War & Peace Quote by William Lyon Mackenzie King

A prime minister’s eyebrow, arched in bureaucratic prose, can be more revealing than a rousing speech. “The increased consumption of alcoholic beverages in Canada since the outbreak of war is one evidence of this” reads like a footnote, but it smuggles in a whole theory of the home front: war doesn’t just mobilize armies; it unsettles bodies, habits, and morals. King isn’t describing a cocktail trend. He’s taking the nation’s pulse and pointing to a symptom.

The intent is diagnostic and managerial. By framing drinking as “evidence,” King folds private behavior into public policy, turning taverns and kitchen cupboards into data. The subtext is anxiety about social cohesion: wartime strain, grief, and uncertainty finding an outlet that threatens productivity, discipline, and the image of a steady Canada. It’s also a political tell. King was a careful balancer, leading a country with lingering temperance politics and deep divisions over conscription and sacrifice. Talking about alcohol lets him address wartime malaise indirectly, without naming panic, dissent, or despair.

Context matters: Canada’s experience of the First World War (and later the Second) strained labor, families, and public health, while prohibition and regulation were live, contentious issues across provinces. King’s restrained phrasing performs authority: cool, observational, almost clinical. That tone is the point. He offers moral concern disguised as administrative fact, inviting state intervention while maintaining the mask of neutral governance. The sentence is less about liquor than about control - and the fear that wartime Canada might start coping in ways the government can’t easily command.