DISTRICT NEWS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 150, 20 November 1914, Page 3

DISTRICT NEWS

MANAIA. (From a Correspondent.)

The No-license League in .Manaia were fortunate in securing the services of the Eev. R. B. S. Hammond as a lecturer under the auspices of the N.Z. Alliance. He ia a busy clergyman of the Church of England, controls two parishes with a population of 20,000, manages an Inebriates Home, and has done so for eight edits the newspaper "Grit," and by way of holiday, which he takes once in three years, undertakes a lecture tour with an average of 15 addresses a week. 'Mr G. H. Christie, chairman of the Town Board, presided. Apart from the merits of the question, the audience were treated to a moist, racy, entertaining and instructive lecture. Mr Hammond is a fluent speaker, not afraid to depart from thq conventional, has a fine command of English, and a store of good stories with a point deftly concealed in the heart of each. His address on Prohibition from a patriot's .point of view bristled with good, and was an able and eloquent justification of the present campaign, in spite of international complications. Liquor was costing England more in men and money than any war, and he cited the Crimean War, three hundred years of war before that, and the South African war to illustrate his point. War, he said, was Hell, but alcohol was worse. (It was an Empire's greatest enemy. His position as an honorary chaplain brought him in Sydney in weekly contact with from 200 to 230 drunks pf all degrees of past culture and present degradation, and he knew. He found he spent a good deal of time cleaning up the mess the liquor traffic made, and he felt that he must hit out against it every time he had a chance. He dealt in a very racy fashion with his own vain search for sly grog shops in Oamaru. There were some, but they were difficult to find and difficult to get into. The most notorious sly-grog seller in Oamaru had it under the house. Nolicense did not do everything, it did not elaim to do it; but it did rf<li'.---irmi'-enness, and convictions and he prated his .point right up to the hilt. The revenue difficulty was lucidly handled, and the lecturer showed that the traffic did not produce but simply collected the revenue from the drinker. They collected five millions sterling on a low estimate last year, paid £900,000 in as revenue and kept the rest themselves, rather a stiff commission to pay. The Prohibitionist was the best patriot, and Lord Roberts, Earl Kitchener, and our troopships were used as apt illustrations. The speaker concluded with an eloquent appeal to strike eut both top lines. Several questions were asked about Philip- Snowdon, M.Pi, and his book, whieh Mr Hammond answered satisfactorily. Mr Snowden, like himself, was learning every day, and the books represented the kindergarten stage of his education on the liquor question; hw recent lectures were his present up-to-uai opinion.

Rev Page, who hns lately come to take charge of the local Anglican Church, in a few words proposed a hearty vote of thanks to the lecturer for his able, informing, and entertaining address. This was seconded by Mr Jno. Hunt, and carried by acclamation.