A LESSON FROM ROUMANIA

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 56, 31 March 1909, Page 4

A LESSON FROM ROUMANIA

After twenty-six years' agitation tne Roumanian (iovcrnment has succeeded in carrying Temperance Legislation, the description of which makes the mouth water. -Mr Alfred Stead, the Roumanian Consul-General in London, tells us all about it in a most interesting article which he has contributed to the Nineteenth Century. The Roumanians appear to have based their legislation upon the result of an exhaustive examination of all existing systems. Of these they appear to have come to the conclusion that that of England is the worst. "Xhev saw that the public-house keepers and the manufacturers of beer and alcohol, representing a capital of about £200,000,000, aspired to direct the policy oi the nation to suit their own ends. "The Komnanian -Minister of Finance has summed up the English situation: their great number, and by the enormous capital which they possess, they defy both public morality and the* noble ell'orU of the temperance societies. Their ends are vice and the alcoholization more and more undisputed of the nation. 'I his is where' England has come witii freedom in the drink trade. AYe Roumanians are not yet there, but we must admit Irankly that the last moment has come in which it is possible to take such measure* to prevent us from arriving at that deplorable state."

The Roumanian (.iovernment came finally to a conclusion which may lie summed up a* follows: "The monopoly of the retail sale together with the public house placed under the supervision ot tile commune and of the State." The list of European Slates showing the amount of alcohol consumed per head finishes with Norway, Sweden, and Finland, the three countries in whicn this system of control has been put into force. The right to sell alcohol drinks in retail and to keep public-houses in the country districts is exclusively reserved to the commune. The municipal councils decide tile opening or the suppression of the public-houses and exercise supervision iiver all such. The revenues from the public-houses are never U* t»e added to the ordinary revenues of the commune. nor does tfio State have any interest whatever in these revenues' It is further decreed that whatever temperance societies with limited benelits are formed in the commune, the communal authorities shall have the right to enter into negotiations with such societies with a view to the handing over to them of the public-houses. With regard to the amusements allowed in the publichouses it was rightly considered that to transform the public-houses simply into shops without meetings, family gatherings, dances, music, would have been to violate the traditions of the country, and to show at the «amc time real cruelty towards a population which has much more suffering than pleasure in life. Thus the law, while forbidding all games of cards or other games of chance, allows games of skill such as skittles and billiards, and all amusements such as dancing are allowed in accordance with ancient customs. The new law leave* in existence 0.000 public-houses and provides for the extinct ion of the licenses of about 'I,OOO. Communal public-houses will remain closed until eleven o'clock in the morning 011 .Sundays and recognised religious holidays. From the Ist of April to tlic 30th of September tlicy will close at nine in the evening, and for the other six months at eight. On all elee-'! turn days, parliamentary and communal, 1 all the public-houses in the country will be closed which are within the district alVected by the election. After a third sentence for drunkenness the district judge will inscribe the name of the offender 011 a drunkard's list, similar to trie lilack in Knglaiid. The great difference. however, is that this list in Honmania U ported up publicly in all the town halls and in all the communal public-houses. Persons inscribed on this li<( may no longer enter any publichouse. either in their own commune or iii any other commune to which the hsl has been officially communicated.