SOLDIERS, GRATITUDE, AND PROHIBITION.

White Ribbon, Volume 25, Issue 293, 18 November 1919, Page 2

SOLDIERS, GRATITUDE, AND PROHIBITION.

(Contributed by an expericvcevl Soi iai Worker.)

This is the question in some people's minds: Is it consistent with the gratitude we unceasingly owe our soldiers to try and bting in Prohibition? Many of our soldiers, erstwhile prohibitionists, now believe that the rum ration was beneficial to them, and they also believe that science backs up their belief, or else how would so up-to-date an at my as the British have issued the rum ration?

Hut let us get to the root of the matter, and sec if this is the truth. Sir Victor Horsley, F.R.S., F.R.C.S., lion. M.D., Halle, etc.; Major K.A. M.U.; late Chairman of the Representative Meeting of the British Medical Association; Surgeon to the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic ; Consulting Surgeon to the University College Hospital, and late Professor of Pathology in Aniversity College, London, etc., in his book, “Alcohol and the Human Bodx,” makes some statements which prove that the British Army was not following the findings of science when they issued the rum rations to their troops, nor were they following the experience of such military officers as the late Earl Roberts, who said: “13,000 abstainers are equal to 15,000 non abstainers; also he said: “Give me a teetotal army, and I will lead it anywhere.” Lieut.-General Sir Reginald Hart says: “As an officer, I support temperance, because 1 know that officers and men who avoid drink arc physically and mentally more efficient, their nerves are stronger, they march better, there is far less sickness and crime, their power of resistance is strengthened.” Admiral Sir J. R. Jellicoe, who so recently visited our shores, said: “As regards straight shooting, it is every one’s experience that abstinence is necessary for etfit iency. By careful and prolonged tests, the shooting efficiency of the men was proved to be K> per tent, worse after the rum ration than before it.” We cannot think he is an antiquated officer who does not know what this war means, however good his experience in other wars and other conditions were. Some may say, “But his fighting was at sea, and he cannot know the needs

of the men *in the wet, muddy trenches, even if his experience holds good in regard to the 30 per cent, less efficiency in shooting after the rum rations.

Sir Victor Horsley says: “One ut the greatest causes of invaliding during the winter campaign in France, i<H4 15, was ‘frost-bite,’ not the necrotic form so much as severe vascular paralysis, with secondary oedoma and neuritis. No better way of encouraging Lost bite could have been imagined than the issue of the rum ration, since alcohol produces the circulatory changes requisite for the first Mag>- of this painful condition.”

The idea that rum makes a man more able to ward off chill is of course* dangerously erroneous. All modern physiological researches have shewn that alcohol aggravates the ultimate effect of chilling in two ways—firstly by increasing the loss of heat by radiation from the surface, and second lx by checking the oxidation in the tissues, thus lowering the temperature of the body, diminishing its resistance to cold, and weakening the circulation in the extremities. The folly of taking alcohol in cold weather has been proved up to the hilt by all dwellers, workers, and explorers in cold climates for more than a bundled years.”

Sir J. Rm>s (Voxage to the Arctic Regions, iK’q-’X) says:-—“I xxas twenty years older than any of the officer*, or crew, yet I could stand the* cold better than any of theXn, who all made use of tobacco and spirits. 1 entirely abstained from them. The most irresistible proof of the value of abstinence xvas when xxe abandoned our ship, and were obliged to leave behind all our wine and spirits. It was remarkable to observe how much stronger and more able the men were to do their work, when they had noth ing but water to drink.’’

Dr. John Rae (Arctic Explorer) says “The greater the cold the more injurious is the use* of alcohol.” So wo have the testimony of science re the* effect of alcohol to keep from chilling, and we have the practical experience from txxo explorers in the Arctic Regions. Surely these two sides of the question xxill have some weight with those who keep an open mind, to the others nothing xvill appeal. Still I think i hear the one say who who keeps an open mind, “Yes, th.it sounds conclu-

>ive enough, but there one’*' own experience to get over. I know I felt a> if 1 were freezing in tliz trenches, and after I had taken the ruin rations I felt in a beautiful glow. How do you account for that?'’ It is due to the fact that alcohol causes the dilatation of the thousands of tiny blood vessels in the skin, resulting in mu* h of the blood reaching the surface, and so being rapidly cooled. That means that an excess of bloou is called from the internal and important organs which are rapidly cooled, and so the real temperature of the bod> is lowered. This if excessive, leads to exhaustion and risk to life. So the false sense of warmth is dearly bought and ought to be a warning instead of giving the deceptive impression of comfort and well being. This accounts for so many being found dead after being intoxicated. Their internal temperature is lowered so that they cannot resist the low external temperature. T his is not the end of the harm or danger connected with the taking of alcohol. The white blood corpuscles are the policemen of the blood. Their work is to seize and devour any disease germ which has entered the blood, and in so doing prevents the germ from multiplying, and neutralises the poison of the germ. Scientists, under the microscope sec that even with moderate doses of alcohol the white blood corpuscle s act as drunken nun, and are unable to seize and devour the disease germs. Thus each time alcohol is taken, for a certain time, that person is laid open to contract any disease if those germs have entered their blood. With continued drinking the blood corpuscles become degenerate, and instead of defending from disease, they devour the tender cells of the brain. The grey matter of the brain can be seen down in their Ikhlics under the microscope. No wonder persistent drinkers get softening of the brain. If it ended there it would not be so bad, but it is handed on to the children. Professor Saleeby, one of the greatest living authorities on Kugenics, maintains that alcohol is a racial poison. That means that wrapt up in the gift of life there is wrapped up the death warrant to be executed before that life sees the light of day 01 shout) after. If not, the child has received some handicap in the race of life. Before me is a book on Heredity, by Profes sor T. W. Shannon, and a picture of

a young man sitting in an invalid (hair. lie is all drawn up and misshapen, a most pitiable object. He was begotten while his father was drunk. No wonder the Professor has put at the foot, “Results of Personal Liberty.” Such personal liberty puts in bondage their children to the end of time. The tremendous degeneracy which i** the result of drink and venereal diseases is making the burdens too hard to be borne. There "as a time when we talked about the “Myterious dispensation of Providence” when idiots, imbeciles, and weak-minded cb.ldren were born. Rut science is dragging into the light of day the causes for these things, and, alas! when the man or woman has repented and forsaken the wrong, the harvest still comes in when least expected. In the “Principles of Kugenics," by B. Karnes, an account is given of a notorious drunkard called Max Jukes, in America, from whom there descended in seventy-five years, zoo thieves and murderers, jSo invalids by blindness, idiocy or consumption, <>o prostitutes, and 300 children who died prematurely. 1 he various members of this family cost the State of New York more than a million dollars. In the “Hill Folk” is another example of the transmittencc of evil tendencies through many generations. The progenitors of these people were shiftless, feeble-minded, and alcoholic* The descendants are and have been degenerates of the first magnitude. From 1901 to njio I.lc* per cent, of all aid given to paupers in the little Massachusetts village where the ancestors hist settled was given to members of the Hill families. The Court and prison records during the past .50 years show that at least sixteen of the Hill stock have been sentenced to prison for serious crimes, chiefly against sex, the expense to Count) and State being at Je.ist 10,763 dollars. As public wards they have cost the State, as accurately as can be estimated, 47,710 dollars. The writer goes on to say: “The fact that feeble mindedness, epilepsy, insanity and other forms of degeneracy arc passed on from ancestors to descendants is now well authenticated by careful and systematic investigations. I am one of those "ho look into the future, and can see what the results of things to-day will produce then. If alcohol were going to give true hap

piness and comfort, and the best heritage to the 1 hildrcn of the future,. 1 would light as strongly to retain it as I do now to get rid of the curse. Personally, it has never hurt me, but in my rescue work, prison work*, and work in the slums of London, 1 have seen so much poverty and misery caused by it. New Zealand has a bail time before it unless this curse i s

removed. Drinking i~ increasing not only among returned men, for whom, if for any one, there is some excuse, but among the youth who have never been away, and among them girls and \oung women. If the men do not feel that they need protection will they not extend it to the girls who some day may be their wives. Every villain knows that if he can get a pure woman under the influence of alcohol, which switches off that part which distinguishes man from the brute creation the inhibiting centres of the brain the power to weed out actions and control impulses the stuff which stimulates physical desires and removes the guiding controlling rein, then her ruin will be easy. What about your comrade who has become addicted to drink. You would not have failed him in the trenches. Are you going to fail him now ? Some of you have lost patience with your comrades who have failed. Is not your comradeship enough to enable you to deny yourself a glass of liquor to help your comrade who is its slave.

“Measure the strength of a man l)\ the strength of the feelings which he subdues, not those which subdue him.”

Show >our strength by your selfdenial in standing by your weaker brother or sistc*.