If the full story could ever be told of the national tragedy of drink
and the war there would be no more ghastly chapter than that which would
tell how drink fought the Red Cross; how, without pity, it hindered the
work of mercy that is the general consolation of the world in days like
these.
We are coming to a famine not only in food, but in doctors. The
death-roll has been heavy beyond all parallel; the strain on the medical
services has been almost too great to be borne, and we look anxiously
round to know where the doctors and nurses will come from. With
Prohibition the problem would be largely solved, for the ordinary burden
of life would be largely lifted from our doctors and hospitals, and
thousands of men and women would be free to give themselves to the war
instead of mending up and patching up the sordid effects of drink. A
rich brewer gave a donation for extending a hospital. “Ah! but we should
not have to extend if he would shut up his public-houses,” said a
doctor.
It is easy to see how drink is telling all the time against our doctors,
our nurses, and our hospitals everywhere. Let us call a few witnesses.
Somebody gave a glass of neat whisky to two wounded men at a garden
party in Tottenham. Both were drunk when the brake came to take them
home, and one died on the way.
_Facts in “Sheffield Telegraph,” September 3, 1915_
Three wounded soldiers at Oxford were overcome by four bottles of
rum smuggled into the hospital by visitors, and one of the men died.
_Records of Oxford Coroner, January 1916_
A wounded soldier asked for two hours’ leave, came back in four
hours drunk with whisky, and died after a terrible night in the
hospital.
_Facts in “Daily Mail”_
Two limbless soldiers were found helplessly drunk on the pavement at
Brighton. A publican was fined £20.
_Facts in “Daily Chronicle,” November 25, 1916_
A wounded soldier, mentioned in despatches, was charged with causing
the death of a soldier with whom he had been drinking. Reeling under
a heavy blow, the injured man was helped to bed, but when the bugle
sounded in the morning he was dead.
_Facts in “Daily Mail,” December 21, 1915_
A soldier, aged 29, with a gunshot wound in his arm, died from
alcohol at Oxford. One Sunday night he and two other wounded
soldiers consumed four bottles of rum brought into the hospital.
_Records of Oxford Coroner, January 10, 1916_
Three soldiers in hospital uniform were found lying helplessly drunk
on the tramlines of Sheffield. Two were back from the Dardanelles.
_Facts in “Sheffield Star,” March 2, 1916_
Seamen on a ship bringing wounded to England from Boulogne were so
drunk that they interfered with the stretcher bearers, and one fell
across a wounded soldier lying on deck.
_Police Records of Southampton, May 14, 1915_
There was a paralysed and helpless man who was found hopelessly
drunk in hospital after his friends had visited him.
_Statement by Lieut.-Col. Sir Alfred Pearce Gould_
An officer who has trained hundreds of men for the ambulance corps
declared that a large percentage of wounded are in a very nervous
condition, in which alcohol means collapse and almost certain death.
_Quoted in “Daily Mail”_
Lying helpless at a London station, moaning on the ground in drunken
delirium, was a lad in hospital blue who had, in truth, been wounded
by his friends. Drink was taking him again through the worst of his
experiences, and his mental pain was pitiable to see.
_Facts in the “Globe,” January, 1917_
Two drunken soldiers from Gallipoli made what a doctor described as
the most savage attack he ever saw on a civilian. They held a young
man’s head against a wall and pounded him unmercifully.
_Facts in “Daily News,” August 19, 1916_
A party of soldiers were seriously injured in a struggle to arrest a
drunken private at Pontefract. The publican called on the men in his
taproom to rescue the private, but the sergeants drove them off.
_Facts in “Daily News,” October 5, 1914_
A sergeant of a Welsh regiment, invited to drink by friends in
Waterloo Road, was picked up as he lay senseless, his pulse beating
feebly, his eyes wide open, and his body starving with cold.
_Facts in “Daily News,” February 14, 1916_
A drunken man rushed from a publichouse and kicked a soldier
unconscious. The military police, chasing the man, were stoned. Four
soldiers were injured, one having his head cut open, and the
military were ordered to clear the place with fixed bayonets.
_Facts in “Daily News,” August 11, 1915_
The medical officer in charge of the Mental Block of a large
military hospital said to the Colonel: “I have the worst job of all,
and it is through Drink, Drink, Drink! Men recover fairly soon from
shell shock, but officers, especially the younger ones, who
habitually take wines and spirits, are subject to relapses every few
days. It is awful!”
_Facts in “National Temperance Quarterly,” May 1917_
Of the thirty war hospitals in Hertfordshire, with 8000 men passing
through them in the first thirty months of the war, there is not one
that has not had trouble with drink.
_Facts known to the Author_
A doctor from a Canadian hospital said a large percentage of their
troops had had to be sent back to Canada rendered permanently insane
through the action of alcohol.
_Facts in “Daily News,” October 31, 1916_
One terrible truth remains to be told of the crime of drink against the
Red Cross. The most blessed thing in all the world today is alcohol, for
it makes chloroform and ether, which soothe the pain of men. We cannot
get enough of either of these consoling drugs, yet we go on wasting
precious food to make more alcohol _to add to the sum of misery and
pain_.