LICENSING AND TEMPERANCE IN SCANDINAVIA.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVI, Issue 43102, 8 June 1907, Page 1

LICENSING AND TEMPERANCE IN SCANDINAVIA.

THE LATEST PANACEA.

By Robert E. Batty.

i (Continued from last issue.) He alleges that prohibitory restrictions, particularly in the closmg.periods of Saturday afternoon and of jjSunday, ■'are broken in Scandinayia, but his particu- , lars are. delightfully v ague, and can .be .easily outmatched by definite and j detailed records of infinitely mpre serious abuses .and Jt he law where Prohibition is not in force. His facta may be a great reflection upon the habits and impulses fostered by the ‘‘ disinterested management ” companies, but in no sense tellpgainst the adoption of Prohibition His quotations can bear no other construction than that he thinks total ab- ; stinenoe will conduce to unchastity. He -quotes a Stockholm - professor as saying: ‘‘ In provinces which have experienced a perceptible .'decline, in drunkenness there has been a rapid inorease in immorality,” Could anything be more preposterous than this ? , Lechery and drunkenness are often found hand in hand.; Hardly, any of the liquor traffic is , more to be deplored than ,the intimate relationship constantly existing between it and what we- euphemistically call the “ social evil.” Men who “apply hot and - rebellious liquors ” to their blood are, generally speaking, far more prone to.. impurity and incontinence than the abstinent and temperate a striking instance is furnished here of the depths to- which pro liquor advocacy Will carry a man ! A remaining point of Mr Pratt, and one upon which he, in 'his failure to find anything stronger, harps continually, is that Phohibition leads the people to indulgence in morphia, ether, and other deleterious things. If Prohibition be not enforced, it is curious that the drinkers be driven to. the use of these noxious and unpalatable articles.

\ The simple fact is that' where the liquor traffic has been long making its victims by thousands,, a percentage of them will fly to j drugs to assuage their crave. It is the drink, not the prohibition of it, which is to be crcditc d with this evil. The drinker is the great patron of the chemist, aud the necessity for the pick-me-up and the restorative is 1 mainly a result of liquor indulgence. Mr Pratt is much concerned af the presence of alcohol in ginger ale and othu* Temperance drinks. He appears to think that teetotalers live upon them, forgetting that they are mainly sold as adjuncts to intoxicants, ;• and consumed by beer aod especially by spirit drinkers. Mr Pratt only makes one invasion of the field of American Phohibition, and, as his authority is- a gentleman whose name he does not give, about a town in Massachusetts whose name he fails to supply, aiid-concern* ing a time whose date he iiegiec's to furnish, one may be pardoned in leaving this remarkable incursion severely alone. Mr Pratt’s trend of thought is best exemplified by the the following quotation,: “It is the same with the drink as it is with boys and apples. Place an apple on the. sideboard, and forbid a boy to touch it; he longs for ihe fruit, and will not be satisfied until he has eaten it, while if you leave a large basket of apples in the room, and allow him to help himself whenever be pleases, he will probably not touch them at all.”

he Continued.)