Some years ago in the army of India the mortality from disease
was as high as sixty-nine per 1,000, but by the introduction
of the reforms mentioned the rate had been reduced to nineteen
per 1,000 in 1880, and for the last ten years has been less than
sixteen per 1,000. According to the opinion of those best qualified
to know, this is largely due to the introduction of what are known
as Regimental Institutes, or Soldiers' Clubs, corresponding closely
to the canteens which were abolished in our army a few years ago,
but which are considered as important a part of the military
organization in India as a hospital or arsenal. After fifty years
of experience in India the British military authorities gave up
the attempt to prohibit drinking in the army. Lord Kitchener says:
"You might as well try to hasten the millennium." And for twenty
years they have been using various measures, some of which have
proved practicable and others impracticable, to promote temperance.
The result is an almost unanimous conclusion upon the part of
those who have given the subject study that the most effective
means of preventing intemperance and promoting discipline and
morals are the soldiers' institutes and clubs, in which liquor
is sold in small quantities under strict regulations enforced by
the enlisted men themselves. In other words, they have stopped
trying to prohibit drinking because they found it was impossible,
and are now trying to reduce it to the minimum. The placing of
the regulation of the liquor traffic very largely with the men
themselves, and removing the semblance of official interference of
authority, is said to be one of the most effective arrangements,
and the very fact that drinking is not forbidden and that liquor
can be obtained at any moment within a few steps of the barracks
is of itself a most wholesome influence, because it takes away
the desire, and all the spirit of adventure and risk. As long
as human nature is stubborn and contrary, men will do out of
pure mischief what they are told must not be done. These matters
have a deep interest for the viceroy, Lord Kitchener, the
commander-in-chief, and other prominent officials of the army
in India. Lord Kitchener takes an active part in the temperance
work and in the administration of the soldiers' institutes, and
has had an officer detailed to look after their arrangement and
management. Not long ago the viceroy traveled seven hundred miles
to deliver an address at an anniversary of the Army Temperance
Association.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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