I have something more to say about this, and it is unpleasant.  I would wish that it were not I, but somebody else that should say it.  Most of our workmen are putting every ounce of strength into this urgent work for their country, loyally and patriotically.  But that is not true of all.  There are some, I am sorry to say, who shirk their duty in this great emergency.  I hear of workmen in armaments works who refuse to work a full week’s work for the nation’s need.  What is the reason?  They are a minority.  The vast majority belong to a class we can depend upon.  The others are a minority.  But, you must remember, a small minority of workmen can throw a whole works out of gear.  What is the reason?  Sometimes it is one thing, sometimes it is another, but let us be perfectly candid.  It is mostly the lure of the drink.  They refuse to work full time, and when they return their strength and efficiency are impaired by the way in which they have spent their leisure.  Drink is doing us more damage in the war than all the German submarines put together.

What has Russia done? [Cheers.] Russia, knowing her deficiency, knowing how unprepared she was, said, “I must pull myself together.  I am not going to be trampled upon, unready as I am.  I will use all my resources.”  What is the first thing she does?  She stops the drink. [Cheers.] I was talking to M. Bark, the Russian Minister of Finance, a singularly able man, and I asked, “What has been the result?” He said, “The productivity of labor, the amount of work which is put out by the workmen, has gone up between 30 and 50 per cent.” [Cheers.] I said, “How do they stand it without their liquor?” and he replied, “Stand it?  I have lost revenue over it up to L65,000,000 a year, and we certainly cannot afford it, but if I proposed to put it back there would be a revolution in Russia.”  That is what the Minister of Finance told me.  He told me that it is entirely attributable to the act of the Czar himself.  It was a bold and courageous step—­one of the most heroic things in the war. [Cheers.] One afternoon we had to postpone our conference in Paris, and the French Minister of Finance said, “I have got to go to the Chamber of Deputies, because I am proposing a bill to abolish absinthe.” [Cheers.] Absinthe plays the same part in France that whisky plays in this country.  It is really the worst form of drink used; not only among workmen, but among other classes as well.  Its ravages are terrible, and they abolished it by a majority of something like 10 to 1 that afternoon. [Cheers.]

That is how those great countries are facing their responsibilities.  We do not propose anything so drastic as that—­we are essentially moderate men. [Laughter.] But we are armed with full powers for the defense of the realm.  We are approaching it, I do not mind telling you, for the moment, not from the point of view of people who have been considering this as a social problem—­we are approaching it purely from the point of view of these works.