Battalion Headquarters—colonel and chaplain present. Enter Adjutant: “The rum ration is due tonight, sir; am I to distribute it?” The colonel (nobly and in a voice audible all over the trench): “No! Damn the rum! To hell with the rum!” _Chaplain’s letter in “Alliance News,” June 1916_ At a court-martial in Newcastle, a sergeant-major, charged with misappropriating funds of the sergeant’s mess, pleaded that during this period a resolution of the mess had come into effect, providing free drinks during Christmas and the New Year. _Facts in “Daily News,” April 17, 1916_ “In the Flying Services one has seen more than one good man go to the dogs through drink, or become fat and flabby and useless through just the excess of alcohol which falls short of taking to drink in the usual acceptance of the term. More men take to drink because of the ‘have another’ custom than because they like or need alcohol, and simple Prohibition would stop all this nonsense straight away. This kindly note is not the outpouring of a teetotal fanatic, for I suppose I have paid in my time rather more than my share of the nation’s drink-bill; it is merely a perfectly sound argument in favour of increasing the nation’s efficiency at the expense of its chief bad habit.” _The Editor of “The Aeroplane”_ A lieutenant in the trenches, knowing that the rum ration made him cold, threw his rum on the ground. His captain saw him, and threatened to report him. “You do, sir,” said the lieutenant, “and I will report you for being drunk on duty.” _Facts in possession of the Author_ A seaman serving on a ship in Cork Harbour died from alcohol. Found drunk and unknown, he was put on a stretcher and died. _Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 9, 1915_ “Over three-quarters of the court-martials I have had anything to do with are due directly or indirectly to drunkenness. Many thousands of competent N.C.O.s and soldiers have been punished, and become useless to the nation during their punishment, as a result of drink. “I have never been a teetotaler, and have rather opposed the radical temperance agitation, but am now changing my views as I see our success over here hampered and our progress towards victory retarded so obviously by drink.” _Letter from a Lieut.-Colonel at the Front, seen by the Author_ The captain of a British merchant ship, drunk on the bridge, ordered his chief gunner to fire 50 rounds of shell at nothing. The gunner fired four rounds to appease him. Going through the Mediterranean, the drunken captain ordered his gunner to fire at a British hospital ship, and the incident led to a struggle for life, which ended in the captain’s being put in irons, tried, and sentenced to five years’ penal servitude.