U.S.A. WANTS TO MAKE AUSTRALIA DRY

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 240, 30 December 1927, Page 7

U.S.A. WANTS TO MAKE AUSTRALIA DRY

PROHIBITIONISTS MOVE NEW YORK, December 9. A school for the training of Austrahan prohibitionists is a large part of the work of the World League against alcoholism. It isn’t a regular classroom with a fixed course of study under professors, but it informally educates a considerable number of “dry” missionaries for Australian fields. Robert Cardini, the secretary of the league, says: “We have more visitors seeking prohibition information from Australia than from all the rest of the world. They are not the paid agents of temperance societies but active business men, retired manufacturers and a few clergymen who are genuinely interested in applying prohibition to Australia. “We have been struck by the seriousness of these visitors, and the time they are willing to devote to an intelligent study of prohibition.” Ex-Pugilist Studying Among its Australian supporters the league is particularly proud of Jack Creagh, a former pugilist, and for many years a crony of Young Griffo,

who died recently. Creagh has become a teetotaller. He is spending several years in America so that he may return to Australia to tell his countrymen the truth about prohibition. The league is superintending Creagh's study to insure that he sees the “dry” side.

Practically all prohibitionist propaganda sent to Australia comes from the league, but American prohibitionists are not sending financial support. They have their hands full financing the “dry” cause locally.

Mr. Cardini says: “It is no use our trying to force prohibition on to Australia unless Australians are willing to finance their own fight, but we are furnishing a quantity of information.” Prohibitionists in America consider that Australia is a particularly fruitful field, partly because of the interest displayed by many Australians, and partly because of the theory that Australia, being a heavy drinking country, the reaction against liquor would be correspondingly heavy. Progressive laws regulating the sale of liquor, it is pointed out, are opening the way for prohibition, despite the Canadian example that regulation does not mean complete prohibition.