THE WOMEN & BELLAMYS

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2560, 7 September 1915, Page 6

THE WOMEN & BELLAMYS

(To tho Editor.) . Sir, —Members of Parliament must be gratified at the notice f th* W.C.T.U. Convention has bestowed upon them. Even condemnation, is often .sweet to the politician. _■ Several 'members ' by pleading to tfieir constituents that they had been badly treated obtained many sympathetic votes. But the women's socalled convention condemns M.P.'s for voting secretly to retain the comforts of Bellamys when they say it would have been patriotism to 'have practised abstinence from.such comforts during the war. I would like, to ask what comforts the women of the W.C.T.U. have denied themselves since the war broke out? Yet, denying themselves nought, they complain that M.P.'s voted for the Tetention of Bellamys I Members, of Parliament, when it comes to doing the right thing by themselves,. aTe not fools. Why should a member of Parliament vote to close Bellamys, and thereby please a few,'and then have as much liquor as he wants at his club or hotel ? Why should a member of Parliament .pretend to be any different froni' any other man ? ' If anyone does not. want to'enjoy the comforts of Bellamys or the club or the hotel, no one will force him to participate. Mrs. A. R. Atkinson supplied the right language and the right argument, although applied in another connection when she is thus re-; ported. "Mrs. Atkinson urged that education and general enliglitment, and in many cases free treatment, would do far more to lessen the evil than compulsion." And so with Bellamys and the liquor question generally: "Education and enlightenment versus compulsion." Therefore I stand for temperance against prohibition.—l am, etc.,A TEMPERANCE MAN.

. Lieutenant Erio. B. Alley, of the Otago Mounted Rifles, who' has just been. reported wounded, writes to his mother in' Ohristdiurch, as follows:— I am getting quite used to living in a. dug-out. The. regiment is holding'a certain outpost detached from the main position. Wo aro not allowed to make mention of casualties or movements' of troops, etc., hut that list first published ill the Now Zealand papers _ was mado up from the Cairo hospitals, where only the. non-serious ones'first go to. It was about iivo weeks after tlio action bofore any reliable lists wero compiled. The Turks , are much . bettor fighters than many of lis over gave them credit for. Tlioy are find men physically, and their Gorman officers (jet the best out of them. 1 I think, nevertheless; the Australians, especially, have put a vory proper-fear of death into thorn. My troop now 25, originally 37,