The Press Thursday, June 25, 1925. Prohibition and Politics.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18417, 25 June 1925, Page 8

The Press Thursday, June 25, 1925. Prohibition and Politics.

; Our remarks, in our issue of Tuesday, | upon the Xcw Zealand Alliance's | questionnaire for members of Parliai ment have .brought us two letters of i counter-proles!, which Ave print to-day. | That which comes from Miss Jessie | Mack ay contains nothing which calls for criticism, but we feel justified in printing i(, because it is the best proof we could present of the fact that the more ardent Prohibitionists can see nothing in politics, local, general, Imperial or international, except the drink problem. Our other correspondent, the liev. W. J. Williams, will recognise, Ave think, when lie reads Miss Mackay's letter, that we might have gone even further than Ave did in our references to the extremists, "who are also the controlling forces, of his party. As for Mr Williams's own letter, it is but fair to say that he does address himself directly to the. points of our article. He asks us whether, if it is "wrong for the New Zealand Alliance to send a questionnaire to intending candidates, it is right for any organisation to do so; and further ■whether, if questionnaires arc to be banned, questions put to a candidate addressing a meeting must be banned also. These are perfectly fair questions, whatever may be the spirit in which they are asked, and we have no difficulty in answering them. What we said of the impropriety of the Alliance's questionnaire applies to all questionnaires of the same kind —to the questionnaire of any organisation which will sacrifice everything to its sectional ends, and which makes the test of a man's fitness to take part in the work of government not his brains and temper, and not his opinions on the major questions upon which the strength and progress of an organised political society depends, but his attitude on one single question which has little or nothing to do with the nation's political progress. Add to this the organisation's resolve to sacrifice everything to its sectional aims, and we do not hesitate to say that every sincere and clear-sighted politician will declaro that he will have nothing to do with a questionnaire so conceived. Mr Williams says that our picture of Prolubitionists " blind, deaf and dumb to " every other consideration than " whether the candidate they vote for "is ' dry' or ' wet' " is a " figment of "the imagination." That it is an accurate portrait Miss Maekay comes forward to testify, but even if Are did not know that the Alliance does wish its friends to support only those who will support Prohibition, there would be the questionnaire itself to explain. The Alliance is not asking candidates to stand and deliver purely out of idle curiosity. In answering the first of Mr Williams's questions wc have answered the second. There is no objection to the asking of questions by tho individual elector at a candi--1 dak's meeting. The individual voter may be a crank with as troublesome a King Charles's head as any " dry " extremist may have, but he is not a powerful organisation with machinery to put into operation against a candidate who docs not share his private delusion. We are afraid that it is useless to attempt to convince Mr "Williams that whether the country goes "' dry " or remains '' wet " is less important than whether it surrenders to Or resists the challenge of the revolutionary Socialists. We think it is so much less important that in the scale of political values the. Prohibition question.must take a minor place, and we have very little doubt that a vast majority of the people-, (including many who ■will vote Prohibition) agree with us.