ALCOHOL AND WAR.

White Ribbon, Volume 21, Issue 245, 18 November 1915, Page 3

ALCOHOL AND WAR.

A letter received by a gentleman in Victoria, 8.C., from his son, who is with the Medical Corps at the Front in Flanders, is as follows: — “And let me say in all seriousness that the poor fellows who have sodden themselves with alcohol haven’t an earthly chance of recovering from the ghastly wounds caused by shrapnel; even the fellows who have been fairly temperate have a far harder fight lor recovery as against abstainers. 1 don’t know what you’re doing in Canada about the drink business, but if you’ve any influence, for God’s sake use it to suppress the cursed liquor traffic during the war. It's efficiency all the way, and how can the men be efficient if they let their systems down by the use of liquor? Let me tell you that the Government did a criminal thing in allowing the liquor interests to send that rum into the trenches. Fellows who got badly frost-bitten were mostly those who consumed most rum, and besides, it intensified the sufferings of others; and then there were some weak young fellows who imbibed that hadn’t touched liquor before, naturally to their undoing. The Medical Superintendent did his utmost to prevent the stuff coming through to the tiring line, and even the commanding officers were reluctant, for, taking them altogether, the officers are abstemious, whatever they were in the South African war. And we cannot understand how Kitchener permitted that quantity to come through to the troops. King George’s example has told its tale with the men, and if Lloyd George is the man you’ve always told us, he surely will close down the liquor houses, for if we’re to win this war our soldiers must be deprived of the power to get drunk. It may seem hard to meddle with the personal liberty of a man, but, as Carlyle said, “there is no greater slave than the man who is subject to his appetite.”