BRITAIN’S SHAME.

White Ribbon, Volume 23, Issue 273, 18 March 1918, Page 5

BRITAIN’S SHAME.

“It could be proved from official figures that the weight of drink stuff carried about since the war began had been as great as the weight of the solid material carried by the Navy to all our fighting fronts. The waste of man-power through drink since the war began had been equal to the closing down of all our munition works for 100 days. We could have put 100,000 men more on the land this year with prohibition. Drink had used up since the war began 5,000,000 tons of food.”— Arthur Mee. Sir Arthur Pearce Gould said the British soldier was not a drunken sot, but it was the civilian population that was at fault. Hospitals should be a sacred retreat for soldiers, yet even there they would hardly believe how difficult it was to protect the men from drink introduced from outside. He instanced the case of a paralysed and helpless man who was found hopelessly drunk after his friends had visited him. Captain McNeill, of Canada, said that all the weapons this nation needed in the war had had their edges blunted by the drink traffic.