewardship of Great Britain in regard to food supplies. Ordinarily America would have no right to demand such an account, but Americans are now asked to deny themselves that Britain may have sufficient.

“Britain has not seen fit to prohibit the use of cereals in the manufacture of drink, notwithstanding that the world’s food supply was obviously short. Are Americans required to forego a part of their accustomed ration of bread in order that their British Allies can continue to have a plentiful supply of beer and whisky? If not, then Britain should lose no time in putting its house in order, quitting the drink to add to the common store of food upon which the safety of all the Allies depends.

“The food supply for the Allies is no longer a purely local proposition, to be used as a football in British politics; it deeply concerns the people of the United States, who are certainly not called upon to deny themselves bread in order that Britain shall have drink.”

What is the Government’s answer to this? “We owe a very considerable debt of gratitude to the great American people for the effective assistance they are rendering us,” says the Prime Minister. Is this the way we pay them back? It is an ugly question for our great Ally to have to raise as she comes into the war, flinging her Prohibition Navy in to smash the drink-made menace of the submarine. It is unthinkable that the Government can read these bitter words unmoved, or can leave this stain on our history in the face of all these questionings.

There is another question, too, that comes across the Atlantic. What is the Government going to do with the soldiers of America’s Prohibition Army, and the sailors of America’s Prohibition Navy, when they come over here? Are they to be broken in their thousands, made useless and degraded as thousands of men from Prohibition Canada have been, by the enemy that traps them before they reach the war?

They are questions for the Government and the nation, and they must be answered in the interests of the nation, and not to please the trade that helps the Germans every day. We cannot afford to pay the appalling price the future will demand unless our fiddlers change their tune.

The Drink Trade and Our War Services

It is not possible to measure the strain the Drink Traffic has imposed on our war services.

The Food Controller’s Organization, with its great offices and staffs, would not have been needed had we saved the food destroyed by drink.

Rationing already involves 1,200 committees, and may mean 50,000 officials and 50,000,000 tickets weekly. It could all be avoided. Prohibition would save more bread without food controlling than all the food controlling can save without Prohibition.

The National Service, with its network of officials, its costly advertising, its absorption of paper and printing, could all have been avoided under Prohibition. About 200,000 men have enrolled, but Prohibition would give us twice that man-power any day.

The strain on a host of men and women looking after soldiers’ children neglected through drink, soldiers’ wives spending allowances on drink, is incalculable.

The strain on war charities and the strain on the police arising from drink are both very great.

The strain of drink on doctors, nurses, and hospitals is beyond belief. Prohibition would set free for the Red Cross thousands who waste their time on the great drink trail.

The strain on transport is seen in the long lines of wagons drawn by strong horses carting beer to public-houses. This year alone the handling of drink must equal the lifting of at least 9,000,000 tons, and the barrels of beer would fill nearly all the railway wagons in the kingdom. As to ships, drink materials during the war have used up 60 ships of 5,000 tons working all the time.

On Lord Milner’s estimate of 19 barrels to the truck it would require 4,500,000 railway trucks to carry the 17,000,000 tons of beer manufactured in the United Kingdom during the war.

It can be proved from official figures that the weight of drink-stuff carried about since war began has been equal to the weight of solid material carried by the Navy to all our fighting fronts.

It is a crying shame that the strength of Britain should be destroyed like this in such an hour as this.

The War-Work of the Food Destroyers

There are hundreds of great Food Destructors in the United Kingdom. The man-power at their service, spread over our breweries and distilleries, numbers hundreds of thousands of men; their capital is hundreds of millions. This is a summary of the work they did in the first 1,000 days of the war:

They sacrificed 4,400,000 tons of grain and 340,000 tons of sugar, enough to ration the whole United Kingdom with bread for 43 weeks and sugar for 33 weeks.

They took from every kitchen cupboard in the land 600 pounds of bread and 76 pounds of sugar.

They destroyed bread and sugar to last every child under fifteen for every day of the war.

They took from our people over £512,000,000.

They used up labour and transport for lifting over 50,000,000 tons. By sea they used up 60 ships of 5,000 tons; by rail their raw materials and the finished products would make up a train long enough to reach nearly round the world.

The Food Now Being Destroyed for Beer

Look at the actual facts about beer alone. We will ignore distilling, as it gives us munitions and yeast. Had the Government tried to solve the yeast question it could have solved it easily in these three years; it would have had no more trouble with that problem than Russia and Canada and America have had. But as the Government is still investigating the yeast question, we will confine our figures to beer.

Brewers are destroying 450,000 4-lb. loaves a day.

This year’s food destruction for beer alone will equal five weeks’ bread rations and four weeks’ sugar rations for the whole United Kingdom.

We have seven critical weeks in this summer, and this year’s destruction of food would carry us through.

Beer alone is taking 10 pounds of sugar a year from every kitchen cupboard, and an ounce of sugar a day from every soldier.

That is what drink is doing at this moment with the shadow of famine creeping on.

“He who withholdeth the corn the people shall curse him.” Proverbs.

The Shadow of Famine

The Government came into office with the food shortage in sight; it was its first duty to build up the great reserve of food we might have had now in our granaries if the drink trade had not destroyed it. We could have laughed at submarines, for our barns would have been filled to overflowing, and we could have lived in comfort for a year if no ship reached us.

Let us see how much food drink has destroyed during the war. We will take it from August 4, 1914, to April 30, 1917. It is 999 days of the war. The grain and sugar destroyed for drink have been:

How Canada sees it—A Canadian cartoon of the callous destruction of bread for beer and whisky

It is not easy to realize what this means, but it will help us if we think of one or two examples.

The biggest thing ever set up on earth is the Great Pyramid. It is 80,000,000 cubic feet. The food destroyed by drink during the war would make two Great Pyramids, each bigger than the Pyramid of Egypt.

The longest British railway is the Great Western; it is over 3,000 miles, but it would not hold the food destroyed by drink since war began. If every inch of it were crammed with wagons, the Great Western Railway would need hundreds of miles more line to hold the train-loads of food destroyed.

There are about 750,000 railway wagons in the United Kingdom, but if the Drink Trade had them all they would not hold the food it has destroyed.

There are about 30,000 engines on our British railways, and if the food destroyed were made up in trains of 125 tons apiece, all our engines would not pull them; we should still want 10,000 more.

So vast is this incredible quantity of food destroyed by an enemy trade while famine has been coming on. We should have saved it all if Parliament had followed the King, and it would have given the whole United Kingdom its flour rations for nearly a year. Take it at its minimum scientific human food value, and on the basis of our rations in May, 1917, it would have given us:

Our three war Governments, confronted with the increasing certainty of at least a three-years’ war, have allowed the Drink Trade to destroy this vast reserve of food.

The full toll of this trade upon our scanty food supply, growing shorter and shorter while the queues outside our food shops grow longer and longer, is staggering indeed, even now with drink about three-quarters stopped. We must remember that it makes no difference that the barley has been malted; it is still good human food, and every ounce of it should be mixed with grain for making bread. Let us remember, also, that brewer’s sugar is a good pure sugar, the objection to it being largely the objection most of us have to standard bread—its colour. Malt or sugar, every ounce a brewer destroys is food stolen from the people. Let us take expert opinion on the subject.

The Food Value of Brewer’s Sugar

We do not, of course, use this dark sugar when white sugar is cheap and easily procurable, but during the war we have used it for coffee, cocoa, and tea; and for puddings where colour did not matter. We have used it a good deal in our bakeries for chocolate goods, where colour again does not matter. It is a good, pure sugar, and the colour is the principal drawback.

Letter to Arthur Mee from a London caterer

The Food Value of Brewer’s Malt

Malt flour can be used to make excellent cake with 50 per cent. wheat flour. It is sweet and pleasant to taste without the need of any sugar. Good scones can be made with 25 per cent. of malt flour. Its use in bread made with yeast causes too much fermentation in the bread, but it has no effect on baking-powder. The Food Controller’s Department is aware of the practicability of using malt flour, but the sale is restricted in order to limit its use for making beer. Brewers and maltsters are too patriotic to wish to use for beer what could be applied to food in case of a serious shortage, and the large stocks of barley and malt can supplement the supply of wheat flour.

Letter from a Brewer in the “Times,” April 11, 1917

Yet we have seen our Government holding up sugar for brewers; we have seen our Food Controller refuse to release a caterer’s sugar unless it were sold to a brewer; we have seen a Government short of food-ships bringing in brewers’ vats and casks of rum; and we see the Government still holding up this malt that would feed a people asking for more bread.

The Tunes They Play

Strange tunes we hear the fiddlers play, but their music does not charm away the troubles of a famine-threatened land. From morning till night the prayer of the people rises, “Give us this day our daily bread,” but the heart of Downing Street is hardened, and the nation’s bread goes day by day to the destroyer.

But all the time we see the measure of the courage of our rulers on the hoardings in the streets. We know their posters by heart.

Defeat the enemy’s attempt to starve you, by—not by stopping the destruction of food, but by joining the National Service, and probably helping to pick hops. There was a man in a co-operative store who volunteered for National Service, and last month he received instructions to leave the grocery store and take up duty in a brewery.

Sow your window-boxes and plant your back gardens—and Mr. Prothero will see that the soil of a million back gardens is wasted on hops.

We have not enough food to last till the harvest—why not go out and catch rabbits, asks Lord Devonport—and sit and wait for sparrows?

We must save every pound of bread we can to get over our critical weeks—not by saving the quartern loaf that beer is taking every month from every British cupboard now, but by going hungry so that drinkers may not thirst.

We must not eat more than our share, on our honour—but the man across the table can eat his share of bread and drink somebody else’s too.

We must eat less and eat slowly—so that brewers may waste more and waste quickly.

We must keep back famine—but not by using malt, says Captain Bathurst: that would cost three times as much as letting famine come. But why not keep the malt till bread is as dear as gold?

Let all heads of households abstain from using grain except in bread, says the King’s Proclamation. But let the brewers waste 8,000 tons a day for beer, says the Government.

God speed the plough and the woman who drives it—yes, and God help the woman who drives the plough to feed the brewer while her little ones cry for bread.

Let us fine £5 whoever wastes a loaf, says the Food Controller—but not, of course, the brewers who waste 450,000 quartern loaves a day.

Hops are no use as food to anybody, says the Board of Trade Scientific Committee. “Then let us grow only half as many,” said Mr. Prothero.

Mr. Lloyd George says Mr. Prothero is working “in a continuous rattle of mocking laughter and gibes.” Yes, it is the mocking laughter of a nation that is not really amused by sights like this. The nation does not like to see the bread rations of 70,000 men in France cut down while the Drink Trade is destroying every week bread enough to last these men a year. It does not like to see the Government sending letters out to managers of factory canteens, begging them to be careful of bread, while food flows through our beer canteens like a river running to waste. It does not like to see Y. M. C. A. canteens denied supplies of sugar while barrels of beer are stacked in great piles outside. It does not like the calling up of discharged soldiers while thousands of strong men are working hard all day destroying food or carting beer about the streets; and it does net like the tragic comedies of Captain Bathurst, who warns us that it really may become necessary in the national interest—and then, perhaps, he drops his voice to break it very gently—it really may become necessary, if these cake shops are not very careful, to whitewash the lower part of their windows.

Oh, these fiddlers! And now we have a new idea from the Food Control Department; it is a coloured poster of a Union Jack and a big loaf on it, and “Waste not, Want not,” printed in big type. It was being printed on the day the Prime Minister told the nation that America had found it is no use waving a neutral flag in the teeth of a shark. It is an eloquent and true saying, but it is also true, that it is no use waving platitudes from copybooks in the teeth of a wolf at the door. The Prime Minister says he is taking no chances. Let us be quite sure. We once had a Government of which men said its motto was “Wait and See.” Are we better off, or are we worse, with a Government that Sees and Waits?

But there is no end to the fiddling. With Food Controllers who hold up food for Food Destroyers; with Food Economy Handbooks that cry out loud to save the crumbs but have no word to say about the tons we fling away; with a Prime Minister praying for window-boxes and a Board of Agriculture consecrating hopfields, we need not be surprised if the nation is not mightily impressed.

How the Allies Did It

All the world knows, except, apparently, the world that goes round at Westminster, how Prohibition has helped the Allies.

With the Shell Famine at its height—largely made by Drink—the Prohibition Army on the East held up the enemy while Britain fought the Drink Trade for her shells.

With the Bread Famine looming in sight—largely made by Drink—the Prohibition Navy from the West flings in her power against the submarines.

Oh, for the spirit of our Allies in this land! If France wants to rouse the spirit of Verdun she strikes down her foe at home and puts absinthe away. If Russia wants to be great and free she stops this drink and orders out the Romanoffs. If Canada wants to give her utmost help to Britain she stops this drink from sea to sea. If Australia wants to make her soldiers fit she trains them in her Prohibition camps. If America wants to beat the whole world at making shells she drives drink from her workshops. If San Francisco has an earthquake she stops drink while she pulls herself together. If Liverpool has a dangerous strike she shuts up public-houses and keeps the city quiet. Oh, for a Government of Britain that will see what all the world can see!

History will do justice to the part the Prohibition policy of the Allies has played in saving Europe, but a pamphlet has no room for these things. We can take only one or two great witnesses to the mighty achievements of our Prohibition Allies. Let us begin with France, and call our own Prime Minister to tell us what they did. Mr. Lloyd George:

One afternoon we had to postpone our conference in Paris, and the French Minister of Finance said, “I have to go to the Chamber of Deputies, because I am proposing a bill to abolish absinthe.” Absinthe plays the same part in France that whisky plays in this country, and they abolished it by a majority of something like ten to one that afternoon.

And how did Paris take this prohibition that men said would cause a revolution? Let us ask Mr. Philip Gibbs, whose splendid letters home have made his name a household word. Mr. Philip Gibbs:

Absinthe was banned by a thunderstroke, and Parisians who had acquired the absinthe habit trembled in every limb at this judgment which would reduce them to physical and moral wrecks. But the edict was given and Paris obeyed, loyally and with resignation.

And now we come to Russia, to these mighty Russian people who in the last year of vodka saved £6,000,000 or £7,000,000, and in the last full year of Prohibition saved £177,000,000. We will call our own Prime Minister again:

Russia, knowing her deficiency, knowing how unprepared she was, said, “I must pull myself together. I am not going to be trampled upon, unready as I am. I will use all my resources.” What is the first thing she does? She stops drink.

I was talking to M. Bark, the Russian Minister of Finance, and I asked, “What has been the result?” He said, “The productivity of labour, the amount of work which is put out by the workmen, has gone up between 30 and 50 per cent.”

I said, “How do they stand it without their liquor?” and he replied, “Stand it? I have lost revenue over it up to £65,000,000 a year and we certainly cannot afford it, but if I proposed to put it back there would be a revolution in Russia.”

How completely teetotal Russia became we read long ago in the Daily Mail, to which Mr. Hamilton Fyfe sent this message from Petrograd:

Try to imagine all the publichouses in the British Isles closed; all the restaurants putting away their wine cards and offering nothing stronger than cider or ginger ale. That is the state of things in Russia. Strange it seems indeed, yet there is one thing stranger. Nobody makes any audible complaint.

Everywhere in Russia it was the same: a nation was made sober by Act of Parliament.

“Without a murmur of protest,” said the Moscow correspondent of the Times, “the most drunken city in Europe was transformed into a temple of sobriety, and we felt that if Russia could thus conquer herself in a night, there was indeed nothing that might not be accomplished.” And two years later, when the revolution came, we read in the Times this note from Odessa: “Perfect tranquillity continues to prevail here, although for the moment Odessa is practically without police. The satisfactory absence of crime may largely be attributed to the sealing up of spirituous liquors.”

We need not be afraid of Drinkless Revolutions.

But the truth about Russia is almost too incredible to believe, for it is Prohibition that made the revolution possible; it was stopping drink that set 170,000,000 people free. We will let a business correspondent of the Times give evidence; here is what he said on April 21, 1917:

In one respect it must be said that the Reactionaries saw clearly. They always claimed that the Tsar had ruined himself by decreeing the abolition of vodka. None but a sober people could have carried out the Russian Revolution.

The police were, on the other hand, the victims of drink. They had seized the vodka at the order of the Government, and had kept plentiful supplies for themselves. Thus the Revolution was in part a struggle between drunken reaction and sober citizens. Sobriety triumphed.

The Russian people will not bow down and tie their hands to the thrones of Europe: do we wonder if they scorn our quailing before this trade?

Free Russia flings off the dynastic yoke: do we wonder Prohibition Russia is not much impressed by a nation with a Drink Trade round its neck?

The Soldier’s Home

The things that will be told against this trade when all the truth is known will break the heart of those who read. It is well for us that we cannot know the full truth now; the burden would be too grievous to be borne in days like these. But if you will go into your street, or will talk of these things with the next man you meet from one of our pitiful slums, or will pick up one of those local papers that still have space to print the truth, you will find the evidence close about you.

We are the guardians of our soldiers’ homes; we are the trustees of the hope and happiness of their little children; but we let this drink trade, that takes our people’s food out of their cupboards, turn that food into the means of death, and sow ruin and destruction through the land.

But we will call the witnesses to these drink-ruined soldiers’ homes, these homes that the enemy worse than Germany has shattered and broken while our men have been fighting for your home and mine. We will call a few here and there, knowing that for every one called are hundreds more that can be called, and that beyond all these that are known there is in this little land a countless host of tragedies as secret as the grave.

A Tooting soldier whose wife had sent him loving letters to the trenches came back to surprise her after 18 months. He found another man in possession of his home and a new baby; and, overcome by the discovery, he gave way to drink and killed himself.

Records of Balham Coroner, March 1916

A soldier who had left a comfortable home behind returned from the Front to find it ruined, with not a bed to lie on, his children never sent to school, his wife all the time in publichouses. “I wish I had been shot in the trenches,” he said when he arrived.

Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 10, 1915

Outside a publichouse in Liverpool a man was dragging home his drunken wife, the mother of eleven children. They rolled over and over on the ground, the drunken women violently resisting the maddened man. Then came up the eldest son, home from the Front, with five wounds in his body.

Facts in “Liverpool Post,” March 2, 1917

A soldier came back to his home in London to find his wife drinking his money away, harbouring another man; one of his children cruelly neglected and the other in its grave, perished from neglect; and a drunken carman’s baby about to be born in his home.

Facts in Shaftesbury Society Report

A Lance-Corporal heard in the trenches of his wife’s misconduct. His commanding officer wrote to make inquiries, and the soldier wrote to the Chief Constable a pitiful letter: “What have I to look forward to at the end of the war?” he said. “Nothing, only sorrow. I never get a letter to know how my loving son is getting on; I think it will drive me mad.”

He came home, opened the door of his house, threw his kit on the floor, and declared that he would kill his wife. He put a razor on the table, and his little boy hid it in a cupboard, but a week later this boy of 12 went home and found his father and mother lying on the floor, the father drunk, the mother dead. The soldier, drowning his misery in drink, had strangled his wife. Rousing himself beside her, he said, as the police found them, “Kiss me, Sally. Aye, but tha are poorly.”

He had been the best of fathers, said the little boy; the best of soldiers, said his commanding officer; and the judge declared that such a man, with such a character, ought not to be with criminals.

Record of Huddersfield Assizes, Autumn 1916

A soldier asked a London magistrate if he could draw the allowance instead of his wife, who was in prison for drunkenness and was neglecting his four children. The magistrate said the only thing was to send the children to the workhouse.

The Soldier: “So I am to be a soldier for my King and country while my children go to the workhouse?” The Magistrate: “That is so, because you have a drunken wife. I am sorry for you.”

Facts in “Sunday Herald,” June 1916

A seaman gunner, who had been torpedoed and had fought in the trenches, arrived home to find his wife, in his own words, “filthy drunk,” and his children utterly deplorable. He reclothed them, but his wife pawned the clothes, though she had £7 a month. He took his children away, but a crowd of women interfered with him, and the police were powerless against the mob.

Facts in “Western Daily Mercury,” July 23, 1915

A soldier just back from the Front was found in the street weeping bitterly on discovering that his wife was in gaol through drink, and his child, through her neglect, had been burned.

Statement by Marchioness of Waterford

A soldier came home from the Front to find that drink had ruined his home, and his children were being cared for by Glasgow Parish Council. “Hour after hour we sit on this council,” says the chairman, “listening to case after case, and the cause is drunkenness, drunkenness, drunkenness. There are 2300 children under the council, and two thousand of them have parents living.” “Our raw material is the finished product of the public-house,” says one of these workers.

Facts from Glasgow Councillors

A motor mechanic at the Front, hearing that his wife, hitherto a sober woman, had given way to drink, obtained leave to come home. He found his wife, very drunk, struggling home with the help of the railings in the street, and neighbours described her horrible life with other soldiers. The husband obtained a separation for the sake of his children, and went back to France.

Full facts in “Kent Messenger,” July 31, 1915

A young soldier came from the trenches to spend Christmas in his home in Sheffield—a teetotal home before the war. He found that his wife had given way to drink, had deserted one child and disappeared with the other, and that a baby was to be born which was not his.

Facts known to the Author

A miner fighting at the Front came home to find his wife at a publichouse, his home filthy, and his children cruelly neglected. He was heartbroken. His young wife frequently left the house from tea-time till midnight, and in order to keep the children from the fire she had burned them severely with a piece of iron. A respectable-looking woman, the mother pleaded for a chance, and was led from the dock sobbing bitterly.

Facts in “Sheffield Independent,” February 21, 1917

A young Yorkshire miner enlisted and left his wife, hitherto sober, with three children. She took to drink, neglected the home, and is now a dipsomaniac, with two children not her husband’s.

Facts known to the Author

A soldier came home ill from France, hurried from Waterloo to his home, and found the door locked. He knocked, and his little boy’s voice came—“Is that you, mother, and are you drunk?” Hearing his father’s voice the excited lad opened the door. “Where’s mother?” asked his father. “Mother?” said the boy; “she’s drinking. She comes home drunk night after night now and knocks the kids about. She daren’t hit me; I’m fair strong, dad; but the other.... And as for baby, she never does nothing for her. I and Freddy takes turns, but I dunno what to give her to eat sometimes.”

Midnight passed before the mother appeared, helplessly drunk. “Did you expect me to sit at home weeping for you?” she said. The next morning, broken with tears, she promised to mend her ways. The soldier went into hospital, and there he had a letter from his boy. This is part of it:

“Dear Dad, I write to let you know mother is going on awful. She has took all Fred and Timmy’s clothes to the pawnshop, and she hit Selina on Saturday with the toasterfork and cut her face. She cried all night, it hurt her so. She is drunk every night and some nights dussent come back at all. She daren’t hit me, but I am getting afraid about baby. We are all very hungry and miserable.”

The soldier got leave, found his wife had disappeared, and, finding charity for his four little ones, he left his ruined home and went back to the hospital.

Facts in possession of the Author

A working-man at Gravesend went to the Front, leaving behind a wife and three children, the baby lately born. His wife started drinking away her allowance, neglected her home, and, full of remorse and shame for the disgrace she had brought on the man who was in the trenches, she hanged herself. The man came home to find waiting for him three motherless children, and one of the most pathetic letters a man has ever had to read.

Records of Gravesend Coroner, 1916

Mothers and Children

It is easy to understand the pitiful appeal of 500 women out of Holloway Prison who begged the Duchess of Bedford to help to close all public-houses during the war. They know in their hearts of tragedies such as these, in which mothers and children die while the fathers fight and the Drink Trade goes on merrily.

A soldier’s wife in Sunderland drew £12 arrears of Army pay, and she and her mother began to drink it away. She drew her pay on Friday, was carried home drunk on Saturday, gave birth to twins on Sunday morning, and died on Sunday night. The twins died a week or two after, and a week or two after that the soldier came home from the trenches to find his family in the grave.

Facts in Sunderland papers, 1917

Two women went drinking in Chester on a Sunday night, a soldier’s mother and a soldier’s wife. They had five whiskies each, and fell drunk in the street. One slept all night on a sofa, and the other lay on the floor, shouting and swearing. Her husband propped her up with a mat, and for hours she lay shrieking. In the morning she was dead. The publican was fined £5.

Facts in “Chester Chronicle,” February 17, 1917

The wife of a Yorkshire soldier was drowned while drunk at Sheffield. She started drinking with another soldier’s wife disappeared with a drunken man, and her death was a mystery.

Facts in “Sheffield Independent,” April 26, 1916

At an inquest on the bodies of a soldier’s twin children, both dead from chronic wasting, it was stated that the mother had 34s. a week, and both she and her husband drank. The mother had had four children in fifteen months, and all were dead.

Records of Battersea Coroner, October 1915

In one street in London where there were one day four convictions for drunkenness, a woman carried a sick baby into a public house. As she stood at the bar the little baby died, but the mother went on drinking, with the dead child in her arms.

Records of Charity Organisation Society

The wife of a highly-esteemed sergeant-major fighting in France was found lying drunk. Her four children, shockingly neglected, were put in a home, but she took them out, went on drinking, and received soldiers at her house. In a few weeks her husband heard in the trenches that his wife had died from drinking.

Records of West Surrey Coroner, March 1917

A soldier left three children at home. He had been earning £1 a week, but his wife received 32s. 6d. a week. She drank it away, neglected the children, and died in an asylum while her husband was in France.

Records of Claybury Asylum

The little child of a soldier in France died in Guy’s Hospital from burns. The mother said she could not buy a fireguard. While she was absent the baby was burned, and the mother, returning in a drunken state carrying a can of beer, said, “A good job!”

Records of Southwark Coroner, December 1915

A soldier’s widow with six children, an Army pension of 30s. a week, and her eldest boy’s wages of 30s., drinks every night with a married man who has a respectable, clean, and sober wife with eight children and a ninth lately born—born prematurely as a result of her husband’s beating her. The child bore the marks of his violence, and died in two months.

Records of Shaftesbury Society

The young wife of a soldier was brought from prison to be tried for manslaughter of her baby, who had died in the infirmary from neglect. She spent her time in the publichouses, and laughed when the children were taken to the infirmary. She went out one day to fetch a bottle of whisky and as she drank with a neighbour she said she knew the baby would die. The doctor said the child’s skin was hanging in folds on the bones.

Facts in the “Observer,” January 23, 1916

A soldier’s wife drank continuously while her child wasted away, left the tiny baby alone in the house while she went for beer, and a policeman found her lying drunk across the dead child’s body.

Records of Barnsley Coroner, November, 1916

The mother of two children whose father was fighting in France gave way to drink in his absence, neglected her children and left them in grave moral danger, and committed suicide.

Records of an Orphan Home

A soldier’s baby starved slowly to death as the mother drank away his pay, and while the child lay in its coffin the mother was out drinking.

West Bromwich Police Records, June 1915

A munition worker at Newcastle was grievously upset by the drinking habits of his wife. The police left a summons for her and she disappeared. Two days later her body was found in the Tyne. The man broke down at the inquest, saying, between his sobs: “She was such a good wife to me for 20 years, and reared a good family before she took to drink.”

Records of Newcastle Coroner, Summer 1916

The wife of a corporation workman at Sheffield, home from the trenches with six gunshot wounds and three pieces of shell in his body, found that his wife had given way to drink and starved her five children. She was sent to prison for six months.

Police Records of Sheffield, November 3, 1915

A soldier’s wife who had spent the greater part of £100 Army money in drink was sent to prison for neglecting her children. Almost everything in the house was pawned, including the children’s clothes; and the woman began to drink at five o’clock in the morning, and went on drinking all day.

Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 10, 1915

A soldier’s wife in Monmouthshire, with £3 9s. a week, was found sodden with drink, while the soldier’s eight children were in rags starving by day and huddling up in one bed by night.

Facts in “Westminster Gazette,” July 22, 1916

A smart tidy woman in a London suburb, whose husband is fighting in Mesopotamia, has £2 10s. 6d. a week. She used to love her children and had a happy home, but she drinks away her Army pay, lives with a married man who has six children, and has become a drunken slattern. The other wife is beaten and neglected, and the soldier’s children have gone to the workhouse.

Records of Shaftesbury Society

The four children of a soldier in Dublin were found hungry and shivering with cold while the mother was drinking. Several times she had let her baby fall while reeling with it in the street.

Facts in “Dublin Evening Herald,” October 20, 1916

At the trial of a soldier’s wife for drinking and neglecting seven children, it was stated that a child of eleven was left in charge of a baby a fortnight old while the mother was drinking. At night all the children were heard screaming. The house was in utter darkness, and there was an escape of gas. Some men went in and turned off the gas, and at last the mother came stumbling out of a publichouse across the road.

Facts in “Sheffield Star,” November 25, 1915

“Your husband is fighting for his country, and his children have the right to be protected,” said the Chairman of the Chesterfield Bench to a soldier’s wife. Her children were found starving while she was drinking, and one day the little boy of three was found crouching naked inside the fender, trying to get warm. The police described the house as foul from top to bottom, with a heap of horrible rags for a bed, and a food cupboard that made the house unendurable when the door was opened.

Facts in “Yorkshire Telegraph,” March 24, 1916

The wife of a missing soldier was sent to prison at Chesterfield for neglecting three children between 13 years and 16 weeks old. She had gone astray through drink, and the youngest child, born under terrible conditions, was not her husband’s. It was found lying on a filthy bed, and its drunken mother, to satisfy its pangs of hunger, had given it pennyworths of laudanum. Eleven people slept in two foul bedrooms.

Chesterfield Police Records, October 9, 1916

Five hundred children of soldiers are being cared for in the great Homes founded by Mr. Quarrier in Scotland, and most of them are there because of drinking mothers.

Facts in Reports

A soldier’s wife at Biggleswade spent her allowance on drink and left her three children locked up in the house for days at a time.

Police Court Records of Biggleswade, September 1915

A soldier’s wife was found reeling in the streets of Dublin with a baby in her arms. At her home were found four other children, cruelly neglected.

Facts in “Dublin Mail,” August 16, 1916

Nineteen hundred children of soldiers have come into the care of the N.S.P.C.C., mainly through drink, since the war began.

Records of the N.S.P.C.C.

The Ruined Wives

Who does not remember the terrible rush for the last drop of drink when Prohibition seemed to be coming with the New Year? Long queues of women besieged the whisky shops in Glasgow. There were women of all ages, said the Daily Mail, tottering in grey hairs, young wives with babies in their arms, and men of the loafer type. “There was not a respectable citizen,” says the Mail, “who did not deplore this discreditable scene, but the remarks of passers-by provoked only torrents of insult.” The promise of the new year and the new Government, alas, was not fulfilled, and now in place of Drink Queues we have Food Queues. Let us see what drink is doing among our soldiers’ wives:

Of 3000 soldiers’ wives being cared for in South London, 2000 are splendid, while 1000 are sinking daily to lower and lower levels through drink.

Records of Shaftesbury Society

A soldier’s wife, with a separation allowance of 32s. 6d. a week, drank most of it away, ruined her home, neglected her children, and became a lunatic.

Records of Claybury Asylum

A young soldier’s wife, hitherto “quite an elegant type,” is rapidly becoming a drunkard. Women hitherto sober have not the courage to keep from women’s drinking parties, and young girls come out of factories and go to publichouses in little groups.

Records of Charity Organisation Society

Outside a public house in Dublin 15 small children were crying in the cold, waiting for their mothers. Ninety-four drunken women came out in 25 minutes. There were ten drunken soldiers, and two girls of 15 were thrown into the street hopelessly drunk.

Facts in “Irish Times,” April 20, 1915

In Dundee over 170 wives of soldiers gave way to drink last year, and cruelly neglected their homes.

Records of the N. S. P. C. C.

A soldier in the trenches received a letter from his little boy, which he sent to London with a pitiful appeal for help.

“Kindly do what you can for me and the well-being and welfare of my four beautiful children,” the poor soldier wrote. “I am enclosing a fearful letter I have received from my poor little lad, 14-1/2, the first and only letter I have received from him. Sir, I shall be most anxiously awaiting your reply, for this letter is the greatest blow I have ever received.”

This is the little boy’s letter:

Dear Dad: Just a line to let you know how everything is at home. Mother is drunk for a fortnight and sober for a week for months and months. I’ve stuck it now for seven months, and can’t stick it any longer. I tried to get into the Navy and passed all the tests, but mother would not sign the papers, for which I am sorry. If mum would sign I could go away to Portsmouth on Thursday, but she will not. At the present moment she is half drunk and keeps jawing me so that I could knife meself. I’ve lost my new job because mum would not wake me in the morning, and nothing for breakfast, and had to get mine and the children’s tea at tea-time. It pains me to write like this, but I can’t help it. I now seek your advice as to what to do. I hope you will enjoy Xmas, although there is not much hope for us. I now conclude with fondest love, X. Your heartbroken Son, Leslie.

A stream of nearly 15,000 men and women poured into 58 publichouses in Birmingham in less than four hours; over 6,000 were women. Into one house the people streamed at nearly 500 an hour.

Facts in “Review of Reviews,” October 1915

For months some wives of soldiers and sailors in Scotland were never really sober. “We have done our best,” says a worker among them, “going to their homes and doing all in our power, but it beats us.” In 23 families, with 178 children born, 61 were dead.

Facts told to Secretary for Scotland, July 1916

Will some Member of Parliament please ask

whether the ships that have brought in food for destruction by the drink trade could not have brought in a large proportion of the 3,500,000 tons of wheat now waiting for ships in Australia and the 2,000,000 tons waiting in Canada?

The Roll of the Dead

No more pitiful record of the war is there than that unnumbered roll of men lured from our armies by this liquor trade, and cast into dishonoured graves. We can take only a few of them.

A number of soldiers at Ormskirk came into camp drunk on Christmas night. A request for quiet led to a fight, and one of the men was struck two blows and was dead the next morning.

Facts in “Daily Mail,” December 28, 1915

A Liverpool soldier, drinking continuously, had overstayed his leave, and in a quarrel about this he stabbed his brother dead.