Temperance Items.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 87, 6 October 1894, Page 4

Temperance Items.

Medical officers who have had experience with the army in India have, says the British Medical Journal, ! spoken much of the harm lesulting from intemperance among 1 the men under their charge. According to , the report recently issued, la?t year there were 1146 courts-martial in Bengal, and 329 ot them were distinctly traceable to drunkennoss. In the Madras Presidency, 96 «»ut of 370 courts-martial wtre traceable to the same cause The percentage of cases wherein Temperance men were ■ court - martialled was insignificant. Official statistics also prove the comparatively great immunity ot Temperance men from sickness an>.l disease. The League of the Cross, organised by Cardinal Manni »', bus fouud its way to Brooklyn. Referring 'o it, Father Barry, of St. Peter's parish said to a World reporter :'* <• huv« from twelve to fif fen thousand nominal Woman ' a' holies in this parish, the area f which ip einhi blocks long by three blocks br-atl — th" large-t parish in the diocese. Kverv corner of every block aim st is decorated with a rum shop. I here are sixtyfive saloons about, and we find that drunkenness is constantly increasing. For every drunkard wp. reclaim the rum shops make ten new ones. Ihe parish is like a shin with strained timbers Ihe five priests here have been labouring to pump it dry. but the water rushes in faster than ever. Now we are going to try to stop the leak. The branches of this tree of intemperance sprout faster than they can be clipped, so the only thi> g to do is to strike at tho root We are like an ambulance corps on a battlefield. As fast as we fix one wounded man up, ten newly wounded are brought to us from the front. What is the use of our work when the bullets are allowed to fly as fast as ever ? We are not even holding our own, for, as T said before, drunkenness is on the increase."