ISLAM

186 " ISLAM VERSUS CHRISTIANITY
the dissipated life led by men and women
frequenting bridge clubs at which they spent
eight hours daily, playing bridge, drinking
, cocktails and pegs, smoking scores of cigarettes.
One woman was shown by the club entries
to have consumed 140 cigarettes in one
sitting."
The wide prevalence of alcoholism in the West
is a striking proof of the inefficiency of Christianity
as a restraining force. Even in the anxious days of
the Great war it was found difficult to check it.
Mr. Lloyd George said thus in 1915 :
We are fighting three forces Germany, Austria
and Drink, and Drink is the most formidable
in the three/'
Referring to this statement in a letter to the
Daily Mail in 1921, Bishop Welldon said :
"One who has helped in his own hands as I
have, to drag out of public houses poor,
sunken, sodden men and women, ruined in
body and soul, can scarcely feel that the
Prime Minister used exaggerated language
when he spoke of drink as a worse enemy
than Germany itself."
The result of the policy of prohibition in that
profoundly Christian country, America, affords a
striking example of the practical moral effect of
Christianity on its followers. Mr. Woodrow Wilson,
while still in the White House foresaw the difficulties
which would attend any sudden attempt to