CHAPTER XXI
THE CHIEF ENEMY OF WOMEN
If we believe that the sexes are mutually dependent and, in the long
run, can neither be injured nor befriended apart, we shall be prepared
to expect that the chief enemy of civilized mankind is no less inimical
to women than to men. So long as it was supposed that drinking merely
injured the drinker, and so long as the drinkers were almost entirely
men, it could be argued by persons sufficiently foolish that indulgence
in alcohol was a male vice or delight which really did not concern women
at all--if men choose to drink or to smoke or to bet or to play games,
what business is that of women? It is an argument which would not appeal
to the mind of the primitive law-giver, and can be accepted by no one who
thinks to-day.
For the least effects of drink are those which are seen in the drinker.
The question of alcoholism is not one of the abuse of a good thing, here
and there injuring those who take it to excess, but is a national
question which affects the entire community, abstainers, and drinkers,
men, women and children, present and to come. No one who has seriously
studied the action of alcohol on civilization can question that it is
our chief external enemy. We must use the word external for the best of
good reasons, since we know that always and everywhere man's chief foes
are those of his own household--his own proneness to injure himself and
others.
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