_RUM RATION RUINOUS_
"I served at Gallipoli; I was wounded on the western front. It is my
earnest opinion that the rum ration is utterly bad."
The speaker turned now so that he faced the larger portion of the
audience that crowded the hall to its utmost capacity, and with which
he had been seated. He then continued,
"_I believe that there are thousands of glorious British lads who would
be alive to-day, recovered from wounds and disease, restored to their
country, their loved ones, and their friends, had this rum ration not
undermined their strength and destroyed their resistance._"
The speaker was a wounded surgeon of the Royal Medical Corps. The
writer had just finished an address in Weymouth, England. The date was
Wednesday, January 30, 1918. The presiding officer of the evening was
the mayor of the city. Following the address an hour was given to the
asking and answering of questions under the direction of the chairman.
It was during this time that the surgeon made his remarkable statement.
The rum ration had been debated, and some apparently earnest
temperance people had gone on record in favor of it.
The writer finds absolutely nothing abroad to cause him to change his
opinion that Sir Victor Horsley, Lord Roberts, and Lord Kitchener were
correct in their opposition to the serving of rum as a ration to the
soldiers. There was a time when a single hour of "Dutch courage" won a
battle, and when a battle won a war; but that time is past forever. If
we were to grant the desirability of the temporary effects resulting
from the ration, we should be bound in the light of evidence produced
to insist that the final results leave the soldier less able to resist
disease, less competent to take care of himself if wounded. The
argument that rum should be given to drown the sensibilities, to deaden
the terror of men about to go over the top, is not valid. Rum enough to
accomplish this makes a soldier unfit to go over the top at all into
the situations where every order must be obeyed promptly and where
every faculty must be supremely alert.
Principal Paton of the greatest public school of Manchester, England,
said to the writer that at a certain aviation camp six young men were
dashed to the ground and killed because, owing to the fact that they
had taken liquor just before their flights, liquor to which they were
unaccustomed, their machines in the higher altitude got out of control.
[Illustration: DR. POLING WITH NEWTON WYLIE, OF THE TORONTO "GLOBE"
Mr. Wylie was the executive secretary of the prohibition campaign in
Great Britain.]
I have found it quite difficult to show any tolerance at all for the
opinions of certain public men of Great Britain, clergymen included,
who have asked for the wet canteen in the training-camps set aside for
boys of eighteen.
The effect of the rum ration upon the teetotaler should have more
attention than it has yet received. The son of a personal friend of
mine wrote home to England that it was impossible for him to secure
water for several days while in the trenches, and that the tea supplied
him had the rum put into it before it was served. _This lad had never
tasted liquor before he left home._
In that very remarkable book, "Letters from Flanders," written by
Second Lieutenant A. D. (Bey) Gillespie, who died at the head of his
troops on September 25, 1915, I find the following:
"Also I had my first taste of rum, for I have to stand by and see a lot
of that served out to men as soon as it gets dark.... I think that they
should arrange that men who do not want it could get chocolate or some
other small thing instead."
While in Scotland the writer received from a British lady the following
portion of a letter written by her "godson," a Belgian soldier:
"If the war is the cause of many disasters, it has also its benefits.
Among them we concede the destruction, if I may say so, of alcoholism.
In our northern countries alcohol was a necessity, so to speak. Alcohol
did one good; that was the idea firmly fixed in the minds of the
people. To-day the governments have abolished the sale of alcohol in
all the cafés. It is forbidden to sell it to soldiers, the soldiers
cannot carry it with them, etc.; and a man is not the worse for that,
but far better off. I know many soldiers who every day 'needed' their
drop of spirits, and I myself was not free from the habit; yet for
three and one-half years now I have done without it, and really my
health is better. The bad habit is uprooted. The war has forced me
to temperance, as it has forced many others. This must have happened
also to civilians, for alcohol has become dear and scarce. So much the
better."
Much has been said about the "impossible" water of France. I crossed
and recrossed France without being at any time so situated that I could
not secure pure or purified water in ample quantity. The American
military administration deserves great credit for the way in which
it has solved this problem for our overseas forces. From the port of
entry to the last mess-kitchen at the front I found that where the
local water-supply was inadequate or questionable the great canvas
bags were kept constantly filled with the wholesome beverage that
to-day makes America famous from the Mediterranean Sea to the Vosges
Mountains. The great water-main laid through the French city in which
the general headquarters of the American army was for months located
was an inspiring sight and a ringing testimony to America's scientific
attitude and her war efficiency.
As to the basis for the British rum ration, Sir Victor Horsley refers
to it as the "old pernicious rum ration" which is given to the soldier
as a deceptive substitute for food, which decreases his efficiency and
reduces his strength. Sir Victor was one of the most distinguished
surgeons of his time, the recognized medical authority of the British
army for a generation, and a scientist who in his profession commanded
a hearing through the world. He has referred to the system of supplying
rum to British soldiers as having been established by the command
in Flanders during Marlborough's campaign at the beginning of the
eighteenth century. He also says, "It must be remembered, for the sake
of our honor as a profession, that the army medical service, though an
absolutely essential part of His Majesty's forces, has not only never
been granted a proper place in the administration of military affairs,
but even now [early in 1917] has no representative on the Army Council."
The medical profession cannot be held primarily responsible to the
British nation for errors in the vital question of the rum ration and
the medical and surgical care of soldiers.
Sir James McGregor, at one time the principal medical officer of the
army, issued one of the earliest statements against the rum ration. He
says in his memoirs that on a trying desert march down the Nile "the
men had no spirits delivered out to them, and not only did they not
suffer by this, but it contributed to the uncommon degree of health
which they had this time enjoyed." This was written in 1801. Medical
men in the United States are familiar with the experience of McClellan
on the banks of the Potomac in 1862 when a spirit ration was issued
in the belief that it would help stop bowel complaints. After one
month the ration was withdrawn because drunkenness and dysentery had
increased.
The experiences of Lord Roberts in the Boer War in South Africa and in
India, and similar experiences of General Kitchener, caused these men
to become unequivocally opposed to a ration of rum.
The army authorities of Great Britain have never answered Sir Victor's
following contentions, which had the fullest indorsement of Lord
Roberts and Lord Kitchener:
The rum ration is responsible for
1. Decadence of morale. Causation of "grousing," friction, and
disorder.
2. Drunkenness, punishments, degradations in rank.
3. Decadence of observation and judgment. Causation of errors and
accidents.
4. Loss of endurance and diminution of physical vigor. Causation of
fatigue, falling out, and slackness.
5. Loss of resistance to cold. Causation of chilliness, misery, and
frost-bite.
6. Loss of resistance to disease (particularly diseases occurring
under conditions of wet and cold), namely, pneumonia, dysentery,
typhoid fever.
7. Loss of efficiency in shooting. (Half the rum ration causes a
loss of 40 to 50 per cent in rifle-shooting. The navy rum ration
causes a loss of 30 per cent in gunnery.)
In Sir Victor Horsley's last letter to Mr. Guy Hayler of London he
spoke of the great riot that occurred in Cairo,--a riot not set on
foot, as had been reported, because the men wanted more drink for
themselves, but because they would not stand quietly by and see the
officers drinking heavily in the hotels after the time appointed for
closing canteens to the privates. He also stated that the enormous loss
of men crippled and dead from frost-bite and cold at Gallipoli was due
to several factors, in which alcohol played a part not only directly,
but indirectly as well, owing to the neglect of the personal care and
treatment of the men due to the satisfaction and complacency which
whiskey-drinking produces. "Men allowed things to drift," the great
surgeon wrote.
I was privileged to be in the front line with the American forces when
they experienced their first general gassing and their first raid from
German shock troops. I was with them in water- and mud-filled trenches;
I saw them when for five and even seven days they had been constantly
in the tense expectancy of men who await a raid; I slept with them
and messed with them; I saw them in the agonies of the gas and soaked
in the blood of their wounds; I saw them so completely exhausted that
they fell asleep in their snow- and water-soaked garments upon the hard
floor of a Y. M. C. A. hut, resting there without protection only as we
found newspapers and canvas strips with which to cover them--their own
blankets had been buried by shell-fire, and they had just come from the
more advanced positions after being relieved.
These men had borne all without a rum ration. The hot coffee and tea
with which the Y. M. C. A. and Red Cross and their own cooks provided
them did for them all that the rum ration could have done, and with
none of rum's evil after-effects. I did not hear a single soldier ask
for rum. As to the insistence of some that it is impossible to supply
our forces with coffee and tea under extreme front-line conditions,
I was witness to the fact that under the most extreme conditions hot
drinks were constantly furnished.
It will be kept in mind that by the term "rum ration" we refer to the
regular and daily supply of spirits as a recognized part of the dietary
of the soldier, and not to the possible use of alcohol in special
instances by order of medical officers. As to this latter, I have not
seen rum or spirits used. The men have themselves informed me that it
has not been prescribed for them. I imagine that its introduction for
medicinal purposes will depend very much upon the personal attitude of
individual medical men toward alcohol as an internal medicine, just as
it does in the United States. The fact that the medical profession _is_
represented in the councils of the American army, and by some of its
most distinguished leaders, and the further fact that medical authority
in America has banished alcohol from the American pharmacopoeia, are
re-assuring. In having such men as Dr. Haven Emerson, formerly chief
health officer of New York City, now a major in the medical service in
France, to counsel those in supreme authority overseas, we are most
fortunate.
Peculiarly difficult will be the problem arising where American
soldiers are brigaded with English and French regiments. _But it is a
problem that must and will be solved._
Under no circumstances will this nation consent to the establishing
of the rum system that now works injury in the armies of her splendid
allies. _That it does work injury, I know._
It is certainly true that the vast majority of men now receiving
the ration of rum, if asked to express an opinion, would heartily
vote for it. It is equally true that the soldiers of our allies
are not a drunken mob, that they do not fall under the influence
of drink _menasse_. But the weakening and deteriorating effect of
this pernicious narcotic, water-absorbing, depressant drug poison is
unmistakable.
What the surgeon of the Royal Medical Corps said at Weymouth, and all
that he said, is true. Canada does well to be aroused; her hurt is
deep. There is tragedy in the situation that ties the hands of a people
who have sent armies of men clean of alcohol to fight for our common
cause under the flag of their motherland. These armies, as soon as
they leave the three-mile zone that guards the shores of Canada, pass
under an authority that thrusts upon them the curse which their own
government has destroyed.
The fact that the immediate and noticeable sensations and effects
of rum deceive men into accepting it as a benefactor instead of a
curse does not relieve a government of responsibility for finding and
following the truth. With my own eyes I have seen the demonstration
of the truth which science establishes--alcohol gives to the armies
of democracy trembling limbs, blinded eyes, deafened ears, dulled
sensibilities, hearts too frail to pump the blood of mightiest deeds,
poverty of soul in times when richest treasures alone suffice to pay
the price of justice and of freedom.