Canteen Lobby’s Chief Excuse Gone

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 4, 1907

Canteen Lobby’s Chief Excuse Gone

THERE is mourning in Washington, not at the Capitol, not at the White House, but in the rooms of the liquor lobby, where they have been “setting the pins” so industriously for the repeal of the anti-canteen law. It is on the program to carry this nullifying legislation at the next session of Congress. Preparatory for this, the liquor lobby has been flooding the country with literature describing the utter failure of the present law to promote sobriety in the army. Notwithstanding the published reports of the judge advocate general, showing a remarkable decrease in the number of arrests and courts-martial since the anti-canteen law went into effect, the charge is made repeatedly that the army has become demoralized since the rank and file have been denied their daily grog. It has not been difficult to get testimonials to this effect from drinking officers, but the counter-opinion from the army’s best generals ought to outweigh the testimony of a thousand majors and lieutenants.

The liquor interests wail bitterly because the poor soldier is subjected to the awful temptations of low groggeries outside the military posts. The most offensive dives of this character have clustered around Fort Sheridan, the large military post just outside of Chicago. The evils there were all that certain newspaper correspondents, who appeared to be in the employ of the liquor trade, have pictured them. These dens at Highwood have furnished more than one specious argument for the restoration of the canteen. Instead of this, however, the Law and Order League of Lake County, in which Highwood is situated, went to the State Capitol and asked for a law prohibiting liquor selling within one and one-eighth miles of any military or naval post. Who indorsed their petition but the secretary of war himself! With this powerful influence abetting, the legislature of Illinois unanimously passed a law closing Highwood dives. What has been done in Illinois can be done in any and every State of the Union; and if it were done, there would be no demand in respectable quarters for the restoration of the canteen by Congress next winter.—Home Herald.