LICENSING POLLS.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 16986, 8 November 1920, Page 8

LICENSING POLLS.

TO THE EDITOR OT '"THX Sir,—As you have kindlv invited mo 10 suggest what- short headline would bo proper to describe tho latest published results of the licensing poll in Victoria, will you allow me to say, what is really pertinent to the issue raised, that nothing has happened to justify your claim that in Victoria the anti-liquor forces have received a set-back. It is quite True tlint the figures in the aggregate show a big majority against no-license, but where, <as in Victoria, tho polling is taken on tho principle of local option, figures in the aggregate by no means tell the whole story. I do not know in -what short headline you or anybody else could sot forth tljo fact that while the figures for continuance for the whole State show a large majority, there are over fiftv districts in which the antiliquor forces have scored a win. Any set-back that has taken place is on the side of liquor and not anti-liquor forces. Tt is the liquor line that has been broken in more than fifty places. "Will vou allow me further to say that the xise of the word "Prohibition" with regard to the poll, either in Victoria or Scotland, is entirely misleading. _ In neither country is prohibition an issue. In both countries the issue lies between no-license or reduction on tho one side, and continuance on the other. There was no hint., on my part, of sncrfresting as descriptivo of the result, either in Scotland or Victoria, the words you put within quotation marks, "A victory, for the drys." T venture to further than to nsscrt, and to trire rensons for my assertion, that the d'slodgment of liquor from # a number of places nreviously occupied. with no compensating gains elsewhere, was fatal to the accuracy of your claim in describing it as "A 'wet' victorv."—l am. etc.. N W. J. "WILLIAMS, November 6th.