Everywhere we hope and pray for peace, for the day when the men will
come home; but we may dread the day if the men come home to drink and
its temptations. The sudden release of millions of men, the certain
reaction after the terrible stress of these three years, is fearful to
contemplate with the door of the tap-room open. There would be an end of
civilization itself for days and weeks and months, and for many a town
at home the Peace would be worse than the War.
We owe it to these men to listen to the warning of the Prison
Commissioners who printed these words in their report last year:
=When war is succeeded by peace there will come a time of trial for
those who have never turned their backs to a bodily enemy. With the
passing of military discipline our brave fellows will be tempted to
forget the hardships and miseries of the trenches in a burst of
uncontrolled pleasure and license, and, if trade be bad and work
difficult to obtain, the lapse may, if not checked, become a step on a
downward career.=
It is not imagination merely. Judges, coroners, police, and all who face
the crime and misery of life, know well the bitter things that happen
when men come home without restraint. There are witnesses innumerable.
Let us hear a few of them.
A captain in the Royal Flying Corps drove a motor-car through
London, knocked a man down, drove on, and ignored the police, who
eventually mounted the footboard and found the officer drunk.
_Bow Street Police Records, June 3, 1916_
A lance-corporal on Chesterfield station was so drunk that he walked
off the platform and fell on the line as a passenger train came up.
_Chesterfield Police Records, June 2, 1915_
A corporal of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, leaving the
Front with 150 rounds of ammunition and his service rifle, came out
drunk into the streets of West Ham and began firing his rifle.
_Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” July 10, 1915_
A soldier who had received a cartridge from his son at the Front,
put it in his rifle, and while drunk fired it in the streets of
Manchester.
_Manchester Police Records, January 27, 1915_
In the early hours of the morning two unarmed soldiers were fired at
in Woolwich by a drunken soldier, who chased them for a long
distance, firing shots all the time, until he was arrested.
_Facts in “Alliance News,” February, 1915_
Drunkenness among soldiers and sailors is appalling. Unoffending
travellers are delayed by drunken sentries. Sailors landing after
weeks of arduous toil in the North Sea find it easy to get so drunk
that some are drowned, some die from exposure, and many return to
their ships in a condition of helpless inebriety.
_Facts in “Inverness Courier,” May 1915_
Two drunken soldiers entered the parish church at Codford, set fire
to the vestry, threw down the altar cross and candlestick, broke a
stained-glass window, and tore leaves out of a Bible 200 years old.
_Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” April 3, 1916_
A drunken soldier at Cannock was imprisoned for drawing his bayonet
in the streets. “If I meet a policeman I will murder the dog,” he
said, and, meeting one, he threatened to cut off his head.
_Police Records at Cannock, March 1916_