Prohibition Is Not Temperance

Hokitika Guardian, 18 October 1928, Page 1

Prohibition Is Not Temperance

Tt is a very significant tiling that the majority of the Bishops and Ministers of the Rro testa lit Episcopal Church of America should have come out in favour .of modifyng the prohibtion law. They have found by experience that it is the enemy and not the ally of true temperance, and they have sanctioned a national campaign for altering its repressive features. Increased drunkenness, an alarming development of the drug habit, political corruption, and a hypocritical attitude towards the whole question are the outcome, they declare, of an impracticable law which time has proven to he inimical to the life of the nation. True temperance, they add, is an educational rather than a legislative problem. That conclusion is strongly supported by the report of the Ron al Army Temperance Association. Although out standing forces at home and abroad number over 202.000, there were fewer than 2(i() magisterial eonvieitions for drunkenness on the part of Army men. Yet there is no prohibition in the English Army, hut something far more valuable—sobriety. And this sobriety has been attained by teaching the men self-respect, se'ieontrol, self-knowledge, and by providing them with healthy open-air distractions. That is true temperance because it is founded on character. A moral reform that is evolved l.rom within stands some chance of perma--18 nency.