A SPYING GENERATION.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1282, 10 November 1911, Page 6

A SPYING GENERATION.

NEW METHODS OF TRAINING YOUTH. "THE WAY THEY SHOULD GO." Tho spy, tho eavesdropper, and tho sneak aro objects of contempt to all straightforward people. When the elect, self-styled, in a community assume the Tole of spies and eavesdroppers they bring down upon themselves tho honest condemnation of right-minded citizens everywhere. From a paragraph published in The Dominion yesterday morning it appears that tho Prohibitionists went spying upon tho trade in alcoholic liquors, and discovered the extent of the business done by hotels on a busy Saturday night.

Certain young Bible Class persons were organised for tho purposes of the New Zealand Alliance of Prohibitionists to watch hotels—forty-seven—in Wellington during a period of an hour and a half, and when they had made (heir tally lhey hurried with the news to the licv. Mr. Dawson, who computed the precious intelligence these spies had gathered for him. And what did it amount to? What was the sum total of news (?) that (he spying youths reported? It amounted to the alleged fact that about ten per cent, of the population of the city patronised tho city hotels during a given time on Saturday night, and quite a number of young persons wcro engaged in this laudable and elevating enterprise.

What is tho community coming to? Hero is a reverend gentleman engaging an army of young peoplo to practise a degrading species of espionage, and these reverend gentlemen, tho supposed religious and moral guides of the community, applaud this latest disgusting outcrop of tho Prohibition and No-License movement I Oil reflection wo cannot think that the respectable—tho less rabid—of the Prohibition party—can approvo the spying methods practised, or express appreciation of a party that seeks to lower the moral tono of tho community by its practices. What aro theso religious leaders, like the Roverends Dawson and Hammond, coming to when they will abandon their preparations for tho Sunday services to organise and lead a band of young people to spy upon tho business operations of licensed victuallers and their patrons and guests? Let it become known beyond tho confines of this Dominion that visitors to hotels cannot go in and out of tho hotels without being spied upon, and what kind of name will the Frohibitionists earn for New Zealand?

But this spying business is, it is understood, going ou all over tho Dominion, and •tho young persons, malo and female, aro being trained by the reverend Prohibition parsons in tho ways they should go, and soon wo will have reared n generation of spying Pecksniffs who will earn for themselves the contempt of every rightthinking man and woman in the community. This, however, is a peculiar development of most communities whero Prohibition takes tho placo of truo religion. When the modern Aarons raise the molten calves of Prohibition to a soulstarved world they will do anything to compel an linregenerale people to fall down before their new god; and is it to compel men aud women who patroniso hotels on a Saturday night to become Prohibitionists that, (ho reverend gentlemen have instituted their spying contingents? Tho men and women of this community who use liquoT without abusing it aro sufficiently strong-minded not (o bo coerced, and decent peoplo generally, who may sympathise even with extreme temperance, will bo shocked out of tho Prohibition ranks, and will probably after this disclosure of the widespread system of espionag-6 striko out the bottom lines on both ballot papers, and give the degrading influenco of Prohibition and Prohibitionists generally the quietus it and they deserve.*