THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1908. "GOING DRY."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3056, 28 November 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1908. "GOING DRY."

Under the above heading the Sydney "Daily Telegraph" publishes a thoughtful article on the No-License movement in New Zealand. It is just as well at times to consider what others think of us, and if the "Telegraph's" article is, on the whole, favourable to the No-License move ment, at the same time the paper recognises that the liquor problem in this country is by no means settled, afid that the eventual method of settlement is by no means certain. The "Telegraph" remarks that the victories gained by the anti-liquor party in New Zealand, and the great and steady increase it shows at

every poll, have a general and remarkable significance, the more markedly so when it is remembered that they are not a purely local manifestation. This is not another New Zealand experiment in the "advanced" class. More than half the area of the United States has voted itself "dry;" and the British Parliament has before it a Bill which, whatever be its political fate, probably expresses the desire of the great majority of the people that there should be popular control, in the form of local option, over the liquor .traffic. All this, taken in conjunction with the unmistakable resolution of peoples to restrict the trade wherever they can get at it, and especially where women vote, ominously hint at the possiblity of national alcoholic drought, the thought of which already excites alarm on the part of both those who do not believe in abstinence and those who think that as a matter of principle such interference with personal liberty is wrong. The apprehension is perhaps exaggerated. Many a drinker votes to shut up hotels because he finds them objectionable in his neighbourhood, or believes they tempt people to drink, encourage dissoluteness, and so on, while himself keeping his keg or bottle always well replenished and convenient in his own house. Doing away with bars is a good idea in his estimation but if it came to doing away with liquor and making the place dry all over instead of only nobbier-dry he might be expected to shy, and the probability is that the party which changed its name from No license to No-liquor would find its numbers seriously shrunk. More people in New Zsaland are voting No-license than continuance nowadays. One v» ould assume that if the majority was made up of enemies of any kind of trade in strong drink—if, that is, they were true-blue prohibitionists—they would exercise their superior voting strength upon Parliament, if not quite effectually, more forcibly than they actually do, to compel drastic anti-liquor legislation; or that they would insist on the wiping-out of that stipulation for a three-fifths No-license vote, which is excellently democratic inasmuch as it recognises the minority's rights. There are, indeed, very plausible evidences of the [exittance in most "drj'' countries of a section that votes temperance with tongue in cheek. The per capita consumption of liquor and the convictions for drunkenness merrily keep pace with increases in the No-license vote in New Zealand, In the United States it is much the | sam 3, we bfelifeVC. and it is certain that the prohibition law there often "has a string on it" in the shape of a reservation enabling the chemist to keep a good supply of alcohol. "It is an interesting speculation, however, what would happen and how it would feel," continues the "Telegaph," "should a countiy go dry one day, as might happen as the result of either a resolute public declaration or a ballot-box fluke. Any conjecture along this line gives the prohibitionist the start-off argument that the traffic must have grown |to mighty proportions when the prospect of its being stopped creates such apprehension as it unquestionably does, whether considered commercially, industrially, socially, or in any other aspect. It represents of course, a very vast concern, and if by some lightning rescript its cessation could be effected in this country, say, to-morrow, the immediate consequences would be enormous and disastrous, in their effect on trade and employment. But taking that for granted, without in the least under-estimating its importance, the social pinch, temporarily at any rate, would be sharper than a serpent's tooth, the wrench of custom a minor earthquake. Drinking is so frequently, so variously, so insistently stranded into the woof of daily habit and intercourse! A business ideal, a meeting with a friend or a parting from one. a misfortune or a stroke of luck, a desire for company—any one of a thousand common necessities, experiences or inclinations seems with many people to irresistibly suggest 'a drink.' Imagination hesitates to suggest what substitute the convivial, the hospitable, the boisterous, and the rest of the custom-tipplers would resort to. Seldom if ever have great problems been finally solved at one move; and how big a one this is may be appreciated by anyone who reflects on the growth of the New Zealand liquor bill in the face of a wonderful campaign of years against it—the logical conclusion from this is that the bill would have been vastly bigger had there been no systematic hostile effort to keep it down. That both restriction and regulation are necessary goes without saying. What is the best method is the question which New Zealand experience ought to illuminate.