"WHAT I KNOW ABOUT RUM."

Taranaki Daily News, 13 November 1915, Page 6

"WHAT I KNOW ABOUT RUM."

To tlie Editor. I Sir, —I have been very much interested in reading art ivies in your correspondence columns on the rum question. I am surprised to find that there are men who eiaim to be intelligent, like Mr, Wright, of Rahotu. in the face of the -highest medical and scientific authorities of the day, advocating the claims of rum as a stimulant against the severe cold and trials and the Kaiser fiend armies our gallant soldiers are enduring in the trenches. Those who have studied the liquor question in its broad aspcct) know that rum—to use poor Tom Bracken's words—is ''the vilest fiend of all," for it is killing, murdering and doing its diabolical work all the time, Mr. Wright, if he knows anything about rum, knows this as well as'l do. and yet he is not only willing that it should con- J tinue to do its devilish work, but is out I to help arid defend it. Last year the editor of Kverybody's Magazine invited the thousands readers in America to send in "What I know about rum." Amongst the hundreds of responses published month after month there appears in the August, Ml 4, issue one by a man who was overseer on two plantations in Uemerara, British Guiana. I am sure that if the thousands who drink whisky, brandy, gin and other spirit concoctions, which are all produced from rum, Havorcd and colored to taste, really knew how they are produced, they would feel thoroughly sickened and swear olf the vile stuff for all time.—l am. etc.. R. H. ROBINSON. Stratford, Xovember 12,