CAUSE AND EFFECT.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 November 1917, Page 6

CAUSE AND EFFECT.

To the Editor. Sir, —T'nder the heading a "Racial Question" in to-day's Jfcws, a correspondent contends this was a misnomer and should have been a "Beer Question."' If this is so, and one applies the" rule of cause and effect to a local incident like this, would it be permissible to attribute the Russian debacle to the fact that early in the war Bussia went on the water waggon? Further on your correspondent maintains that it is time all sensible people determined to banish all intoxicants from the country. The following liar from an Australian paper just to hand makes interesting reading in connection with this assertion; "Very different is the mind of the churchman who has never seen beyond the texts on the walls of the little Bethel and that of his brother who has been where the big guns boom. The other day a khaki-clad member of the Melbourne Anglican Synod strenuously advocated the wet canteen, and (while the brethren swallowed hard) even urged that beer, good, moist beer, should be on sale at church tents for soldiers! The community had scarcely recovered from this shock when Chaplain-Captain Davies, „at the annual assembly of the Congregational Uriion, held in Melbourne announced that in the light of information received from soldiers, doctors and nurses of Christian character, he could not oppose Billjim being given a tot of rum j fn the trenches or stimulants in the hospital. Men who want the issue of the tot stopped, declared the chaplain, are unable to appreciate the conditions in the trenches. The men have thanked God for the issue before an attack"— and once more there were shocked cries of ''Oil, oh." ■Nothing in the world can bo quite as obstinate as ignorance when it buttons its collar at the hack.—l am, etc., RKKOWX.