Читать книгу A Woman and the War онлайн

24 страница из 40

In touch with serious workers in many of the fields of endeavour that make brief oases in the deserts of industrialism, I know that both drink and prostitution have increased since war began, and I know that drink is the great support of prostitution, and that thousands of women of the class we must pity most have a natural sense of shame that drink destroys. If the demons of ruin—gin and whisky—had not been busy pouring gold into the national treasury, day by day and year by year, they would have been exorcised long since. But business is business, and the gentlemen whose activity corrupts the country can always talk of freedom and liberty, and declare to thunders of applause that Britons never shall be slaves. The possibility of being free to be a slave to drink never occurs to them, or if it does they forget to mention it.

But while I welcome legislation that will tend to keep women sober, and believe that our sex stands in need of more sobriety by reason of its sedentary life, I am far from thinking that the law that is good for women is necessarily good for man. The conditions are altogether different. The self-respecting artisan and skilled worker drink less than ever they did. The men who are doing the country's work to-day in all the armament manufacturing areas need a stimulant, need it far more than the prosperous City man, the real toper of our times. He will drink champagne and whisky with his lunch, and, having had quite enough of both, will damn the working classes for being given to the use of intoxicants. I have been through some of those great works in the north, where labour at and round the furnaces is unremitting, and where to-day the pace has been increased to the extreme limit of physical power. To preach temperance to the armament worker is an absurdity; if he is not to be stimulated according to his needs his hours will need to be greatly diminished; it is impossible for him to give out unless he takes in. Why, in the name of all that is sensible, should he not have that which will help him? Why should he have remained so long at the mercy of cheap, vile spirits that are a more or less effective poison? Why should he be at the mercy of the people who, having little hard work to do, can thrive comfortably upon lemonade and barley water? The manufacturers spare no pains to obtain the very finest material for their own work; if it is necessary to spend a few or many thousands of pounds upon new plant the money is forthcoming without a murmur. Does it pass the wit of these sapient people to give to humanity a little of the thought they give to raw material? Can they not see that the best and purest drink that the new regulations permit is within reach of the workers, and that the rest is out of reach?