‘The war against drink‘, Shire at War, 9 December 2016
Another post from the excellent Shire at War blog from down Alberton way in Gippsland. This one is about local efforts to defeat the demon drink during the Great War.
The impact that the War had on the existing push for temperance was both significant and complex. The claim that the war against Germany and the war against drink were intimately connected – to the extent that the former required the latter – was a constant message reflected in the newspapers, particularly in the first few years of the War. Further, the success of state-level referenda over 1915-16 on the introduction of earlier closing hours did indicate that there was popular support for the view that drink did constitute a threat – however defined or quantified – to the war effort.
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