Page 2 Advertisements Column 2

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 334, 22 October 1908, Page 2

A SHAMEFUL ADVERTISE- ' > MENT.

LIBELLOUS TACTICS. A blatent insult, quite in keeping with tho tactics of the No-License, party, has been offered and is daily being ottered to the budding manhood and womanhood of tho Dominion, and also to. their parents. "The Divilio Image which we see changed by intemperance into sots, tipplers, and drinksodden wrecks," is the amiable legend which surmounts a large reproduction;'of' some hundred or so photographs of pretty children, the sous and daughters of New Zealand folk. The insult lies'in the facfc;that"uuiii.bers of these are "now grown up, and, according to this precious screen,. the young men and women - who are" fortunate (?) enough to . discover therein a reproduction of .the faces of their , own babyhood are in future to be > • ■ ■' BRANDED WITH THE PAINT of intemperance, and ; by imputation, of moral, decadence. . This offensive sheet has been widely circulated through the medium of the provincial press, whose editors for the most part failed to see, the gratuitous affront that w|s being offered to the sons and daughters, of good citizens, and to the parents themselves. One public-spirited gentleman, however, whose children had been gibbeted by the No-License party as ."drinksodden wrecks" and.wastrels in embryo, if not in actual fact, wrote to the editor of the " Wairarapa Daily Times" demanding a publio apology for the libel upon those near and dear to him. • After a private apology had been received and declined, the editor, to avoid A WRIT FOR LIBEL, published in his newspaper the following apology^ "It has been represented to us that "a supplementary sheet published "by us on tho. 3rd inst., consisting "of a group, containing portraits " of children which had been made , " public without the consent of "their parents. One of these par-' . "ents has complained to us of pain "and annoyance occasioned by such " portraits being presented under a " head-line which might be construed "into a reflection on.the character " of his children, now grown up. We " are unaware ourselves _of tho "identity of any of tho'children in "the group. It was supplied to us . " in the ordinary way of business as " a No-License inset, and we regret " that it should have been the cause " of annoyance to the parents of any " children." Our sympathies are with the editor as well as with the insulted parent. The former, as many other honourable pressmen did, accepted the advertisoment in all good faith, not believing that the frenzied fanaticism of a party- which- encourages drinking at homo and under the eyes of the very infants for whoso well-being it hypocritically professes to be so solicitous, would display itself in shabby insinuations and accusations against tho children of respectable people. If sonio publicspirited man were to sue the authors of this shameful advertisement for libel, ho would, indeed, bo performing a public service,'and do something to protect the country's youth and maidenhood from tho attacks of a party whoso propaganda, if adopted, must inevitably make A SECRET DRUNKARD 1 of many a good man who, had ho been allowed to refresh himself openly at tho bar of a decent hotel, would nover have fallen a prey to intemperance at all. Tho very grammar of tho words quoted is a criterion of tho irrosponsibility of the No-Liccuso party. Any child who has passed creditably through his school course can sec that an imago or reflection cannot possibly become a " tippler," for a tippler is a person, and an "imago" is a thing. Olio may agree with the No-Liconso party, however, that under their system of Prohibition, it is highly probable that many young men who now uso THE SAFETY VALVE of modorat-o and sensiblo indulgenco will so dcteriorato as to lose their manly personal-ities,-and become "things" unworthy of tho namo of man at all. Of onp fact, however, tho party that stands for equity, moderation, and freedom, is certain that evon whore tho public will tolerato bad grammar bncau.se porforco it must, it will not countenance tho libelling of its young manhood and womanhood. _ C 905

Tho Art of licing Disngrceablo is n purely scKiinl art nnil liovcr ft domestic one. Wo havo no right in any circumstances or under any provocation to cxorciso it towards those wlio aro bound to us by tho tio of kinship, ,or by a still oloser tio.—Ellon Thornovcroft 'Fowler, in "Hearth and Home." For Bronchial Coughs tako Wood's Great Peppermint Curo. Is. fld. and 2a. Gd. CSI