NOLICENSE NOTES.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 834, 4 June 1910, Page 14

NOLICENSE NOTES.

[Cr Arenit.-pESiE.NT.]

In the proposed agreement between the Brewers and Prohibition party, as arranged by the Government last year, it was provided that a period of five years should elapse between the carrying of No-Lieonso and its going into plt'cct, if carridd all over the Dominion. This was necessary, it was urged, in order to prevent the dislocation of our finances. To ascertain how such a proposal would be viewed in the United States, a member of the New Zealand Alliance submitter! the ques-tion-to a representative leader of the temperance party in that country. From the reply recently to hand is culled the following :—"ln. all the hundreds of towns and cities which have gone for prohibition, and the nine States which have adopted the law by Statutory or Congressional enactment, there lias never.been more than fourteen months from the date of passage of, or popular vote for, prohibition' to tile date upon which legislation has gone into effect and we can scarcely conceive of anything more absurd than the suggestion that , half, a decade should elapse between the adoption of such a measure and the. commencement of its operation. Of the nine lrolnbition States, six, Alabama Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina,' Uklaliomn, Tennessee, each have a population larger than you credit to iNev.' Zealand, and four of these number twico as many people as you state are found m the whole of vour Dominion, In tho most of the cities and to«n?bipsi which have gone for Prohibition, the law provides that the new order goes Into effect within thirty 'lays to-five months, at most, of the time of its adoption." The third quarterly return of conations for drunkenness in Jlasterton, under No-License, lias come to hand, llus completes nine months in all and gives a total of 30 convictions, as against _ 200 convictions for a . like tT T • Previous year under License, being equal to a reduction of that.at least 19 of the 30 got drunk m licensed areas, and enmo into Mastorton while intoxicated. Jfaslerton is therefore ■responsible for not more than )er Ca^i' Or " an aCt " al dccreasc of 94 - 5 Lord Gorell (formerly president of the Divorce Court) said in the House or Lords, 'If drink were , abolished tho yivorce Court might almost close its doors. "After forty years at the Bar and ten years as a Judge, I have no hesitation in saying that 90 per cent, of the crime of this country is caused by indulgence in strong drink,"—Lord bluet Justice Alverstone, at the International Congress on Alcoholism, London. The Rev. Father Hays is as cnerRotic as. ever m his cnisado against the .liquor traffic. Preaching recently at Leicester, in tho courso of an impressive- sermon he said: "No imagination coud picture and no human talent could adequately describe the widespread ravages and tlio fai-reachinn. ruin caused by England's national sin of intemperance. It was the most potent factor in the social, mental, and moral degeneracy of the race. In all its fierceness and all its foulness this terrible curse of drink passed, along the line of posterity to the second and third generation. -Was it any wonder that strangers visiting England from Japan and from Australia and seein" for the first time the deep degradation, the ghastly squalor, and: the hideous demoralisation of,the, slums of-London Glasgow, and Liverpool should express their titter bewilderment thai such, a state of things was permitted to exist in the very heart of an Empire which ■ boasted of its civilisation and its Christianity, Passing strange it was that the homes of tho poor, tho interests and.welfare of ■ the toilers, and the very lives of'tho people should all be,sacrificed at the altar of greed ; and ambition and in the interests of a great, drink combine, whose prosperity depended on the degradation and demoralisation of those who' should bo useful citizens and' practical Christians. The truth was that England was 'gradually ceasing to be Christian, and was drifting into modern Paganism." Sir E, H. Shacklcton says: "Alcohol in any form, in the Arctic or Antarctic regions, is most injurious; the less alcohol is used in-any part of the world the better it is for the community."