A WORD OF CAUTION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 214, 3 September 1908, Page 4

A WORD OF CAUTION.

To the Editor. Sir,—A telegram in Monday's issue of the News informs us that at the inquest on the burning of the Southern Cross Hotel, at Reefton, a verdict was' returned that the place had been wilfully set on lire, but there was no evidence to say by whom. Had not the recent attempt to blow up the White Hart Hotel been providentially frustrated, a similar verdict would probably have bei.ii returned. Tlie following passage In' " The Heresy of Teetotalism " recurs to one, which may not be in-apropos. After saying that in Canada he, and others, were prepared to go any length to make men sober, 'the author gives the following incident: "I had been attending the annual session of tlie Grand Lodge of Good Templars at London, C.W., and the meetings had dosed. The mayor of the town had been elected Grand Worthy Chief Templar. A number of us were to leave for Toronto and the Eastern States by a train that passed through on the Grand Trunk line at a very early hour in the morning. So at the mayor's kind suggestion we all met in his drawing-room, to sit up and await the train. There was a young brother from New York State there, who entertained us with an account of an incendiary society, which they had organised in that State, to burn down distilleries and similar buildings. He gave us detailed accounts it how the brethren in a given town would spot out the place to be burnt, an'i then communicate with the members of some other, but not too distant, lodge. These, on a given night, would drive over in light waggons belonging to some of themselves, set fire to the premises, and at once start for home. In this way, he assured us, so many places belonging to 'the cursed liquor traffic' had been destroyed in New York tlmU the business ihegan to be unremunerative, and they had hopes soon to render it wholly so." The author adds: "One thing struck me subsequently as noteworthy, neither the mayor nor any o! his guests took the least exception to the code of morality implied in this ac count, 'but all appeared to sympathise with the idea of carrying the fire-stick 1 as a part of the weapons of the war against drink. Some 'time before this' I had been cognisant of an attempt, which happily proved a failure, on the part of a zealot of total abstinence, to line Warren's distillery in Wliaroa, C.W."—I am, &c, B. ENROTH.