PROHIBITION COLUMN.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 October 1922, Page 3

PROHIBITION COLUMN.

CATHOLIC ADVOCATES ON THE PLATFORM. GREAT AUDIENCE AT WELLINGTON. “The New Zealand Times” of October !) reports one of the largest meetings held in the Wellington Town Hall. “A Catholic View of Prohibition” was the subject of an address given at the Town Hall yesterday afternoon by the Rev. Father G. Zurcher (president of the Catholic Clergy Prohibition League, U.S.A.). When the chairman, Mr W. D. Hunt (managing director of Messrs ’Wright, Stephenson and Co., and formerly a member of the National Efficiency Board), Father Zurcher, and the other speakers mounted the platform, amid loud applause, the great hall was crowded in every part, many having to be content with standing room only.

The chairman said that the Rev. Father Zurcher was born in France, but went to America when he was 21 years o-f age, and had been there ever since. Dr. O’Brien, of Christchurch, another speaker, was New Zealand-born. The examinations he had passed put him in the forefront of the medical profession in New Zealand. He was also a true sport, having, when a student at London University, represented All England in the football field. Mr Charles Todd, of Dunedin, also one of the speakers, was a well-known business man ana stock auctioneer of Otago; and all three were members of the great Catholic Church. (Applause.)

VIEWS OF THE LAITY. Mr Charles Todd said they had just completed a tour of the South Island, and they found a growing feeling in favour of prohibition everywhere. It was he who arranged with Father Zurcher for hi<s New Zealand tour. Father Zurcher was not getting paid anytnmg beyond his expenses, and neither he himi self, nor Dr. O’Brien was being paid for what they were doing. He went on ro remark that the country was up against very heavy taxation, and they could not afford such expensive luxuries as the drink traffic. Generally. 1 he contended that the country would get as much money out o-f dry, whotesomo goods as it would out of “wet” goods, and. in addition, it would not cost anything like the same amount to “clean up the wreckage,” and the sum of human happiness would be increased tenfold. The use of altar wine was expressly settled by Act of Parliament.

“A DENIAL.’” Dr. O’Brien, in the course of his ademphatically denied the suggestion that Father Zurcher was an excommunicated priest. He had presented himself to Dean Bowers, at Christchurch, the Bishop's representative, and he said mass at Christchurch and throughout the Dunedin diocese. Speaking on the subject from the medical point of view, he said he was certain that in the future alcohol would be placed on the drug shelves and dispensed by men who knew its properties. No doctors to-day ordered them to take alcohol. “Some of them give you permission to take it. but you ordered it yourself.” (Laughter.) He told his audience that they had no right to give alcohol to, for instance, a fainting person unless they knew the cause of the faintness. He had known cases in which ignorant administration of alcohol had resulted ■fatally. The only place thqt alcohol now held was as a drug and not as a beverage, and he gave at length and in detail his reasons for contending that alcohol of slight value as a food—it could not regenerate or restore the body, and it was not only not a heart stimulant but a real source of danger, as far as the heart was concerned. Alcohol was a drug and nothing else. (Applause.)

FATHER ZURCHER’S SPEECH. “CARICATURE OF PROHIBITION.” The Rev. Father Zurcher, who was received with loud applause and cheers, said that he was greatly surprised to find on his arrival in New Zealand that we were not getting a correct account of prohibition in America. We were getting, indeed, what he would call a caricature of prohibition. He shrewdly suspected where such distorted views of the effects of prohibition came from, as they had in America 32 organisations whose ©bject was to vilify, and nullify, if possible, prohibition. Let him give them one or two facts na io the results of prohibition. In 1921. under prohibition, the United States used one-fourth to one-third more milk than before prohibition was carried. (Applause). That meant that where the farmer had previously three cows he had to keep four, and he required proportionately more men to do the farm work and milk the cows. There was more work for the railways, etc., in carrying the milk. So that if anybody told any of his hearers that men would be thrown out of work by prohibition they should tell them they could go and milk cows. (Laughter and applause.)

INFANTILE MORTALITY. Then take the official figures as to infantile mortality. Tn New York in 1921 the rate of infantile mortality was 71 per thousand; in Canada in the same year it was S 3 per thousand; but in the citv of Montreal, the only cue ni Canada with the retail liquor traffic, it was 156 per thousand. But in poor, wine-drinking France—and manv people claimed that wine-drinkins did not rnun t—the infantile mortality rate was •200 per thousand, as against only 71 per thousand in New York. (Applause.) Before prohibition in America they used to have 65 .Neal institutions to cure drunkard.-, now there were only three, and they were poorly patronised. Previously there wore some 390 other institutions for the cure of drunkards, and they had fallen off proportionately in numbers. (Applause.) The House of The Good Shepherd in Buffalo used to receive four to five drunken women on the average every week, and now it received only one drunken woman every three or -four months. (Applause.) Ho could tell them how vast distilleries had been transformed, into something useful, turning out! breakfast foods, and so on, instead ot liquor. One formbr brewery was now turning out stoves. Three former breweries in Chicago had now been combined to form the largest clothing factory in the world. A great former brewery in Washington now turned out ice-cream, and another in Boston now produced candies. (Laughter.) One brewery in New Jersey had been turnel into a sshwi S' llll4 .

gan, had been turned into a church and was now turning out saints instead of sinners. (Laughter and applause.) IMPORTS OF DRUGS. He noticed that a pamphlet circulated in New Zealand stated that prohibition had made five million drug fiends in America. But the official figures a<? to the imports of drugs into America supplied a sufficient comment on the statement. In 1919, 12,000 ounces of cocaine were imported; in 1921, only 7000 were imported. In 1919, 15,000 ounces of morphia were imported, in 1921 3000 only; in 1919, 316,000 pounds of ipium were imported, in 1921 only 96,000; in 1919. 795,000 pounds of coca leaves out of which cocaine was extracted were imported, but in 1921 only 104.000. (Applause). These were the official returns from the Government in Washington. “AWFUL LIES TOLD.” It was stated that the doctors were prohibited from prescribing alcohol as a medicine, but the American Pharmacopeia, the official list of medicines, no longer contained alcohol or whisky; and three-fourths to four-fifths of the doctors practising in America no longer took out a license to prescribe alcohol medicinally, though the prohibition law gave them the privilege of doing ao, and they had to apply for the license once a year. A CALL TO SACRIFICE. It was said also that prohibition wa* opposed to the liberty of the subject; but millions of Americans agreed on 'that point in this way: “For the aake of hundreds of thousands of people getting ruined through .strong drink, and the misery brought by it to hundreds ot thousands of homes, I am perfectly willing to make a personal sacrifice and give up this little bit of alcohol." (Applause.) People made much'greater sacrifices than that for one another. There was the case of the epidemic oi yellow fever in Memphis. Some of the Sisters of Mercy who had been nursing the plague had died; and the head of the order called from volunteers from every one of the branches in America. Every nun in the order volunteered (applause), and from twenty to thirty of them died fighting the plague. (Applause.) Then there was the case of Father Damien amt other devoted priests who had devoted themselves to the work of caring for the lepers on Molokai Island; and many more that could be mentioned. (Applause.) When we knew that there were hundreds of thousands of human beings —millions, he dared say—ruined, not only in body, but in soul, by this alcohol, especially throughout Christendom. why should we not be willing, he asked, to make this sacrifice for them? A PREDICTION.

They knew what the result would be next December, “and,” lie said, “Australia is going to follow your example, in mv humble opinion, it will not be many years before all the English-speaking peoples will have adopted prohibition.” (Applause.) “I am here,” the speaker wont on to say. “as an American citizen. I am here to defend American prohibition against many slanders. It is not a church question at all, and. therefore, if that impression has been given in any way we want to correct it. It is a citizens’ movement. I want to add that when n priest of the Catholic Church travois the Catholic Church asks that he should, if possible, say mass each day. I have received great kindness from so many of the Catholic clergy in Now Zealand for the past four weeks and have had no difficulty about saying mass. 1 have I been asked to si>y it privately, almost! secretly. We have a certain etiquette amongst ourselves, aa priests, and I feel? that I must, in kindness to my fellow■ priests, say this: That I would not do I anything in the world to cause oinbar-i rassment to the priests in New Zea-J Jajnd.” (Applause.) <

SHOULDER TO SHOULDER. Father Zurcher went on to quote a. statement issued by the Council of nearly 160 Catholic Bishops at Baltimore, in 1884, as follows: “We urge all Catholics engaged in the sale of alcohol to quit that dangerous traffic as soon as possible, and get their living in some other honourable way.” In those days a Catholic in America who advocated prohibition was pointed out as a trank and a fanatic, that he was “running around with Methodists.” (Laughter and applause.) They did that “running around" with Methodists and Presbyterians and Episcopalians in a most friendly manner. They soon learned to respect each other and “soon discovered we were not half so bad as some of us suspected we were. We worked Catholic and Protestant prohibition workers, shoulder to shoulder like brothers, fighting for a common cause—l dare say for a common Christianity. (ApplaiMe.) For the first time in 300 years. I dare say. Catholics and Protestants worked together harmoniously in a common moral movement, and if in any future time there shall be Christian unity—and the Saviour prayed that His disciples should dwell together in unity—some future historian will sot out that the beginning of that Christian unity was in the American prohibition movement.” (Applause.) “PESTILENTIAL EVIL.” Tn the course of further remarks, Father Zurcher quoted Pope Leo XIII. as having said: “Let all priests shine as models of abstinence,” and ho contended that alcohol must be dealt with as a pestilential evil, in the same way « a they dealt with small-pox and yellow fever. It was nothing new, he said, for tlhe Catholic Church to take a high stand on the liquor question. For 1200 years after the Apostles it was the universal law that, during the forty days o-f Lent, every man and woman should abstain from alcoholic beverage* “What was that,” he asked, “but s solid chunk of prohibition imposed upor. the people by the Church?” (Applause.) It's a wonderful thing that we never heard anything about ‘personal liberty’ in connection with that law.” Then, again, he said, for the four weeks of Advent the same law used to apply, and on every fast day throughout the year there was a similar law. For the first 409 years of monasticism every member had to bo a total abstainer for life, and England, Scotland, and Ire-

land, far as the monks were concorned, held that prohibition law down to the twelfth century. Fifteen hundred years ago St. Jerome wrote: “Shun wine as you would poison. It was wonderful to see how his opinion agreed with modern science. Father Zurcher devoted most of the remainder of his address to showing that in nn ca.se in America had the advocates of prohibition taken the slightest step t<» interfere with the use of sacramental (Published by arrangement by the Taranaki Provincial Prohibition Council.)