Читать книгу The Times Great War Letters: Correspondence during the First World War - James Owen - Страница 64

THE NEXT GENERATION

22 June 1915

SIR,—AS A SLUM WORKER and member of an L.C.C. Care Committee may I crave space for a few burning words? No one who has at heart the moral and physical welfare of the next generation can witness without dismay the appalling increase of “drinking” amongst the women of the poorest class. Let anyone who doubts this look at the unprecedented number of cases of women had up for drunkenness in our London Police Courts. The money which the Government is pouring out so lavishly upon soldiers’ and sailors’ dependents is in many instances being shockingly and shamefully wasted. There are many families who go dinnerless on Mondays, when the women draw their pay and often remain in the publichouse from 11 a.m. till late in the afternoon. A young soldier’s wife who was explaining the black eye she had got the day before told me that it was not that she cared for the drink, but the “company” and the “treating.” She had recently been troubled by a visit from the S.P.C.C. Another, who before her husband went away was considered a respectable woman, is now doing two months’ hard labour, and I have had to help toward the support of her six little children. Scores of working men who are themselves moderate drinkers have said to me, “Why don’t they close the pubs?” If the sale of drink can be limited to help on the output of munitions why not also for the moral and physical welfare of the mothers and the coming generation?

I am yours faithfully,

A SLUM PARSON