PROHIBITION COLUMN

Evening Star, Issue 19658, 10 September 1927, Page 15

PROHIBITION COLUMN

[Published by Arrangement with the United Temperance Reform Council.] The man who votes for license ought to; be willing that his son should die a drunkard. The open liquor shop, which his vote helps to establish, ho knows will ensnare the feet or somebody’s boy; Why should it not bo, in the eternal law of fitness, his own child? •—Louisa S. Rounds. “ One’s own life would be hardly worth living without dreams of better things, and the life of a nation without such dreams of a bettor and larger future would bo poor indeed.”—H.R.H. Duke of York, at Canberra, the new dry capital of the Australian Commonwealth. “ National Prohibition is worth living for and worth dying for.”—Tom E. Taylor. Workers, read this: Buying poverty instead of wealth. N Had the miners and their friends kept clear of alcohol since the armistice, and concentrated upon the purchase of the mines, with the money thus saved they could have been in practical possession of the mines by this time. Sir Frederick Mills, managing director of the Ebb Yale Coal and Iron Company, quite recently testified; “If the money spent in drink by the people of Ebb Yale in the last three years had been invested in shares in that concern, the working men would now have had controlling interest.” What keeps workers standing in their own light? Let Bernard Shaw answer: “Drink is tho working man’s chloroform.”. LOCAL OPTION BILL FOR ENGLAND, DIVISION' ON BISHOP OF OXFORD’S BILL. The Bill was rejected on July 8, 192-1, iu tho House of Lords by 106 votes to 50. This result of the division was anticipated by those who saw the large number of peers present—many of them for the first time in 1924—at the first day’s debate, and tho way in which the Chamber filled up again on Tuesday with unrecognised faces as the hour for taking the division -was reached. It is significant, however, that when tho Bill was before the House in 1926 it was negatived without a division, whereas on July 8 fifty peers went into the lobby, in favor of the principle of local option. This minority for the Bill included tho two archbishops, all the bishops present save one, representatives of the Labor Government, and tho Liberal leaders, and a group of Unionists, including Lords Milner, Balfour of Burleigh, Clinton, Clarendon, Airlic, Dunmore, Plumer, Grenfell. LORD ROSEBERY. “ If the State does not soon control tho liquor traffic tho liquor traffic wifi control the State. I see tho danger coming nearer and nearer that, owing to the enormous influence, wielded directly and indirectly, by those who are concerned in upholding the liquor traffic, we are approaching a condition of things perilously near the corruption of our political system.” A MENACE TO PUBLIC LIFE. “ The real question is the political question (England) and not tho physiological side of tho drink problem. To my mind there is more danger to the nation in the political influence of this one liquor industry than there is iu drunkenness, and that this opinion is shared by persons who are in a position to know I can quote the present Prime Minister: ‘ The Prime Minister stated that the trade had become a menace to the public life of the country, and corrupted politics. 1 ” —Lord Astor. 1 LIQUOR TRADE NEVER WILL AND,. CANNOT REFORM ITSELF. “Tho inevitable conclusion, which I do not think we can possibly escape, is that it is absolutely impossible for the trade to reform itself.”—Lord Balfour of Burleigh. FINANCIAL POWER OF LIQUOR INTERESTS. “After eighteen months of attempting to deal with tho drink trade, the Control Board reported unanimously to tho Government that it was impossible, even with tho drastic powers tof the D.O.R.A. which had been given to it, effectively to control tho drink trade; that it was impossible to reconcile private interests with national interests; and that the - trade was so powerful that tho Government Control Board, even with its enormous powers, was not able to get tho maximum results.” WHAT ABOUT THE NEW ZEALAND PARLIAMENT? At the 1925 election tho electors of this country expressed their wishes as to licensing legislation through the elected members. Are tho insidious powers' of vested interests of the New Zealand liquor tr.-flic strong enough to throttle tho Government and Parliament of this country? YVi 11 tho pressure of liquor’s wealth and threats paralyse tho members of Parliament into dumbness and inactivity? If they do, then it is high time tho democracy of ibis country arose in its might and smashed such chains of political serfdom and liquor tyranny in an effort to put this anti-social and anti-progressive liquor trade in its right place. If the people do not quickly act it is only a matte: of time and the liquor traffic of New Zealand will have like stranglehold to that in Britain—domineering, corrupting, and controlling all political parties in the interests of tho huge dividends of its unscrupulous monopoly. , A WORLD VISION. It has often been said, and with groat truth, that fl.ere is no country in the world without its temperance or Prohibion organisation. It may bo but a small group of people doing tho hard, pioneering work, or it may be a ranch more spectacular and weighty assembly making its demands with insistent voice. To-day by virtue of the progress of science expressed through train, ship, aeroplane, and. wireless, tho whole world has been linked up, making tho distant peoples as much our neighbors as those living-in tho next town. There is no near or far, except as we make it so. If half of the influence of the temperance and Prohibition bodies were reflected in tho Press of the world there would be an instant rallying to the cause of those who may now be content to leave tho work of bringing about universal to others. The Press is not antagonistic to the Prohibition movement, it ‘ is only prevented from supporting it by the financial backing of liquor advertisements. Apart from the misery and crime produced through diink, what would tbs newspapers and journals of any land have to say about the liquor 'r a file? Nothing. There is a propaganda empty of nil worth save the emotional appeal than it makes. We want an educated propaganda based scientifically, economically, socially, and morally on indisputable facts, drawn from the very fabric of life itself. We can prove, and prove to the hilt, that the Prohibition way_ of life, so far as this evil of alcoholism is concerned, is right and sound. We are right, and right the day must win, “ to doubt would be disloyalty, to falter would be sin.” The great men and women of the world will stand with us, as they are beginning to do, as we get together and give out the collected data from all lands of .the might of our appeal. A world vision in our local work is much needed, and our local work «du-

cated up to tho world’s needs is essential if we are going to break down the international forts of liquordom. So shall we be strong enough to legislate with a public opinion behind us wholly sympathetic. Parliament will not then refuse protection to the ' proletariat from the ravages of this alcohol plague. It may serve the ends of some Governments to keep reforms back from a drunken democracy, but it never yet meant progress to stand in tho light of an educated people and.refuse their demands-