ying for lack of fuel, the
children unkempt and ill-nourished. In many districts the allowances
made by the State to the dependants of its fighting men were but a
further State-endowment of the publican. It was for this that our
soldiers bared their breasts to the foe and looked death in the face.
This was the reward of their sacrifice, the guerdon of their wounds.
In their absence the State provided for their wives the solace and stay
of alcohol; but the State heeded not the fact that by so doing it
ruined the home and destroyed the children. If there be condemnation,
let the State be condemned; and from that condemnation for us, as its
citizens, there can be no escape.

II

When we consider the results of the trade in alcohol, the wonder grows
how it is that this State-regulated monopoly {107} for the
manufacturing of paupers, lunatics, and criminals has been suffered to
continue so long. To it most of the evils which afflict the
body-politic can be traced. It nullifies all efforts at social
improvement. Philanthropic movements have poured out money like water
to improve the condition of the people, but faster than slums can be
cleared away or emptied, new slums are created and filled by the
victims of alcohol. The funds of Guardians and of Parish Councils are
mainly used to support those whom alcohol has impoverished. There is
the authority of Mr. John Burns, the late President of the Local
Government Board, for the statement that out of 100,000 applicants for
poor relief at Wandsworth during a period of twenty years, only twelve
were abstainers.... It not only fills our workhouses, it also crowds
our jails. According to the late Lord Alverstone nine-tenths of the
crime of this country was due to drink.... Insanity finds in it a
fruitful source. {108} Twenty per cent. of all the men and ten per
cent. of all the women in a London County Council asylum--the Claybury
Asylum--have become insane through alcohol.... The social evil is
mainly due to alcohol. Under its influence women descend to vice.
Half the infections of the social disease are traceable to the
weakening of the will power by drink.... Evil though it be in itself,
its evil goes far beyond itself, for it is the short-cut to all the
other vices.... It is one of the great causes of the decline of the
race in thus polluting the springs of life, poisoning and sterilising
them; but, far more, it is responsible for an enormous share of the
app