"I served at Gallipoli; I was wounded on the western front. It is my earnest opinion that the rum ration is utterly bad."

The speaker turned now so that he faced the larger portion of the audience that crowded the hall to its utmost capacity, and with which he had been seated. He then continued,

"I believe that there are thousands of glorious British lads who would be alive to-day, recovered from wounds and disease, restored to their country, their loved ones, and their friends, had this rum ration not undermined their strength and destroyed their resistance."

The speaker was a wounded surgeon of the Royal Medical Corps. The writer had just finished an address in Weymouth, England. The date was Wednesday, January 30, 1918. The presiding officer of the evening was the mayor of the city. Following the address an hour was given to the asking and answering of questions under the direction of the chairman. It was during this time that the surgeon made his remarkable statement. The rum ration had been debated, and some apparently earnest temperance people had gone on record in favor of it.

The writer finds absolutely nothing abroad to cause him to change his opinion that Sir Victor Horsley, Lord Roberts, and Lord Kitchener were correct in their opposition to the serving of rum as a ration to the soldiers. There was a time when a single hour of "Dutch courage" won a battle, and when a battle won a war; but that time is past forever. If we were to grant the desirability of the temporary effects resulting from the ration, we should be bound in the light of evidence produced to insist that the final results leave the soldier less able to resist disease, less competent to take care of himself if wounded. The argument that rum should be given to drown the sensibilities, to deaden the terror of men about to go over the top, is not valid. Rum enough to accomplish this makes a soldier unfit to go over the top at all into the situations where every order must be obeyed promptly and where every faculty must be supremely alert.

Principal Paton of the greatest public school of Manchester, England, said to the writer that at a certain aviation camp six young men were dashed to the ground and killed because, owing to the fact that they had taken liquor just before their flights, liquor to which they were unaccustomed, their machines in the higher altitude got out of control.

I have found it quite difficult to show any tolerance at all for the opinions of certain public men of Great Britain, clergymen included, who have asked for the wet canteen in the training-camps set aside for boys of eighteen.

The effect of the rum ration upon the teetotaler should have more attention than it has yet received. The son of a personal friend of mine wrote home to England that it was impossible for him to secure water for several days while in the trenches, and that the tea supplied him had the rum put into it before it was served. This lad had never tasted liquor before he left home.

In that very remarkable book, "Letters from Flanders," written by Second Lieutenant A. D. (Bey) Gillespie, who died at the head of his troops on September 25, 1915, I find the following:

"Also I had my first taste of rum, for I have to stand by and see a lot of that served out to men as soon as it gets dark.... I think that they should arrange that men who do not want it could get chocolate or some other small thing instead."

While in Scotland the writer received from a British lady the following portion of a letter written by her "godson," a Belgian soldier:

"If the war is the cause of many disasters, it has also its benefits. Among them we concede the destruction, if I may say so, of alcoholism. In our northern countries alcohol was a necessity, so to speak. Alcohol did one good; that was the idea firmly fixed in the minds of the people. To-day the governments have abolished the sale of alcohol in all the cafÉs. It is forbidden to sell it to soldiers, the soldiers cannot carry it with them, etc.; and a man is not the worse for that, but far better off. I know many soldiers who every day 'needed' their drop of spirits, and I myself was not free from the habit; yet for three and one-half years now I have done without it, and really my health is better. The bad habit is uprooted. The war has forced me to temperance, as it has forced many others. This must have happened also to civilians, for alcohol has become dear and scarce. So much the better."

Much has been said about the "impossible" water of France. I crossed and recrossed France without being at any time so situated that I could not secure pure or purified water in ample quantity. The American military administration deserves great credit for the way in which it has solved this problem for our overseas forces. From the port of entry to the last mess-kitchen at the front I found that where the local water-supply was inadequate or questionable the great canvas bags were kept constantly filled with the wholesome beverage that to-day makes America famous from the Mediterranean Sea to the Vosges Mountains. The great water-main laid through the French city in which the general headquarters of the American army was for months located was an inspiring sight and a ringing testimony to America's scientific attitude and her war efficiency.

As to the basis for the British rum ration, Sir Victor Horsley refers to it as the "old pernicious rum ration" which is given to the soldier as a deceptive substitute for food, which decreases his efficiency and reduces his strength. Sir Victor was one of the most distinguished surgeons of his time, the recognized medical authority of the British army for a generation, and a scientist who in his profession commanded a hearing through the world. He has referred to the system of supplying rum to British soldiers as having been established by the command in Flanders during Marlborough's campaign at the beginning of the eighteenth century. He also says, "It must be remembered, for the sake of our honor as a profession, that the army medical service, though an absolutely essential part of His Majesty's forces, has not only never been granted a proper place in the administration of military affairs, but even now [early in 1917] has no representative on the Army Council."

The medical profession cannot be held primarily responsible to the British nation for errors in the vital question of the rum ration and the medical and surgical care of soldiers.

Sir James McGregor, at one time the principal medical officer of the army, issued one of the earliest statements against the rum ration. He says in his memoirs that on a trying desert march down the Nile "the men had no spirits delivered out to them, and not only did they not suffer by this, but it contributed to the uncommon degree of health which they had this time enjoyed." This was written in 1801. Medical men in the United States are familiar with the experience of McClellan on the banks of the Potomac in 1862 when a spirit ration was issued in the belief that it would help stop bowel complaints. After one month the ration was withdrawn because drunkenness and dysentery had increased.

The experiences of Lord Roberts in the Boer War in South Africa and in India, and similar experiences of General Kitchener, caused these men to become unequivocally opposed to a ration of rum.

The army authorities of Great Britain have never answered Sir Victor's following contentions, which had the fullest indorsement of Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener:

The rum ration is responsible for

1. Decadence of morale. Causation of "grousing," friction, and disorder.

2. Drunkenness, punishments, degradations in rank.

3. Decadence of observation and judgment. Causation of errors and accidents.

4. Loss of endurance and diminution of physical vigor. Causation of fatigue, falling out, and slackness.

5. Loss of resistance to cold. Causation of chilliness, misery, and frost-bite.

6. Loss of resistance to disease (particularly diseases occurring under conditions of wet and cold), namely, pneumonia, dysentery, typhoid fever.

7. Loss of efficiency in shooting. (Half the rum ration causes a loss of 40 to 50 per cent in rifle-shooting. The navy rum ration causes a loss of 30 per cent in gunnery.)

In Sir Victor Horsley's last letter to Mr. Guy Hayler of London he spoke of the great riot that occurred in Cairo,—a riot not set on foot, as had been reported, because the men wanted more drink for themselves, but because they would not stand quietly by and see the officers drinking heavily in the hotels after the time appointed for closing canteens to the privates. He also stated that the enormous loss of men crippled and dead from frost-bite and cold at Gallipoli was due to several factors, in which alcohol played a part not only directly, but indirectly as well, owing to the neglect of the personal care and treatment of the men due to the satisfaction and complacency which whiskey-drinking produces. "Men allowed things to drift," the great surgeon wrote.

I was privileged to be in the front line with the American forces when they experienced their first general gassing and their first raid from German shock troops. I was with them in water- and mud-filled trenches; I saw them when for five and even seven days they had been constantly in the tense expectancy of men who await a raid; I slept with them and messed with them; I saw them in the agonies of the gas and soaked in the blood of their wounds; I saw them so completely exhausted that they fell asleep in their snow- and water-soaked garments upon the hard floor of a Y. M. C. A. hut, resting there without protection only as we found newspapers and canvas strips with which to cover them—their own blankets had been buried by shell-fire, and they had just come from the more advanced positions after being relieved.

These men had borne all without a rum ration. The hot coffee and tea with which the Y. M. C. A. and Red Cross and their own cooks provided them did for them all that the rum ration could have done, and with none of rum's evil after-effects. I did not hear a single soldier ask for rum. As to the insistence of some that it is impossible to supply our forces with coffee and tea under extreme front-line conditions, I was witness to the fact that under the most extreme conditions hot drinks were constantly furnished.

It will be kept in mind that by the term "rum ration" we refer to the regular and daily supply of spirits as a recognized part of the dietary of the soldier, and not to the possible use of alcohol in special instances by order of medical officers. As to this latter, I have not seen rum or spirits used. The men have themselves informed me that it has not been prescribed for them. I imagine that its introduction for medicinal purposes will depend very much upon the personal attitude of individual medical men toward alcohol as an internal medicine, just as it does in the United States. The fact that the medical profession is represented in the councils of the American army, and by some of its most distinguished leaders, and the further fact that medical authority in America has banished alcohol from the American pharmacopoeia, are re-assuring. In having such men as Dr. Haven Emerson, formerly chief health officer of New York City, now a major in the medical service in France, to counsel those in supreme authority overseas, we are most fortunate.

Peculiarly difficult will be the problem arising where American soldiers are brigaded with English and French regiments. But it is a problem that must and will be solved.

Under no circumstances will this nation consent to the establishing of the rum system that now works injury in the armies of her splendid allies. That it does work injury, I know.

It is certainly true that the vast majority of men now receiving the ration of rum, if asked to express an opinion, would heartily vote for it. It is equally true that the soldiers of our allies are not a drunken mob, that they do not fall under the influence of drink menasse. But the weakening and deteriorating effect of this pernicious narcotic, water-absorbing, depressant drug poison is unmistakable.

What the surgeon of the Royal Medical Corps said at Weymouth, and all that he said, is true. Canada does well to be aroused; her hurt is deep. There is tragedy in the situation that ties the hands of a people who have sent armies of men clean of alcohol to fight for our common cause under the flag of their motherland. These armies, as soon as they leave the three-mile zone that guards the shores of Canada, pass under an authority that thrusts upon them the curse which their own government has destroyed.

The fact that the immediate and noticeable sensations and effects of rum deceive men into accepting it as a benefactor instead of a curse does not relieve a government of responsibility for finding and following the truth. With my own eyes I have seen the demonstration of the truth which science establishes—alcohol gives to the armies of democracy trembling limbs, blinded eyes, deafened ears, dulled sensibilities, hearts too frail to pump the blood of mightiest deeds, poverty of soul in times when richest treasures alone suffice to pay the price of justice and of freedom.