DEFEAT OR VICTORY ?°
fx Defeat or Victory Mr. Mee and Dr. Holden put forward boldly and vigorously the case for Prohibition till the Peace. The grave indictment against the Drink Trade in war time is set forth in the words of the Manifesto drawn up by the Strength of Britain Movement :— " IT HINDERS THE ARMY ; it is the cause of grave delay with muni- tions; it keeps thousands of men from war work every day, and makes good sober workmen second-rate. Ir naarrans THE Navy. ; it delays transports, places them at the mercy of submarines, slows repairs, and congests docks. IT THREATENS OUR MERCANTILE MARINE; it has absorbed during the war over two hundred million cubic) feet of space, and it retards the building of ships to replace our losses. IT DESTROYS ova FOOD SUPPLIES; during the war it has consumed over 3,500,000 tons of food, with sugar enough to last the nation 100 days. It uses up more sugar than the Army. IT WASTES OUR FINANCIAL STRENGTH; since the war began our people have spent on alcohol over £400,000,000. IT DIVERTS THE NATION'S STRENGTH; it uses 500,000 workers, 1,000,000 acres of land, and 1,500,000 tons of coal a year ; and during the war it has involved the lifting and handling on road and rail of a weight equal to 50,000,000 tons. IT SHATTERS OUR MORAL STRENGTH ; its temptations to women involve grave danger to children and anxiety to thousands of soldiers."
Each point is investigated in detail ; but, with the problem of food shortage daily becoming more urgent, we may deal particularly with this subject. We quote from the chapter on " The Destruction of Food " :- " The plain fact about drink and food is that since the war began we could have had, at the very least, three and a half million more tons of food in this country if there had been no drink trade. Drink has stolen one pound of food from every home in this country for every day of the war. That is what wo have paid in food to keep the drink trade going. . . . The destruction of food at any time is an evil thing ; the destruc- tion of food on an island which grows only one loaf in every six it eats is beyond all pardon in time of peace ; but the wholesale destruction of food on such an island in war time is a crime of the greatest magnitude. We own one-quarter of the earth, and we grow enough bread in the heart of the Empire to last our people only two months ; we give up as much land in this country to beer and whisky as we give to Iuheat ; we give less and less to wheat and more and more to drink. 'Ike wheat acres have gone down, but the drink acres have been growing all the time, so that to-day this trade robs us of two months security against famine every year. For every acre we give to growing wheat for food, drink takes an acre for destroying food ; the land wasted on drink in this country would make a field a mile wide from England to America. So drink destroys our food supplies and hinders the proper cultivation of the land, but it does infinitely more than that ; it prevents the pro- duction of food at home and wastes the food that comes from abroad. It does all that in normal times, but in times like these drink stops the bringing-in of food ; with famine threatening, it wastes the food it gets, it keeps the bread from people's mouths, and it uses up or holds back ships that would bring in supplies. In the crisis of our food sup- plies this trade was found destroying wheat itself, so that an Order of the Board of Trade was necessary to protect our very staff of life against these men who deal in death."
There is nothing, the book goes on, in the argument of beer as food. " We have to drink so much that the good would be more than weighed down in the scale by the harm of the alcohol. . . . The talk about beer as food means simply this, that we meat destroy tons of food to get pounds." Speaking of tho alleged value of the trade to cattle, it remarks that " a trade is in desperate straits when it defends itself against a charge of starving men and women and children by saying that it feeds the pigs. There is no real relation between this trade and cattle foods ; we can do without it all the time, as the greatest dairying coun- tries in the world do, as Canada does, as Russia does." The writers deal very trenchantly with what we have called the " roast pig " argument used by the Board of Agriculture, which they describe as "obvious and utter rubbish. . . . It is as ff we should take the food from a table and claim the gratitude of the hungry children for leaving them the swill-tub " :—
" The trade does not make milk ; it destroys it. The brewer takes good barley, destroys the best of it, and leaves the worst for cattle and pigs. He takes 100 lb. of barley and leaves 30 lb. of cattle food, chiefly husk and woody fibre ; the rest goes into drink, and what has happened is not that we have gained 30 lb. of poor cattle food, but that we have lost 70 lb. of good cattle food and spoilt 30 lb. more. Out of 100 lb. of good food we have 30 lb. of bad."
" But in any case," the writers ask very pertinently, "if this Trade is necessary for milk, what happens in that half of the world now living under Prohibition ? "
With regard to transport, we read that " Australia bought up all her wheat and offered it to us, but we had no ships to bring it ; India had a great wheat surplus, but there were no ships to bring it " ; for the Trade in drink " has swallowed up a fleet of great ships working all the time... . The Transport Workers' Federation will not be suspected of fanatical sympathies with temperance, but it is nearly two years since it begged the Government to take decisive action about drink in the interests of national well-being." A summary of the evidence gives the following "stern facts of the situation " :— " Prohibition of the Drink Trade during the war would have saved in drink expenditure and its results, £1,000,000,000 ; added a hundred days to our war work ; saved over 200,000,000 cubic feet of shipping ; set free for war work 100,000 trains of 200 tons ; saved the waste of 1,000,000 acres of land ; released man-power enough to lift 60,000,000 tons ; enormously relieved the strain on the Red Cross ; released
• Defeat or Victory, By Arthur Mee and J. Stuart Holden. London : Morgan and Scott. tcd. net,1
thousands of doctors and nurses ; saved food to iced the nation three months ; or saved enough food to feed the Army and Navy all the time."
But we have not space here to go more into detail. We must, however, quote the eloquent answer to the argument that not for any reason will the country tolerate Prohibition :— " We have prohibition of white bread, prohibition of light, prohibition of petrol for pleasure, prohibition of potatoes for pigs, prohibition of travel, prohibition of trading, of building, and postal facilities, prohibition of cakes in theatres and chocolate tied with ribbons, prohibition of any- thing or everything except this thing that stands eternally in the way of Britain and of victory. We are to have beefless days and muttonleas days and chiekenless days—anything but drinkless days. We are not to spend more than 5s. lid. on a dinner, but the drink can always be extra ; you have it for breakfast and lunch and supper, tea, and you can spend as much money on it as you please. Are we children, or are we fools, that Governments should talk to us like this ? . . .
IF WE HAVE ALL THIS PROHIBITION OF THINGS THAT STRENGTHEN US, WHY, IN THE NAME OF HEAVEN AND EARTH AND VICTORY, CAN WE NOD HAVE PROHIBITION OF THINGS THAT WEAKEN US "
Included in the book is a useful little map showing that half of the world where Prohibition already operates, from which we see the Daughter Nations shaming the Motherland. All Canada, except Quebec, is or soon will be under Prohibition; and all Australasia is under Local Option, and all her military camps are under Prohibition.
We may remind our readers that the authors of this book are no teetotal cranks, and that the Strength of Britain Movement, which they represent, is in no way connected with or run by any temperance organization. We may add that no profit is made from the sale of the book. For every copy sold another will be printed. The only aim of the authors is to put their facts before as wide a public as possible.
Of the first edition, published under the title Defeat r one hundred thousand copies were sold in twenty days. In regard to the new edition, with the auspicious addition of "or Victory" to the title, the author. make the following comment and appeal :—
" No longer do we think simply of Defeat. We look ahead, we see the stirring of Authority, we feel the throb of a mighty passion rising in the State, and we think of the Victory that is coming—here at home and there abroad. . . . The Strength of Britain Movement has made this book its own, as part of the Win-the-War Campaign for Prohibition. Will you, who helped to send out the first Hundred Thousand, help to send out One Hundred Thousand more ? "
We ask our readers to read this book, to study the well-founded and truthful facts it contains, and then to draw their conclusions. If those conclusions are to the effect that we could make our position at home absolutely secure by Prohibition during the War but not without, not to insist on Prohibition is treason. Those who realize the need of Prohibition during the War and do not demand it because it is unpopular are guilty of moral cowardice, and deserve the fate of the coward. We feel far more sympathy with the careless, ignorant riveter on the Clyde who gulps down his syrupy beer "laced" with raw whisky, and swears he will do so till the Government tell him ho must not, than we do with the thin-lipped prudent advocate of moderation who thinks it would be " courting revo:ution " to deprive the worker of his liquor.
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