Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1909. NEW ZEALAND’S CRUEL ENEMY.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4463, 16 September 1909, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1909. NEW ZEALAND’S CRUEL ENEMY.

This above all—to thine own self be true , And it must follow as the night the dag Thou eanst not then be false to any man Shakeipeare.

We read that in an article, “Crimeless Invercargill,” Mr Q. B. Nicholls quotes from congratulatory addresses of Judges Cooper, Williams, Chapman, and Denniston, and states that in the last three years and a quarter only seven convictions have been recorded in the Supreme Court on matters that arose in Invercargill. Most of the cases were of a trivial nature, and two arose in the Awarua district. Mr Nicholls concludes : “If the Government only give the people a chance by a national vote on any sort of equal terms, New Zealanders will assuredly sweep the drink traffic away at the 1911 election.” Yes ! “ If the Government only give the people a chance.” But why shunt the blame upon the Government ? It is not fair and not honest to do so. The Government is what the people make it. Let u« blame ourselves. The people have the power in their own hands. They can elect whoever they please to represent them in Parliament, and they can get whatever legislation they require. The Parliament and the Government must obey the peoples* mandate, add if we are so foolish as to allow ourselves to be ignored, defied, or trampled upod, we deserve all we get. ' The Government is only the peoples’* ' committee of management/ '

The people must rise to the occasion and demand their right to legislate' through their elected representatives and to govern through the duly appointed Cabinet. The statements of the four abovenamed New Zealand Judges should stimulate every man with a love of country in his heart to make every other district in the Dominion as free from crime as Invercargill is The liquor traffic is New Zealand’s cruel enemy. Only three convictions in the Supreme Court in seven years is something for Invercargill to be proud of. But what a black record of suffering is laid at the doors of intoxicating liquor-dealers in this Dominion. The heart sickens and the mind is horror stricken as one ponders over the awful crimes due to intemperance in intoxicating liquors. Murders, assaults, wife desertions, blighted lives, ruined fortunes, arson, and a mountain of miseries characterise the course of alcoholic excesses.

The people have in many districts throughout the Dominion demanded at the polls that no legalised liquor traffic shall be carried on there. Is the law respected and obeyed as it ought to be ? No ! It is shamefully defied. We have heard of one prohibited district where a ’bus load of persons was carried with an extraordinary amount of intoxicating drinks.. Beer and hard spirits were carried into the district on a Sunday, .acd the holiday-makers have been known to get rolling drunk. A resident observed that more drunken persons had been seen in that district since Bocal Option took atfay the license, than could ever have teen seen there before when license was in full swing. We are told that in another place whore Local Option prevailed, the “ locker system ” of drinking has led to aid sorted abuses, It is the

custom for men in boarding houses to have lockers of which each one keeps his own key. The lockers contain beer and spirits. If a man wants to give his friend a drink he takes him to the lodgings, gets out his key and then the servant supplies the drink. As a remuneration for the servant’s trouble and the owner’s permission for a locker to be used, the drinker throws down his threepence or sixpence and that goes, not as payment for liquor, but nominally for the use of the glasses. And that subterfuge and overriding of the spirit of the law is going on in other lands besides New Zealand. The Very Reverend Father James F. Cassidy, rector of St. Mary’s Cathedral, Massachusetts, has been inveighing against the’ same evil, with all the eloquence of his gr/ted nature. Father Cassidy was the principal force in getting the saloon closed in Fall River. He had worked might and main in invoking Divine assistance to save his flock some of whom were ruining their bodies and souls with drink. He preached to his congregation imploring the men to shun the death traps called saloons and he begged of them to help him to save their fathers, mothers, sons and daughters from the awful thraldom of drink. A woman came to him and said : “ Father, I want to go to confession, but I cannot.” The reverend Father asked : “ Why can’t you go to confession ?” The broken-hearted, almost distracted woman replied : “ Last night they brought home to me, dead drunk, my eldest son, and as I laid him on the bed in all his helplessness a great storm of indignation arose within me and I lifted up my hands and I asked God in heaven to curse those who served him liquor. I asked Christ to strike their children down, and I asked God to place a curse upon their lives just as they have blasted and cursed mine. I knew it was wrong, but I can’t take it back.”

Mothers in Te Aroha can pity the American mother. They know that their own beloved boys on whom they build their hopes may fall a prey to the pitiless drink demon that dogs their steps, aided by those who are bribed to give no warning. Such hush money curses the giver and the receiver. Rather than be criminally silent when warning is needed we would suffer martyrdom.