SOCIAL EVILS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 April 1943, Page 2

SOCIAL EVILS

ALCOHOL A “RACIAL POISON” CANKER IN COMMUNITY. ADDRESS BY MISS ANDREWS. “The Effect of Custom” was the title of an address given in Masterton yesterday afternoon by Miss Elsie Andrews, educational officer of the Women’s Temperance Christian Union. Miss Andrews said custom had a hampering effect and it was important that bad social customs should be changed before they became ingrained in the people as a bad national habit. She referred to the chattel slavery of the Roman and Greek empires and the industrial slavery in England a century ago and stressed the point that no outcry was raised against conditions as they existed because they were accepted as a custom. Miss Andrews contended that the same thing was happening today with evil social customs which were gnawing their way into the hearts of the people. She held that those customs were a graver danger to the nation than the enemy without. The evils were those of drinking, gambling and venereal disease, which were all closely connected. The W.C.T.U. was particularly concerned with the amount of drinking that was going on among young people. It was easy to point the finger of scorn at others. The trouble was that although the youth of today were a fine lot, they did not have fully developed the quality of self-control. Describing alcohol as “a racial poison,” Miss Andrews said that eugenists held that for a baby to be born into the world with the best chances for the future, it should have two generations of healthy ancestry. When young expectant mothers drank liquor they were utterly ignorant of the danger to which they exposed their children. Sir Truby King had warned mothers that alcohol flowed like a poison in the veins of the mother’ and the child. The speaker quoted Mr Churchill, Lord Jellicoe, and others in statements they had made on the paralysing effect of liquor on efficiency. Miss Andrews referred to France as an example, stating that it was the highest consumer of alcohol per head in the world. It also had the highest death rate from tuberculosis. In conclusion, Miss Andrews said alcohol was a canker in the midst of the community and she appealed for new members for the W.C.T.U. At the conclusion of the meeting a resolution was moved by Mrs T. R. Barrer and seconded by Mrs H. Speight: “That this meeting supports, as a war measure, total prohibition for the duration of the war and six months after.” The resolution was carried unanimously.