An Indictment

Manawatu Times, Volume XL, Issue 13523, 6 October 1916, Page 7

An Indictment

DEINK RETARDS WAR. LIQUOR COSTS HALF A MILLION A DAY. Now the time lias come, now that a hundred thousand of the flower of Britisr manhood lie in their graves, when the nation owes it to their memory and to its'own sense of honour to seek victory, and /to pursue it, to let nothing stand in the way of the peace and liberty for which these men have died. The third year of the war is upon us, and we owe it to our fathers and/ our children —to our soldiers and Allies —to put on the whole

armour of Britain, and use every

ounce of her strength. With these words, Mr Arthur Mee prefaces one of a series' of stirring articles which he is contributing to the London "Daily Chronicle." No man will question these things; it is the faith of every one of us alive. Why, then, have wc not put forth all our strength? It is, as Mr Mee says, a question that we cannot easily answer. '' There are so many interests that must be conserved; there are so many problems that must be solved, and we who have sown liberty so widely in many fields, do not readily adapt ourselves to the cruel needs of war. We began with half-way steps; we came slowly to conscription and slowly to our implacable blockade, and slowly to the conservation of our economic powers. We do not give up personal liberty for the State as quickly as the men of other lands, and so we creep up slowly; but when we go at last, the whole world knows that we go.'' Mr Mee's great point is that while in the first two years the nation has accomplished a great deal, we are still fighting with a broken arm:—

"We have brought in every lighting man and taken over every fighting workshop, and all is well there, too. We have taxed and ;axed and taxed again, and never did men pay so cheerfully. We ended our second year of the war with all these problems tried and solved, yet it has to be said that we start another year of war with an enemy force still dragging at our vitals, entrenched in vital places, checking us, and- hindering us in every vital thing we do. vVe have done all things but one —we have left free and unfettered a trade that fights against us every hour our men light for us."

It is time the Governments of the Empire faced the facts. Mr Asquith has declared that the last ounce of our strength is needed to win the war, and that no sacrifice is too great for our freedom and honour. We invite our readers to grasp the significance of the recent casualty lists; multiplied many, many times over by the lists which are appearing simultaneously in the Mother Country, and then to turn to this picture as sketched by Mr Mee:. — ' ' The street through which I came this morning was blocked with barrels of beer; strong men were moving them into a public house, and 1 thought of the cases of shells I had passed a little while before; strong men were moving them towards the trenches. Wnat a bitter mockery it is; this double stream for ever flowing in and out within our little land! We '■ pour out all the strength we can, most of us, and some pour out their precious blood; but while this stream of strength flows constantly towards France and Flanders, an enervating stream flows constantly through all our streets, through our homes and through our workshops, swallowing up the powers on which our existence depends. A pleasant stream ,it is, and nobody stops it, because most of us like it, '"■ and it has not yet occurred to us how it saps the sources of our strength and hinders us, and weakens us, and breaks the force of every blow we strike agaiiißt the

enemy.'' Those who love smaller things than England may exclaim that this is mere prejudice, and attempt to turn aside, but Mr Mee faces them with some terrible facts: —

"Drink is interfering with the army; it has caused grave delay with munitions, it has.robbed the workshops« of many millions of hours of labour, it hinders good workmen every day by keeping other workmen away. "It is interfering with the Navy; it has caused Admiral. Jellicoe grave anxiety by delaying ships, placing transports at the mercy of submarines, slowing repairs and congesting docks. "It is interfering with shipping; it has used up over 60 million cubic feet of space since the war began, and it delays the building of ships to replace our losses. "It is interfering with the Treasury; we call in vain for our people's savings, but the people pour £500,000 a day into our publichouses. "It interferes with industry; it uses up half a million workers, and during the war has involved the handling by road and rail of a weight of sixty million tons. . "It interferes with vital supplies; it uses up the produce of a million acres of land, and during the war it has used three million tons of

coal." . There arc those in the community who are not ashamed to treat the anti-shouting law as a joke, and who talk glibly and openly about the ease with which they say they are able to evade the restriction which Parliament has sought to impose upon them. Yet the law was passed because it was deemed that the prohibition of the evil and foolish system of "shouting" was essential to the best interests of the Empire. There is no harm in it, say these illicit drinkers vet, according to Mr Mee, one day last March a few drunken firemen delayed a thousand troops a day and anight, and for want of 75 ram a great firm was issuing only halt its possible supply of machine guns, at a time when men were being mown down in thousands for want of them. It is our duty, the duty of every loyal citizen, to stand for the enforcement of the law. To quote Mr Mee agai "The Commander-in-Chief of the | a rmy knows how to deal -Witt men 1 who fail him on the held; it Is on our honour at home to deal with those who fail us behind the Bri tish lines. Without passion and without prejudice, it must be stated That drink has robbed ftai. countay in her hour of trial of a continuous

power equal to hundreds of thousands of men. What would they not have been worth at Loos, in Mesopotamia, or on Gallipoli? What would Lord Kitchener not have given for them on that day last August when he found on his desk in "Whitehall a desperate appeal from Sir lan Hamilton for a hundred thousand men? 'lf • this help could be sent at once/ it said, 'we could still clear a passage for our Fleet to Constantinople.' But Lord Kitchener had npt a hundred thousand men to send, though prohibition would have given them to him easily. It is the price wo pay, the price our Allies pay, for this private trad>- in' drink, and as for our men, the / pay for it with their lives. It ij over a year since the Cabinet was officially warned that drink was holding back torpedo craft. We dare not risk a ban* holiday, but drink takes heavier toll of us each week than any holiday without drink would ever do. We have added an hour of sunlight to our working day, and yet let drink steal a day from our working week. So this callous farce goes on. Our men push on and on, and ever on, and wc —we give them such help as a private trade will let us. Wc come up slowly with a milestone round our neck, and we shout in a loud voice from the Mansion House that we believe in this war to the last ounco of our strength. If faith is measured by works, that is not trus. We believe first in the liberty (<t Drink, and second in the liberty of England."