3. What inferences may justly be made from the following?

 

During the Boer War it was found that the average Englishman did not measure up

to the standards of recruiting and the average soldier in the field manifested a

low plane of vitality and endurance. Parliament, alarmed by the disastrous

consequences, instituted an investigation. The commission appointed brought in a

finding that alcoholic poisoning was the great cause of the national degeneracy.

The investigations of the commission have been supplemented by investigations of

scientific bodies and individual scientists, all arriving at the same

conclusion. As a consequence, the British Government has placarded the streets

of a hundred cities with billboards setting forth the destructive and

degenerating nature of alcohol and appealing to the people in the name of the

nation to desist from drinking alcoholic beverages. Under efforts directed by

the Government the British Army is fast becoming an army of total abstainers.

 

The Governments of continental Europe followed the lead of the British

Government. The French Government has placarded France with appeals to the

people, attributing the decline of the birth rate and increase in the death rate

to the widespread use of alcoholic beverages. The experience of the German

Government has been the same. The German Emperor has clearly stated that

leadership in war and in peace will be held by the nation that roots out

alcohol. He has undertaken to eliminate even the drinking of beer, so far as

possible, from the German Army and Navy.