“AWFUL SIN ” OF LONDON.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 453, 23 March 1909, Page 4

“AWFUL SIN ” OF LONDON.

POLICE AS A PATTERN TO ITS CITIZENS. [By Carry A. Nation.] Ob, the shame of London ! Oh, the vice of London ! Its streets are polluted with the rank smells of millions of cigarettes ; its highways and byways groan under sin. London is rotten and corrupt with vice. It is like a clear pool of iter, its surface showing io’ - i g of the poison below, but it % tull of rottenness and dead me - s bones.” I have been in London two days, and this proud city is to me a nightmare of sin. The handiwork of the Devil is everywhere. Travelling on the omnibuses I find that the proprietors are inducing the people who ride in them to drink that which drives away their braius. Whs’ should Ibe told to drink this and smoke that when I have paid a penny to ride in an omnibus? It is the same with the underground railroads. One would expect to find the Devil deep in the darkness. He is there in the advertisements of the detestable liquor that corrupts the soul and brain. RAILROAD MANAGERS. lam Carry A. Nation, prohibitionist of all vices, and I say that the underground railroad managers are wotse than the publicans. I was overcome with indignation to-day, and I smashed a window in one of the carriages that had insulted me with a drink advertisement. “Young man,” I said to the conductor, “it ain’t your fault —it’s your misfortune to be riding face to face with these appalling invitations to drink.” He answered that he sympathised deeply with me, and he took my name and address. Persons will call me lawless because I smashed the advertisements of cigarettes and liquor. I say I was enforcing law. I was endeavoring to prohibit vice. Your laws prohibit crime. Why do they not prohibit vice ? Ob, the awful sin of Loudon ! the city of cigarette-smokers. I’ve been crying aloud about sin all day, and now lam hoarse. I’ve seen the poor, degraded wretch shuffling along with a picked-up cigarette-end soiling his lips ; I’ve seen men in silk hats and frock coats puffing the vile fumes into the air. All the men and women who smoke in London are vicious and degraded. I stand and watch the people pass. Here come the young men, their cigarettes between their lips. I speak to them out of the indignation of my heart. Some of them smile sadly, others glance at me in fear, and some barter words with me. “ I’ve paid for it,” said one man to-day. “ Yes, you’ve paid dearly for it,” I replied. “ You have bargained your manhood away for it,”

AT A MUSIC lIAU. I went to a music hall on Saturday night. Awful ! The girls that set the liquor before’the men are gills that are uutme to themselves. Ob, the black vice of London ! We want to organise a “ smashing ” crusade here. Women must band themselves together to smash those windows that are pasted with sinful placards. I reckon that Carry A. Nation will have to get her axe out. When I smashed to-day I felt that I could not do the job properly without mv hatchet. I was in Trafalgar square, where the great column to Horatio Nelson stands. Horatio Nelson never smoked a cigarette. S Ho you know who are the finest, healthiest-looklug, strongest men in London ? The policemen. They are splendid. I have not received a disrespectful word from them. I have heard that they neither smoke nor drink. It only all the men in London were as fine and as good as the policemen. Hell is an awfully smoky place, and people who smoke are getting prepared for it. I am not afraid of telling people what I think. A mother is not very much- afraid of her sou —even if he’s drunk. So I shall tell the people of Loudon what I think. I shall stop them in the street and repeat it, not once or twice, but thrice. Oh, London ! your shame, your vice, your blatant sin, the reek of your drink and your cigarettes make me cry aloud in my grief.— Daily Express.