HALT IN LIQUOR POLLS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 451, 5 September 1928, Page 14

HALT IN LIQUOR POLLS

MODERATE LEAGUE’S VIEWS

WELLINGTON, To-day. Referring to the result of the New South Wales liquor referendum and to the statement of the President of the New Zealand Alliance, Mr. Charles Todd, that the result had been expected, Mr. D. M. Findlay, president of the New Zealand Moderate League, and vice-president of the New Zealand Licensing Reform Association, said that Mr. Todd’s statement was an admission of the obvious futility of the prohibition movement in British communities. Hs attribution of the overwhelming defeat of prohibition in New South Wales to the condition of compensation did not square with the confidence expressed by the New Zealand Alliance in 1919, when, as a result of the wartime prohibition agitation, a special poll was granted to the Alliance on the issue of prohibition with compensation. It was deplorable, said Mr. Findlay, to find that a section of the community which, by its never-ending agitation and political activity, was responsible for the tremendous expense and social disturbance of the prohibition referenda, calmly admitting that it expected defeat. This constituted a strong argument for calling a halt in the constant recurrence of referenda on prohibition in New Zealand. Poll after poll had repeatedly disclosed the determination of the people of this country to have nothing to do with it. The question of prohibition lay like a fallen tree across the road to real reform and temperance.