THE SALE OF DRINK TO WOUNDED SOLDIERS. Ire ran Emits.
as ras ”Elreeratos."1 Sts,—On March 20th you discussed the problem of how to deal with the terrible injury being done now to the nation by drink as regards the production of vitally important war material. May I call your attention to another form of the question ? All over the country Red Cross hospitals are being worked by Voluntary Aid Detachments. These hospitals even now are being used a great deal ; later on, when the pressure increases, their existence will be the only means of meeting the growing requirements of the war. What are the Government authorities, civil and military, doing to assist those who are working these new hospitals in dealing with patients who give way to drink P
It has been my good fortune to be able to give a small amount of general help to a Voluntary Aid Detachment staffing a subsidiary military hospital in a West Country village which is supplied with patients from a bane hospital in a great town fourteen miles away. The problem has bees bow to allow reasonable liberty, and at the same time protect the nurses and ladies of the staff from the unpleasant experi- ences of having to deal with drunken men. After the first arrival of patients the problem soon became acute, because the patients, in spite of rules and remonstrances, resorted to the public-houses in the neighbourhood, and were treated to drink in private houses. The result was, of course, that the staff had to undergo the most unpleasant experiences, culminating on one occasion in a fight between two men in one of the wards, and the discovery of bottles of spirits secreted in lockers.
I thought the police might be able to help; but I found that the local Superintendent, however much he sympathized with us, considered the legal obligation of the publican to sell drink to any one the governing factor in the situation. So things went on till one pouring wet night I had to fetch two men who had broken out of the hospital without leave from a public-house a mile away. One of the two, a raw recruit from Glasgow, who had not yet been to the front, was in Boob a miserable condition that I saw my opportunity of making a serious complaint against the publican, not before the Magistrates, as the Superintendent of Police assured me that my unsupported testimony would have no weight against the evidence of an innkeeper. I, however, wrote to the brewery company who owned the house and found them most helpful They instructed the tenants of four of their houses in the neighbourhood not to serve patients of the hospital with drink. Unfortunately, one house of a bad character remains, of which the owner is the licensee, and so no pressure can be brought to bear on him.
It would seem an elementary rule that public-houses near a hospital should be ordered officially not to serve patients, but nothing of the kind appears to be done. Even if this step were taken, it would not be enough. Inhabitants of houses near must be penalized for supplying men with drink, or else our experience of bottles hidden in the bushes of the garden by a woman in a neighbouring cottage will prove a great source of trouble.
The evil of which I complain is a real one. The V.A.D.'a are doing arduous work tinder new conditions, and work which cannot be dispensed with. Are their efforts to be increased very greatly and most unpleasantly by a removable evil P Have not the people who have taken the trouble to train themselves in the past, so that they might be of use when the crisis came. a right to demand that the Government who use them should protect them from a wholly unnecessary evil P
I should be very sorry in writing as I have done to give the impression that the drink habit is universal among soldiers. It is with the greatest pleasure that I record the sympathy and help received from the majority of the patients of the hospital in question in dealing with these difficulties, and their regret that the good name of the Army they love so well should tarnished. It is nothing but a pleasure to associate with a large number of the men. With many of those who do give way to temptation one can sympathize acutely. Men in full vigour suddenly compelled to lead a life without definite occupation, often in pain, are surrounded with easy ways of getting drink. Some public-house keepers act with a view to aiding the efforts of the Red Cross workers, others do not. One innkeeper, when I was asking him not to serve patients, said to me : "I want every pennyworth I can sell." The remedy is simple. Let it be made illegal to give or sell alcohol to a patient of a military hospital.
Late in the day the military medical authorities have issued an order that if a patient in a subsidiary hospital misbehaves he will be removed to the base hospital by an escort. We are grateful for this power in the background ; but we should like the cause of the evil dealt with, and not only the effect. I have
king been of the school of total abstainers who did not believe in prohibition or in the tied-house system. Now I am coming to believe that the prohibition of spirite and the reduc- tion of the strength of wine and beer sold is the only thing to be done. I also see great disadvantages in publie-housee being owned by irreepoucible licensees who have the whole machinery of the law and its administration by the police on their side
for the free sale of intoxicants.—I am, Sir, &c., H. S.
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