Every turn that talk can take on the drink
question brings the image of some man or woman, or company of men and
women, before me, and that image is alive to my mind. If you pelt me
with tabular forms, and tell me that each adult in Britain drank so many
pints last year, you might just as well recite a mathematical proof. I
fix on some one human figure that your words may suggest and the image
of the bright lad whom I saw become a dirty, loafing, thievish sot is
more instructive and more woeful than all your columns of numerals.
Before me passes a tremendous procession of the lost: I can stop its
march when I choose and fix on any given individual in the ranks, so
that you can hardly name a single fact concerning drink, which does not
recall to me a fellow-creature who has passed into the place of wrecked
lives and slain souls. The more I think about it the more plainly I see
that, if we are to make any useful fight against drink, we must drop the
preachee-preachee; we must drop loud execrations of the people whose
existence the State fosters; we must get hold of men who _know_ what
drinking means, and let them come heart to heart with the victims who
are blindly tramping on to ruin for want of a guide and friend.
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