Alcohol's Army by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 23, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 37.

Alcohol's Army

By Editor

THE passing of persons singly does not particularly affect us. Unless we know him personally, or are related to him in some way, the passing of a single drunken man has but little effect upon us. A few do not impress greatly the mass of people. Take it in any of our large cities, and there are thousands and thousands of workmen that pass a given central point every day. No one is impressed by them in any way; but if it was said that at a certain hour there was to be a procession of all the individuals that passed that point, the town itself would be attracted. The mass would really affect people. We wish sometimes it were possible to mass in the great cities a procession of alcohol's victims, the bloated-faced, blear-eyed wrecks of humanity, and that that procession could carry banners and present floats showing the actual work that alcohol is doing. It seems as tho it would impress that city

so that the trade and commerce in alcohol would be forever revolting and prohibited.

In the year 1908 there were 131,000 arrested in Massachusetts alone for drunkenness. What a procession that would be! About one in a dozen would be a woman. There would be children in it, more than five thousand of them under seventeen years of age, just enlisting in the army. There would be young men and young women in it, more than 40,000 of them between twenty and thirty years of age; and there you would find the old veterans, all the way up to seventy years old and more. How the veterans of the Civil War, the Old Guard, command attention when they walk,—wounded, scarred, infirm! Alcohol's veterans are wounded and scarred and infirm; but O, how differently would they be regarded! The Old Guard of the Civil War fought honorably and conquered. And even their foes are regarded honorably; for tho they fought for a "lost cause," yet to them it was a patriotic struggle. But these in alcohol's army are all fighting for everlasting defeat.

The great procession moves on to the court-house, and from there many of them to the jail, where some of them have been all the way from one to twenty and thirty times before, some few of this 131,000 a hundred times before; but at the end of their confinement there they go back and join the same procession. "Tramp, tramp, tramp, to the drunkard's grave march" not only these, but all the millions in the various states and countries of the world.

It would seem, friends, that every one of us ought to do all that we can to stop the procession, to stop the captain that is rallying them to this,—alcohol, with all its cursed associations and recruiting agencies. Do everything in your power to help.

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The New York "World" sees hope, in the overthrow of Governor Sulzer, that Murphy of Tammany fame will be the next to go. We are often told by the press, as some corrupt politician seems about to be overthrown, that we are making great reforms, and soon we will have things quite respectably clean in our politics. We were told this when Gill and Wapenstein were overthrown in Seattle. We were told the same thing when Schmitz and Ruef were overthrown in San Francisco. We are continually asked to note the progress of "the reform wave" whenever any grafting politician is forced to surrender to the law. We have been told that publicity would create a "moral sentiment" that would sweep corruption from the political camp. It may be very pleasing to dream of such things, but the facts will not warrant an intelligent hope of realizing the fulfillment of our dreams. The Bible plainly says that "evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived." Some men say that the world is getting better and better. God says it will get worse and worse until it finally becomes a reproduction of old Sodom. If we believe God and His word, we will stand with Him, and be on the side of actual fact and truth. If we reject His plain word, we will go on with our dreaming of things that can not be realized, and finally go down in destruction.