The Fiddlers; Drink in the Witness Box — John Shaqi
The Fiddlers; Drink in the Witness BoxMee, Arthur
History
The Fiddlers; Drink in the Witness Box
Mee, Arthur
Alcoholism; World War, 1914-1918
A Sergeant-Major from Canada declared that he had lost 20 per cent.
of the men of his battery through venereal disease. They had a
little drink, and were captured by the swarm of bad women at
Folkestone.
_Facts in Letter to Author_
A woman was imprisoned for placing young children in moral danger.
Every night the girls brought soldiers home, and colonial soldiers
were frequently so drunk that they were carried in.
_Records of Central Criminal Court, April 25, 1917_
The Rising Storm in Canada
=The thing cannot be justified. It is the blackest tragedy of this
whole war that, in fighting for freedom in Europe, the free sons of
the British breed have to face this war-time record of waste at
home, with its inevitable toll of debauchery and crime.=
_Editorial in “Toronto Globe”_
While this book was being written one of the greatest meetings ever held
in Manchester was cheering a Canadian in khaki who declared that he was
not going hungry while brewers were destroying food, and he went on to
say, this soldier and sportsman well-known in the Dominion:
“Great numbers of our men never saw France. Canadian boys cried
because they had not munitions. England reeled and beer flowed like
water while thousands of our boys went down into their graves. We
will never forget it in Canada.”
We may be sure Canada will not forget. She will not forget her dead: she
will not forget that the Drink Traffic she has swept away at home struck
down her sons in the land for which they fought. “We must know who is to
blame,” says a Canadian paper; “we presume they will have no objection
to have their names placarded before the country, that every mother may
know.” Col. Sir Hamar Greenwood, M. P., has lately returned from Canada,
and this is what he tells us:
“I met many fathers and mothers whose boys had been sent back to
Canada debilitated and ruined for life because they had been
enmeshed by harpies, and again and again these parents have said to
me, ‘We do not mind our boys dying on the field of battle for old
England, but to think that we sent our sons to England to come back
to us ruined in health, and a disgrace to us, to them, and to the
country, is something the Home Country should never ask us to
bear.’”
_Letter from a Solicitor in Ontario to the Author_:
I wonder if the advocates of the drink traffic in Britain appreciate
the contempt in which they are held in Canada. Before the war I had
a class of ten young men. Every one of them is now at the Front, and
one writes that when I told them of the drink conditions in England
he did not believe half of it; now he says I did not tell him half.
Letters from our Canadian soldiers are appearing in our papers, and
they are all amazed at the drinking habits of Britain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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