Chicago Tribune
FIVE MILE DRY ZONE FIXED
FOR NAVAL STATIONS
Great Lakes Is Not an Offender; Newport "Bone Dry."
(By a Staff Correspondent.)
Washington, D. C., March 6. — [Special] — Secretary of the Navy Daniels in an official order today established a five mile "dry" zone around the Great Lakes Naval Training station and seven other naval stations.
Within this zone all saloons must close. Within this zone, too, liquor may not be served to officers and men of the navy in private zones in which they are guests.
Outside the "dry" zone there is a prohibition against the sale or giving of liquor to officers and men in uniform, but they may be served with drinks while guests in private homes. The navy department cannot regulate this, but Secretary Daniels expresses the hope that in such homes in the free zone no liquor shall be offered men of the navy.
The secretary said he had been told the five mile zone at the Great Lakes station took in only one small "wet" town.
Newport Is Hard Hit.
Newport, the fashionable Rhode Island summer resort, which is also the side of a naval training station, is hardest hit by the order. It will be made "bone dry" for the war. Newport and Vallejo, Cal., are the two stations at which the worst conditions were reported.
The Great Lakes conditions have been less serious than elsewhere.
In addition to these places, the navy’s five mile order affects the naval academy at Annapolis, the training stations at Norfolk, Va., and at the naval operating base at Hampton Roads, and the marine barracks at Paris Island, S.C. and Quantico, Va.
Explains His Order
In his statement explaining the order Mr. Daniels said it had become necessary to protect the young sailors gathered for training. He referred at length to conditions at Newport and Vallejo, Cal., near the Mare Island station, which he said the local authorities had been vainly urged to correct.
"For many months," the statement said, "evils resulting from the presence of intoxicating liquor in the vicinity of certain places under naval jurisdiction have been brought repeatedly to the attention of the department. By various means this liquor finds its way into the men, and the moral and physical welfare of those men is thus being seriously endangered."
In regard to Newport, the secretary quoted communications from the commandant of the naval district, from the Newport ministers, from the war camp community service committee, and the chief of ordinance, urging that intoxicants be barred.
