es' 24,277 118 205
St. Andrew's 11,166 87 128

In proportion to the poverty and misery of the population are the
licences increased. In the Cowgate of Edinburgh there are 12 licences,
and in the Canongate, 19. The same proportion applies to all our
cities.

[3] _The Drink Problem of To-day_, p. 182.

[4] Micah ii. 11.

{125}

CHAPTER VI

THE GREAT REFUSAL

For the historian of the future who may essay the task of elucidating
the moral progress or decay of the British Empire, one date will stand
forth as a landmark--April 20, 1915. For it was on that day that the
House of Commons refused to follow 'the King's lead.' On the 6th April
it was announced that 'By the King's command no wines, spirits, or beer
will be consumed in any of His Majesty's houses after to-day.' No
announcement ever cheered the heart of a nation more than that. It was
as if an electric current had suddenly passed through an inert mass,
galvanising it into life. When Lord Kitchener and other leaders
loyally followed the King's example, the men who fought {126} a weary
battle for the emancipation of the nation from the yoke of alcohol, and
whose hearts were oft sickened by long-delayed hopes, felt that the day
of moral victory had dawned at last. The nation, delivered from the
enemy within its gates, would bring its full power to bear upon the
enemy that threatened its destruction from without. In house and mess
and restaurant alcohol was banished. But all these fair hopes were
rudely shattered when the House of Commons at the end of fourteen days
refused to banish alcohol from the precincts of Westminster. The dawn
of hope ended once more in gloom.

I

It is only as yet possible to surmise as to the forces which led to the
great refusal. The nation, with the almost unanimous voice of its
wisest and best citizens, had called for the deliverance of the people
from alcohol by its total prohibition. Employers of labour, who {127}
had no sympathy originally for the prohibition movement, were converted
to it by the spectacle of the nation's marshalling of its forces being
steadily hampered by drunkenness. The leaders of all the Churches
pressed for it; the Press began to plead for it; Mr. Lloyd-George
openly declared that 'drink is doing us more damage than all the German
submarines put together'; and there is no doubt but that the King and
Lord Kitchener expected