HV 5296 .P53 "*« ^ooDEN Horse OR AMERICA MENACED BY A PRUSSIANIZED TRADE BY DEBTS PICKETT THE ABINGDON PRESS NEW YORK .^- ^.% CINCINNATI • 883 A-^^^ BOOK 178. 1.P586W c. 1 PICKETT # WOODEN HORSE 3 T153 ODDb ■*.■ "rz. OF COMPUMENTARY '4UJI. 'ill V\\J The Wooden Horse --^<^^ "^ OR America Menaced by a 'V 53 Prussianized Trade I \(t ^ ^^ BY DEETS PICKETT Research Secretary r^oard of Tempeiance, Prohibition, and Public Morals of the Methodist Episcopal Church THE ABINGDON PRESS NEW YORK CINCINNATI Copyright, 191 8, by DEBTS PICKETT TABLE OF CONTENTS Page I. A Clarion Call 5 11. Destiny Knocks at the Door 6 III. Rivers of Money Running to Waste 9 IV. Drink, Where Are Our Men? .... 15 V. The Mills of the God Mars 22 VI. "Lick the Plate, and We'll Lick THE Kaiser" 29 VII. The Railways and Ships 36 VIII. Prince Henry's Conspiracy 40 IX. Beer — The International Brute. . 53 X. Our Allies 69 XI. That America May Be Strong 79 XII. The Call of the Crisis 85 XIII. Lest Haply We Should be Found Fighting Against God 88 A CLARION CALL Sir David Beatty is now admiral of the great British fighting fleet. When the German High Seas Fleet came into the open off Jutland, Beatty found them. He had under his command four lightly armored, big-gunned battle cruisers. With these four ships he seized the entire German navy in a fighting grip, and altho his losses were heavy, he held them until the British fleet arrived. The following clarion call to Britain was voiced by Sir David, that true son of the bull-dog breed : ''Surely the i\lmighty God does not intend this war to be just a hideous fracas, a bloody, drunken orgy? There must be a purpose in it; improve- ment must come out of it. "In that direction France has already shown us the way, and has risen out of her ruined cities with a revived religion that is most wonderful. "England still remains to be taken out of the stupor of self-satisfaction and complacency in which her flourishing condition has steeped her, and until she can be stirred out of this condition, until religious revival takes place at home, just so long will the war continue. "When she can look on the future with humbler eyes and a prayer on her lips, then we can begin to count the days toward the end." What England needed then, we need to-day. II DESTINY KNOCKS AT THE DOOR Eight months ago the United States of Amer- ica was faced by the necessity of skulking hke a whipped hound to its kennel or accepting war. The American people elected war. Since that fateful Good Friday, decision after decision has rushed upon us with earth-shaking step. To-day we see with appalling clearness that upon us falls the duty of supplying the ir- resistible force which is needed to crush the legions of Germany and yield the victory which cannot be gained by any agency except the army in the field. Russia, mad with the weed of spurious liberty, seems intent only upon ''forty acres and a mule for every mujik." Italy, Serbia, Roumania, with thin industrial organizations, do not seem able to cope with the barbarian. The French can beat him. The liritish can beat him. iUit their vic- tories are scanty and aUtTmic. We must add to the demonstrated superiority of the Briton and the Frenchman, the crushing, not-to-be-defied might of a nation which has cleansed itself of all weakness. We have to defeat veteran armies and it will require millions of men. ( )ur soldiers, trained in abstinence, must be backed by four times their number of laborers, likewise unhampered by drink weakness. The ships to move men and supplies must be forthcoming in numbers here- tofore believed impossible to produce. The vast sums of money demanded must be insured by the elimination of waste. The precious fuel and precious food, the essential tonnage of transporta- 6 DESTINY KNOCKS AT THE DOOR tion must be found by the very limit of production and conservation. Clear as the noonday is the fact that this war might have been over but for the same spirit that has insisted upon toleration of drink. We, the Allies, have despised the margins of victory. Because drink robbed us of the labor of only a few hundred thou- sand men, we thought we could tolerate it. Because it seized the food of only a few mil- lions, we felt that we could take a chance. But we have seen the bitter days when a little more food, a little more man-power, a little more transportation and a few more ships might have pushed us across the goal line of victory. And the needed margin of victory remembered our contempt and mocked our distress. America should not fight this war another day with the drink traffic hanging to its arm. Any- thing less than the elimination of all preventable disease, all preventable waste, all preventable weakness from the war program will be a degra- dation of the nation's place and spirit. No one asks that war prohibition be considered except in the light of war's necessities. If it will help us win safety for Democracy and security for our homes, we should have it. If it will not, we should not demand it. No honest and intelligent man can consider the simple facts and doubt that it would help us to win. IMillions of men believe that we cannot win without it. While we stop to drink, the rape of Belgium is being consummated and the rape of America is being planned. Every glass of beer is mixed with the blood of our soldiers ; every glass of whisky is distilled from the heart contents of men who are hanging their bodies upon barbed wire and plunging thru the hell of the barrage for us. What is the greatest destroyer of food? DRINK! THE WOODEN HORSE What is the greatest destroyer of labor? DRINK! What is the greatest destroyer of financial strength? DRINK! What is imperiling our ship-building pro- gram, helping the submarines, congesting our railways, docks and warehouses, prolonging the war, and costing us unnumbered precious lives and billions of money? DRINK! Ill RIVERS OF MONEY RUNNING TO WASTE Probably you will meet with a smile the state- ment that America is spending $2,438,037,985.50 each year for drink. The people have no realiza- tion of this fact. What is the relation of that appalling waste to the successful conduct of the war ? Money is the first warrior to the front in any conflict. Before men or munitions must come the raising of vast sums of money. The first step of the American government in this war was the floating of a two-billion-dollar loan and the introduction of a bill to increase taxes by as much more. By cutting off our expenditure for drink we could have taken care of that first great Liberty Loan and could have bought a fleet w^ith the change. If the drink expenditure for 1917 had been wiped out, every family in the United States could have purchased $100 of the Loan. Possibly the drink expenditure would not have been invested in the war loan. But certainly one of three things would have been done with it. It would ( I ) have been spent for Liberty Bonds ; (2) would have been spent in the promotion of legitimate industry; (3) would have been spent for legitimate commodities. ' If it had been invested in the war loan, the in- vestor would have benefited, and the govern- ment would have profited. If it had been in- vested in the promotion of legitimate business, 9 THE WOODEN HORSE the whole structure of industry would have been strengthened; the stock and bond market would have been sustained; there would have been an abundance of capital for the making of extensions necessary to the handling of war orders ; and we would have insured that "business as usual," which is one of the essentials of national power. If it had been spent for legitimate commodities, we would have turned into the channels of legiti- mate trade a vivifying force equal to our entire outgoing foreign trade. The raising of taxes would have been immediately facilitated. During this war the South has afforded us a startling illustration of the effect which is pro- duced by a relatively small access of prosperity. In 1914 the cotton crop sold for $750.000,000 — and the South was in distress. Individuals were harangued to ''buy a bale" and hold it till normal prices were reestablished. The poorer farmers, especially the Xegro farmers, actually lacked food and clothing. In 19 16 the cotton crop sold for $1,250,000,000, only $500,000,000 more. But that $500,000,000 made all the difference between dire poverty and abounding prosperity. The Negroes who had been hungry were buying small automobiles. The Southern industrial establish- ments readily found that "last ten per cent" which represents productive capital. Laborers whose wives had been glad to wear brogans in 1914 brought their families into the shops to be shod with eight and ten-dollar footwear, paid the bills with greenbacks peeled from fat rolls, and departed to deposit the remaindep in the banks. If $500,000,000 could make that difference in the South, what would nearly $2,500,000,000 added to the sum total of our trade in healthy values mean to the nation? Suppose that a man from Mars were to arrive suddenly upon this planet with a vast sum of money. Suppose he were to say, "We lack all kinds of useful commodities on Mars; and I am 10 MONEY RUNNING TO WASTE commissioned to place an order with American producers for two and one-half billion dollars worth of goods." What would be the effect of that record order ? Cash registers would be hum- ming, labor would be amply paid. Nowhere in America would there be want among the willing and industrious. Then suppose that, at the end of the year, the man from Mars were to say: 'T have over- looked the fact that there is no way for us to secure delivery of these goods, altho we have been able to transport their equivalent as pay- ment. But on Mars we are intensely sympa- thetic with your war for the safety of Demo- cracy. I will pay for the goods, but you may keep them as the contribution of our planet to the defense of civilization upon the earth." Sell the goods and keep them too ! That is exactly the proposition offered by prohibition. What is the practical power of this money that we pass so readily over the bar in exchange for poverty and insanity, delinquency and deficiency ? If the $2,438,037,985.50 spent for liquor in the United States last year were used for the sup- port of the army until the end of the next fiscal year, July, 1918, this is what it would accom- plish : It would insure the salaries of our fighting men ($715,828,440) ; would pay for necessary transportation in mobilizing our troops and equipment ($450,490,305) ; it would clothe ($375,506,097) and provide subsistence ($329,- 672,218) for the army; would allow the medical corps to keep up its work and erect hospitals ($100,026,000) ; it would cover the ordnance stores ammunition ($39,520,000) and ordnance stores supplies ($70,000,000) ; would erect barracks and quarters for the troops ($82,118,- 000) ; maintain the civilian training camps ($2,- 119,000) ; the very important engineer depart- ment could operate with sufficient funds ($104,- 300,000) ; would maintain the quartermaster's II THE WOODEN HORSE department ($163,917,925) ; and the signal corps ($3,000,000) ; and besides all this would leave a balance of $1,540,000.50. Or consider the significance of this drink ex- penditure in its relation to the great gray ships which await in menacing patience the irruption of the Kaiser's fleet. The first taxation proposal of the government was for $2,002,000,000. We could pay that tax out of the drink bill and still have $436,000,000. or enough to build a sea-going fleet which would definitely establish American naval supremacy over the Kaiser. The American people sank in beer and whisky the equivalent of enough battleships and sub- marines to drive the German fleet from the seas. What could be done with $436,000,000? It would build ten battleships, each costing $11,- 500,000; five battle cruisers at $16,500,000; five scout cruisers at $5,000,000 each ; 20 torpedo boat destroyers at $1,200,000 each ; 3 fuel ships at $1,500,000 each; 10 gunboats at $900,000 each; a flotilla of 60 submarines at $1,000,000 each ; and leave $1 16,000,000 to be used for their armor and armament which are not included in the above figures. Hov^ much longer are the people going to allow the sinking each year of this vast fleet, even before it is built? The fact that the drink traflic returns to the government a small part of what it wrings from the people is no argument for the c(Mitinuation of its ravages. The drink seller can no more help to carry the burdens of government than the gambler and prostitute. He is part of that burclen. The highwayman who stops you upon the street and demands your money or your life spends his ill-gtn gains. He even pays a tax upon the pistol he thrusts into your face. Hut no man would contend that he is an asset to the national treasury. Read what Professor Irving Fisher, the coun- 12 MONEY RUNNING TO WASTE try's leading political economist, thinks of the drink revenue : 'Tn 19 1 6 the federal government received less than $250,000,000 as revenue from alcoholic liquors, and only $89,000,000 of this was from fermented liquors. This is less than 10 per cent of the Liherty Loan, less than 5 per cent of a Vear's war expenditure. "These taxes are PAID BY THE CON- SUIMER, who pays in addition $2,000,000,000 which the government DOES NOT GET and which is worse than wasted. The nation loses annually $2,000,000,000 worth of energy in the production of licjuors. Under prohibition this expenditure would be transferred to channels truly productive, the government could still get its $250,000,000 and the people would have $2,- 000,000,000 more in their pockets in additional food, munitions, clothing, etc. ''Besides this there would be an increase in productive energy of from 10 to 20 per cent. In Russia textile mills increased their productivity 9 per cent under prohibition, the Russian mines increased their productivity 30 per cent, and the Finnish mines 50 per cent. A Connecticut manu- facturer, after careful reckoning, found that elimination of drunkenness would increase his factory's output 20 per cent. "The total income of the United States is about $45,000,000,000, of which three fourths consists of wages and profits. By prohibition we would, at least, gain $2,200,000,000 thru the release of human energy, in addition to the $2,000,000,000 saved by diverting drink ex- penditure to useful production, to say noth- ing of the saving in the cost of jails, alms- houses, asylums, and the reduction of the death rate. "Prohibition would not destroy revenue. New tax levies are easy to construct. The net result will not be additional economic or tax burdens, but quite the contrary. One might as well argue 13 THE WOODEN HORSE against a public measure to reduce the death rate on the ground that it would reduce the receipts from inheritance taxes. To keep alcohol for revenue is as absurd as to burn a house in order to roast a pig. Even without laying new taxes the old ones would yield more revenue automatically. For instance, the income tax would yield lo per cent more. IMost other tax receipts would increase correspondingly. **We could even, for the present, let the tax bill alone and take a quarter or half billion of the over-subscription to the Libertv Loan. "WE SIMPLY CANNOT AFFORD THE DRINK REVENUE IN WAR TIME. IT COSTS TOO MUCH." As the wick burns, oil, creeping slowly up, feeds the flame. As the saloon prospers, wealth, creeping slowly up from the basins of national prosperity, feeds the fire. In the realms of trade the drink traffic is an Apache. If it cannot secure its money by fraud, it tries theft; if theft is not remunerative, it uses mur- der. The blackjack, dynamite, and fire are its arguments in local option campaigns, while the boycott and political corruption serve its state and national purposes admirably. There is noth- ing it will not do, good or bad, if only dividends will be yielded. And when the simple facts, the irresistible arguments for prohibition, are laid before the j)eople, the liquor trade offers in opposition a defense so frantic, so absurd in its methods, that one is reminded of a howling dervish with a Roman candle. The situation is illuminated, of course, but col(^r and direction are changed a bit too often for efficiency. IV DRINK, WHERE ARE OUR MEN? Money first, but MEN must come next. The call for men sounded over the land, and ten million strong they came forward. Out of the homes of the clean and strong they came by millions. Four out of five of them were found physically fit. Then Drink advanced to make its offering. And as its share it turned over to the registrars of the national army its surging mob of rickety, half-made, slum-bred incompetents for examina- tion. Four out of five of them were found physically unfit. Clear-eyed, sturdy and strong, physically fault- less and morally clean, the hope of the nation, two million young Americans have marched away to the camps to defend the nation and the unfit who made themselves unfit with beer and foul women. Diseased, unclean, physically rotten, the peril of the nation, the rejected men of the drink- made slums are marching back — to breed ! During the past twenty years the liquor traffic in America has been responsible for nearly two million deaths. We need soldiers and the liquor traffic killed them years ago. We need laborers and Drink struck them down with a Kaiser's blow in the days gone by. Three times as many American babies died in 191 5 as the German soldiers succeeded in killing of British men. Alcoholic liquor was the great- est single factor in that murderous record. One year of drink murder is responsible for 15 THE WOODEN HORSE more slain than were killed in the battles of Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Antietam, Chicka- maiiga, Cold Harbor, Fredericksburg, Man- assas, Shiloh, Murfreesboro, and Petersburg. The Committee of the Aledico-Actuarial Mor- tality Investigation found by investigating the records of two million lives that the drinking men in that group lost an average of four years each. Estimates based upon Danish actuarial investiga- tions indicate that each pint of beer consumed costs the drinker twenty-five minutes of life. If we were to lose five hundred thousand men in this war, we could make good that loss in ten years by stopping Drink's murder of our citizens. Concerning these things, there are no longer two opinions among informed men. The Amer- ican Medical Association has formally denounced alcohol, denied its claims of omnipotent medicinal powers and declared hostility to it as a beverage. The Health boards of New York, Chicago, and a score of other cities have assailed it. The Life Extension Institute, a score of State medical boards, nurses' associations and unnumbered thousands of physicians have warned the country against it. In the light of modern medical science, the giving of rum to soldiers who are in immediate clanger of suflfering wounds, is a stab in the back. The soldier's resistance to shock and infection is greatly decreased by alcohol. The drinking man is in much greater danger of contracting tuberculosis ; he is much more likely to suffer from trench feet. lUit there is a danger far greater than tuber- culosis or trench feet. The drink trade, after the United States has weeded out its beer-fed incapables, camps on the trail of America's select youth with its bars and prostitutes, and does its utmost to drag down wholesome men and make ihem rioters, associates of harlots and disease- rotted slackers. i6 DRINK, WHERE ARE OUR MEN? It is true that Congress has forbidden the sale of drink to soldiers. The infinite blessings of this law indicate that a policy of complete con- sistency on the part of the government, a policy that demands of the man behind the soldier the same efficiency that is demanded of the man be- hind the gun, would yield enormous results. The wide difference in the effect of the law prohibit- ing the sale of alcoholic beverages in wet terri- tory and in dry territory also calls in stentorian tones for the enactment of prohibition thruout the, nation, for the drink trade has maintained to- ward this law the same attitude it has main- tained toward every other law which affects its dividends. It is reported that in Philadelphia, some "patriotic" beer men provided garments to cover uniforms so that the informing insignia could not be seen and they could claim ignorance as their excuse for breaking the law. In wet terri- tory scores of men are being arrested weekly for attempting to debauch American troops. But what has been the result of this law in territory where the civilian is on the same plane as the soldier? The camps in prohibition States have established a record for soberness and moral cleanliness never before approached in the history of the world. Mr. Joseph H. Odell, in special correspondence to the Outlook, issue of November 14, 1917, declares that at Camp Han- cock, near Augusta, in the prohibition State of Georgia, "there has not been a new case of venereal disease discovered in the six weeks the Regiment has been in camp." "The statement seems so incredible that I went to the divisional surgeon. Colonel C. M. Kellar, and verified it with my own eyes on the dailv health reports at headquarters," writes Mr. Odell. "Such a thing is almost beyond belief. The judge-advocate also told me that in six weeks there had been only four cases of *drunk and 17 THE WOODEN HORSE disorderly* in the entire division of 27,000 men. Naturally, I wanted to know what lay behind this almost immaculate condition. "The little city of Augusta is only four miles from the camp, and I determined to make an investigation. A newspaper man, writing for a syndicate of papers in a Xorthern city, helped me considerably. 'This is a Sunday-school out- fit with a vengeance,' he said. 'Where can you get a drink? W^hy, old man, you will have to go back home for it ! I've been here six weeks and I don't know where you could get a pony to save your life. There was a man here last week who had a bottle in his room, but he's gone now. They tell me that if you make friends with exactly the right native, and he's dead sure you're not a plain-clothes man, he might get a bottle of rye for you ; but it would cost from six to ten ' bucks and be poor stuff at that ! And women ? Why, there isn't a house in town, and I doubt if there is a professional in the region. The local authorities have cooperated with the Fosdick Commission and cleaned the place up as I never saw a place cleaned up before. Soldiers some- times find what they are looking for, but it is clandestine and occasional. There is no com- mercialized vice.' **r\irther inquiry about town, interrogations of hackdrivers and likely loafers, and a more care- ful questioning of the military police confirmed the correspondent's statement. I doubt whether any city near a large military establishment was ever as clean as Augusta. I found similar con- ditions in Spartanburg. South Carolina, but that is a nuich smaller place, and tiiercfore more easily handled. I am now convinced that something more than the climate determined the choice of those cantonments. Where liquor is absolutely banished from a region, the moral problems of the military commanders are reduced almost to the mininuun. And I write the following de- liberately about Camp Hancock: That I would 18 DRINK, WHERE ARE OUR MEN? rather intrust the moral character of my boy to that camp than to any college or university I know. This does not cast any unusually dark shadow upon the educational institutions of the country, but they have never possessed the abso- lute power to control their environment that is now held by the War Department. And it does not mean that Camp Hancock is conspicuously better than the other Southern camps." In contrasting conditions at Camp Hancock with conditions at wet El Paso, where he was at the time of the Mexican mobilization. Colonel George C. Richards, said : "This is heaven com- pared to El Paso. Since coming South I have smelled liquor on the breath of only one man. The drink situation and the matter of disorderly houses are both under control. The folks at home have no cause for worry." Similar news comes from Camp Funston in Kansas and from other camps in other prohi- bition States. Captain R. C. Winslow, regimental surgeon at Camp Custer, declares that prohi- bition increases the efficiency of soldiers one hun- dred per cent; and the commandant at Fort Sheridan, Colonel W. J. Nicholson, asserts that drink is responsible for ninety-five per cent of the military crime at that post near the wet city of Chicago. Small wonder that Surgeon-Gen- eral Gorgas of the army and Surgeon-General Braisted of the navy are both prohibitionists. Since prohibition produces results so astonish- ing as a reenforcement of the law forbidding the sale of liquor to soldiers, certainly the only sensi- ble thing for the American people to do is to de- mand a nation-wide dry zone as the logical basis of that law. Indeed, this is absolutely necessary to protect the men against those diseases which deplete ranks almost as seriously as the casual- ties of the battlefield. The influence of alcohol as a causation of venereal disease is placed at all the way from thirty-nine per cent of all infections by Not- 19 THE WOODEN HORSE thaft, to seventy-six per cent by Forel, and eighty per cent by Douglas White. A man out of the war is "ouf whether he has been ehminated by a German bullet or an Amer- ican harlot. /\t one time an allied nation had in one hospital camp 17,000 soldiers suffering from venereal disease. The evil women, who are the practical allies of the Kaiser, have struck down 200,000 British soldiers in France alone, according to a statement of the London Daily Mail for April 5, 191 7. "There is an intimate, and not well under- stood, relation between alcohol and the venereal diseases," says Dr. Charles E. Riggs, medical inspector of the United States Navy, at Norfolk, Mrginia. ''Alcohol and venereal disease are close allies." He comments upon the fact that promoters of vice use alcohol to stimulate trade. Of the utmost importance are tlie figures Dr. Riggs proffers in support of his statement. He says, in giving the experience of the naval medical officers at Norfolk : "Our statistics show that prior to the time of enforcement of the prohibition law in the State of \'irginia, there were 365 infections, and 137, oi" 37-5 P^^" cent, of the infected admit being under the influence of alcohol at the time the disease was contracted, and 228, or 62.5 per cent, deny alcohol. Since the enforcement of prohi- bition there have been 93 infections, of which II, or 1 1.8 per cent, were acquired while under the influence of alcohol, and all but two of these were contracted outside of the State and in wet territory. Of the 548 infections investigated 148, or 32.3 per cent, were acquired while under the influence of some kind of alcohol. Alcohol is still a factor in the venereal problem, but owing to increasing prohibitory legislation it is a dimin- ishing factor." The men who advocate complete ])r()hibition for the war are accused of being fanatical. Per- 20 DRINK, WHERE ARE OUR MEN? haps they are. Where there is fanaticism, there is energy, and where there is energy there is work, and where there is work there is accom- phshment. If it is fanaticism to feel an intense and burning hatred of the hcense system which hinders the soldierly efficiency of our men at a time when the nation is in danger, then we are fanatical, and so is every other man who has a shred of patriotism in his soul. 21 THE MILLS OF THE GOD MARS The day when armies fought armies is past. Now nations fight nations. Over the looms and before the blazing furnaces, on the platforms of ten thousand warehouses and on a hundred thou- sand swaying railway cars, the soldiers of the republic are contriving the defeat of Germany. What infinite folly, then, to discriminate be- tween the soldier in uniform and the soldier in overalls in our treatment of the liquor traffic ! LABOR is the most vital consideration of the war program. We must build ships as we never built them before, or we may expect to see the submarines triumphant, our coast cities bom- barded, our little ones rent with exploding bombs, and perhaps our country devastated and our women dishonored as the unoffending countries of France and lielgium were ruined and polluted. And LABOR must build the ships, labor must make the uniforms, labor must grow the wheat and corn, labor must mine the coal that goes to feed the hot vitals of the mills with which the god Mars is grinding forth victory. LABOR must move everything that is moved. When Germany graciously informed us that we could send one ship to England each week, provided we would decorate it with convict stripes, the industries of this nation were under such strain as they never knew before. Day and night they were working to munition the forces of civilization, and to maintain the high-speed traffic of our own people. Laborers were pre- cious almost beyond price. And then we added to the burden upon our 22 THE MILLS OF THE GOD MARS industries the greatest war program in history. We gave them twice as much to do AND LESS TO DO IT WITH, for two milHon men were withdrawn from the farms and forges to face the brutal Hindenburg. The result might have been accurately fore- told by a child. The cantonments were late in preparation. Needed equipment arrived weeks after it was expected. The ship-building pro- gram is far behind. There is only one solution to our problem. Men must be diverted from the destructive to the con- structive trades. Not only is every ounce of power used in making, distributing, or transport- ing booze worse than wasted, but this loss of labor is directly productive of a far worse loss in de- creased efficiency. Consider the one item of fuel. Upon a steady and ample stream of coal depends our entire in- dustrial organization. At this very moment fac- tories are running on short time because coal is lacking. In many cities there is actual suffering for want of coal to feed the furnaces of schools and residences. And yet the drink trade is at this moment responsible for the loss of the entire time of 15,000 miners. "It is safe to say that our loss in production due to the use of alcoholic beverages by the men, amounts to ten per cent," writes one coal com- pany which mines anthracite. This concern esti- mates that in anthracite alone, the country loses 7,500,000 tons yearly and they support their esti- mate by figures showing a loss of 80 mine cars of coal in two days following one pay day and the loss of 750 tons following one pay day and Labor Day. "Drink is seriously interfering with the opera- tion of our coal mines," declares another concern in pleading for immediate national prohibition. "Twenty-five per cent of the men are off one or two days after each pay day." "Alcohol is reducing the output of our mines 23 THE WOODEN HORSE by one fourth," testifies another operator. The estimate of twenty-five per cent loss because of drink is a favorite one with mine men. Hun- dreds of coal companies have furnished detailed information showing that their mines have actu- ally been closed from five to six days a month on account of booze. "Drink is responsible for ten per cent of our men being idle all of the time and twenty-one per cent after pay day," is the ex- perience of a Pennsylvania mine. "The government is calling upon us for in- creased production and then continues to tolerate the one thing that does more than all else to decrease production," writes the head of one great mine company, in almost bitter words. "If President Wilson will exercise the power vested in him and stop the manufacture of beer, Lincoln's name will pale into insignificance," writes another, who adds: "Prohibition should be nation-wide. If liquor is permitted in one place and not in another, the more ignorant type of laborers will be inclined to follow the saloons. In West Virginia prohibition has done more for mining than was believed possible, but the mines have lost some men to Pennsylvania because they wanted the saloons and prostitutes." Almost without exception, the coal operators whose testimony has been compiled, but whose names must be held confidential to protect them from sabotage and boycott, advise immediate national prohibiti(^n as a vital necessity. Many of them in no-licensc communities contrast con- (Htions with those obtaining in the wet days. ( )ne concern, the White Oak Coal Company, of McDonald, West \'irginia, has made public a contrast between three Saturday pay days and Mondays following when the State had saloons and the corresponding days of the first dry year. The figures show an increase of 32.1(78 tons in favor of the dry period. The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company have also permitted the use of 24 THE MILLS OF THE GOD MARS their name in connection- with a similar con- trast. No wonder that the National Coal Producers' Association in convention at Pittsburgh on Octo- ber 22i, 1917, requested the government to sur- round the nation's mines with the five-mile bone- dry zone which now protects its camps. The manufacturers of motor vehicles, of rub- ber products, of leather goods, of steel and iron — these, and many other groups, are sounding a clanging alarm. In Akron, Ohio, a great rubber company is devoting one department to manufacturing nose-clips for gas masks. They are working only two shifts a day instead of three. On one Saturday, following the Friday pay day, only six men in one shift of sixty reported for work. Superintendent of this department asserts that drink is responsible for ninety per cent of his labor troubles. Consider the single industry of iron and steel. These manufacturers may be quoted. Eighty- three of them representing the greatest single industrial group in the world, have gone on record as demanding the elimination of alcohol, as an industrial necessitv. This is the mightv roll : The Interstate Iron and Steel Company, East Chicago, Indiana ; the American Manganese Steel Company, Chicago Heights, Illinois ; the Wiscon- sin Steel Company, Chicago, Illinois ; Mackin- tosh, Hemphill & Co., Pennsylvania; the Girard Iron Company, Ohio ; the Lackawanna Steel Company, New York ; the Josephine Furnace & Coke Company, Pennsylvania ; Thurlow Steel Works, Pennsylvania ; Lockland Iron and Steel Company, Ohio ; the Lebanon A^alley Iron and Steel Company, Lebanon, Pennsylvania; the Union Steel Casting Company, Pennsylvania ; Chicago Railway Equipment Company, Illinois ; the Thomas Iron Company, Pennsylvania ; the Altoona Iron Company, Pennsylvania; the Mary- 25 THE WOODEN HORSE land . Steel Company, Maryland ; the Empire Steel and Iron Company, Pennsylvania ; Amer- ican ]\lalleables Company, New York; the Em- pire Rolling ]\Iill Company, Ohio ; Seaboard Steel Casting Company, Pennsylvania; the Rogers- Shears Company, Pennsylvania ; the American Rolling Mill Company, Ohio; the Logan Iron and Steel Company, Pennsylvania ; Marting Iron and Steel Company, Ohio ; the Andrews & Hitch- cock Iron Company, Ohio ; Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, Ohio ; the Delaware River Steel Company, Pennsylvania ; Stanley Flagg Company, Pennsylvania ; the Penn Steel Castings and Machine Company, Pennsylvania ; the Thomas Iron Company, Easton, Pennsylvania; the Pennsylvania Steel Company, Pennsylvania ; George B. Lessig Company, Pennsylvania ; the Reading Steel Castings Company, Pennsylvania ; the Wyoming Shovel Works, Pennsylvania ; the Cleveland Furnace Company, Ohio; the Marion Malleable Iron Works, Indiana ; the Union Roll- ing Mill Company, Ohio; the Duquesne Steel Foundry Company, Pennsylvania : David P>rad- ley Manufacturing Works, Illinois ; the Ameri- can Manganese Manufacturing Company, Penn- sylvania ; the Allegheny Steel Company, Penn- sylvania ; Spang, Chalfant & Co., Inc., Pennsyl- vania ; the A. M. Byers Company, Pennsylvania ; the Columbus Iron and Steel Company, ()hio; The Farrell-Cheek Steel Foundry Company, Ohio; Mclnnes Steel Company, Ltd., Pennsyl- vania ; the Cleveland I-^urnace Company, Ohio ; Follansbee r)rothers Company, West \'irginia ; Phillips Sheet Tin Plate Company, West \^ir- ginia ; the Buckeye Rolling Mill Company, New- ark, Ohio; the American Steel Foundries, Al- liance, Ohio; Otis Steel Company, Ohio; the American Brake Shoe and Foundry Company, Norwood, ]\rass. ; the Interstate Iron and Steel Company, Chicago. Illinois ; Oliver Chilled Plow Works, Indiana: the Chicago Malleable Castings Co., Illinois; Columbia Tool Steel Company, 26 THE MILLS OF THE GOD MARS Chicago ; the IlHnois Steel Company, Chicago ; the Indiana Steel Company, Chicago; American Brake Shoe and Foundry Company, Chicago; the Upson Nut Company, Ohio ; the DeForest Sheet and Tin Plate Company, Ohio ; the Ameri- can Steel & Wire Company, Newburgh, Ohio ; Newburgh Steel Works, Ohio ; Emma Furnace, Newburgh, Ohio ; the Buckeye Rolling Mill Com- pany. Steubenville, Ohio; the Belfont Iron Works, Ohio; Reeves ^Manufacturing Company, Ohio: the Scranton Bolt and Nut Company, Pennsylvania ; the American Steel and Wire Company, Cleveland, Ohio; the Reliance Steel Casting Company, Pennsylvania ; Crane Com- pany, Illinois ; the Marion Steam Shovel Com- pany, Ohio ; the Illinois Steel Company, Joliet, Illinois ; the Berkshire Iron W^orks, Pennsylvania ; the American Sheet and Tin Plate Company, West Virginia ; Lukens Iron and Steel Company ; Pennsylvania ; the Reading Iron Company, Penn- svlvania ; Joseph E. Thropp, Pennsylvania ; the Interstate Iron and Steel Company, Cambridge, Ohio; the West Steel Casting Company, Cleve- land, Ohio. If we could measure labor in terms of man- power, we would find a yearly loss of twenty-nine million tons of brawn-units simply in moving beer from place to place. Thruout the activities of our industry the liquor trade is taking the equivalent of thirty days of labor each time the four seasons pass. Now, when the world's safety hangs upon our effort, is no time to fool and gamble with peril. If we, when the guns begin to roll this spring, are not ready to the last man and the last ship and the last gun, we will pay the cost with a million lives and twenty billion dollars. Not all of the months are campaign months. The delay which will cost us sixty days of campaign weather will cost us also months of weary trench warfare in waiting for the fighting time of 1919. 27 • THE WOODEN HORSE A few months ago an Italian mission in Wash- ington was pleading for fuel and mmiitions. Everybody knew it. Also everybody knew that ~ practically nothing could be done for Italy be- cause the ships were lacking. The ships were lacking because material and labor were lacking. Material and labor were lacking, according to the testimony of hundreds of industrial leaders because drink was cutting the efficiency of labor and preventing its full-time effort. If the United States had prohibited the drink trade in April, 1917, one factor in the Italian disaster would evidently have been eliminated, and Cadorna might have been at Trieste and Laibach. The chances that the war will end in 191 8 are slowly glimmering out. Unless the nations opposing Germany stop their fooling now and begin to make a full-time, one hundred per cent effort only God knows when it will end. Drink is more responsible for this than any- thing else. And then when objection is made, the trade protests that we are troubling the coun- try. ''And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him. Art thou he that troublcth Israel? And he answered, I have not troubled Israel ; but thou, and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the command- ments of the Lord, and thou hast followed lUialim" (i Kings 18. 17-18). 28 VI 'TICK THE PLATE AND WE'LL LICK THE KAISER" This war will be won not by the last million men but by the last million bushels of grain. ''Armies," said Napoleon, "advance on their bellies." If we are to lick the Kaiser, we must lick the plate. France entered the campaign of 19 17 with a 127,000,000 bushel deficit in grain. England is even now in the shadow of the bread ticket. The allied nations are sustaining a grain shortage of 200,000,000 bushels. America will never know what it owes to Mr. Herbert Hoover and his devoted stafif, who grappled with this situation in full faith that the American people would overcome it with in- telligence and courage. Lawns by the million became gardens, schoolboys left their books to go into the field, housewives learned the world importance of leftovers and pledged themselves by the millions to wheatless days and meatless days. But there are no beerless days ! When the food bill was under consideration by the United States Senate, the unscrupulous men sufficiently debased to lobby for German beer against Amer- ican bread swarmed upon Washington with bigotry and hate flaming in their ranks. The tyranny of the trade which had held its hand upon tile throat of America these generations gone was passing, and it writhed in venomous fear. That trade and these men, American allies of Berlin, told the American Congress that it could stop the wasting of food by everyone but the 29 THE WOODEN HORSE brewers ! Threats of treason and rebellion, of sabotage and strikes were drifting around. The breweries and the slums ruled at least to the ex- tent that beer was not then prohibited. And yet the manufacture of beer is the great- est single waste of food in the United States. x\ll the elements that enter into food prices are deleteriously affected by the liquor trade. Al- cohol cannot be made without destroying car- bohydrate foods such as sugar and starch. And while this destruction proceeds unchecked, the high cost of living is making life itself almost prohibitive. The American pantry, stocked with the pitiful savings of faithful women who love the republic, is being raided. Victor Hugo said, 'The hunger of my children shall be the enemy of my thirst." We are taking food from the mouths of little ones to enrich the brewers who roll along our boulevards in limousines. It is a bitter absurdity to pry mouth- fuls of bread from the teeth of our babies and at the same time allow the continued raiding of our food supply by those who produce nothing but crime and insanity and j)overty and death. We are told that the government, which can take a man's profits and his business, his auto- mobile and his house, which can send his body to the trenches and his soul winging into the mysteries cannot turn down his beer glass, because the workingmen will strike! It is a black slander of our working population. Prohibition would not make these men sullen or rebellious. They are no less patriotic than others. They are even more burdened by the high price of bread than other classes. They would respond heartily to the supreme call to efficient war if that call were made. And it ill behooves spoon-fed profiteers to libel them in the meantime. The bald fact is that the time will soon be upon us when we must choose between empty cup- boards and empty glasses. 30 "LICK THE PLATE— LICK THE KAISER" The beer trade is using iio2U food sufficient to support 5,555,000 hard-working- men for an en- tire year. By stopping brewing w^e could gain a food supply more than sufficient to feed five times over any army we can put into France this year! In 191 5 we used, in making beer, ap- proximately 3,495,125,040 pounds of malt; 191,- 413,943 pounds of rice; 460,128,650 pounds of corn; 63,979,560 pounds of grape sugar; 58,165,- 083 pounds of hops ; 45,505,673 pounds of glucose and other material to the amount of 4,706,247 bushels, 232,429,685 pounds, 73,928 gallons. Turned into calories, or food units, these items amount to 6,894,273,468,150. If the land used in growing hops in America, 44,000 acres, were devoted to food products, its output would much more than feed the entire enlisted force of the navy. The breW'Crs are exerting themselves now to minimize the food they destroy. But in the Yearbook of the United States Brewers' Asso- ciation for the year 19 14, page 156, the follow- ing claim is made : "In the course of the fiscal year 19 13 grain and other farm products to the value of $113,513,971 were used in the manufacture of liquors. The full significance o£ this amount can best be appreciated if we compare it v^ith the reports of the last U. S. census on the total value of the crops in certain typical States which show that it exceeded the total combined crop values in the census year of Vermont, Maryland, and West Virginia; of Massa- chusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Florida; of Louisiana (with its great cotton and sugar interests), New Hampshire, and Utah; or of Maine, Connecticut, Delaware, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming." And again — in the National Wholesale Liquor Dealers' Association Anti-Prohibition Manual for 1916, the following is found on page 21 : "According to the U. S. Statistical Ab- 31 THE WOODEN HORSE stracts, there are three hundred thousand farmers raising corn, barley, rye, hops, and fruits that go into the production of liquor. They receive in prices from the liquor interests of the country two hundred million dollars an- nually. Destroy this market and you reduce their purchasing power by two hundred million dollars a year. This means a corresponding reduction in the volume of all business — the output of the mines, mills, and factories. When you hear a prohibition speech you will imagine that only corn and only a small per cent of that is used in the production of liquor. They do not tell you the whole truth. They never intimated that barley, rye, hops, and fruits go into the produc- tion of liquor. We are not afraid of the whole truth. The brewers and distilleries of Peoria alone consume the entire surplus crop of Iowa and Illinois." The land misused in feeding the brewers' vats would make a field two miles wide and reaching entirely around the earth at the equator. If this waste could be stopped, the people would secure a substantial margin upon the food essentials of life. That bare fact is all that the people need upon which to base action. They know that food cannot be dcstrined without making what is left cost more, and THEY PAY THE PRICE. It is a race between the brewers' big horses, with Death lashing the team, and the bread cart, with Victory driving. Take the single item of sugar. The poor are staring to-day at a famine price on this com- modity and their hearts sink while the brewers are using milhons of pounds of sugar annually to make their C^icrman drink. The candy-makers have been put upon rations ! When you were a boy you remember you would bgast, "Just as easy as taking candy from a baby !" Now you know how easy that is. The brewers are doing it with consummate and devilish facility. Pos- sibly the candy-makers would fare better if they 32 "LICK THE PLATE— LICK THE KAISER" were to join the German- American Alliance, to which practically all of the brewers belong, and which protects them by its threats when Congress considers any legislation inimical to this special interest. Fifteen cents a pound for sugar is the ap- proaching price, and every year the beer trade destroys many days' supply of that article. And we permit it — in exchange for famine prices on the food that is most essential to our children, the food that above all others gives warmth and strength and courage! In these times of high prices every dollar spent for beer buys misery for the poor. What reply have the brewers to these charges ? None. They only try to befog the issue. They say that barley is only fit for brewing beer, that it cannot be used for human food. This is mere mockery. Meat is made of grain just as surely as bread. Thousands of cattle have died upon the Western plains since January i, 191 7, because feed was lacking. Poultry is being slaughtered because there is nothing to feed it. But barley, properly handled, is excellent hu- man food. Listen to Herbert Hoover: "Barley mixed in the bread makes a bread with as fine a texture as wheat. There is a large margin of saving if the brewing could be cut out." He was testifying before the Senate Agricultural Committee (see pages 380, 417, Hearings). Listen to Professor Alonso Taylor, government food consultant: "In my opinion, the need for grain, and especially barley, which has proved itself valuable as a flour, is such as to make it imperative upon us, after the present makings in operation and under contract have been con- cluded, in about three months, to cease the manu- facture of malt for internal or export trade for brewing" (see Senate Hearings, page 438). Lis- ten to Secretary of Agriculture Houston: 'The ease with which barley may be substituted directly for wheat in human food and its usefulness to 33 THE WOODEN HORSE replace wheat-milling by-products as food in the production of the milk supply, renders its abun- dant production important" (statement of April 7, 1917). Even malt, if sterilized, can be used in making bread. The brewers claim that their slops are needed for cattle food. A more impudent absurdity could not be imagined. By destroying 70,000,- 000 bushels of good grain, we get 22,000,000 bushels of poor cattle food ! There has been noth- ing like it since Lamb's Chinaman burned his house to roast his pig. Experts of the Agricul- tural Department strongly doubt the necessity of the kind of "finishing" given cattle by brewery slops. At least some of them think they are bet- ter food without it. At least the brewers are saying little about the alleged "food value" of beer. We give them credit for that. Beer has about four per cent of nutritive material ; less than the poison it con- tains. Professor G. O. Higley, of the Depart- ment of Chemistry, Ohio \\'esleyan I'niversity, found the ratio of proteids in beer to proteids in flour as i to 80; of carbo-hydrates as i to 61 ; and of fats as o to .28. To furnish a hard-work- ing man with the amount of proteids needed in a day it would be necessary to give him 108 glasses of beer, costing $5.40. He would need 52 glasses of beer for liis supply of carbo- hydrates and would pay $2.fx) for them. In order to get nourishment from beer, he would have to give his entire time to drinking and die at the end of the day. Beer is liquid, cer- tainly, but it is not bread. The German-American Alliance and the United States Brewers' Association have solved the problem of destroying food much better than has Von Tirpitz. The submarines are sinking 8,000,000 bushels of grain a year. The breweries are destroying 70,000,000. '"It is clearly a ([uestion of beer vs. l)rea(l," said Lord Dcvonport, first food controller of 34 "LICK THE PLATE— LICK THE KAISER" England. Shall American women and children be underfed in order that some American men may be over-beered? Shall the fields of France be soaked in American blood that slackers may soak their bread in beer? In the shamble acres of No Man's Land young men by the millions are plunging thru barbed wire and bursting shells for our freedom and security. They are freely emptying their veins of life's blood for us. Are we unwilling to empty our glasses for them? Are we so little in ear- nest that the thought of the fishes, sucking the rotten flesh from the bones of American women and babies who sailed the seas under the stars and stripes will not nerve us to sacrifice a beve- rage which cannot even be classed so high as a luxury ? 35 VII THE RAILWAYS AND SHIPS Pull from the human body its blood vessels and you do what the paralysis of transportation does to a nation. Sever every nerve leading from the brain to the limbs, and you do what would be done to Pershing's army by cutting its ocean communication with America. Months ago the underfed poor people of New York city were parading the streets crying, ''Bread! Bread!" At that time there was ample food ; but they were hungry. Why ? Because the docks were overcrowded, warehouse plat- forms were swamped, railroad men were over- worked, and freight embargoes held back the food that was vitally necessary to the metropolis. Travel is growing increasingly arduous. Pas- senger trains are being discontinued to supply locomotives for freight. Shortage of food here, of fuel there, can be traced to the car shortage. Nor is that the most important factor in the transportation situation. We stand or fall with Great Britain. And Great Britain eats from the ship terminals. We are helpless if the armies of France and our own splendid troops fail. And their success depends abs(^lutely upon ample, un- broken ccMumunication with the .Atlantic ports of the Tnitcd States. "Build ships!" pleads Lloyd George; and Lord Northcliffe, head of Britain's war mission in America, exhorts, "Build ships, and more ships !" The blackest week the United States has known in a generation was the week when the sub- marines reached the peak of their murderous campaign. 36 THE RAILWAYS AND SHIPS What has drink to do with the railroads and with our shipping? For one thing, the Hquor trade is using 7,000,- 000 tons of railway transportation annually. If the transportation demanded by this vampire trade were supplied at one time, it would take a train of 200,000 cars, reaching one third of the way from New York to San Francisco ! In this time of stress and burden the transportation de- mand of beer is ten times harder to bear than in normal times. It is the straw that breaks the camel's back. By eliminating this factor alone we would secure a working margin that would immensely increase the efficiency of our railways. Cars would be available for vital needs, millions of cubic feet in warehouses would be saved, the congestion of our docks would be relieved. Do you ask why the docks would be less crowded ? Because even now, with ships so valu- able they are worth their weight in human flesh, they are being used to send drink to poison our allies and drink to poison the poor savages of Africa. Early in September a ship arrived at Tilbury, England, with two thousand cases of whisky on board. There was no lack of whisky in England. Indeed, there was more than enough to "last" until the end of the war even if its end be remote. There was enough to kill thou- sands of brave British soldiers who, unpoisoned by rum, would recover from wounds ; enough to debauch millions of English wives and mothers. But drink and brewers' vats have been moved to England in space which might carry guns and grain. In March, 19 17, there left from Boston and other Massachusetts ports, intoxicating liquors to the amount of 198,434 gallons, and in August, 1917, 175,626 gallons. From the port of New York, during the months from April to Decem- ber, there left on its way to Africa alcohol to the value of $112,464; rum to the amount of 163,135 gallons; 2,561 gallons of rye and bourbon, and 37 THE WOODEN HORSE wine and spirits to the value of $2,582. The natives of Africa are being slain by the thousands, and are decorating their graves with empty bot- tles and demijohns from this land, which can find shipping to send them poison but cannot find shipping to move enough troops against Hinden- burg. It is but the continuation of a wicked trade which has been fully aired in Congressional hearings. Transportation equivalent to sixty 5,000 ton vessels is being constantly employed in carrying drink to and fro between the Allies. The public knows that the shipping board has been a trouble crux ever since its organization ; but it does not know what is at the bottom of the ship-building muddle. Ships cannot be built without material and la1)or. X^either can the en- gines and boilers be supplied without material and labor. In October, 1917, the ship-building yards of the I'nited States were not running to sixty per cent of their capacity. They averaged from fifty per cent of full time and full efticiency at the end and beginning of each week to ninety per cent efficiency and sixty per cent full time in the middle of the week. The Washington Post re- cently carried the following headlines: HALT TO SHIP BUILDING Labor Shortage Has Paralyzing Effect on Navy Program No Yards Running Full Time Work on Larger Warships Suspended to Rush Destroyer Fleet The Xcu York World lioadcd a special story from Washington thus: "Xation May Soon Draft Labor. Shortage Is a Grave Problem. Lack of Workers Scriouslv Felt in Ship Yards and Other 38 THE RAILWAYS AND SHIPS War Establishments. \\'omcn To Be Con- scripted Too." The story declares that there is a labor shortage of thirty per cent in the spruce lumber industry, vital to the airplane program. The Baltimore Sun, itself anti-prohibition, also warns the country of serious conditions .in the ship-building industry and blames the delay on drinking by workingmen. Some of the great- est yards of the country, according to the Sun, are working less than one full shift a day because highly paid workmen are spending two or three days a week soaking beer in saloons. Haste in building ships is a matter of Hfe and death, but, declares the Sun, ''certain classes of men are not making more than forty to forty- five hours' work a week, and many are making less." "Drinking plays a bad part in all of this. With unusual amounts of money in their pockets and indifference to their jobs or their country in their hearts, large numbers of the workmen are hanging about the saloons soaking rum into their systems and, as a result, either staying away from work entirely for days at a time or turning up unfit to handle their parts in the vast team- work of modern industry. They not only do not play their own parts, but they weaken the efiiciency of the whole industrial machine." But in the face of these bitter facts cheap politicians and "kept" newspapers have the effrontery to protest against the injection of a "domestic peace time issue" ! 39 VIII PRINCE HENRY'S CONSPIRACY Half a generation ago a royal prince reached the shores of America. He came to spin a Ger- man web. Of course he was welcomed. A brief time before, Admiral Dewey, in Manila Bay, had opened the eyes of the German emperor to the fact that America was a power, not a joke. The Kaiser remembered that some millions of his subjects had left his lands for America, and he was smitten with a new and glorious Idea. That Idea was to "Make Amer- ica German" ! And Prince Henry came to do it. Some of these German milhons who had come to America went to the rural districts and small towns. They had become American to the back- bone ; but, of course, the Kaiser could not reahze such a thing. ( )ther Germans had swarmed to the cities, and there most of them had fallen under the political influence of the breweries. Prohibition of the liquor traffic soon came to represent to these people the American standard of life. The brewers, inspired by an economic motive, set forth against this American principle the German ])rinciple of free and unrestricted beer. Prohibition and anti-prohibition became the champions respectively of Americanism and Deutschtum. Shortly before the visit of Prince Henry the German-American Alliance had been formed as a pro-li(|uor organization. It had already taken upon itself tlie character of an anti- American "i)eutschland iiber Alles" society. To these peo- ])le, the IVince brought the doctrine of '*( )nce a German, always a German." He soundetl the 40 PRINCE HENRY'S CONSPIRACY call to allegiance for every German-born man in America and for every man with a drop of Ger- man blood in his veins, no matter how long he had nursed at America's breast. Von Holleben, the German minister, showing an indiscreet zeal in this crusade to sap Amer- ica's strength, was summarily sent home by the United States government. But the plot pros- pered. "Break the power of prohibition, and you have broken 'nativism,' " the German leaders were told. Leading American brewers received royal honors and the brewing organizations al- most merged into the Kaiser's American forces. Sixty-five per cent of the saloon-keepers were loyal German subjects at heart if not by law. German papers in the big cities combined anti- Americanism and anti-prohibition in a way in- dicating clearly that they must rise or fall to- gether. The German- American Alliance is reported by the Philadelphia North American to have de- clared in an official bulletin: "The National Alliance is waging war against Anglo-Saxon- ism, against the fanatical enemies of personal liberty and political freedom; it is combat- ing narrow-minded, benighted knownothing- ism, the influence of the British, the enslav- ing Puritanism which had its birth in Eng- land." By "Puritanism" is meant prohibition, which these Philistines of Potsdam call "a shameful and despicable propaganda," a "criminal activity/' the "work of a dark brood." It is the belief of this organization that "In order to obtain for German-Americanism the place in the sun which has always been denied to it, it is absolutely essential that personal liberty be guaranteed, and that it be not cur- tailed by the attacks of nativists and prohi- bitionists." "We have suffered long the preachment that 'you Germans must allow yourselves to 41 THE WOODEN HORSE be assimilated, you must merge in the Amer- ican people,' but no one will ever find us pre- pared to descend to an inferior level. No! We have made it our aim to elevate the others to our level. We will not allow our two- thousand year Kultur to be trodden down in this land. Many are giving our German Kul- tur to this land of their children, but that is possible only if we stand together and con- quer that dark spirit of muckerdom and prohi- bition, just as Siegfried slew the dragon. Let us stand for our good right and hold together. Be strong! Be strong and German!" How thoroly the work of Dr. Hexamer, presi- dent of the German-American Alliance, was ap- preciated by the German emperor, and what faith he had in its efficacy, is attested by the fact that the Kaiser conferred upon the Doctor the Order of the Red Eagle. The archives of the British government yielded a secret report of a war council in Potsdam in the year 1908, at which the Kaiser made the following statement which is reported in German Spies in England, by Wm. LeQucx : "Even now I rule supreme in the United States, where almost one half of the popula- tion is either of German birth or German descent, and where 3,000,000 voters do my bid- ding at the Presidential elections. No Amer- ican administration could remain in power against the will of the German voters who thru that admirable organization, the Ger- man-American National League of the United States of America, control the destinies of the vast republic beyond the sea. If a man was ever worthy of a high decoration at my hands, it was Herr Dr. Hexamer, the president of the League, who may justly be termed to be, by my grace, the Acting Ruler of all Ger- mans in the United States." in its war against "nativism" the brewers and the anti-nativists clearlv defined several salients PRINCE HENRY'S CONSPIRACY of strength which must be broken clown. The American "prejudice" against drinking by women and children must be overcome; and recreation centers must be captured for beer. The brewing publications and German news- papers were naively frank in declaring this. Beer gardens were opened, the home beer trade was promoted in a thousand ways, dance halls and excursion steamers were made drinking centers. Courses of advertising intended to encourage drinking by women and children were outlined for local breweries. As the w^ar against prohibition and against the safety of the country progressed, the beer-trade organizations and the pro-German organization effected a connection so close that it was hard to tell where the one left ofif and the other be- gan. The Illinois Staats-Zeitung, run by Horace L. Brand, a Chicago brewer, said editorially : "When the hundreds of thousands of those drafted for military service realize that their country is going to make them victims of foreign adventure, there will arise a conflict between sentiment and duty which may threaten the internal peace of the republic." This same paper only a few^ weeks before the outbreak of the war, said : "We prefer to sacrifice ourselves rather than see the old Fatherland after its glorious battles done out of the reward of its victory." On September 14 the editor of a brewery magazine was seized at San Antonio for obstruct- ing the operation of the draft law. When the federal agents on September 11 seized the Philadelphia Tageblatt, two of the men they wanted were Peter Schaefer and Paul Vogel, a brewery man. On September 27, 191 7, it developed that the "mystery woman" who had furnished large sums of money to finance the American Embargo Con- ference was Mrs. Carl Buhl, of Chicago, the daughter of one brewer and the wife of another, 43 THE WOODEN HORSE Mr. Percy Andreae, who superintends the poHtical activities of the United States Brewers' Association, himself effected the creation of the "Organization Bureau" of the German-Ameri- can AUiance. It was thru this "Organization Bureau" that the joint pohtical purposes of the disloyal German element and brewers were ac- complished. One of the field men who was doing work of this dual character for the ''Organiza- tion Bureau," in his report to that Bureau, said : "Any attempt to bring about a German state organization must have financial sup- port. I believe that such should come from the State Brewers' Association; and, as I have already indicated, should not be given direct, but might pass thru the hands of a middleman." The beer lobby established in Washington was paid by the brewer, Andreae, who looked after the legislative interests of his associates in con- sideration of a $40,000 salarv. THIS LOBBY WAS SUPERVISED BY 'DR. HEXAMER, RECENT HEAD OF THE GERMAN-AMER- ICAN ALLIANCE. THE MAN WHO DE- CLARED GERMANS SHOULD NEVER DESCEND TO THE LOWER LEVEL OF AMERICANISM! And yet beer organs did not hesitate to inform Congress and the country that strikes would be brought about and necessary war legislation de- layed and even prevented by fililnister tactics, if beer prohibition stayed in the Food Bill. In the New York World, which led the pro-beer fight, there were prophecies of "bloody fighting," "war for personal liberty at home instead of for demo- cracy abroad" and similar near-treasonable threats. How have these pro-German brewers built such a mighty power? By the boycott and by political corruption. By the unfiinching loyalty of those mainly animated by pro-Germanism to the cause of beer and similar loyalty on the part 44 as i ^i 3 a s 2 JT - ;; g ■s :i S :3 § ^ £ 2^ § I I I i c i I s : c r< W i I s ^ s 1 i § 5 " a s s I.- § i § 8 § t, I I ^4 o ^ a 5 o SK' 4- * s s iW I I 1 1 :i I ^ 5 S « ■g < g & eer deposits fat around the heart, weakens the muscular walls, thickens and enlarges the ventricles, and if continued, ultimately cuts short the life of the individual. "All of this has been proven time and again by the post mortems of Bollinger, who has ex- amined and weighed the hearts of many beer drinkers. This is a terrible scientific arraign- ment of beer, but it is the truth, and truth is the voice of God." Dr. John M. Dodson, dean of the Medical De- partment of the University of Chicago, gave as his opinion that beer is even more deleterious to health than the stronger drinks. Dr. Struempell, a German physiologist of high standing, does not tolerate for a moment the suggestion that beer is less of a social enemy than other liquors, for he says : 54 BEER— THE INTERNATIONAL BRUTE "Nothing is more erroneous from the physi- cian's standpoint than to think of diminishing the destructive effects of alcohohsm by substituting beer for other alcohohc drinks, or that the victims of drink are found only in those countries where whisky helps the people of a low grade of cul- ture to forget their poverty and misery." The Beer Drinker Gets More Alcohol The belief that beer should not come under the condemnation so frequently meted out to whisky is traceable to the common impression that beer drinkers consume much less alcohol than whisky drinkers. But those who believe this overlook the fact that the man who drinks four per cent beer usually takes ten times as much as a man who takes forty per cent whisky. The United States Internal Revenue commissioner, on page 675 of the statistical abstract, gives the per capita consumption of distilled spirits and beer in 1914 and their respective alcoholic content, as follows : Gallons Gallons of Used Alcohol Distilled spirits.. 1.46 0.584 Malt liquors 20.51 0.820 It will be seen from this that the per capita consumption of alcohol from beer in 19 14 was forty per cent greater than that from whisky. Professor Kraepelin, of the University of Munich, says that at one banquet of professional men in Berlin there was consumed during the evening, by four thousand persons, 15,382 bottles of wine, 4.646 pints of beer, and 300 bottles of cognac. Professor Kraepelin has also stated that 13,000 persons become victims of alcohol each year in Germany, and that one fifth of all mental disorders are attributable to alcoholic liquors. Nor must it be thought that the less concen- tration of alcohol in beer makes that beverage 55 THE WOODEN HORSE less dangerous. During a recent court trial in Chicago a medical witness was asked: ''Does the rate or degree of oxidation depend upon the concentration of alcohol?'' He an- swered, "Not at all on the concentration." To the further question, "Would the stimulant and narcotic action of forty-eight drops of alcohol be greater or less if given in twenty per cent or fifty-five per cent dilution?" "It would be in- distinguishable," he answered, "just as the narcotic and stimulant effect of the same dose of alcohol is indistinguishable whether it is given in the form of whisky or in the form of beer." The ''Philistinism" of the Beer Drixker Professor Rudolf Eucken, possibly the great- est philosopher Germany has produced, declares that his country must give up beer, which "breeds the wretched type of beer-Philistine with which everyone is familiar." The "Philistine" is the incorrigible barbarian whose thickness of intellect cannot be penetrated by any appeal of poetry or art ; whose heart can never be touched by the feelings of kindness and mercy which appeal to the undebauched. The Philistine of the Bible could not be converted, and it was impossible to live at peace with him. He was the eternal scourge, the Hun of that day. He has a modern counterpart in the product of "Kultur," with wIk^iu con(iuest by fire and sword is the highest expression of strength, bestial revelry the highest expression of pleasure. 11ie Scientific American says: "The most dangerous classes of ruffians in our large cities are beer drinkers. Intellect- ually a stupor amounting almost to paralysis arrests the reason, changing all the higher faculties into a mere animalism, sensual, self- ish, sluggish, varied only with paroxysms of anger, senseless and brutal." it continues its unflattering remarks as fol- lows: 56 BEER— THE INTERNATIONAL BRUTE *Tn appearance the beer drinker may be the picture of health, but in reaUty he is most in- capable of resisting disease. A slight injury, a severe cold, or a shock to the body or mind will commonly provoke acute disease, ending fatally. Compared with other inebriates who use dififerent kinds of alcohol, he is more incurable and more generally diseased. It is our observation that beer drinking in this country produces the very lowest kind of inebriety, closely allied to criminal insanity." Dr. Fiessinger, editor of a Paris medical periodical, declares that *'Beer makes people ferocious and beastly." The Pacific Medical Journal of this country supplements this testimony: ''Of all intoxicating drinks, beer is the most animalizing; beyond all others it qualifies for deliberate and unprovoked crime." The fact is generally acknowledged. Said one wife, "When my husband drinks whisky, he soon gets stupid ; but when he drinks beer, he runs after me with a knife." A woman of forty-five, with an eleven-year-old boy, was found by the police, near Hoboken, New Jersey, nearly dead from exposure. There was a hotel near by where she might have had shelter, but she refused it because there was beer on the premises. This illustrates in a striking way the popular recognition of the beastly qualities im- parted by constant use of beer. The Experience of Germany Kraepelin, one of the best known of German scientists, in speaking of Munich, says : 'The daily amount of beer there runs from four to eight quarts; and about forty per«cent of these beer drinkers add small amounts of distilled liquors, and some men drink daily ten, fifteen, and twenty quarts." This certainly does not in- dicate that beer tends to create "temperance" in that province. 57 THE WOODEN HORSE Mrs. Elizabeth Tilton, in the Survey for Febru- ary 24, 1 91 7, calls attention to the fact that beer has been found to be the chief alcoholic cause of disease in Germany. She says : "Noted investigators of this disease-maker were Bauer and Bollinger. They found that out of 5,700 autopsies conducted in a series of years in the Pathological Institute of ^lunich, only six women (the more temperate sex) had died of that enlargement of the heart afterward called 'beer heart.' But one out of every sixteen males had died of it. Sendtner, following up these researches, found that while the general death rate elsewhere (according to the Gothaer Life Insurance) was 5.8 from heart disease, in beer- soaked ^Munich it was 11.9. He also found that brewery hands in Munich had an even higher death rate from heart disease than did the Munich population in general." Professor \ on Strucmpcll, above quoted, ex- presses himself at greater length, thus : "Formerly whisky and brandy were the uni- versal evildoers, the only despised drinks as against 'noble' wine and 'harmless' beer. At present we know that in practice the injurious effects of beer are at least as frequent, if not, indeed, more frequent, than those of distilled liquor. "For, altho the percentage of alcohol (beer 2 to 4 per cent), is not especially high, yet this low percentage is counteracted by the great quantity drunk ; 100 cubic centimeters of beer contain only 3 grams of pure alcohol, but a liter contains 30 grams. A moderate beer drinker, who daily drinks his five liters, thus gets every day 150 grams of absolute alcoln^l into his body, h'inally it nuist be noted that perhaps beer con- tains besides alcc^hol other injurious substances from the hops, whose elTect is also to be taken into account." Other eminent European scientists and doctors speak as follows : 58 BEER— THE INTERNATIONAL BRUTE Professor Emil Kraepelin: "In the production of alcoholism in Germany, beer undoubtedly plays the chief role. It must be conceded that beer is capable of producing typical delirium tremens." Professor Gustav von Bunge : *'No other drink [referring to beer] is so insidious. It has been in Germany worse than the whisky pest because more apt to lead to immoderate drinking." Professor ^lobius, Leipsic : 'T know little of whisky and wine-drinkers. With us it is beer that ruins the people." Dr. Johannes Leonhart, a distinguished scien- tist: "The question concerning alcohol is not whether Smith or Jones believes that he can take two or three glasses a day without harm, but how is it possible to diminish the immense amount of injury from it that the whole German people suffers." Professor Forel, in the American Journal of Insanity (1900) : "One only needs to study in Germany the 'beer jokes,' beer conversation, and beer literature. They have stifled in young Germany the ideal- ism, the taste for the classics and the finer men- tal pleasures throughout broad parts of the nation and in both sexes, to an extent that makes one cry for help. Among the academic youth of Germany the drinking of beer has truly killed ideals and ethics and has produced an incredible vulgarity." Similar opinions are held in other countries where they consume beer and "light liquors." Sully-Prudhomme is responsible for this state- ment, which hardly jibes with what the brewers tell us : "All in all, my opinion as to alcohol in all its forms is, that it is fitted, thanks to the' devasta- tion it brings about in the nervous system, to animalize people in all grades of society and, sooner or later, to annihilate the superiority which man has slowly acquired over the anthropoid ape." 59 THE WOODEN HORSE Even in Germany the government authorities in the interest of efficiency are showing all the hostility they dare to the use of beer. A docu- ment issued to the German soldiers says : "A glass of beer costing 25 pfennigs [about 6 cents] has no more food value than a piece of cheese that could be bought for one pfennig. To call beer liquid bread is there- fore wholly unjustifiable." A recent testimonial comes from a source that can by no means be said to be prejudiced to prohibition. England found soon after the out- break of war that she must curb the ravages of the liquor traffic, so the government put the en- tire matter into the hands of the British Board of Control, of which Lord D'Abernon is chair- man. In October, 1916, he made this statement: "In London at various periods in the early part of 1916 a total number of 903 cases of drunkenness were analyzed, of w^hom 566 were men and 337 women. Dividing the cases according to cause of drunkenness it was found that 40 per cent had become drunk on beer or stout; 35 per cent on spirits excluding rum; 8 per cent, on rum; 10 per cent, on spirits and beer; and 4 per cent on other drinks. The remaining 17 per cent did not know the nature of their drink." Professor Daly, professor of geology at Har- vard, attributes the brutalities of official Ger- many t(^ the drinkiii,2: of hcor. "I venture the hypothesis," he says, "that lifelong drinking of mild beer has been one of the most potent causes for the amazing brutalities of official Germany. I'licsc crimes have been ordered by men who for decades have been poisoned by beer. In time of peace and quiet the poison causes derangement of brain tissue, often expressed merely in some form of sentimentality, plain or maudlin. If, however, the victim is put under stress, his nervous disorder is likelv to lead to bad temper and bad judgment, 60 BEER— THE INTERNATIONAL BRUTE with endless possibilities in the way of loss of dignity, poise, and the sense of human fellow- ship." To the hypothetical retort that as much alcohol per capita is drunk in England and France as in Germany, he answers: "The Germanic peoples are the only great group who feed alcohol to babies or very young children of the middle or upper classes. If the baby has not been already prenatally damaged because of beer drunk by his mother, he still runs the risk of poisoning from the alcohol-bearing milk of a drinking mother or wet-nurse. The child grows to man- hood, drinking alcohol and continually handi- capped in his development of cerebral, and there- fore moral, control. ''On the other hand, nearly all the alcohol drunk in France and England is consumed after the formative years of childhood — distinctly less- ening the danger of permanent cerebral degen- eration. The drunkards of France and the Brit- ish Isles are, as elsewhere, brutal and mean; but, fortunately for the good name of the govern- ments of these two countries, many men of the ruling classes, the men who issue orders, are not addicted to the daily use of alcohol, either in youth or maturity." And he ends his exposition of the part that beer has played in the great war with a quotation from the elder Moltke, who once said: ''Beer is a far more dangerous enemy to Germany than all the armies of France." A German on Beer-Stupidity The German immigration to America may be divided into two classes. The one class, embrac- ing the majority of these people, came to accept American standards and offer variations which were in the general direction of original Amer- ican character-development. This class is found principally in the rural districts and the small towns. It is beyond praise for the strength of 6i THE WOODEN HORSE its principles and intellectual activity, its whole- hearted loyalty and incorruptible morality. The other class embraces those who either had a financial interest in the beer trade or fell under the influence of those who have such an interest. This class is characterized by beer-degeneracy, which shows itself in stupidity, immorality, and disloyalty. Lager makes fat hearts and fat heads. It was of this class that Professor Adolphe Stille, of Leipsic, wrote in Die Alkolofrage: "The injurious effects of the habitual moderate use of beer stand out nowhere so conspicuously as in the United States of America, because there one finds material for comparison which is scarcely obtainable elsewhere : on the one hand the total abstinent Anglo-Americans ; on the other, the Germans who almost without exception are given to the daily use of beer. Where Are the Active Old Beer-Drinkers? "Among these circumstances I put first the striking fact, which was a problem to me during the seventies and eighties, that there was a much higher death rate during the active years among our Germans than among the Anglo-Americans. The German merchants, manufacturers, and hand laborers die in strikingly large numbers shortly before or soon after their fiftieth year, and we do not find among them those active, tranquil- minded, gray-haired men over seventy that are so common among the Anglo-Americans. Who Lev\d in Culture and Science? "A second noticeable difference is that the Ger- mans in America show far less interest than the Anglo-Americans in intellectual matters — in science, culture, and public offices. The city of Saint Louis, for example, during the eighties, contained over 100,000 Germans, but tliere was not a single German bookstore worthy of the name. Schiller, Goethe, and Heine could be bought, it is true, but thev seldom were for any 62' BEER— THE INTERNATIONAL BRUTE other purpose than as Christmas or birthday pres- ents, but whether they were ever read or not is another question. And of German scientific books there were scarcely any in Saint Louis, except a few medical books used by German physicians. The Clubs That Are Only Beer Clubs "The influence of beer-drinking as a disturbing element in all kinds of German societies is al- ready evident in America. Every club, every society, whether for bowling, music, gymnastics, target practice, dramatics, is on the inside simply a beer club. How many a Turnverein has pledged itself in the 'foaming glass' to take up intellectual matters, and has provided for a library and reading room ; but the reading room soon stood empty, while the beer hall was full. *Tt is plainly evident that efforts for advance- ment among the Germans in America are drowned in beer, for the same conditions are repeated in all cities. The German takes little interest in public affairs except when it is a ques- tion relating to beer; then he rises in wrath and fights for 'personal liberty,' that is, liberty to drink beer, especially on Sunday and at band concerts. Dullness Not Due to Blood But to Beer ''One very perplexing thing, which during the eighties I had not yet attributed to beer, w^as the fact that the German children in the American schools (at least in the large cities) are con- sidered rather dull. 'Slow and plodding,' is the term applied to them. • This was particularly the case among the children of South Saint Louis, where there are many large breweries. There the results of all the half-year examinations for promotion to the high school presented much worse showing than in other parts of the city, and the pupils there were, almost without excep- tion, children of men engaged in the breweries. THE WOODEN HORSE There could be no doubt that the German chil- dren were slower and less ready in comprehen- sion, especially as their deficiency showed itself most clearly in mathematical calculations. ''That this stupidity is a special German charac- teristic I never would admit, and the conviction was finally forced upon me that it was the beer that was to blame here, just as it was in nullify- ing attempts of advancement in literary and scientific pursuits among Germans in America. 'Tn the year 1900 I came back to Germany to remain. Here I was struck by the appearance of premature age, lack of alertness and inclina- tion for work in the German, so different from the Anglo-American. The conclusion was un- avoidable that here is made clear the incalculable damage growing out of our German drinking customs." Abstinent Americans Are ^Ierry Professor Walter Rauschenbusch, of Rochester, New York, in a remarkable address at Dessau, Germany, warned the German people that their brilliant natural capacities were being dulled and perverted by the insidious influences of beer- drinking. He called attention to the practical absence of social drinking in America and said : "The Americans are abstemious on such oc- casions, and for that very reason they are jolly. They laugh much more than the Germans ; they are not without the joy of living." Professor Rauschenbusch also attacked the "crowd suggestion" in Germany as assaulting the personal liberty of the abstainer and pointed to the effects of beer-drinking as indicating its brutalizing power: Germany's Best Sacrifice to Drink "When we look more closely at German life we see that the drinking habit is not harmless. The coarsest, most brutal scenes that I have ever witnessed in all my life were not in Amer- 64 BEER— THE INTERNATIONAL BRUTE ica but in Gernianw We see continually how many lives are spoiled by drink. But we see that also in Germany among a class of young men who are almost immune in America — the edu- cated young man. 'T have been educated partly in Germany and partly in America, and the friends of my youth are in both countries. Among the American friends of my \outh I do not know a single one who has been injured by drink, but among my friends and relatives and schools fellows in Ger- many I know a large number who have been ruined in the saddest way, so that the most heart- breaking family tragedies have occurred. "It is worth your while to think about this and ask yourselves why in so many of the cultivated families of Germany the social drinking habit demands so many more victims than it does in similar circles in America. 'Think only of the many German men, poets and thinkers, who have been ruined by alcohol. I remember some of the sweetest and dearest names in our German literature ruined by drink. I know of only one among the Americans — Edgar Allan Poe — and he belonged to a time be- fore the total abstinence movement began. "If we look thru our German history, we see that many of our intellectual heroes have suf- fered from chronic alcoholism ; and we learn that all our German history has been more deeply in- fluenced by the chronic alcoholism of some of the chief leaders than most of us would think. German Social Life Debased and En- dangered BY Alcohol "And we see still more the danger of our social drinking habits. So many abnormally red- dened faces, so many eyes wath baggy eyelids ! Two things struck me immediately on my land- ing in Hamburg or Bremen — the immense num- ber of uniforms, and the immense number of corpulent men. 65 THE WOODEN HORSE 'The physiognomy of our academic youth is strongly marked by the influence of social drink- ing. I am a university professor, and when I look at the students here I miss the inner bright- ening up of youth, and the ideal transfiguration of enthusiasm. I see so many, many spongy faces, so many dough faces. The cause is partly to be found in the drinking habits of the uni- versity. "Have your ladies ever considered the fact that they can go out a night alone without male protection in America, vv^hile they can- not do it here? The American girl can drive out and walk with young men just as she likes. That would be impossible if the men were drinkers. The freedom of women in America depends on the almost universal abstinence in those circles of which I am speaking." German-American Beer-Kultur Concerning the activities of organized beer- Germans in America. Dr. Rauschcnbusch speaks almost bitterly : "They talk a great deal about the defense of their Germanism, and preventing its absorption by American 'muckers' (one of the 'muckiest' of German words, which could perhaps be best translated by the words 'canting bigots'). "But if we get rid of the phrases, what is this Germanism that is so dear to them? Is it Schiller? Is it Goethe?" Is it Kant? No! It is the riglit to be jolly, with cigars and beer." It is a great mistake to think tliat the use of beer in Germany has aflFcctcd favorably the rates of alcoholism. In the United States, in 1906, the death rate from alcoholism was 6.2 ; in Prussia it was 7.9 ; in Bavaria, 7.4. England Tried It The Scientific Temperance Journal has pub- lished a most interesting study of England's ex- C6 BEER— THE INTERNATIONAL BRUTE l)erience in trying to combat the stronger alco- holic drinks by encouraging beer. It says: In 1830, England tried to discourage the "gin places" by establishing free beer-shops (that is, shops that were not required to pay license). A few weeks after the passage of the bill, Sidney Smith wrote: "The nezv beer bill has be- gun its operations. Everybody is drunk. Those zi'ho are not singing are spraivling." Parliament twice instituted committees of in- quiry into the operation of the Act. The Com- mittee of the House of Lords in 1850 reported: "The absolute consumption of spirits (whisky, etc.) has, from whatever cause, far from diminished; the comfort and morals of the poor have been seriously impaired." In 1843 t^"*^ Committee of the House of Com- mons concurred with the Lords' report, and added : 'The beer-shop system has proved a fail- ure." In 1869 'The Lower House of Convocation of the Province of Canterbury," a body having ecclesiastical supervision of more than 14,000,- 000 of the population, adopted the report of its committee of investigation, in which was the statement: "Of the direct causes of our national intemperance, one of the foremost and most prolific, as it appears to your committee, is the operation of the Legislative Act which called beer-houses into existence." The plimax of the testimony was added from the medical standpoint by the Lancet in 1889, called out by a remark made by Sir Michael Hicks Beach, chancellor of the exchequer, at a dinner of the Country Brewers' Association, where he was a guest. After telling the brewers that thirty-one gallons of beer per capita were drunk in a year, Sir Michael said that he rejoiced in the fact, and hoped it would increase, adding: 'The people of the United Kingdom would be better off if more beer and less spirits were drunk." ^7 THE WOODEN HORSE The Lancet published a protest which con- tained the following remark : "Does the consump- tion of more beer really mean the consumption of less spirits ? Few medical men will admit such an opinion. . . . Beer drinkers are by no means free from the vice of spirit-drinking, and are certainly not infrequently the subjects of cirrho- sis (of the liver)." "We commend these medical facts to the consideration of the chancellor of the ex- chequer," says the Lancet, "and all who are disposed to regard beer in the light of a temperance drink or as an alternative to the use of spirits." Then referring to the historical results of the idea, the Lancet continued : "We may remind them that this view has once or twice prevailed in legislation with very doubtful effects. One of the objects of the free beer-house legislation in 1830 was to discourage drinking of spirits by encouraging the consumption of beer. lUit it failed signally. It would be disastrous if any new legislation were to be attempted on this principle." The continuation of the brewing of beer after the prohibition of whisky making, is as senseless as it is unjust. William Jennings Bryan never said anything better than this: "The trade in cHstilled liquors and the trade in beer have been partners in every crime ; co-conspirators in every plot. They have corrupted politics together, boycotted and bulHed business together, protected vice and gambling together. It woukl be cruel, positively cruel, to separate them now. They should die together and be buried in the same grave." 68 X OUR ALLIES The part played by drink in this war has been a varied one. It was prohibition in Russia that enabled that country to mobilize six weeks be- fore the Germans thought mobilization possible, and France was saved. The Paris correspond- ent of the (London) Standard relates that a Ger- man general take« prisoner quoted the Kaiser as saying : "I was certain of crushing the Russians when they were freely given to drink, but now that they are sober the task is much more difficult." And he added in a melancholy tone, "Who on earth could have foreseen the anti-alcohol coup d'etat perpetrated by Nicholas II?" In Belgium, the wine cellars helped to bring her women to shame unspeakable and her ac- cumulated treasures to destruction. The cap- tured diaries of German soldiers tell a tale of drunkenness which surely must be taken as a partial explanation why human beings could be brought to carry out the official program of bestiality and schrecklichkeit. ''We are fighting Germany, Austria, and Drink, and so far as I can see, the greatest of these three deadly foes is Drink," declared Lloyd George ; and he added that Drink was doing Brit- ain more damage than the submarines. British patriots assert that the war would be over now if it were not for what alcohol has done to the men and material of Britain. Drink, the Traitor *'You cannot hide the shadow of a traitor who stalks across the nation as it rocks and reels," 69 THE WOODEN HORSE says Arthur Mee in a manifesto issued to the British people. "During the past fifty years drink has deprived this country of man-power equivalent to the whole British army under arms. We are drinking away our strength. For every acre that we give to growing wheat for food, drink takes an acre for destroying food ; the land wasted on drink in this country would make a field a mile wide from England to America and this on an island which grows only one loaf of every six it eats. "The labor that drink has stolen from this country during the war is equivalent to the whole United Kingdom standing idle for a hundred days. Mr. Lloyd George said in 191 5 that by stopping drink we could add a vast army of men to our armament works without spending one penny on additional construction, without putting down a single additional machine, and all by one act of sacrifice on the part of the nation. The king has said, Tt is, without doubt, largely due to drink that we are unable to secure the output of war material indispensable to meet the require- ments of our army.' Money, L.\bor, Ships "Drink and its results cost us one million pounds a day. During the war the national drink bill has reached four hundred million pounds. It'c viiist liaz'c poured more of our financial strciii^tJi into this trade siiice .iui^nst, 1914, than li'c have fired an'ay in France. We are giving an enemy trade the power to waste our wealth, scatter our resources, drain our people's savings, and break down our reserves. We let the drink trade use hundreds of millions of cubic feet of space in ships, congest our docks, streets, and railways, use up the labor of hundreds of thou- sands of men. We have not men enough to carry on the war, but we have men enough to lift and move from place to place a weight of drink stuff every year three times as heavy as 70 OUR ALLIES the Great Pyramid. Tt took a hundred thousand men a generation to set up the Cireat IVramid, but if we had pulled it down and set it up again three times since war began, it would ha^e taken less labor than the shifting of this drink stuff that ships pour everlastingly into our docks. Every week our railways carry enough of it to fill over a thousand trains of two hundred tons each. "We shall not win the war until we have built a trench between the British home and the pub- lic house. The Call of the Lions ''The Prime Minister has declared that this trade has sown destruction and devastation in time of peace, and in war has done us more damage than all the German submarines. "The King has banished alcohol from his palaces as a traitor to the state. "General Joffre has declared it the duty of all patriots to fight alcohol in all its forms ; by diminishing the moral and material strength of the army, it is a crime against national defense in the face of the enemy. "Lord Kitchener would have nothing to do with drink during the war, and begged his men to keep fit by leaving it alone. "Lord Roberts, in almost his last message to the nation, declared that drink was prejudicial to our chance of victory. "Lord Ciirzon declared that drink is a leprous spot eating into the life of our people. "Lord Rosebery warned us long ago of the time that is now come, when, if the state did not control the liquor traffic, the liquor traffic would control the state. "Mr. Chamberlain, the first of our imperial statesmen, declared that while a priest-ridden na- tion is to be pitied, a publican-ridden nation is to be despised. "Mr. Bonar Law will not touch alcohol, and is 71 THE WOODEN HORSE believed to be in favor of prohibition during the war. ''Admiral JcUicoe declares that alcohol is the enemy of efficiency and reduces the efficiency of shooting by one third. "Lord JVoIscIey declared that drink kills more soldiers than all the new weapons of warfare. ''The Czar of Russia has indicted alcohol as the exploiter of the ruin of his people. "Admiral Beatty has appealed to the nation to arouse itself from its languor, and it can hardly be possible that the drink trade was not in his mind when he said : 'The nation is not yet aroused out of its state of self-satisfaction. When our people have humility and prayer in their hearts we can count the days to the end.' Xor can it have been out of Sir IVilliam Robertson's mind when, on being asked what the church could do to help win, he said, 'Bishop, make the nation more religious.' Britain's Brain Indicts Alcohol *'No less than two thousand four hundred forty-eight of Britain's greatest citizens have signed the following statement: "Drink hinders the army; it is the cause of grave delay with munitions ; it keeps thousands of men from war work every day, and makes good, sober workmen second-rate. "It Jianipcrs the nazy; it delays transports, places them at the mercy of submarines, slows repairs, and congests docks. "It threatens our mercantile marine; it has absorbed during the war over two hundred mil- lion cubic feet of ship space, and it retards the building of ships to replace our losses. "It destroys our food supplies: during the war it has consumed over three million five hundred thousand tons of food, with sugar enough to last the nation one hundred days. It uses up more sugar than the army. "It zi'astes our financial strength; since the 72 OUR ALLIES war bei2;an our people have spent on alcohol over four hundred million pounds. '7/ dk'crts the nation's strcn^i^th; it uses five hundred thousand workers, one million acres of land, and one million five hundred thousand tons of coal a year ; and during the war it has involved the lifting and handling on road and rail of a weight equal to fifty million tons. ''It shatters our moral strength; its temptations to women involve grave dangers to children and anxietv to thousands of soldiers." A Wonderful Company The names of the men and women who signed this document directed to the British government are known among informed people the world over. ''There are men who have been ambassadors, commanded squadrons, built ships, made guns, written books, painted pictures, carved monu- ments, educated children, made the British name illustrious by their discoveries and investigations, administered justice, built industries, maintained national health, presided over public bodies, shaped laws, and advised the King in privy counsel. "One of them saved the British army in its retreat from Mons ; nine of them wear the V. C. There are nearly one hundred admirals and gen- erals and one hundred fifty other army officers. Many of them represent the Red Cross or the military hospitals; hundreds are controllers of munitions of war, scientific directors of the science of munitions training schools. A hundred of them represent Parliament, the Privy Council, and the Imperial Services. A hundred more stand for literature, art, music, and the stage, and hun- dreds represent the great trades and industries and finance. There are two hundred baronets and knights, and hundreds of men distinguished in municipal life, including a hundred who are, or have been, mayors, sheriffs, deputy-lieutenants 73 THE WOODEN HORSE of counties, and county council chairmen. There are representatives of every university in the United Kingdom, and the principals of hundreds of university colleges and public schools. There are sixty or seventy Fellows of the Royal So- ciety, and twenty-five members or associates of the Royal Academy. There are five hundred magistrates and about the same number of doc- tors, including medical officers of health for nearly one third of the United Kingdom. Laurel-Crowned Men "But even such a summary as this can hardly give a proper conception of the dignity of this list of names. It stands for the intellectual and industrial strength of Britain. At the head of its military group stands a general on active serv- ice who wears the Victoria Cross, another wears the D. S. O., another whose name has nmg thru Europe in this war. At the head of its munitions group is the present controller of shipping, with the chairman of the Cunard Line, all the great shipbuilders, and such a man as the late Sir Hiram Maxim. At the head of the imperial group stands Mscount Bryce, our late ambassador in the great Rei)ublic of the West, with Sir Ernest Satow, our late ambassador to our gallant ally in the East. The Order of Merit which X'iscount Bryce represents is found at the head of other groups as well ; as the \'ictoria Cross heads the list of soldiers, so the Order of Merit heads the list of public servants, of authors, and of scien- tists. At the head of the Literature group stands Thomas Hardy, with the Poet Laureate beside him ; at the head of the group of science men stands Sir William Crookes, with such names following as Sir E. Ray Lankester, Sir Xorman Lockyer, and Sir Ernest Rutherford. ''For Education we have Dr. Michael Sadler, with the Master of P>alliol, the Provost of Oriel, and hundreds of names familiar in learning; and when we come to Medicine and the i'ui)lic 74 OUR ALLIES FTealth, we find Sir Rickman Godlee, President of the Royal Colleg"e of Surgeons, with such men as Sir William Osier and Sir Edward Shafer, and most of our physiologists and surgeons. There are men here, like Patrick Mason and Sir Ronald Ross, whose work has saved millions of lives thruout the world. And Women Also "And there are not men only, there are women and organizations too. There is a daughter of Lord Lansdowne and a daughter of Mr. Glad- stone ; a sister of Lord Kitchener and a sister of Lord French ; there is the wife of the late Presi- dent of the Board of Trade and the wife of the present Prime Minister (a curious thing is that, waiting for ]\Ir. Lloyd George as he came home on his first day as Premier was this appeal from his wife, in company with thousands of the most distinguished people in the nation, pleading that Britain might be put at full strength). There are all the greatest leaders of the great Y. M. C. A., the heads of the Salvation Army and the Church Army, and men and women who stand for the will of the masses of the people — such names we find as Mrs. Snowden, Mrs. Sidney Webb, Mr. George Lansbury, Mr. Thomas Burt, M.P., Mr. Richards, M.P. ; the Secretary of the Miners' Federation; such miners M.P.'s as Mr. J. G. Hancock, Mr. Finney, and Mr. Galbraith. Tho the Memorial stands chiefly outside of Parlia- ment, the M. P.'s on this list represent about five millions of the population, and several of them are members of the government. *'No charge of narrow fanaticism can be brought against a document like this. It speaks for the brain-power of the British people, and it asks for immediate and total prohibition of the liquor trade as long as the war lasts." In heroic France, "where wine has solved the problem," the Temps has this to say : "Un- 75 THE WOODEN HORSE touched by the almost universal ruin, the seller of alcohol is continuing to serve out the poison which is undermining the race. Side by side with the horrors of war we suffer the horrors of alcohol. During war time un- doubtedly the sole use of alcohol should be for the manufacture of explosives. Let us send this poison over to the enemy's lines in the shape of shells. We shall then save France while killing her enemies." Alcohol is blamed by leading French scientists for the depopulation of France which encouraged Germany to attack. One third of the deaths in hospitals and asylums of Paris have been due to alcoholism. In an official proclamation Dr. Debove, dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, and Dr. Faisans, physician to the principal gen- eral hospital, said : "Alcoholism is chronic poisoning, resulting from the habitual use of alcohol even when not taken in amounts sufficient to produce drunken- ness. The so-called hygienic drinks (wine, beer, and cider) also contain alcohol. Alcoholism is one of the most frightful scourges of the nation." This was an official proclamation. On the walls of every post office in France, and in the tram cars, may be found a poster ap- proved by yi. Clemcntel, minister of coiumerce, and signed by the President of the Republic. This poster was placed under the direction of the under secretary of the Health Service and was issued AI^^Tl^R the prohi])itinn of absinthe. It reads: "To French Women and to Young French- men : "DRINK IS AS MUCH YOUR ENEMY AS GERMANY. "Since 1870 it has cost France in men and money much more than the present war. "Drinkers age quickly. They lose half their normal life, and fall easy victims to many infirmities and illnesses. 76 OUR ALLIES "The seductive drinks of your parents re- appear in their offspring as great hereditary evils. France owes to alcohol a great many mad men and women and consumptives, and most of her criminals. "Drink decreases by two-thirds our national production; it raises the cost of living and increases poverty. "In imitation of the criminal Kaiser, drink decimates and ruins France, to the great de- light of Germany. "Mothers, young men, young girls, wives! Up and act against drink in memory of those who have gloriously died or suffered wounds for the Fatherland! You will thus accom- plish a mission as great as that of our heroic soldiers." How, then, do the brewers dare to stay our avenging arm and point to the French toleration of wine and beer as the ideal for America? It requires impudence almost unbelievable. The average brewer has so much gall that one must wonder how he finds room for his lungs and his liver. It must not be thought that our allies have done nothing to put down this internal enemy. France has entirely prohibited absinthe. Great Britain has decreased the production of beer and has put into effect the most stringent regulation of sales. And Russia, remembers that prohibition saved civilization's cause and she clings to it. In 1912 the Russian people saved in their banks or deposited in securities just over $20,000,000, in 1913 not quite so much. In the first eight months of 1914 they took out $55,000,000 more than they paid in. Then came the war and pro- hibition, and in the first four months of the war, with no vodka to lure their money from them, they poured $70,000,000 into the banks. In 191 5 they saved $405,000,000, and the Budget for 19 17 gives us their savings to September, 19 16, when they had reached, with securities, over $750,000,- 17 THE WOODEN HORSE ooo. The figures of saving and deposits of se- curities are hard to believe; look at them again: Last eight months of vodka, net loss of $55,000,000 First four months of prohibition, savings of 70,000,000 First full year of prohibition, savings of 405,000,000 First nine months of 1916, savings of... 755,000,000 In two years Russia recovered her lost revenue and enriched her people. There has been noth- ing like this in the history of the world before. Germany, in her efforts to undermine Russian courage and integrity, has made free use of drink. Alcohol has been offered to the Russian troops upon every occasion of fraternization and when the Germans have retreated in recent months, they have taken care to leave behind them large quantities of beer and spirits. 78 XI THAT AMERICA MAY BE STRONG When the President read his immortal mes- sage to Congress, caUing the country to sacrifice and honor, the Hons of the old breed stirred them- selves in every corner of the land. From the East and the South and the West, the big men, the makers and builders of the nation, the cap- tains of hundreds and the captains of thousands, turned their faces toward Washington, there to offer their property and their lives and — more nearly priceless — their brain power, to the serv- ice of the nation. We entered the war with great advantages. We had seen the errors of our allies and our enemies. Even the poorest and humblest realized vividly our unpreparedness and just as vividly the necessity for unity among the nations oppos- ing the empire which had prepared the world's murder for forty years. More vivid still was the universal realization of the fact that the nation must shake itself, arouse every energy, cast aside every weakness and exert from the very be- ginning the full power of its resources. Of some things we felt assured. We knew that the sons of the men who breasted the leaden sleet of Cold Harbor and marched with unfalter- ing step up the steeps of Gettysburg could be depended upon to do anything for which naked valor suffices. But of our ability to con- tinue our pleasures and extravagances — above all, our vices — and still sustain the immense labors of a war fought with machines and industries, w^e not only felt doubt but absolute skepticism. So the big men, the *'dollar-a-year men," left 79 THE WOODEN HORSE their vast incomes and vast private interests and hastened to Washington, saying: "Now let Effi- ciency rule; let us save blood and treasure by losing our vices and weaknesses ; let everything be decided in the light of facts alone." And, to the last man, they were for immediate, absolute prohibition as the very first essential food of efficiei^cy. Hoover was for it to conserve food. The great employers were for it to conserve man- power. The transportation chiefs were for it to conserve transportation. The economists were for it to conserve all that is summed up under the term, "Aloney !" The War Prohibition Committee, headed by Professor Irving Fisher, of Yale, undertook the preparation of a memorial for war prohibition, to be signed by one thousand out-standing Amer- icans. Telegrams authorizing signatures poured in like a flood. Only by an effort was the roll restricted to one thousand names. When com- pleted, the document was even more distinguished in its patronage than the "Strength of Britain Memorial." Inventors and authors, public men and industrial leaders, bankers and economists had not only signed but had accompanied their signatures with the most earnest declarations. Luther Burbank, the genius of the West, was there in the company of Elbert Gary, head of the mighty steel industry. John D. Rockefeller. Jr. ; Darwin P. Kingsley. of the New York Life In- surance Comi)any ; Frederick Frclinghuysen, of the Mutual Life Insurance Company — all called for absolute wiping out of the vampire trade in order that America might be strong for her great task. F. A. Vanderlip, who, under McAdoo, shared the honors of the great Second Liberty Loan, president of New York's most important bank, was there with Davitl Forgan. head of Chicago's mightiest financial institution. George W. Cable and Booth Tarkington were there in the company of many other literary masters. Orville Wright and Simon Lake, but for whose 80 THAT AMERICA MAY BE STRONG inspired genius this war would not have known the aeroplane and the submarine ; Dr. W. J. Mayo, the country's most distinguished surgeon ; W. J. Ilarahan, president of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad ; and Howard Elliott, president of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford, were there. John Wanamaker, merchant king; Ray Stannard Baker, the writer ; P. P. Claxton, United States commissioner of education ; Herreshoff, builder of cup-defending yachts ; Robert Babson, the financial and statistical au- thority ; Albert J. Stone, vice-president of the Erie Railroad; J. M. Gruber, vice-president of the Great Northern ; Dr. H. W. Wiley, the pure-food expert; Dr. Howard Kelly, the surgeon; Miss Jane Addams ; A. W. Harris, the great banker of Chicago; Dr. Irving Fisher, the leading econo- mist of America ; Dr. George Blumer, of Yale ; and Professor Winfield Scott Hall, of Northwes- tern ; William Jennings Bryan and Frederick Palmer, the war correspondent — of such was the roster of that memorial. "It is not wise to starve the people in order to make them drunk," said William Jennings Bryan, and Theodore Roosevelt declared that for the period of the war not a bushel of grain should be turned from food into intoxicants. "To tolerate the drink trade in time of war is nothing less than stealing bread from our sol- diers," declared another former President, William Howard Taft. We can give only the gist of a few of the flood of telegrams which swept in upon Congress : "Profoundly for war-time prohibition." — Luther Burbank, the "Plant Wizard." "In favor of national prohibition during the war and forever after." — David R. Forgan, City National Bank, Chicago. "Sale of liquor should be prohibited." — Simon Lake, inventor of the submarine. "Conditions loudly call for diversion of food- stuffs from distilleries, breweries, and bars to 8i THE WOODEN HORSE grist mills, bakeries, and breakfast tables." — Louis F. Post, Assistant Secretary of Labor. "flavor national prohibition during the war to prevent disease, save food wasted in the manu- facture of liquor, and promote national efficiency." — B. F. Harris, president First National Bank, Champaign, Illinois. "War prohibition a necessity." — Booth Tark- ington, novelist. '*No greater saving financially and in man- hood could be made than war prohibition. Every bushel of grain used to make liquor takes bread from the poor." — Richard H. Edmonds, editor Manufacturers' Record, Baltimore, Maryland. "Entire Interurban Clinical Club approve na- tional prohibition." — Dr. George Blumer, Dean Medical Department, Yale University. "For economic reasons as well as others, strongly favor national prohibition." — C. C. Chesney, Manager General Electric Company, New Haven, Connecticut. "Favor well-defined war prohibition." — J. P. Reeves, Treasurer Chicago and Eastern Rail- road Company, Chicago. "I am for nation-wide prohibition as a war measure, because of effect on food, economic and health conditions." — W. A. Evans, Editor of Health Department, Chicago Tribune, Chi- cago. "Highly approve of natii^nal pr(iliil)iti(in." — N. C. Herreshoff, President Herreshoff Boat Company, and Marine Engineer, Bristol, R. L "National prohibition absi^lutely essential to preserve foo(l supply." — John T. Stone, Presi- dent Maryland Casualty Company, Baltimore, Maryland. "Statistics show clearly that the Cnited States should immediately adopt national prohiliition as a war measure." — Roger W. Babson, Babson*s Statistical Organization, Wellesley Hill, Massachusetts. "Favor war prohibition. Effect on health, 82 THAT AMERICA MAY BE STRONG efficiency,and national economy would be great." — Howard Elliott, President New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad. "National prohibition during war has unquali- fied approval." — J. H. Wesson, President Smith & Wesson, Springfield, Massachusetts. "Favor war prohibition as measure of economy and efficiency." — John Crosby, Washburn Crosby Company, Minneapolis. "Unqualifiedly for national prohibition." — Charles K. Haddon, Vice-President Victor Talking Machine Company, Camden, N. J. "Seriousness of the task before us demands prohibition to conserve food supply, raise effi- ciency of the nation, and open far richer sources of revenue." — F. A. Vanderlip, President City National Bank, New York City. "Firmly believe national prohibition would be of great benefit." — Samuel S. Childs, President Childs Restaurant Company. "Prohibition would enormously reduce disease, would save food now wasted and promote na- tional productiveness more than a dozen other measures." — John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Chair- man Rockefeller Foundation. "I strongly favor national prohibition during the war." — Frederick Palmer, author, corre- spondent with the British Army and Fleet, 1914-16, New York. America's brain was and is unreservedly for prohibition. Back of these mighty leaders stand at least two thirds of the common people who can only give their sons to die and their women to wait that America's freedom may be once more countersigned in the red blood of her children. Why, then, are we to-day wasting treasure and sacrificing lives in the interest of a German- ized trade ? The President has power, under the food bill, to wipe out the manufacture of beer. Why does he not do it? The people of this country have not yet grasped 83 THE WOODEN HORSE the fact that the wet politicians of the skims hold the balance of power in Congress and have threatened to hamstring the government if the brewers are molested. Nor do they realize how ignorance and vice have been mobilized in de- fense of this trade. There is only one thing that will loose the might of this nation and let it go to the battlefield and to victory. That thing is the arousing of such a sentiment, such an over- whelming, outspoken, fighting sentiment, that the President will feel at his back the fearless con- science of the great patriotic masses in support unquestionably strong enough to justify him in defying Tammany, defying the slums, defying the German-American Alliance and the United States Brewers' Association. The days are passing. The hour draws near when the United States must choose between passing under the yoke of the brewers and the pro-Germans, or striking hands with the men who represent the brain and brawn, the genius and material with which we can WIN THIS WAR! 84 XII THE CALL OF THE CRISIS Prohibition for the war would awaken the people of the United States as nothhig else will. The government cannot avoid impugning its own sincerity when it officially asks the women to omit fashion for the period of the war in order to release labor now engaged in the useless work of making feniinine fripperies ; but fails to call for the release of the labor engaged in the worse than useless work of making beer. It is folly for the government to continue to ask the women and little ones of the country to deprive themselves of food, if it does not dare to ask the men of the country to deprive themselves of beer. The people are willing to go hungry to win this war; but they are not willing to go hungry in order that the brewers may add to their in- famous fortunes. It will avail nothing to tell the American peo- ple to become serious in this war until the govern- ment has become serious. The people say : ''O well, they talk; but they don't mean it. If we were in a serious situation, they wouldn't let the brewers rot this grain and misuse labor and waste railroad cars and put a brake on everything." War prohibition would come as a flash of white lightning in a black sky. The mind of the peo- ple would be cleared in a twinkling. They would know that we are in deadly peril, and that we are going to meet that peril as men who will wrest victorv from fate itself. THE DRINK TRADE IS A TRAITOR. It has been a traitor in Great Britain and France. IT IS A TRAITOR IN AMERICA TO- DAY. , 85 THE WOODEN HORSE We do not need beer; but we do need chloro- form and ether and industrial alcohol. We do need, the breweries to pack meat and bottle fruit juices and produce milk products. But they are not content with legitimate trade and legitimate profits. WE CANT BEAT GERMANY UNTIL WE HAVE BEATEN BEER. IT IS DEADLY MOCKERY TO ASK OUR BOYS TO DIE FOR US UNTIL WE ARE WILLING TO GO DRY FOR THEM. The law which prohibits the sale of liquor to any man in uniform is a good one ; but to-day armies are not fighting armies — nations are fight- ing nations. Why put all the sacrifice upon the soldier and the sailor? LET US NOW HA\'E A LAW WHICH WILL PROHIBIT THE SALE OF LIQUOR TO ANY MAN IN CIVILIAN CLOTHES. The man who is selected to go must spill his blood for victory ; let the man who is selected to stay at least spill his beer for the soldier. The country must act upon the assumption that the war is on for long years, requiring every cent of available money, every pound of avail- able food, every ounce of available labor, and every unit of brain power. It will not do to learn our lesson to-morrow ; it must be learned to-day in order that we may immediately wield our full strength, for to-morrow is the day of battle. It is not a question of whether or not prohi- bition will be adopted for the war ; it is a ques- tion of whether it will be adopted now, or after scandal, preventable disease, lost labor, misused transportation facilities and mounting food prices, have caused the people to blaze with white-hot wrath. Every saloon is an enemy fort ; every brewery a national menace, every bonded warehouse an arsenal for our foe, as long as it turns food into poison. In the name of all that American men and 86 THE CALL OF THE CRISIS women hold sacred, in the name of the principles we have won, and the principles we cherish, in the name of that honor which will be blasted if in our might we do less than what we should do, we call upon the President of the United States nozv to exercise the power vested in him to stop the manufacture of beer. He should commandeer every gallon of whisky and, by redistillation, make it an agency of victory instead of an agency of defeat. In the name of all these things, and more, the Congress of the United States should immediately close every saloon for the period of the war. There is a way to win this war; and that is, to call the nation to a recognition of its foes without and within and to that full and free action which can alone give victory. There is also a way to lose the war. Let the people get the impression that the government is afraid of slackers, draft resisters, and the beer trade. Let the government continue to exhort the women to save crumbs and permit the brewers to waste loaves. Let the espionage and anti- American propaganda now sheltering in the shadow of the brewery continue undisturbed. Shall we win or lose? ^ XIII LEST HAPLY WE SHOULD BE FOUND FIGHTING AGAINST GOD God Almighty still rules. He has not vacated the throne of the universe. He carries out his will by human leaders. Nations are his agents. They have no immortal souls. Their righteous- ness is to be rewarded and their sins punished in this life. Where in all history did a nation sin and escape its just penalty? What is the greatest sin against God and man in the twentieth century? The turning of God's great gift — our daily bread — into human poison ; the debauching and damning of the hundreds of millions by habit-forming drugs — opium, vodka, absinthe, wine, beer, hasheesh, ale, rum, and whisky. We do not understand God's purpose in this unspeakable world-wide war. But if it is to wipe the liquor traffic and all drug poison trades from the planet, may America speedily see the light, line up with the Divine purpose, and enact na- tional prohibition before it is forever too late ; lest, haply, by refusing we should be found fighting against God ! — Clarence True Wilson. 88 Hi- 1;- 1 ' ■ .#^ r^rf'*'*^*^ ''''''5«te^,.!dSi ^.^•^