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.
Will some Member of Parliament please ask
=if, in view of Lord D’Abernon’s statement that Prohibition has failed in Canada, the Government will issue the figures showing the decrease of crime and the increase of wealth?=
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It is a bitter irony that while the men of the Empire have come to France to fight the enemy of mankind, this foe within our gates has struck a blow at the British Empire that generations will not heal. How many Empire men this private trade has slain we do not know, but we know beyond all challenge that it has weakened the bonds that bind our Dominions to the Motherland. This trade that throttles us at home can pull the Empire down, and it has started well. It has struck its blow at Canada.
Let us look at the plain facts which in other days than these would have caused a storm of anger that Parliament could not have ignored. Canada has followed the King; arming herself with her full powers, flinging herself upon her enemies with her utmost strength, she has swept drink out of Canada almost from sea to sea. But even before she did this Canada saw that alcohol must go from her camps if her men were to be fit to fight for England, and long before the Prohibition wave swept across the country, the Canadian Government removed all alcohol from the training camps. It was the deliberate choice of a Government and its people, and from that day to this there has been no reason for regret.