WET CANTEENS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 September 1939, Page 5

WET CANTEENS

OPPOSED BY CHAPLAINS’ COMMITTEE. PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH RESOLUTION. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The following motion was adopted a! a meeting of the Presbyterian chaplains' committee in Wellington yesterday:— “That this conference of the assembly chaplains’ committee of the Presbyterian Church, with representatives of chaplains’ advisory boards in the four centres, meeting in Wellington today, all men with war experience, regrets to hear of the suggestion of ths introduction of the wet canteen into New Zealand military camps, as it is its conviction that the experience of the last war showed the grave danger attending wet canteens in camps and transports, and also because it would profoundly disturb a large body of opinion in the community as a whole.”

MR HARGEST’S VIEW.

EXPERIENCE IN CAMPS

The establishment of wet canteens in the military camps in New Zealand was -advocated by Mr Hargest (Opposition, Awarua) speaking in the second reading debate on the War Expenses Bill in the House of Representatives last evening.

Mr Hargest. said he had never seen drunkenness in military camps, and he had seen many of them. But in Egypt and in Wellington in 1914 he had seen a great deal of drunkenness when young men got leave and went into the city. The moment wet canteens were set un in Egypt all that stopped. The men had no incentive to rush out and get liquor in large quantities.