ENGLISH ADMIRALS DECLARE THAT LIQUOR HURTS EFFICIENCY.

White Ribbon, Volume 21, Issue 248, 18 February 1916, Page 6

ENGLISH ADMIRALS DECLARE THAT LIQUOR HURTS EFFICIENCY.

In a letter to the Admiralty, ViceAdmiral Jellicoe says: “I am very uneasy about the labour situation in the Clyde and the Tyne. 1 sent a telegram or two about it lately. You may think I am exceeding my sphere of action in doing so, but the efficiency of this fleet is so affected by it that I felt it my duty to wire today. “An officer in a responsible position has arrived here, and his account of things on the Clyde is most disquieting. He said tffi aen refused altogether to work on Saturday afternoon ; that they took Wednesday afternoon of every week, if not the whole of Wednesday, and worked on Sunday because they got double pay for it. He said also that they only worked in a half-hearted manner. My destroyer dockings and refits are de-

layed in every case by these labour difficulties, and they take twice as long as they need to. I feel you ought to know the facts, and so I put them before you.” Rear-Admiral Tudor says: “Briefly, the position is that now’, while the country is at war, the men are doing less work than would be regarded as an ordinary week’s work under normal peace conditions. Thus the problem is not how to get the workmen to increase the normal peace output, but how to get them to do an ordinary week’s work of 51 to 53 hours, as the case may be. The reasons for the loss of time, no doubt, are various, but it is abundantly clear that the most potent reason is the facilities that exist to obtain beer and spirits with a high rate of wages and the abundance of employment. Opinion on this point is practically unanimous.”

The Captain-Superintendent of the Clyde, in his report, says: “In the shipyards last week, where a warship was under repairs, the work on the inner bottom of the ship was so badly carried out as to suggest that it could not have been done by men who were sober. It was dangerous, and had to be condemned.” These are not the utterances of “wowsers, ’ but of men occupying the most rf sponsible positions in our fleet, and who realise how strong drink is lessening the efficiency of that fleet.