Читать книгу A Woman and the War - Frances Evelyn Maynard Greville Countess of Warwick - Страница 6

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It is hard to pierce the thick cloud of cant in which, as a nation, we are all too apt to shroud ourselves. I do not think we are hypocritical, although that charge is laid to our door by all our ill-wishers, but I do believe we are hopelessly conventional, and seldom muster up the courage necessary to call a spade a spade.

I have been re-reading of late, the endless comment upon the drink legislation, some of it frankly inspired by publicans and sinners—I mean distillers—some of it the pure outpouring of cranks, most of it prejudiced, or uninformed, or both. We deplore drunken habits, but when Sir Cuthbert Quilter tried to persuade Parliament to pass a Pure Beer Bill he met with no success. The worst crimes against the person, the common and criminal assaults on women and children, are largely due to drink, and of this drink raw and crude spirits are the worst part; but we do nothing to protect our poorer classes from the poison. To introduce "square face" gin among the black population of some of our possessions is a deadly offence, the punishment is heavy, swift, and certain, but to poison the workers of our great manufacturing centres is business, and many quite worthy people believe that "when Britain first at Heaven's command arose from out the azure main" it was to do business, and as much of it as possible. Naturally it follows that the fight against cant is all the harder because most of us do not recognise cant when we hear it. I remember how when temperance legislation was first mooted as a war measure many friends who can afford to buy pure French wines and spirits of great age and mellowness solemnly assured me that temperance legislation is mere foolishness, and that they themselves are living proofs that moderation, good health, and a wise activity march hand-in-hand.

But of late years a certain number of women of all classes have been drinking more than is good for them, and since the war broke out the working women's temptations in this direction and the opportunity to indulge them have grown side by side.

The majority of working women are as sober as the majority of every class, but, though there are thousands of temperate women, they are matched by thousands of intemperate ones, the number has grown apace, and I feel they should be saved from themselves. The sober classes cannot resent restriction. It leaves them where they were. The intemperate classes may resent restriction, but it remains necessary in their own interests.

I don't suppose many people read Harrison Ainsworth's novels to-day, but I remember a striking passage in "Jack Sheppard," where Mrs. Sheppard justifies herself to her friend Wood, the carpenter, who has told her that Gin-lane is the nearest road to the churchyard. It is worth quoting—

"It may be; but if it shortens the distance and lightens the journey I care not," retorted the widow.... "The spirit I drink may be poison—it may kill me—perhaps it is killing me, but so would hunger, cold, misery—so would my own thoughts. I should have gone mad without it. Gin is the poor man's friend—his sole set-off against the rich man's luxury.... When worse than all, frenzied with want, I have yielded to horrible temptation and earned a meal the only way I could earn one ... I have drunk of this drink and forgotten my cares, my poverty, and my guilt."

The working women whose husbands are at the war have many excuses. They are deprived of their husbands, and—though there is no need to emphasise the point it cannot be overlooked—their lives are a drab monotony of toil, their surroundings are often of the most unfavourable description, the only restraint that can reach them is self-restraint, and their training has done little to provide it. The public-house offers companionship, a brief surcease of anxiety, light and warmth. Many are enervated by much child-bearing, worn out by much house or factory work. They meet temptation and succumb, but let us remember that in classes removed from the same form of temptation there is no lack of intemperance. A very small dose of bad spirits is enough to provide the cheap anodyne some are seeking, and under the influence of drink they are apt to lose their self-respect. The craving for drink grows with what it feeds on, and in all too many cases the hold upon self-respect falters and is lost. We have sent very many men to the war, but enough and more than enough remain behind to take advantage of women who have lost all or even a part of their normal control.

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?

It has long been the custom of the capitalist class in normal times to give the workman bad drink with one hand and to raise the other hand with an expression of holy horror against the sin of drunkenness, quite ignoring the truth that the quality, rather than the quantity, that people drink is often the deciding factor—that every class drinks, and that if the vice looks worse in one class than another it is because the poorer the man or woman, the viler the alcohol supplied to them. There are so many excellent people who preach temperance and live on the dividends of drunkenness, there are so many who believe that a reasonable excess in matters of drink is a form of manly virtue, and there are yet more who believe honestly in moderation, and do not see that their good brand of claret, burgundy, or brandy should be denied to them, seeing they have never abused it.

For myself, I drink a glass of good wine; failing that I am content with pure water. If we could give our working classes nothing but the best, and at a price within their means, I should look askance at legislation, of whatever kind; but I recognise the old truth that the destruction of the poor is their poverty, and that the working man and woman have always been penalised, and will continue to be, until Government recognises its responsibilities, and rides its supporters of the drink trade with a very tight rein.

Above all I feel that the new legislation that has first restricted and then diluted the working man's drink must not be regarded as an isolated instance, but as part of the vast changes that the war will ensue. The working man will not forego his legitimate refreshment; it is for the Government to see that it is pure and reasonably harmless. Good beer in moderation will not hurt anybody; bad spirits are the foundation of disease and crime, and, in their silent fashion, are always fighting against the best interests of the State. Sometimes, when I read that the perpetrator of some ghastly crime has been sentenced to death or a long term of imprisonment, with all the pomp and circumstance of our criminal courts, I find myself wondering what poison was administered to him in some squalid public-house, and who among those who rejoice that justice has been done, or vengeance executed, have actually derived financial benefit from the drink that turned a man into a beast. We punish the poor fool with a diseased appetite, we confer some honour or reward upon the prime offender. Then when our enemies say that we are hypocrites we are indignant because of their injustice, or contemptuous of their ignorance, knowing as we do, that God is in Heaven, and that business is business.

Finally, and quite apart from the immediate significance of the drink question, I rejoice in any legislation that will help the working-classes to the full possession of their faculties. If drink helps them to forget intolerable surroundings, insufficient pay, the deprivation of their fair share of the world's beauties, let us be glad that it is taken from them in its worst forms. They will see with clear eyes and with wiser heads, they will no longer be at the mercy of those who pander to their weakness in order to keep them weak. They will enter upon the great struggle that lies before democracy with stronger will and stronger armour. They have surrendered much of their power to the public-house, and the longer its shutters are up the more leisure they will have to see that there are better things in life, the greater will be their determination to share them with the fortunate classes.

There is a time of trouble in store; they cannot be too well equipped to meet it.