All the world is learning now that the drink trade is the great
confederate of venereal disease. It leads a man into temptation,
destroys his power of resistance, and retards his chances of recovery.
We can never know the truth about the extent of this disease, about the
way in which the liquor trade, by breaking down tens of thousands of our
men, has stabbed the Army in the back. But the number of soldiers
incapacitated by this disease through drink is enormously greater than
the number incapacitated by the most subtle or dramatic stroke devised
by the German staff.
The lost man-power of the Army through this disease must be equal to the
whole of the original British Expeditionary Force. The Government has
given us figures for the Army at home last year, and they are 43 per
1,000—or over 100,000 cases for an army of 2,500,000 men. There were
7,000 cases in one Canadian camp alone.
Here are the black facts revealed in a debate in Parliament on April 23,
1917, when two distinguished Army officers, speaking with great
restraint, sought to open the eyes of the nation to this plague fostered
in our camps by drink:
“During the war we have had admitted into the hospitals of England
over 70,000 cases of gonorrhœa, over 20,000 cases of syphilis, and
over 6000 cases of another disease somewhat similar. I am quite
openly prepared to state that of these 20,000 cases of syphilis you
do not get much work out of them under two and a half years. I know
from what I have seen of the modern conditions of this War that you
may absolutely wipe them out, except for a few handfuls.
“When you come to the great mass of casualties under this head ...
the figures mean that you have =a Division constantly out of
action=. If you have anything like 70,000 men enfeebled, you find
that you suffer to that extent also. It is not only that you lose
the men, and not only the men who are partially cured are suffering
for many months to come, but their chances of recovery from wounds
are not nearly so good.
“I know of a hospital for venereal cases which it was found
necessary to expand from its normal accommodation for 500 or 600 up
to 2,000 cases, and they are continually full. It is a British
hospital in France. A figure I should like to submit to challenge is
that during the course of the war between 40,000 and 50,000 cases of
syphilis have passed through our hospitals in France. When you come
to gonorrhœa, the figure given me which covers that is between
150,000 and 200,000 cases.”
_Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917_
“Every Canadian soldier who comes to this country arrives here not
only a first-class specimen of a fine soldier, but as clean-limbed
and as clean a man as the Creator Himself could create. The fact
that in one only of the three Canadian camps in this country 7,000
of these clean Canadian boys went through the hospital for venereal
disease in fourteen months is not only a great discredit to any
Government in this country but has an effect in Canada which I can
assure the House does not make for a better feeling with the Home
Country, and does not make for what we all desire—Imperial Unity.”
_Colonel Sir Hamar Greenwood in Parliament, April 23, 1917_
Those are unchallenged statements made in the House of Commons itself;
they stand as a terrible indictment of this disease, and it is not to be
denied that this evil could never have reached its present frightful
proportions if Parliament had followed the King. Let us look at a few
examples of the ravages of this vice allied so closely to the
public-house.
It is not possible to tell the whole truth about drink; the language
in which it must be written would be offensive in a civilised
country. It must be said, simply, that soldiers in England have been
court-martialled for having been influenced by drink to commit
unspeakable offences against animals.
_Facts in Records of Court-Martials_
A special constable in a harlot-haunted district in London describes
how these harpies carry off lonely soldiers to their rooms, make
them drunk, and finally innoculate them, as likely as not, with
disease. Is it not possible to hold in check these women who prey
upon and poison our soldiers? asks Sir Conan Doyle.
_Letter in the “Times”_
One of the hot-beds of venereal disease to which drink leads our
soldiers, was kept by an Austrian woman in Lambeth, who was
receiving 15_s._ a week from the Austrian Government in April 1916,
and used to lure our soldiers when weakened by drink. All the men
seen to enter this house were either soldiers or sailors.
_Police Records of Lambeth_
A soldier from the Front with £18 was taken by a married woman to
her home, where he was found after a drunken bout with eight women,
all drunk. The woman’s children were terribly neglected.
_Police Records of St. Helens, November 30, 1915_
If you describe the Waterloo Road and the back streets as an open
sewer you will be somewhere near the truth. Not a day goes by
without bringing some soldier who has been waylaid.
_Facts in the “Times,” February 22, 1917_
A soldier came from the Front to go home to Scotland. He got drunk
near Waterloo, losing all his money and his railway pass. He spent
his leave living on charity, and returned to the Front without
having been near either his home or his friends.
_Facts in “Daily News,” February 14, 1916_
Here is the official proof of the relation of the drink trade to this
traffic in disease. It is from the Report of the Royal Commission:
Abundant evidence was given as to the intimate relation between
alcohol and venereal diseases.
Alcohol renders a man liable to yield to temptations which he might
otherwise resist, and aggravates the disease by diminishing the
resistance of the individual.
Alcoholism makes latent syphilis and gonorrhœa active.
Our evidence tends to show that the communication in disease is
frequently due to indulgence in intoxicants, and there is no doubt
that the growth of temperance among the population would help to
bring about an amelioration of the very serious conditions which our
enquiry has revealed.
We desire, therefore, to place on record our opinion that action
should be taken without delay.