What Is Wrong With New Zealand

Hokitika Guardian, 12 November 1928, Page 6

What Is Wrong With New Zealand

Is New Zealand a drunken country? .\ia list its show that in comparison w.ih any other country it i.s a very sober one. and by far the soberest of all countries in which su .stantial restrictions are placed on the tsalo of liquor. Slat.sties often i .other the plain man wlui has his own eves and ears, anyway. Ami the plain man in his .Dominion, using his eyes, learns that a drunken man i.s an oddity and a rarity, li i.s oars .ml him that no person ot any onnseqnencc or capacity has ever come to Now Zealand and lelt it without saying tlmt it is a, remarkably (lean and sober and healthy land. They tdl ns, perhaps, that we are a little oil' the line in our higher education, Unit we are nob treating <nr pastures

right, that wo have not balanced our industrial activities. Hut not one of them, has said that there is any sign that we are alnioiiig the g ;od gilt ot i ermented liquor. They would all stare if anyone said to F a that the stale of the people is fill b that the Miimtry is in need of a nai; mil prohibition order. liven the pro -siomil prohibition orators imported from time to time by the X.Z. Alliance have shrunk from saying what the prolii tion movement . implies. They stick to generalities, or rather one generality: that the forcible extinction of the sober man’s right to drink beer or tvino or whisky will make our country a heaven i,n earth—-.such a heaven as the earth lor- never experienced. Foreign investigators. and Americans themselves, have been thinking about the conditions Cant the heaven-bringing doctrine of the prohibitionists have brought to the i itited States, and the general conclusion is that “if this is heaven, heaven is not what we thought it was.” In comparison with Eritain. New Zealand simple has no “drink problem,” and y.-t in Eritain the drink evl is not of any inn;• ■rfaiiee. and has not dulled the energy or spirit of the great Island Kingdom. And Eritain will never listen to the proposers of prohibition any more than New Zealand will. •?.