Dear Sir, In answer to your inquiry, the only limitation in the size of cases consigned to officers in the Expeditionary Force is that they must not exceed 1 cwt.

We can guarantee delivery right into the front trenches. The cases are handed over at Southampton to the Military Forwarding Officer, and the A.S.C. see them right through. We are shipping hundreds of cases weekly. Yours faithfully,

Soldiers at the front, tried for drunkenness, have declared that they have received drink from home. Men sometimes receive flasks in the trenches. They are exhausted, the stimulant revives them for a minute or two, and the harm is done. “And then (says Col. Crozier) they get about two years’ hard labour.”

As a result of a Court-martial investigating charges of excessive drinking among the officers of a regiment at the Front, the Army Council removed the commanding officer from his post.

In the torrid climate of Mesopotamia, in defiance of all military medical history, rum was issued to the men instead of food and sterile water, and the presence of cholera, dysentery and other diseases, was attributed to this by Sir Victor Horsley. “Our gross failures and stupidity,” he said, “are in my opinion due to whisky affecting the intellectual organs and clearness of our leaders. They do not realise that alcohol in small doses acts as a brake on the brain.”

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!”

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.

“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.”

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.”

A seaman serving on a ship in Cork Harbour died from alcohol. Found drunk and unknown, he was put on a stretcher and died.

“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.”

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.

An officer was left in charge of a British ship. Mad with drink, he went among the men and shot one dead. He is now in an asylum.

The crew of a Dutch ship arriving in the Tyne was placed under a naval guard after a drunken riot in which three were killed.

The captain of a Norwegian barque mysteriously disappeared, and the vessel arrived in port from the North Sea. The mate, who had been drinking heavily, was seen, with a hammer in his hand, with the captain in a corner, bleeding from wounds about the head.

A seaman ashore in Glasgow, “wild with drink and passion,” was terribly wounded in a quarrel in a public-house, and died the same night. A youth of 19 was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude.

A barge-loader at West India Docks died from alcohol, and three other men were removed in an ambulance after drinking rum.

Orders were given on a steamer for the boats to be swung out in readiness for submarines. The first and second officer, having been drinking, could not do their duty.

The jury returned a verdict of murder against a youth of 19 who, after drinking one night, went on to his ship and killed the second officer.

A drunken captain in command of a drifter landed with an armed party on the Isle of Man. He posted the men on the quay, and gave them orders to allow no one to pass. Declaring he would shoot every person who came within reach, he fired twice, and threatened to kill two police officers.