Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
In 1940 alcohol abuse in the French Army was the subject of a Symposium shortly before the eclipse of interest in this matter by more urgent purely military problems.Contributors stressed the importance of alcohol in military crime (Hugonot one physician stating that at least 15 % of patients referred to him for gastronintestinal symptoms were alcoholics (Delore, 1940).It is interesting how close this figure is to the 13.8% of concealed alcoholics found by Nolan (1965) in 900 consecutive admissions to general medical wards.Writing after the French defeat Mc-Adam Eccles (1942) considered that alcohol had been a significant factor in the military collapse and cited a statement from French General Headquarters in April 1940 that "alcohol poisoning was rampant among French privates, N.C.O.'s and even (not author's emphasis) certain officers".In contrast Moore (1942) comments on the victorious Germans that on active operations they "are not allowed alcoholic liquor in any form and the picked troops who invaded France in 1940 were, for the most part, men who had been on a military training regime more strict than of any football teams in our universities".However, no satisfactory evidence is given to support this statement which is probably based on the principle that "nothing succeeds like success."The interest in alcoholism as a problem in the Bri-guest.
R A Dunbar-Miller (Sun,) studied this question.