1915] War Notes 445 



soldier is allowed 1,793 S^- of beer and 20 gm. of brandy daily, 

 amounting to a total of 70.7 gm. of alcohol a day. I do not know 

 how you or the British Med. Jour. happened to take the figure 1,793 

 gm. of beer, but that this could not possibly be true should have 

 occurred to you. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that 

 there are 3,000,000 soldiers at the front, although there are probably 

 more than that. They would receive 5,379,000 kg. of beer daily. A 

 liter of beer, including packing, weighs, according to the estimation 

 of the breweries, 1.65 kg., so that the daily allowance for the army 

 would total 8,075,350 kg. The ordinary freight car carrying beer 

 will hold 10,000 kg. Therefore, 887 such cars filled with beer would 

 have to be shipped to the front daily and as many returned. Such 

 freight traffic, under present conditions, is an impossibility because so 

 many other things must be transported to the front at this time. In 

 reality there is no regulär alcohol allowance or consumption. The 

 soldiers are given coffee and tea as stimulants, and not alcohol; and 

 if, by any chance, a keg of beer should happen to fall into the hands 

 of the soldiers, it would be cause for celebration. You must be pre- 

 pared to find unsolved in the final analysis the problem as to how 

 much military efficiency among the German troops may be increased 

 by means of so-called ' Dutch courage.' " 



Very respectfully yours, 



Walther Straub, M.D., 

 Professor of pharmacology, University of Freiburg in Breisgau, 



July 10, 191 5 

 {Jour. Amer. Med. Assoc, 1915, Ixv, p. 732). 



Honors. The Paris Acad. of Sciences, in secret Session, passed 

 a resolution removing from its membership four German scientific 

 men, including Emil Fischer. 



Prof. Roentgen was 70 years old, Mar. 27. In honor of the 

 occasion the Kaiser presented him with an Iron Gross. In the ac- 

 companying message of congratulation, the Kaiser said : " The Ger- 

 man nation cannot be grateful enough to the discoverer of the rays 

 for whom they are named. The many advantages from the use of 

 the rays are being rendered apparent by the war more than ever 

 before." 



