Brothers of the Brook

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2500, 31 October 1922, Page 4 (Supplement)

Brothers of the Brook

The dreamer dreams of splendid schemes To irrigate aridity „ iWith'Gipger Ale which none shall hail To swallow with avidity.

Each crank will he by law made free To practise on humanity His little fad to make men glad, And inculcate urbanity.

Then life will be as “dry” as dust, And Beer wip be banality, If al l are sworn as soon as bom To total teetotality.

No doubt, Mr. Editor, you will be inundated with thousands of masterpieces which leak in relentless profusion from countless fountain pens. Friends have stopped me in the street to ask my opinion on this great question, and my favourite answer is: “What s yours?” In the Bible we find Christ (the modem Christian ideal of conduct) showed no dislike' for the use of wine. Hie Disciples were also instructed to eat bread and drink wine. Christ’s ministry started with the miraculous areation of four firkins of wine (St. John 2-6). He counted wine amongst the great gifts of God. Then the Psalmist singe: “He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle and herbs for the service of man, that he may bring forth fruit out of the earth and wine that ,maketh glad the heart of man.” (Psalms civ., 14-15.) In the Bible we only one instance of a man asking for water—and he was in Hell. The iyorld has never been solely water since the flood. Opposing Human Nature. If we read the History of England, the Eeign of the Sainte, and of the New England Puritans, who all endeavoured to reform vices, we~only read of signal failures owing to human nature always being opposed to their ideals. The Spartan law-givers devoted themeelves to-.making life unbearable and their army 00-urted death, the most peaceful thing within reach. The Pilgrim Fathers were a similar failure as reformers. We do not need American lecturers, we have enough “dry” preachers of our own. We prefer lectures with a little

By C. H. ( Gisborne )

“spirit” in them, and not their stereotyped water-bottle. t The N.L. Party fail to see (in the words of Cromwell) “that it is an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his liberty for fear he may abuse it.”

Our Brothers of the Brook enjoy doing without what they don’t want, simply for the sake of denying it to others.

Are we seriously injured as a nation by the drink traffic? The average wealth of New Zealand is £SOO per head; 75 per cent, of the people have Savings Bank accounts, the average amount of same being £B2. The few in proportion to the moderates, who drink to excess, would, being naturally unbalanced, fly to some other vice. If, a® is stated, Bacchus slays his thousands, Venus might slay her tens of thousands under this new reign of selfrighteousness. X Tea and tobacco can both bo abused, yet they have made the world a brighter place to live in. Every year social conditions and habits are improving, by better housing and increased standards of comfort. We must remove from our people the cheerless gloom of an empty existence. Lost Revenue. When the good ship Barleycorn has been wrecked on the reefs of stern morality where will the lost revenue come from? . Those who believe in' liquor pay their 2J millions; under No-License this would still have to be found in other ,taxation. Seeing that the country is about equally divided for and against drink, those who do not drink wouldhave to contribute, say, li millions in taxation as their share of the burden, which they are not now called on for. If they do not drink, this should give them food for thought. May the weight of taxation never break the hack of our credit. The great difficulty with life’s problems is we cannot turn to the back of the book to find the answers.

Should Prohibition succeed they may proceed to wreck the fleeting joys of life, and one bunghole of freedom after another would be closed. The only

thing left to bottle would be ''our indignation. Prohbition Generates Discontent. New Zealand under Prohibition would be divided under two camps which would merely generate discontent and bitter hatred. Life would be as balmy as the breezes in a Missionary Hymn, and our Christian name, surname, and telegraphic address as a nation would be —JONAH.

Would the nation going “dry” make the lazy man less lazy, the lustful man less lustful, the dishonest man less dishonest, or the selfish man less selfish? Reforms were never yet achieved by destruction, they must come from within, not fromexternal and mechanical efforts. In :conclusion, a quote from John Milton: “No man denies that the best things may be abused; but it is a rule resulting from many pregnant experiences, that wihat does most barm in the abusing, used rightly does most good,, and such a good to take away from honest men, for being abused by such as abuse all things, is the greatest abuse of all.”

By C. L. Crowe, Geraldine .