ght up in its atmosphere will deem alcohol not only
inevitable but also desirable. They will be 'happy in the mire because
they are not conscious of the slough.' The true liberty of the subject
cannot mean racial destruction.... Recently a woman in a mean street
in London went to the public-house with a sick baby in her arms.
'While she was there it died, but she stayed on drinking and holding
the dead baby.'[3] That dead baby in the arms of its alcoholic mother
in a public-house visualises the grim and terrible situation. It is
the personification of all the millions of baby lives throttled to
death by alcohol--of a race sinking to decay in its grasp.

{112}

III

We must not, however, forget that the Government of this country, while
the manhood of the race was perishing abroad, were not wholly
indifferent to the welfare of childhood at home. When they found that
ship-repairing and shipbuilding and the production of munitions were
hampered and delayed by drunkenness, they adopted restrictions of
various kinds. But in most cases these restrictions were worse than
useless. The Government surrendered its powers in the matter of the
greatest evil afflicting the nation, to a Board of Control. That
authority meant well. It sought to limit the consumption of alcohol by
limiting the hours of its sale. This Board forgot that a man can in
five minutes buy enough whisky to keep him comfortably alcoholic for
five months. To shut the public-house for certain hours meant for many
the laying in of a store of whisky when formerly a few {113} nips
sufficed. But no regulations made by man since the day of the Bourbons
equalled in sheer fatuity the decree that a man who wanted a gill of
whisky could not get it unless he bought a quart? With a wage that
passed his rosiest dreams, to secure the gill he of course bought the
quart. No wonder the consumption of alcohol increased to L181,959,000
in 1915, as compared to L164,453,000 in 1914. This was the fruit of a
policy which aimed at producing sobriety.

But there are some good results claimed by the Board of Control. The
number of convictions for drunkenness decreased! But what was the
price paid for this improvement in our streets? It was the greater
corruption of the home. The drinking was driven out of the
public-house into the house; the drunkard no longer offended the public
gaze in the street, he carried his vice and degradation into the bosom
of his family