  All the world knows, except, apparently, the world that goes round at Westminster, how Prohibition has helped the Allies. With the Shell Famine at its height—largely made by Drink—the Prohibition Army on the East held up the enemy while Britain fought the Drink Trade for her shells. With the Bread Famine looming in sight—largely made by Drink—the Prohibition Navy from the West flings in her power against the submarines. Oh, for the spirit of our Allies in this land! If France wants to rouse the spirit of Verdun she strikes down her foe at home and puts absinthe away. If Russia wants to be great and free she stops this drink and orders out the Romanoffs. If Canada wants to give her utmost help to Britain she stops this drink from sea to sea. If Australia wants to make her soldiers fit she trains them in her Prohibition camps. History will do justice to the part the Prohibition policy of the Allies has played in saving Europe, but a pamphlet has no room for these things. We can take only one or two great witnesses to the mighty achievements of our Prohibition Allies. Let us begin with France, and call our own Prime Minister to tell us what they did. Mr. Lloyd George: One afternoon we had to postpone our conference in Paris, and the French Minister of Finance said, “I have to go to the Chamber of Deputies, because I am proposing a bill to abolish absinthe.” Absinthe plays the same part in France that whisky plays in this country, and they abolished it by a majority of something like ten to one that afternoon. And how did Paris take this prohibition that men said would cause a revolution? Let us ask Mr. Philip Gibbs, whose splendid letters home have made his name a household word. Mr. Philip Gibbs: Absinthe was banned by a thunderstroke, and Parisians who had acquired the absinthe habit trembled in every limb at this judgment which would reduce them to physical and moral wrecks. But the edict was given and Paris obeyed, loyally and with resignation. And now we come to Russia, to these mighty Russian people who in the last year of vodka saved £6,000,000 or £7,000,000, and in the last full year of Prohibition saved £177,000,000. We will call our own Prime Minister again: Russia, knowing her deficiency, knowing how unprepared she was, said, “I must pull myself together. I am not going to be trampled upon, unready as I am. I will use all my resources.” What is the first thing she does? She stops drink. I was talking to M. Bark, the Russian Minister of Finance, and I asked, “What has been the result?” He said, “The productivity of labour, the amount of work which is put out by the workmen, has gone up between 30 and 50 per cent.” I said, “How do they stand it without their liquor?” and he replied, “Stand it? I have lost revenue over it up to £65,000,000 a year and we certainly cannot afford it, but if I proposed to put it back there would be a revolution in Russia.” How completely teetotal Russia became we read long ago in the Daily Mail, to which Mr. Hamilton Fyfe sent this message from Petrograd: Try to imagine all the publichouses in the British Isles closed; all the restaurants putting away their wine cards and offering nothing stronger than cider or ginger ale. That is the state of things in Russia. Strange it seems indeed, yet there is one thing stranger. Nobody makes any audible complaint. Everywhere in Russia it was the same: a nation was made sober by Act of Parliament. “Without a murmur of protest,” said the Moscow correspondent of the Times, “the most drunken city in Europe was transformed into a temple of sobriety, and we felt that if Russia could thus conquer herself in a night, there was indeed nothing that might not be accomplished.” And two years later, when the revolution came, we We need not be afraid of Drinkless Revolutions. But the truth about Russia is almost too incredible to believe, for it is Prohibition that made the revolution possible; it was stopping drink that set 170,000,000 people free. We will let a business correspondent of the Times give evidence; here is what he said on April 21, 1917: In one respect it must be said that the Reactionaries saw clearly. They always claimed that the Tsar had ruined himself by decreeing the abolition of vodka. None but a sober people could have carried out the Russian Revolution. The police were, on the other hand, the victims of drink. They had seized the vodka at the order of the Government, and had kept plentiful supplies for themselves. Thus the Revolution was in part a struggle between drunken reaction and sober citizens. Sobriety triumphed. The Russian people will not bow down and tie their hands to the thrones of Europe: do we wonder if they scorn our quailing before this trade? Free Russia flings off the dynastic yoke: do we wonder Prohibition Russia is not much impressed by a nation with a Drink Trade round its neck? |
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