PROHIBITION MEETING

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 165, 7 April 1919, Page 8

PROHIBITION MEETING

SPEECHES IN THE TOWN HALL.

A prohibition meeting in the Town Hall last night was addressed by Chaplain Burridge (Salvation Army) and Mrs. A. U. Atkinson. The Hov. Robertson Orr presided. The attendance was fairly large. The meeting was opened with the i\a-, tkmal Anthem. , Chaplain Burridge referred first to tlio description of himself in an advertisement as a "hero of Gallipoli." He said he was not a horo, and he had not been on Gallipoli. He was simply a padre who had spent three years with the soldiers, doing hi* best in a humble way to perform his duty. Ho had seen, much of New Zealand's soldiers in Egypt and France helping to defeat ono of tho greatest enemies that true liberty and civilisation had ever been called upon to defeat. He had come back to New Zealand to find the people engaged in a fight against a foe that lie earnestly believed to bo an even worse and more deadly foe than Germany had proved to be. He was on the platform that night because he wonted tho year of peace to | be.'also for New Zealand the year of \ emancipation from tho liquor evil. He felt that peace and prohibition would bring a large and increasing measure of prosperity to the Dominion. Chaplain Burridße' referred lo the evil that liquor had wrought among soldiers, and sain Hint what he had seen in England ■ had strengthened his detcrminaiton to fi"ht for prohibition. Jinny of the returned soldiers would: vote against Iho liquor trade because they had seen the Blums of the Old Country, and also becauso they had seen Mr. Lloyd tieorge defeated by the trade when he had tried to efi'ect reform. The seeds of tho same troubles were in New Zealand, ami must be destroyed before they established themselves firmly. The fight against the trade in New Zealand had already been a long fight, and- he 'respected the men and women who had upheld the-cause ot prohibition in daye when progress, seemed slow. They were the people who had gained tho temperance reforms already achieved, and not the Moderate League or tho moderate drinkers. The fight might not be over yet. He was not sure that the liquor trade was going to j bo wiped out on Thursday next, but he ; believed that the prospects of victory l ; were better than they uver had been. .Chanlain Burridge proceeded to reply to some. of. the arguments that had 'been advanced by opponents of prohibition. Iho Prohibition Party had brought speakers from Canada and the United States to give first-hand information regarding the success of the reform in those countries, i The liquor trade had offered i« reply i snippets from newspapers and scrappy ; cablegrams from dubious sources. If the ; tra<i6 could get'substantial evidence to! disprove the statements of the' prohibi- i {ion speakers, why had it not sent dele- ; gates to America to get the information? '. It had not dared to do that. Attempts ■

to reform the liquor traffic -by any nienRiiro short of extinction had always tailed.' There were elements about the traffic that- made it impossible for any decent Christian State to. control it, and the'remedy for the evils and miseries ol drink was prohibition. ■lire. A.-It. Atkinson spoke, briefly, her subject being "The Voice of the Children." Owing to the lateness of tlio hour, shn postponed the greater part of her speech. She said that she had been shocked to sec the liquor trade in an advertisement, claiming that people should vote continuance for Hie sake of the babies. The trade did nothing but evil to the children. Mrs. Atkinson told of a father who, while under the influence of liquor, had inflicted a fatal injury on his well-loved child by kicking it; nnd of a mother who, while in bed immediately before the birth of her child, was beaten by a drunken husband. Mrs. Atkinson called upon the electors to complete the work that great reformers had begun.