STATE CONTROL AND MR. MACK

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 310, 19 September 1918, Page 6

STATE CONTROL AND MR. MACK

Sir, —I am sorry that Mr. M. .T. Mack is a laggard in the Temperance movement. * AH advanced thought in the Temperance question is liow for State control. Even prohibitionists— that is. tho more intelligent, thoughtful, and educated—are abandoning prohibition in favour of Stale control. The leading names in tho Labour movement have given their adhesion to State purchase and State control. Sir. Phillip Snowden says (P. 170, "Socialism and the Drinking Question"): "The drink traffic is completely analogous to ;'!! <ithr>r businesses and services which tlie State has had , to regulate ami ultimately oivu and control." Mr. Lloyd George, who in his unregencrato days talked about drink being equal to the Gorman menace, has dropped his prohibition notion, and now says: "Personally, I ;vm of opinion that State purchase is the best way to progress and temperance." That now famous

Labour leader, the Hon. J. R. Clynes, who is Controller of Food in Great Britain, is a State controllist. .Thero is not a Labour man of outstanding ability to-day who is not favourable to State purchaso and control. Mr. Phillip Sivowden says (p. 118) "that experiments in prohibition offered no encouragement in Great Britain," and in another part he says, "that even local option in New Zealand has done nothing whatever to lessen drink consumption" (p. 129). Mr. Mack coniirms my contention that drinking and drunkenness were rampant long before tbe days w" licensing, and that licensing was instituted as a temperance movement, just as State control is advocated to-day as a further temperance movement. The underlying principle which is governing both is tho freedom and liberty of the individual under either licensing or State control; and, it is. because prohibition would 1 destroy that liberty for which the working classes are fighting that I am opposed to it. Prohibition in principle is a greater nienaco to the working classes than the Hun hordes of Germany. Yes, Germany inspired the Tsar to prohibit vodka. Then Mr. Mack asks: "Did not the Germans want' to divide Russia ?" Of course they did, and by inciting the Tsar to institute prohibition the German propagandists roused the antipathies of the moujiks to the ruling classes generally, and the Tsar in particular, thus making the Revolution possible, and all the evils, enormities, mtirders, and massacres that have followed in that unhappy country. My friend the Hon. J. R. Clynes, speaking in the House of Commons on March 12 of this year, said this: "Knowing what he did df his fellowcountrymen, he could not believe that, State-enforced teetotnlism would in itself ho a contributing factor iu winning the war." It was this belief nmong the Labour leaders of Great Britain, together with the conversion of Mr. Lloyd George, that prevented prohibition, with its accompanying evils and probable revolution,, being forced upon Groat Britain.

In the same speech Mr. J. R. Clynes said: "The suppression erf vodka in Russia lias failed to strengthen that country either militarily or morally. In fact, he said, it accounted in some measure for the discontent that finally'produced the Revolution." What i's Mr. Mnck and hie co-agitators for prohibition doing for this Dominion? They are inciting the same passions, the same_ hatreds in the minds of tho working peoplo as the German propagandists incited in Russia. Ido not say that there is any fear of revolution .in New Zealand, but what I Jo say is that the discontent, the Rectional hatreds, the result of an embittered 1 fight which the prohibitionists are fomenting, are not going to help us to beat the Germans and win the war.—l am, cftL, E. KENNEDY.