Stand Up, Ye Dead Part 5

The time to make that policy effective is now. While the nation is in the midst of the great conflict for its existence, the people will gladly welcome any restrictions which will strengthen the State in its hour of need. The heart of the nation is prepared for sacrifice. But when the danger is pa.s.sed, the mood will change. It will not be so easy then to make drastic changes in the habits of the people. And the time when restrictions will be most necessary will be when the army is demobilised. If restrictions are not {118} imposed now, it will be impossible to impose them then.

There is a growing feeling that the quickest road to the desired end may be found in the nationalisation of the liquor trade. Many would shrink from this policy if they thought that the State would become a permanent species of glorified publican. But the end in view is the transformation of the liquor trade. Only the State can achieve that.

The State, with full control, can make the public-houses centres of recreation, with the temptation of spirits removed. And the way will be clear for mending or ending, as experience will prove which is the better policy. The true reformer will care far more for the reform than for the means by which it is to be achieved. If the reform can best be realised through State-ownership, then the sooner it comes the better.

If the remedy for the evils wrought by drunkenness does not, and cannot, lie along the road of supplying more {119} facilities for the sale of alcohol, we must at the same time never forget that the craving for alcohol is a craving for a fuller life--for life lit up by colour and social joy. Those who meet that hunger for a richer life with nothing but a dreary 'don't,' with no remedy save that of the surgical operation, expose themselves to jibes such as that bitter jibe of Lord Macaulay: 'The Puritans objected to bear-baiting not because of cruelty to the bear but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.' The aim of the social reformer must be the subst.i.tution of true joy and happiness for what is spurious. The State must make provision for the social instincts of the ma.s.ses. 'What are wanted,' writes Sir Thomas P. Whittaker, a member of the Royal Commission on Licensing, 'are places of the nature of free clubs, where men may sit and smoke and talk and play games or read the papers. They should be open to the public free, with small charges for the use of cards and the {120} billiard-tables.... People should be made to feel as much at their ease in them as they are in our public parks. The cost of maintaining such places would not be great, and the social, material, and moral advantages that would result would render them an excellent investment....' It is along this road deliverance must be sought.

There is no use sweeping out the house unless the house is to be occupied by fairer and more wholesome tenants than those expelled.

V

There is one last serious aspect of this problem wherewith the spiritual forces of the nation are faced, and that is the weakening of the nation's soul which the new policy has entailed. Whosoever considers the manner in which religion has lost its grip on the ma.s.ses, the pa.s.sing away of all discipline, the decay of idealism, and the slow but steady emptying of the churches, cannot but feel that the greatest need of to-day is a revival of {121} religion. Unless the soul controls the body, man atrophies and perishes. The Church for many centuries has striven to garrison the nation's soul, and to bring the body under discipline. But the Church no longer can bring its power into play, for the churches are left deserted more or less. The proportion of the industrial population who never enter a church's door is vastly greater than is commonly supposed. Professor Cairns, a careful and judicious observer, who would make no statement that could not be verified, has declared that three out of five soldiers at the front have had no connection with the Church. The toilers of our cities are rapidly relapsing into that paganism out of which Christianity rescued the world at the first. What the world needs is G.o.d. It is only when the face of G.o.d is unveiled to the awe-filled eyes of men that they can realise the foulness of moral degradation.

In the light of that holiness which marshals all the forces in {122} the universe to war against sin, and in that light alone, does the soul realise the awfulness of sin. When that realisation comes, then the history of the world becomes mainly the history of sin--that dread power which saps the vitality of nations, disintegrates empires, ruins civilisations, and which brings upon proud capital cities the flaming judgment of sword and fire. The function of the prophet is to keep clear before the eyes of men the moral issues which are laden with life or death. The mission of the Church is to replace the spurious and fleeting joys of sin by the true and enduring joy of a life in unison with G.o.d.

But the State renders the Church impotent and makes the revival of religion in our day impossible. That may seem exaggerated, but it is true. For the State has driven alcohol into the homes, and has consigned not only the husband, but often the wife also, to the degrading influence of alcohol not only on Sat.u.r.day but on Sunday. In vain does the call {123} to return to G.o.d sound in the ears of a population sunk in the torpor of alcohol. No prophet can rouse such a people. 'If a man, walking in a spirit of falsehood, do lie, saying, "I will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink, he shall even be the prophet of this people."'[4] The Church is powerless against thirty public-houses to the half-mile! Alcohol bars the door against every movement for the social and spiritual uplift of the nation. If the nation is to be saved, the nation must act. Arise, O Israel!

We must look at our population in a new light and see them not as makers of munitions but as sons of G.o.d. The horribly cynical att.i.tude of our rulers is that which regards men merely as munition-makers.

They survey them only from the low ground of self-interest. It is not in relation to the peril of the hour that this problem has to be faced, but in relation to man's high calling as {124} the son of G.o.d. These men and women are our brothers and sisters, bearing the image of G.o.d, and created to be heirs of an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled.

Can we go on working their ruin, d.a.m.ning them body and soul? A race that will not cleanse the fountains of its national life, that will not remove from its midst the forces of degeneration, that shrinks from that moral surgery which will alone save the body-politic--such a race cannot hope to go on swaying the destinies of the world. But this is our confidence, that through the horrors of war the nation will waken to the deep issues of life and death, and that the forces of moral and social renewal will advance a hundred years in one day. We can hear the marshalling of the forces in our midst which will transform and enrich the nation. There is arising the cry of the coming victory:

'The King shall follow Christ, and we the King.'

[1] In the _Record_, the official organ of the United Free Church of Scotland, there appeared in the August number, 1916, a letter written by a 'Special Constable' which gives a terrible word-picture of a slum family:

'Let me give a personal experience of one of the mult.i.tude of family tragedies directly due to drink which come under my notice. A family of eight persons--four of them adults--occupied a single room in a slum area.

'The eldest son, aged twenty-one years, was in the last stage of consumption, and occupied the only bed in the room. On visiting the house one morning, I found the lad lying on the floor, in a corner. He had required to vacate the bed for his mother, and during the night there had been born into these surroundings another of those immortal souls who, in the words of Kingsley, "are d.a.m.ned from their birth."

'The following day the mother was sitting at the fireside, and was never back in bed till the son died some days later. It is hardly necessary to add that the mother, the infant, and another girl followed him at short intervals. On the day of the mother's funeral the husband got drunk and had to be locked up--the twentieth-century method of remedying evils of this kind.'

[2] The distribution of licences in our cities is a crying evil. The following are examples of the provision made in the wards of Edinburgh:--

Number of Population to Ward. Population. Licences. each Licence

Morningside 24,320 18 1351 Merchiston 24,436 21 1163 St. Giles' 24,277 118 205 St. Andrew's 11,166 87 128

In proportion to the poverty and misery of the population are the licences increased. In the Cowgate of Edinburgh there are 12 licences, and in the Canongate, 19. The same proportion applies to all our cities.

[3] _The Drink Problem of To-day_, p. 182.

[4] Micah ii. 11.

{125}

CHAPTER VI

THE GREAT REFUSAL

For the historian of the future who may essay the task of elucidating the moral progress or decay of the British Empire, one date will stand forth as a landmark--April 20, 1915. For it was on that day that the House of Commons refused to follow 'the King's lead.' On the 6th April it was announced that 'By the King's command no wines, spirits, or beer will be consumed in any of His Majesty's houses after to-day.' No announcement ever cheered the heart of a nation more than that. It was as if an electric current had suddenly pa.s.sed through an inert ma.s.s, galvanising it into life. When Lord Kitchener and other leaders loyally followed the King's example, the men who fought {126} a weary battle for the emanc.i.p.ation of the nation from the yoke of alcohol, and whose hearts were oft sickened by long-delayed hopes, felt that the day of moral victory had dawned at last. The nation, delivered from the enemy within its gates, would bring its full power to bear upon the enemy that threatened its destruction from without. In house and mess and restaurant alcohol was banished. But all these fair hopes were rudely shattered when the House of Commons at the end of fourteen days refused to banish alcohol from the precincts of Westminster. The dawn of hope ended once more in gloom.

I

It is only as yet possible to surmise as to the forces which led to the great refusal. The nation, with the almost unanimous voice of its wisest and best citizens, had called for the deliverance of the people from alcohol by its total prohibition. Employers of labour, who {127} had no sympathy originally for the prohibition movement, were converted to it by the spectacle of the nation's marshalling of its forces being steadily hampered by drunkenness. The leaders of all the Churches pressed for it; the Press began to plead for it; Mr. Lloyd-George openly declared that 'drink is doing us more damage than all the German submarines put together'; and there is no doubt but that the King and Lord Kitchener expected that their example would give an impetus which would carry prohibition to victory. But the House of Commons shattered that hope. The forces of reaction immediately began to raise their head, and to the tables of the home and the mess alcohol slowly returned to resume its fell sway. The nation that had braced itself for social surgery was presented with soothing medicine in the form of the Central Control Board.

Though it is impossible to a.s.sign causes to these effects with cert.i.tude, yet it is safe to say that this failure was the {128} fruit of the party system. We have seen how the play of political parties one against the other devastated the countryside. The party politicians think primarily of votes, and anything that would cost them votes is banned. They knew in what peril the nation stood before the war, but they did not summon the nation to prepare for war and endure hardness. That would have been unpopular--and would have cost votes.

They kept the nation in ignorance of its peril, and cowered before the people whom they kept in the dark, terrified to use firmness lest the firm hand on the reins should mean their unseating. They went further: when Lord Roberts warned the State in prophetic terms, they held him up to derision. The greatest calamity that ever befell the human race we owe to the party politicians.

Behind the party politician there is the caucus, and behind the caucus the party funds. The power of money is proverbial, and behind the party politician {129} is the exchequer supplied by his supporters.

That exchequer is replenished by the sale of honours. When Oleander, a Phrygian and erstwhile slave, was the minister of the Emperor Commodus, Rome saw the woeful spectacle of the rank of Consul, of Patrician and of Senator exposed to public sale. We hold the decencies of life in too high regard to do that. Secretly and decorously our senatorships and the ancient orders of our knighthood are a.s.signed. At one end of the social scale national degeneracy makes the trader in alcohol a plutocrat; at the other end the same national degeneracy makes him a legislator and a pseudo-aristocrat. The alcoholic trade was too wise to be on terms of friendship with one party alone; it sought relationship with all. n.o.body can object to the man who pays the piper calling the tune. In Ireland the publican is even a greater power in politics than he is in England. And the power behind the politicians brought all its forces into play. When, in 1887, Lord Iddesleigh, {130} superseded at last, fell dead in Lord Salisbury's waiting-room, the latter, writing to Lord Randolph Churchill, exclaimed, 'As I looked upon the dead man before me I felt that politics was a cursed profession.' And Lord Salisbury knew.

The party politician, even in the maelstrom of a world's devastation, pursued his familiar course. Before the war he failed to warn the nation and to prepare. In the midst of the war he still strove to keep the nation in the dark. After months of calamities the nation was told that all was going well, and the people were obsessed with the idea that final victory was at hand. If the people only knew their peril they would have made any sacrifice for their country and their homes.

But they were not told. And the party politician shrank from demanding or enforcing a sacrifice which the nation did not realise to be necessary because of its ignorance. The policy of pusillanimity pursued before the war was still regnant. The politicians who shrank {131} from demanding sacrifice in peace, shrank from demanding it in war. They did not know the heart of the nation. There was no sacrifice the nation would have shrunk from, if the demand were made.

The nation knew that it needed discipline, and it asked for discipline, but asked in vain. And to-day the same pusillanimous policy sacrifices prohibition to the fear that the munition-workers might give trouble.

They knew not, and they know not, the heart of this nation. But the fact remains that to-day the nation is spending 180 millions or so a year on alcohol, while the Government calls on the people to exercise the greatest economy that the war may be waged to the end. It is a sad and strange spectacle.

II

It was fortunate for the cause of the world's freedom that there was found in Europe a great nation which was not under the sway of party politicians. {132} The German Emperor is reported to have said that the next great European war would be won by the most sober nation.

When the war began and the Tsar issued his great rescript abolishing vodka the Emperor is said to have exclaimed, 'But who could have foreseen this wonderful coup!' Some day it will doubtless be the accepted fact that the deliverance of the Russian nation from the degenerating power of alcohol won the war. For through that great act of a statesman's prevision the Russian Empire experienced a resurrection from the dead.

The statesmen of Russia knew the evil effects of alcohol. It was to vodka that they mainly owed the defeat and humiliation of the j.a.panese war. The manhood of Russia could not be rapidly mobilised owing to the grip of alcohol on the race; and the operations were ever hampered by its fell power. When the Russian Empire was called upon to fight for its life, the Emperor resolved that this time it would fight unfettered. {133} The sale of vodka was temporarily suspended, and the armies were mobilised with rapidity and precision. Misery and poverty were banished from the villages. The doss-houses and jails were emptied. A great nation resolved to fight with all its vigour. Though vodka const.i.tuted a State monopoly, and though Russia drew from it an enormous revenue, yet that revenue was unhesitatingly sacrificed. 'We cannot,' said the Tsar before the war, in a proclamation to his people, 'make our fiscal policy dependent upon the destruction of the spiritual and economic powers of many of my subjects.' On August 22, 1914, the Tsar issued an order that all vodka and other spirit shops should be closed till the end of the war. When the beneficial results of this policy were fully realised the Tsar made a final decision. 'I have decided,' he announced, 'to abolish for ever the Government sale of vodka in Russia.' Russia was thus finally delivered from the greatest of its enemies--the enemy {134} that destroyed its homes. And Russia has accepted its deliverance with a joyful heart. At first M. Bark, the Finance Minister, was 'staggered when prohibition was suggested.'

After six months' experience of its results he declared: 'If I proposed to reopen the vodka shops there would be a revolution.' Thus was effected the greatest social reform in the history of the world.

'Since China proscribed opium,' was the verdict of a _Times_ editorial, 'the world has seen nothing like it. We have been well reminded that in sternly prohibiting the sale of spirituous liquors, Russia has already vanquished a greater foe than Germany.'

And so it proved. Through vanquishing alcohol Russia found a power which is now vanquishing Germany. On eyes cleared from the fumes of vodka there rose the vision of G.o.d. The Russian went forth tying his knapsack on his back as one who took up the Cross. They endured defeats which might have {135} overwhelmed them, but they were unconquerable. Through hardships and privations undreamed of the Russian soldier retained his health and fighting power. Though he often confronted the enemy with no weapon but his bare breast, he never despaired. Wounds which in other campaigns would have been inevitably fatal, healed, and life conquered death. Though oft deprived of sufficient food, he endured fatiguing marches, and in the midst of the nervous strain of defeat and retreat he remained cheerful, determined, and confident of victory. At last, with 'firm faith in the clemency of G.o.d,' the Russian hosts turned at bay and stood fast. When the clouds were darkest, it was as if the sun broke forth when the news was flashed through the world that the Russians had stormed Erzerum.

To-day Armenia is freed, and the great surge of the Russian hosts is rolling west. For the Russians knew that a holy war could not be waged by a drunken nation; {136} and in the power of self-sacrifice they have s.n.a.t.c.hed victory from what seemed irretrievable defeat. While Britain continued to sacrifice its strength and its wealth at the shrine of alcohol, while the wives and the children of the men who were fighting and dying were left to the comforting of publicans, while the munition-workers were hindered and marred by the lure of strong drink, while the best of the manhood of the British race called in vain for deliverance from the yoke of the national bondage, Russia in the might of a great renunciation was gathering its forces and advancing to victory. Autocracy has delivered Russia from the bondage of centuries; democracy has surrendered its power to the party politician, and the party politician has kept Britain still enslaved.

III

It would be difficult to overestimate the evil consequences for the future of {137} the race which will inevitably ensue from the great refusal. Let me endeavour to make clear one of these evil consequences. Had the House of Commons on April 20th of last year resolved to follow the King's lead, instead of spurning it; had it made that lead effective, what would have been the result? One effect would have been that to-day we would have had an army delivered from the bane of alcohol. The King's officers and the men who wear his uniform would have followed the King's example.

It is the commonplace of much of the speaking from religious platforms that we are to have a new era inaugurated when the men come back from the war. The religious life of the nation is going to be quickened; its moral forces are to be vastly strengthened; there is to be a new earth when the war is over--if not a new heaven. These hopes are, however, doomed to disappointment. It is not the ranks of those who are striving for temperance that will receive {138} reinforcement when the great army comes home.

Let any one who thinks that we are on the verge of a great social or religious revival consider the facts. (The difficulty is that we fail to face facts and delude ourselves with vain imaginings.) The great fact to which we blind ourselves is that the manhood of the nation, for the first time in its history, has been brought into the atmosphere of alcohol, and acclimatised to that atmosphere to the number of between four and five millions. In that remote period before August 1914, the British army was a volunteer force mainly recruited from 'the adventurous and the derelict.' The recruiting area was largely the congested wards of our great cities. The men who enlisted did so, in the great majority, after they had already acquired a taste for the exhilaration of alcohol. It was in the circ.u.mstances expedient that in the canteen provision should be made, under military supervision, for their being supplied {139} with a purer alcohol than the public-houses provided. The results were beneficial rather than otherwise.

The strange thing, however, is that the canteen system which was necessary for the small voluntary army should have also been imposed by the Army Authorities upon the full manhood of the nation when they sprang to arms in defence of King and country. Though no trainer would ever allow the use of alcohol by those preparing for any athletic sport, though the man who would excel at football or racing or boxing or shooting, as a first step eschewed all alcohol, the Government of this country provided alcohol as an integral part of every camp where the heroic of the race set themselves to endure hardness. 'The greater endurance of the non-alcoholic soldier or worker is now not a matter on which there can be or is any difference of opinion.'[1] For the youth of the nation, {140} wearied with the hardness of unwonted exercise, away from the influence of mothers and loved ones, warned by the Secretary of State for War against alcohol, the Government provided the narcotic of alcohol. Millions came within the sphere of its baneful influence who never would have been so exposed in days of peace. And not only so, but though it has been scientifically established that alcohol lowers the vitality, a paternal Government, in the mud and misery of the trenches in Flanders, provided for each soldier the sustenance of rum, though from such a stimulus no benefit could accrue.

'Small doses of alcohol ... cause ... a distinct flushing of the skin due to dilation of the cutaneous capillaries, the skin becoming first warmer and the blood in the internal organs cooler than before the alcohol was taken. After a time the skin temperature falls, but there is no corresponding increase of temperature of the blood in the internal organs. This means that the body has {141} lost heat by the skin. The evaporating moisture of wet putties and stockings carries away a further amount of heat, whilst the contracting wet materials exerting pressure on the lower limbs, after a time tend to compress vessels in the skin, and especially to interfere with the return of venous blood and lymph to the larger veins and lymph channels. The lowered temperature and the impaired nutrition due to this obstructed circulation together are accountable for the "trench foot." ... A man is not at his best, whether working or fighting against enemies or diseases, if he is taking alcohol. Lord Roberts knew this, and His Majesty the King, Admiral Jellicoe, and Lord Kitchener appreciate it.

How soon will the nation realise it?'[2]

The Government supplied the soldiers in the camp and in the trench with the means of decreasing their fighting efficiency. To the 'tot of rum'

can be {142} traced a proportion of the cases of unstable nervous equilibrium which the war has produced. Men who were total abstainers, pledged Rechabites, and others were swept by a paternal Government into the ranks of those who derive from alcohol a false exhilaration. 'The national conscience,' writes Lieut.-Colonel Woodhead, 'has not yet been thoroughly aroused to the importance of the issues at stake--that in peace or in war intemperance is the link in the chain of our national life which gives greatest evidence of weakness and most cause for anxiety.' Against stupidity the G.o.ds themselves fight in vain. Though every laboratory worker and every physiological chemist tells us, with the cold precision of science, that alcohol is not a stimulant but a depresser, that the elation it produces is simply that of a narcotic, that it diminishes the energy and dulls the enthusiasm of man, that it leaves the mind and body more exhausted than before--yet the stupidity entrenched in high places cannot learn {143} the lesson. It trains the armies on alcohol; it seeks to sustain the embattled hosts with alcohol.