The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-04-22
BEER DIsTRIBuTOR E TO GERMAN ARMY
 UPHOLDS BEER

0The author of the following article Dr. Max Stein. is director of the Ass0- citation for the Distribution of Beer in Germany. This organization copes with the tremendous task of supplying the entire German army with beer. Director Stein, who is a. Swiss citizen, recently visited the United States for a short stay and his shrewd observations will interest those who care. for con- structive criticism and enlightened ad- vice.)
 By DrJ Max. Stein.
 < Every day the Association for the Distribution of Beer in Germany, of which I am the director. sends 1, ,50O,- 900 liters of beer to our soldiers at the front.
 Every day railroads, motor trucks, pack animals, steamships, arc carry ing great shipments Of beer. to our soldiers in Russia. in Germany and in the Balkans.
 The average American. cannot u1i- aderstand why the German government spends millions of dollars and uses valuable transportation space in car ryings what you consider a luxury to the front. But that is just the=point. We do not consider beer a luxury, we consider it a necessity, and we believe that the health of our troops would suffer greatly if for any reason the beer supply were cut off.
 Fl Before came to America I could not understand this attitude of the American people To me it scene ed send an army into a waste country like Mexico and subject them to the dan gers of poisoned water holes and ty- phoid, when you might so easily trans port beer. But since coming to- Amer ica begin to understand. have visited your drinking places, which are only. frequented, by men-where men stand up. at a bar and one man terats the other in succession, and where drinking is more of a business than a pleasure, and where one Anever sees a woman, or if there is a woman, not Of the better class. In Germany. it is different. One goes into a Ger man restaurant where the whole Ger man family sits at table, orders food the morning the Muenich woman drinks her stein of beer, and yet I know that German women do. not be- come slaves to the habit the way the American women become slaves to the cigarette and the cocktail.
 You notice that the men who have been foremost in the fighting around Verdun are the Brandenburgters the Baden CTS, and the Rhinelanders. Those men come from provinces where more beer and wine are consumed than probably any other territory in the world. You can draw your own con clusions from this, as to whether the moderate drinking of beer and wine destroysl the wholesome strength of the people or breaks down manly vii taIity as your fanatica1 prohibitionist says they do.
 Another thing not generally known abroad is that the Austrian army was under strict prohibition during the early part of the war After the bat ties in the Carpathians. the Austrian army was reorganized, and one of the first reforms was the introduction of beer into the army. Now the Aus trians have organized a bureau, such as our German bureau, and the Aus trian army gets about the same amount of beer as our own army. Since the reorganization, you~~ know that the morale of the Austrians is 60 per cent. better than it was. I do not mean to imply by this that the inn provement is due to beer, but beer evil dently played a part and today the Austrian military chiefs wouI no more think of sending out an army corps without beer than it would without bread. i On the side of the Allies want to call your attention to the fact that it is
 
 the English who have made, the best showing. The backbone of the Allies is the French army, who drink their wine as we Germans drink our beer.
 am not attempting here to dis parage the temperance, movement. Only you in America and we on the Continent have an entirely different view of what constitutes temperance. I do not consider that the German who takes his beer with his meals, nor the F'renchman who takes light wine in the same way, is incorporate. I consider the Russian peasant, who used to get drunk every day on vodka, but who, now that Russia has prohi- bition, has substituted varnish for vodka, incorporate. But I suppose that your American, prohibitionists would class all three nations as inten- perate, and the only truly temperate nation Turkey, which drinks neither wine nor beer, nor hard liquors.
 My own view of what constitutes temperance agrees pretty much with the French. If you will read the tract sent by the French Medical Society to the soldiers at the front you will see that. while the men in the trenches are warned that nip of brandy is delus-