THE GREAT REFUSAL
For the historian of the future who may essay the task of elucidating
the moral progress or decay of the British Empire, one date will stand
forth as a landmark--April 20, 1915. For it was on that day that the
House of Commons refused to follow 'the King's lead.' On the 6th April
it was announced that 'By the King's command no wines, spirits, or beer
will be consumed in any of His Majesty's houses after to-day.' No
announcement ever cheered the heart of a nation more than that. It was
as if an electric current had suddenly passed through an inert mass,
galvanising it into life. When Lord Kitchener and other leaders
loyally followed the King's example, the men who fought {126} a weary
battle for the emancipation of the nation from the yoke of alcohol, and
whose hearts were oft sickened by long-delayed hopes, felt that the day
of moral victory had dawned at last. The nation, delivered from the
enemy within its gates, would bring its full power to bear upon the
enemy that threatened its destruction from without. In house and mess
and restaurant alcohol was banished. But all these fair hopes were
rudely shattered when the House of Commons at the end of fourteen days
refused to banish alcohol from the precincts of Westminster. The dawn
of hope ended once more in gloom.
I
It is only as yet possible to surmise as to the forces which led to the
great refusal. The nation, with the almost unanimous voice of its
wisest and best citizens, had called for the deliverance of the people
from alcohol by its total prohibition. Employers of labour, who {127}
had no sympathy originally for the prohibition movement, were converted
to it by the spectacle of the nation's marshalling of its forces being
steadily hampered by drunkenness. The leaders of all the Churches
pressed for it; the Press began to plead for it; Mr. Lloyd-George
openly declared that 'drink is doing us more damage than all the German
submarines put together'; and there is no doubt but that the King and
Lord Kitchener expected that their example would give an impetus which
would carry prohibition to victory. But the House of Commons shattered
that hope. The forces of reaction immediately began to raise their
head, and to the tables of the home and the mess alcohol slowly
returned to resume its fell sway. The nation that had braced itself
for social surgery was presented with soothing medicine in the form of
the Central Control Board.
Though it is impossible to assign causes to these effects with
certitude, yet it is safe to say that this failure was the {128} fruit
of the party system. We have seen how the play of political parties
one against the other devastated the countryside. The party
politicians think primarily of votes, and anything that would cost them
votes is banned. They knew in what peril the nation stood before the
war, but they did not summon the nation to prepare for war and endure
hardness. That would have been unpopular--and would have cost votes.
They kept the nation in ignorance of its peril, and cowered before the
people whom they kept in the dark, terrified to use firmness lest the
firm hand on the reins should mean their unseating. They went further:
when Lord Roberts warned the State in prophetic terms, they held him up
to derision. The greatest calamity that ever befell the human race we
owe to the party politicians.
Behind the party politician there is the caucus, and behind the caucus
the party funds. The power of money is proverbial, and behind the
party politician {129} is the exchequer supplied by his supporters.
That exchequer is replenished by the sale of honours. When Oleander, a
Phrygian and erstwhile slave, was the minister of the Emperor Commodus,
Rome saw the woeful spectacle of the rank of Consul, of Patrician and
of Senator exposed to public sale. We hold the decencies of life in
too high regard to do that. Secretly and decorously our senatorships
and the ancient orders of our knighthood are assigned. At one end of
the social scale national degeneracy makes the trader in alcohol a
plutocrat; at the other end the same national degeneracy makes him a
legislator and a pseudo-aristocrat. The alcoholic trade was too wise
to be on terms of friendship with one party alone; it sought
relationship with all. Nobody can object to the man who pays the piper
calling the tune. In Ireland the publican is even a greater power in
politics than he is in England. And the power behind the politicians
brought all its forces into play. When, in 1887, Lord Iddesleigh,
{130} superseded at last, fell dead in Lord Salisbury's waiting-room,
the latter, writing to Lord Randolph Churchill, exclaimed, 'As I looked
upon the dead man before me I felt that politics was a cursed
profession.' And Lord Salisbury knew.
The party politician, even in the maelstrom of a world's devastation,
pursued his familiar course. Before the war he failed to warn the
nation and to prepare. In the midst of the war he still strove to keep
the nation in the dark. After months of calamities the nation was told
that all was going well, and the people were obsessed with the idea
that final victory was at hand. If the people only knew their peril
they would have made any sacrifice for their country and their homes.
But they were not told. And the party politician shrank from demanding
or enforcing a sacrifice which the nation did not realise to be
necessary because of its ignorance. The policy of pusillanimity
pursued before the war was still regnant. The politicians who shrank
{131} from demanding sacrifice in peace, shrank from demanding it in
war. They did not know the heart of the nation. There was no
sacrifice the nation would have shrunk from, if the demand were made.
The nation knew that it needed discipline, and it asked for discipline,
but asked in vain. And to-day the same pusillanimous policy sacrifices
prohibition to the fear that the munition-workers might give trouble.
They knew not, and they know not, the heart of this nation. But the
fact remains that to-day the nation is spending 180 millions or so a
year on alcohol, while the Government calls on the people to exercise
the greatest economy that the war may be waged to the end. It is a sad
and strange spectacle.
II
It was fortunate for the cause of the world's freedom that there was
found in Europe a great nation which was not under the sway of party
politicians. {132} The German Emperor is reported to have said that
the next great European war would be won by the most sober nation.
When the war began and the Tsar issued his great rescript abolishing
vodka the Emperor is said to have exclaimed, 'But who could have
foreseen this wonderful coup!' Some day it will doubtless be the
accepted fact that the deliverance of the Russian nation from the
degenerating power of alcohol won the war. For through that great act
of a statesman's prevision the Russian Empire experienced a
resurrection from the dead.
The statesmen of Russia knew the evil effects of alcohol. It was to
vodka that they mainly owed the defeat and humiliation of the Japanese
war. The manhood of Russia could not be rapidly mobilised owing to the
grip of alcohol on the race; and the operations were ever hampered by
its fell power. When the Russian Empire was called upon to fight for
its life, the Emperor resolved that this time it would fight
unfettered. {133} The sale of vodka was temporarily suspended, and the
armies were mobilised with rapidity and precision. Misery and poverty
were banished from the villages. The doss-houses and jails were
emptied. A great nation resolved to fight with all its vigour. Though
vodka constituted a State monopoly, and though Russia drew from it an
enormous revenue, yet that revenue was unhesitatingly sacrificed. 'We
cannot,' said the Tsar before the war, in a proclamation to his people,
'make our fiscal policy dependent upon the destruction of the spiritual
and economic powers of many of my subjects.' On August 22, 1914, the
Tsar issued an order that all vodka and other spirit shops should be
closed till the end of the war. When the beneficial results of this
policy were fully realised the Tsar made a final decision. 'I have
decided,' he announced, 'to abolish for ever the Government sale of
vodka in Russia.' Russia was thus finally delivered from the greatest
of its enemies--the enemy {134} that destroyed its homes. And Russia
has accepted its deliverance with a joyful heart. At first M. Bark,
the Finance Minister, was 'staggered when prohibition was suggested.'
After six months' experience of its results he declared: 'If I proposed
to reopen the vodka shops there would be a revolution.' Thus was
effected the greatest social reform in the history of the world.
'Since China proscribed opium,' was the verdict of a _Times_ editorial,
'the world has seen nothing like it. We have been well reminded that
in sternly prohibiting the sale of spirituous liquors, Russia has
already vanquished a greater foe than Germany.'
And so it proved. Through vanquishing alcohol Russia found a power
which is now vanquishing Germany. On eyes cleared from the fumes of
vodka there rose the vision of God. The Russian went forth tying his
knapsack on his back as one who took up the Cross. They endured
defeats which might have {135} overwhelmed them, but they were
unconquerable. Through hardships and privations undreamed of the
Russian soldier retained his health and fighting power. Though he
often confronted the enemy with no weapon but his bare breast, he never
despaired. Wounds which in other campaigns would have been inevitably
fatal, healed, and life conquered death. Though oft deprived of
sufficient food, he endured fatiguing marches, and in the midst of the
nervous strain of defeat and retreat he remained cheerful, determined,
and confident of victory. At last, with 'firm faith in the clemency of
God,' the Russian hosts turned at bay and stood fast. When the clouds
were darkest, it was as if the sun broke forth when the news was
flashed through the world that the Russians had stormed Erzerum.
To-day Armenia is freed, and the great surge of the Russian hosts is
rolling west. For the Russians knew that a holy war could not be waged
by a drunken nation; {136} and in the power of self-sacrifice they have
snatched victory from what seemed irretrievable defeat. While Britain
continued to sacrifice its strength and its wealth at the shrine of
alcohol, while the wives and the children of the men who were fighting
and dying were left to the comforting of publicans, while the
munition-workers were hindered and marred by the lure of strong drink,
while the best of the manhood of the British race called in vain for
deliverance from the yoke of the national bondage, Russia in the might
of a great renunciation was gathering its forces and advancing to
victory. Autocracy has delivered Russia from the bondage of centuries;
democracy has surrendered its power to the party politician, and the
party politician has kept Britain still enslaved.
III
It would be difficult to overestimate the evil consequences for the
future of {137} the race which will inevitably ensue from the great
refusal. Let me endeavour to make clear one of these evil
consequences. Had the House of Commons on April 20th of last year
resolved to follow the King's lead, instead of spurning it; had it made
that lead effective, what would have been the result? One effect would
have been that to-day we would have had an army delivered from the bane
of alcohol. The King's officers and the men who wear his uniform would
have followed the King's example.
It is the commonplace of much of the speaking from religious platforms
that we are to have a new era inaugurated when the men come back from
the war. The religious life of the nation is going to be quickened;
its moral forces are to be vastly strengthened; there is to be a new
earth when the war is over--if not a new heaven. These hopes are,
however, doomed to disappointment. It is not the ranks of those who
are striving for temperance that will receive {138} reinforcement when
the great army comes home.
Let any one who thinks that we are on the verge of a great social or
religious revival consider the facts. (The difficulty is that we fail
to face facts and delude ourselves with vain imaginings.) The great
fact to which we blind ourselves is that the manhood of the nation, for
the first time in its history, has been brought into the atmosphere of
alcohol, and acclimatised to that atmosphere to the number of between
four and five millions. In that remote period before August 1914, the
British army was a volunteer force mainly recruited from 'the
adventurous and the derelict.' The recruiting area was largely the
congested wards of our great cities. The men who enlisted did so, in
the great majority, after they had already acquired a taste for the
exhilaration of alcohol. It was in the circumstances expedient that in
the canteen provision should be made, under military supervision, for
their being supplied {139} with a purer alcohol than the public-houses
provided. The results were beneficial rather than otherwise.
The strange thing, however, is that the canteen system which was
necessary for the small voluntary army should have also been imposed by
the Army Authorities upon the full manhood of the nation when they
sprang to arms in defence of King and country. Though no trainer would
ever allow the use of alcohol by those preparing for any athletic
sport, though the man who would excel at football or racing or boxing
or shooting, as a first step eschewed all alcohol, the Government of
this country provided alcohol as an integral part of every camp where
the heroic of the race set themselves to endure hardness. 'The greater
endurance of the non-alcoholic soldier or worker is now not a matter on
which there can be or is any difference of opinion.'[1] For the youth
of the nation, {140} wearied with the hardness of unwonted exercise,
away from the influence of mothers and loved ones, warned by the
Secretary of State for War against alcohol, the Government provided the
narcotic of alcohol. Millions came within the sphere of its baneful
influence who never would have been so exposed in days of peace. And
not only so, but though it has been scientifically established that
alcohol lowers the vitality, a paternal Government, in the mud and
misery of the trenches in Flanders, provided for each soldier the
sustenance of rum, though from such a stimulus no benefit could accrue.
'Small doses of alcohol ... cause ... a distinct flushing of the skin
due to dilation of the cutaneous capillaries, the skin becoming first
warmer and the blood in the internal organs cooler than before the
alcohol was taken. After a time the skin temperature falls, but there
is no corresponding increase of temperature of the blood in the
internal organs. This means that the body has {141} lost heat by the
skin. The evaporating moisture of wet putties and stockings carries
away a further amount of heat, whilst the contracting wet materials
exerting pressure on the lower limbs, after a time tend to compress
vessels in the skin, and especially to interfere with the return of
venous blood and lymph to the larger veins and lymph channels. The
lowered temperature and the impaired nutrition due to this obstructed
circulation together are accountable for the "trench foot." ... A man
is not at his best, whether working or fighting against enemies or
diseases, if he is taking alcohol. Lord Roberts knew this, and His
Majesty the King, Admiral Jellicoe, and Lord Kitchener appreciate it.
How soon will the nation realise it?'[2]
The Government supplied the soldiers in the camp and in the trench with
the means of decreasing their fighting efficiency. To the 'tot of rum'
can be {142} traced a proportion of the cases of unstable nervous
equilibrium which the war has produced. Men who were total abstainers,
pledged Rechabites, and others were swept by a paternal Government into
the ranks of those who derive from alcohol a false exhilaration. 'The
national conscience,' writes Lieut.-Colonel Woodhead, 'has not yet been
thoroughly aroused to the importance of the issues at stake--that in
peace or in war intemperance is the link in the chain of our national
life which gives greatest evidence of weakness and most cause for
anxiety.' Against stupidity the gods themselves fight in vain. Though
every laboratory worker and every physiological chemist tells us, with
the cold precision of science, that alcohol is not a stimulant but a
depresser, that the elation it produces is simply that of a narcotic,
that it diminishes the energy and dulls the enthusiasm of man, that it
leaves the mind and body more exhausted than before--yet the stupidity
entrenched in high places cannot learn {143} the lesson. It trains the
armies on alcohol; it seeks to sustain the embattled hosts with alcohol.
IV
The great refusal of April 20, 1915, meant that this national
organisation for the training of the manhood of the race in the use of
alcohol went on unhindered. Of all the products of the great war this
is the most amazing. Let any one consider the situation and judge. In
every camp and barracks the visitor will find the State-established
monopoly of the canteen. The canteen is set up by the State, and the
taxpayer provides the building, rent and rate and tax free, for the
contractor, who runs the canteen. Abroad, the canteens are almost
exclusively in the hands of one co-operative society, whose board of
management is mainly composed of officers in the Service and some of
them recently heads of regimental institutes. 'Clearly there is a
great deal of "military" money invested in it. {144} Surely it is not
a good thing that a society of this kind should have the privilege of
making a good deal of money out of supplies to the private soldier.'[3]
Whatever be the system of administering the canteen, whether by the
regimental officers or by contractors, the fact remains that behind the
canteen are the resources of the nation. And the contractors of the
canteen supply in some cases amusements. 'I know of a camp where the
contractor supplied the singers, and not very desirable ones
either.'[4] Recreation is thus used to encourage the consumption of
alcohol by the army.
While the taxpayer is thus behind and supporting the canteen, the
counteracting forces are left to the support of the charitable. The
Y.M.C.A. or Church huts are there not by right but by favour, and
whatever attractions they provide are provided by means of voluntary
contributions. The State provides the means {145} of degeneration; it
is left to the voluntary effort of private citizens to provide the
means of healthful recreation. It is truly a strange world.
Do the parents of the youth of this country realise the situation?
Henceforth every boy when he reaches the age of eighteen is drafted
into a camp. And there the State makes provision for acclimatising him
to the atmosphere of alcohol. To frequent the canteen is manly, and
few will be able to resist. It means that by the million the future
citizens of this country will acquire a liking for alcohol. They find
there the door of escape from weariness and monotony, a false joy of
life and a meretricious colour lighting up drab and grey days.
Hitherto the youths of this country were protected by the slow
evolution of beneficial restrictions. In Scotland the public-houses
were shut on Sundays. The young men were protected on at least one day
in seven. But when at the age of eighteen they put on the King's
uniform that protection ceases. {146} The public-house is shut, but
the canteen is open on Sunday. Not even on one day in seven is there
protection from temptation for the youths of this country now
conscripted. The fathers and mothers who give their sons to their
country do not realise the provision a grateful country is making for
darkening their souls by the fumes of alcohol. If they realised it,
there would arise a demand before which even those who refused to
follow their King would bow. Without that national demand there will
be no escape from the consequences of the great refusal. Those who
delude themselves with the hope that out of the great war will come a
moral and religious revival will have a rude awakening. Out of the
social conditions now upheld by a beneficent Government there cannot
emerge any ethical revival. The ranks of those who have learned the
narcotising benefit of alcohol and who will naturally turn to the same
comfort, will be greatly multiplied.
{147}
V
Let me conclude with a personal experience. On a car in one of our
great cities in this last summer, a man sitting beside me began a
conversation. Though he was a stranger to me, he began to speak out of
a heart sore distressed. His son had been home on leave. 'Every night
he was at home he was under the influence of drink. Before he enlisted
he did not know the taste of alcohol.... When he went away back, he
was drunk leaving the station.... A few days later word came that he
was killed.... The last we saw of him was his going away drunk....
His mother is in sore distress.... She is old-fashioned in her faith
and she cannot get out of her mind the words that drunkards cannot
enter the kingdom of God. What do you say?' Thus he spoke in
disjointed sentences, palpitating with emotion. All I could say was
that hell was not for such as his son, in my {148} opinion; but that
hell was essential for the due disciplining of those who maintained the
conditions which made his son a drunkard. But how many are there
to-day in this country like that poor father and mother? They gave
their all: this is their reward.
[1] Lieut.-Colonel Woodhead, M.D., LL.D, _The Drink Problem_, p. 79.
[2] Lieut.-Colonel Woodhead, M.D., LL.D., _The Drink Problem_, p. 81.
[3] A correspondent in _The Times_, April 22, 1916.
[4] _Ibid._
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