DRINK AND THE GIRL MUNITION WORKERS. (To TES EDITOR OF
THR " SPECTATOR.") received the other day a letter from a University woman engaged in "Welfare Work" among women and girls who are employed in munition-making at certain large armament works controlled by the Government. She inhabits a dormitory where, for the last few days, nearly,a hundreekgirls have had their night quarters. She says " that it sometimes happens that the munition workers lurch in at 2 a.m. dead drunk," and she proceeds to describe the general condition of things, among both men and women, in the following words:— " The drink is awful. . . . Before they [the works] shut down for the holidays, the night-workers revelled and drank all night, till the overseers could do nothing with them. As a result of drunkenness there was an accident—an explosion—two men killed and six injured. Of course nothing of this gets into the papers. Miss — was up till 4 a.m. letting, in girls who were dead drunk, some of them babes of 17."
The blame for this state of things is not to be laid, first, on the workers—certainly not on the tired, and often very young and inexperienced, girls who are iorking twelve hours a day at employments which are frequently dangerOus to life and health. The heaviest blatne must lie, first, on the- traffickers in drink, and secondly"; on the authorities who continue to allow England- to fight the greatest of all her wars " with a broken. arm." Ainfortn- -rately, truth is gagged in these matters and the public don't
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