General Wheeler Opposes Army Canteens
The National Temperance Society has planned for a national temperance congress, to be held at Rochester, N. Y., from August 3 to 15. General Joseph Wheeler was present at the meeting which planned this congress. In an address in reference to the use of liquor in the army, General Wheeler said that fully one-half the young men who joined the army had come from good homes, where they had been brought up to let liquor alone, and he considered it wrong for the government to place this class of young men in such surroundings that their only chance of recreation was in the presence of a bar. He held that if it was wise for corporations and business men to require total abstinence on the part of their employees, it was equally wise for the government to encourage total abstinence in the army. He favored the continuance of the anti-canteen law. General Wheeler has had a long experience in army life, and has been in a position to know the real merits of the temperance question in the army. Further than that, he would have nothing to gain in taking the position he does—except a clear conscience. He knows, as every unprejudiced, thinking man and woman knows, that liquor in the army, as everywhere else, is evil and only evil.