TEMPERANCE ADDRESS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3837, 28 August 1928, Page 3

TEMPERANCE ADDRESS.

BY mss McCORKINDALE. An interesting meeting was held last evening in the Presbyterian schoolroom, when Miss McCorkindale, who is visiting New Zealand under the auspices of the New Zealand Alliance, and is a director of education for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in Australia, addressed a number of women on the educational aspect of temperance. The chair was occupied by Mrs. Perreau, mayoress,, who extended a welcome to Miss McCorkindale. Mrs. J. Ross also spoke on behalf of the W.C.T.U.

Miss McCorkindale in a most interesting address said the question of the success or failure of Prohibition in U.S.A. was not one that should trouble us, but what we had to face up to, was to make temperance a real live question in New Zealand and to so supply people with facts, scientific as well as physical and moral, that they could judge for themselves the great value it would be to the nation if the custom of drinking alcoholic liquor was abolished. It was the duty of all who had the nation’s interest at heart, she said, to not only strive for reforms, but to so help that when reforms came the people, through education and understandwould be prepared to hold to what they had secured. We should create a sentiment for law-keeping and law-abiding. Prohibition is no longer prohibition when a generation has become used to it. The prohibition against theft does not effect 99 per cent, of the people, because by education and a desire to be honest and useful citizens, we have no desire to harm our neighbours. So, in the course of a generation, if our nation is prepared, prohibition of the liquor trade would be accepted by the people as any other prohibitions that obtain for the people and nation’s benefit. The fight, she said, was not between teetotalers and drinkers or between the Trade and Prohibitionists, but the temperance movement was a great spiritual urge for better conditions and the progress of national life, the giving to the coming generation a better opportunity for physical and moral progress. At the close of the address, Mrs. Stone moved a vote of thanks to Miss McCorkindale for her address which contained so much information and direct helpfulness. The motion was carried by acclamation. At the close of the meeting a committee was formed to arrange for the distribution of educational literature.