A NEW YORK TIMES correspondent, after reviewing the widespread anti-drink sentiment which had emerged since the start of the war, concluded: ‘a reaction against alcohol is going on. It is partly social, partly scientific, partly moral, partly and most powerfully economic.’ The drink crisis was a coalescence of these varied concerns and the culmination of years of anti-drink protest. The failure to enact prohibition, and the hostile reaction to such a measure being considered, meant that the newly created CCB was the antidote to the drink crisis supposedly engulfing the country.

The Central Control Board came into being on 19 May 1915 with the passing of the Defence of the Realm (Amendment) (No. 3) Act, 1915. The Order in Council establishing the Defence of the Realm (Liquor Control Regulations), giving the CCB actual powers and defining the functions, constitution and power of the Board, was applied on 10 June 1915. The Board was established for the purpose of ‘controlling the sale and supply of intoxicating liquor in naval, military, munitions or transport areas, where such control should be found expedient for the successful prosecution of the war.’ This was an historic moment for drink control in Britain. For the first time a government body with real power had been established to deal explicitly with the question of alcohol consumption. The parameters in which the Board could act were apparently firm but the perception of them, as we shall see, was open to interpretation. These criteria meant that the CCB could not enact change simply for reform's sake. As Lord D'Abernon, Chairman of the Central Control Board, later recalled ‘[the actions of the Board] constitute the first attempt to deal with the drink traffic solely on lines of national efficiency, any other aspect of the problem having been barred by the terms of reference’. Thus, much of the action taken by the Central Control Board, under the auspices of ‘national efficiency’, was reformist in nature for the simple reason that social reform was in the best interests of improving national efficiency.

The war gave the arguments of drink reformers a new impetus to deal specifically with the institution of the public house.