that goods,
vital to the State, could not be delivered because of drunkenness; that
Admiral Jellicoe had warned the Government that the efficiency of the
Fleet was threatened because of drunkenness; and that shipbuilders and
munition manufacturers had made a strong {vii} appeal to our rulers to
put an end to drunkenness. It was then that the King, by his example,
called upon the people to renounce alcohol, and the nation waited for
its deliverance. But the Government refused to follow the King. There
is but one law for nations, as for individuals, if they would save
their souls: 'If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off.' But our
statesmen could not brace themselves to an act of surgery; they devised
a scheme for putting the offending member into splints. And, since
then, it looks as if the wheels of the chariot of victory were stuck in
the bog of the national drunkenness. The vision of God has faded
before the eyes of a nation that refused its beckoning.

This book deals, therefore, with those evils which now hide the face of
God from us. If drunkenness be the greatest of these evils, there are
others closely allied to it. Two Commissions have recently issued
Reports, the one on 'The Declining Birthrate,' and the other on 'The
Social Evil,' {viii} which reveal the perilous condition of
degeneration into which the nation is falling. It is difficult for
people, engrossed in the labours and anxieties of these days, to grasp
the meaning of the facts as presented in these Reports. In these pages
an effort is made to look the facts in the face and to make the danger
clear, so that he who runs may read. And the writer has had but one
purpose: to show that there is but one remedy for all our grievous
ills, even a return to God.

As we think of the millions who have taken all that makes life dear and
laid it down that we might live; who have gone down to an earthly hell
that we might not lose our heaven; who have wrestled with the powers of
destruction on sea and land that these isles might continue to be the
sanctuary of freedom and the home of righteousness; who in the midst of
their torment never flinched; and of the fathers, mothers, and wives
who have laid on the altar the sacrifice of all their love and
hope--the question arises, how can {ix} we show our love and our
gratitude to those who have redeemed us? We can only prove our
gratitude by making a new world for those who have saved us--a world in
which m