THE PROHIBITION ISSUE

Hokitika Guardian, 5 December 1928, Page 2

THE PROHIBITION ISSUE

(Dunedin Paper)

The smashing defeat which the prohibitionists suffered at the polls last month seems to have brought to a number of the members of the Presbyterian General Assembly a realisation

of the fact that they have acted unwisely in recent years in allowing their church to be tied so closely as it lias been to the New Zealand Alliance. There was some rather frank talk on the subject during the session of the Assembly. One speaker adduced ten •‘reasons” why prohibition lias not been carried. Not only has prohibition not I,el-n carried hut the likelihood of its

ever being carried is more remote than it was at any time since the issue was first submitted to the people. It may he suggested that there is another reason for this besides the ten reasons that were enumerated —and

tnis a more Dowerful reason than any of the others—namely, that the people are determined that they will not submit to a tyranny in respect of personal habits which arc not in themselves necessarily harmful, ltathev curiously, however, the reasons which the Presbyterian Assembly was asked to accept as an explanation of the defeat of prohibition included two that are not regarded by the leaders of the New Zealand Alliance as operating against their movement. One is the six o'clock closing of hotels. This has been claimed by the prohibitionists as a reform for which they were responsible. It is doubtful whether their claim in this respect is one that can he justified. The reform was introduced as a war measure, with the approval of a great many persons who arc not prohibitionists, and it lias been pretty generally accepted as a useful innovation which, has gone to show the value of reasonable regulation of the trade.

The “citing of America as an example” was another ol the reasons that wen.* advanced for the defeat of prohibition. Yet the prohibitionists have themselves set a great deal of store upon the results which they attribute to the operation of the Eighteenth Amendment in the United States. The policy of the New Zealand Alliance was apparently the subject of a good deal ol criticism from members of the Presbyterian Assembly. T)r Gibb expressed the opinion that the sacrifice of the principal of local option was a great mistake on the part of the opi>onents of

tlie trade. It is fairly obvious that .when this principal was abolished The New Zealand Alliance suffered one of the most serious blows it has encountered during its existence. It had been able to apply this principle to its distinct advantage, but it was apparently content to allow the local option system to be destroyed without making any effort to retain it. Never, however, has the political strategy of the Alliance been remarkable for its acuteness. Even the most recent developments of it, exhibited in Lj.e boast that the last Parliament bad been “captured’’ by the Alliance and in the attempt to “capture” the new Parliament, reacted to its discomfiture. The complaint which one of the speakers at the Presbyterian Assembly made that “the Alliance was becoming a political body” might not have been beard if the Alliance had only achieves success in the political field. It has. however, failed rather conspicuously in it.