SICKNESS AT FEATHERSTON CAMP.

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2698, 18 February 1916, Page 6

SICKNESS AT FEATHERSTON CAMP.

Sir, —Your correspondent "Fact" must feel sick himself after tlie complete confutation of his slander upon our soldiers by Colonel Henderson. "Fact" is evidently a Prohibitionist, for lie says the sickness is dne to drunkenness. To the Prohibitionist everything is due to alcoholic drinks. "Would yon be surprised to hear," asks "Fact," the Prohibitionist, "that tho number of sick men at' Featherston Camp was nearer 700 than 120?" Of course, everybody would. Last week Mr. Allen gave the number as 120, and in to-dav'6 Dominion, two or three columns away from "Fact's" slanderous and unwarrantable letter, is the statement inade by The Dominion, on the authority of General Henderson, that on Tuesday the number at sick parade was 125, or 2.3 of the total strength in camp. And General Henderson says anything under 3.5 per cent, of sickness is indicative of good health in any body of men.

in the ?amo column as "Fact's" letter, Mr. Flowollen King also refutes the allegations of tlie Prohibitionist completely. To Mr. King the sickness is a kind of English cholera, duo to tlie heat. In Egypt, where the soldiers have wot canteens, this mild type of gastritis or English cholera is quite unknown,- unless among total abstainers, and these are frequently urged to "take a glass of beer" as a sure and constitutional remedy. General Henderson has never been in a fixed camp of English soldiers that was as "dry" as the Prohibitionists of New Zealand have made Fea-therston. Men go into camp who have been used to their beer daily, being strictly temperate men, and are forced to do without this daily ration of most otlier camps in the British Army, and they get "out of sorts." Some of them —very few—come to town and take a little more than is good for them, on the principle of drinking for the thirst to come, so to speak, and then correspondents like "Fact," whose effusion sliows that he is a Prohibitionist and does not understand, says ill ignorance "there is drunkenness among soldiers." It is untrue. "Fact" wants the attention of the Minister Of Defence drawn to the drunkenness at the camps. Prohibitionists liavo postered the soul-case out of the Defence Minister. His sympathies aro yith tlie Prohibitionists, bnt he has inquired into such allegations as "Fact" puts forward, and last week declared that "out of 4-5,000 men recruited and trained in Now Zealand, only three had been dismissed for drinking." AVhen will these anti-drink fanatics learn truth and speak it ? Why are they allowed to traduce the fair name of this country by the flower of its manhood? Apart from its being untrue, it is grossly unpatriotic. I believe in temperance, but not in total abstinence, and it does not make for temperance among men or women either to compel tliem to total abstinence. That course leads to excess when access is available. If there is any too much drinking among a few soldiers, it is due entirely to tlio policy the' Prohibitionists are pursuing, and have so far. compelled the military here to adopt. It docs want a strong man to say, "I am done with this mollycoddling of grown men—our country's'defenders."—l am, etc., TEMPERANCE.