LICENSING AND TEMPERANCE IN SCANDINAVIA.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVI, Issue 43092, 14 May 1907, Page 1

LICENSING AND TEMPERANCE IN SCANDINAVIA.

THE LATEST PANACEA

By Robert E. Batty.

The latest contribution to that|uow vast army of literature devoted to the ablution of the liquor problem is a book entitled “ Licensing and Temperance in Sweden, Nor way, and Denmark,’ by Mr Edwin A. Pratt. The oject of the writer is to persuade the British public to waste no more time over the Gothenburg and kindred systems as tried in Scandinavia, but to study the Copenhagen system instead. To put that system in a nutshell, it amounts to the adoption of practical free trade in liquor, and “moral persuasion” of the people to wean them from the use of ardent spirits to that of light and palatable beer. The author would recommend the Temperance societies of Great Britain to “ make a distinction between spirits containing a considerable pecentage of alcohol, and malt liquors which have only a small percentage thereof.”

Mr Pratt’s book appeal* at a singularly opportune time, for although it is written with a most obvious prejudice against teetotalism and Prohibition, and contains opinions and theories which no instructed Temperance reformer can acem t for one moment, it is a veritable storehouse of facts—est iblishing the utter failure of those principles aud theories upon which the “ Disinterested Management party have grounded their w'm'e ciso.

t,To be Continued.)