Again and again we have seen the peculiar temptations of drink among
Canadians. Officers, chief-constables, chaplains, newspapers, the men
themselves, have all borne witness that to these men from Prohibition
Canada the sudden temptations of our drink trade come with terrible
power, and often they fall not knowing. The finest manhood of the Empire
our tap-rooms and canteens destroy, not in isolated cases, but in a host
we dare not number.
Of the soldiers who first came over from Canada, says a great Canadian
paper, many were emigrants from England, not yet securely planted in
Canada, and for their sakes especially drink should have been withheld
from them. Of the larger number of Canadian troops that followed them,
many were youths who had never known drink, and they were taken from
home at the most social and reckless age, to face drink with all the
temptations induced by the nervous strain, the hardships and social
abandon of the camp and the trench, and the free pocket-money when on
leave.
In an officers’ mess of two double companies of Canadians only one
officer drank on his arrival in a canteen camp in England; within
three months there was not an abstainer in the mess.
_Facts told at Society for Study of Inebriety, Jan. 10, 1916_
These men come mostly from districts in Canada where intoxicants are
prohibited by law, and many of them, being young lads, who perhaps
have never tasted liquor before their arrival, fall easy victims.
_Chief Constable of Godalming_
Overseas soldiers come to our hospitals astonishingly cheerful and
fit in a general sense, and wonderfully receptive to treatment. Only
three per thousand die in our great hospitals. This is largely due
to the hardy life of the men and the fact that they are removed from
the danger of taking too much alcohol. The home troops have a much
higher mortality, partly because their use of alcohol diminishes
their chances. Re-admissions are largely due to drink on furlough.
_Major Maclean, M.D., of the Third Western General Hospital_
A Canadian soldier, who had been wounded at the Front, was taken to
a house by women and left alone drunk. An officer gave him an
excellent character, and said he was on his way back to Canada.
These men experience temptations here (he said) that they would not
find in Canada, and there was too much of this going on.
_Hastings Police Records, February 19, 1917_
I heard a sad account of the havoc of the wet canteen and a private
in a Canadian A.M.C. told us of a lad of 17 who is made so drunk
that there is rarely a night when he has not to be helped up to bed.
One of the soldiers here told me of his son in Canada being anxious
to join up, but after seeing the condition of things over here he
was doing all he could to discourage his son.
_Letter to the Author_
The Canadians in most cases are entirely lost when they arrive in
this country, and are much more liable to the temptation which is
thrown in their way, but when you give a figure such as this—that in
one camp during last year, and two months of the previous year,
there were 7,000 cases—it seems to me that it is about time we
realised the magnitude of the evil. I do not know what has happened
to them, except that I imagine a large number have gone back to
Canada, and have not been able to play the part they had hoped to
play.
_Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917_