Anti-Treating and Other 'Antis'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 32, 6 August 1903, Page 17

Anti-Treating and Other 'Antis '

The Anli-Trcating League— to which we have from time to time directed attention in our editorial columns —is progressing at a merry pace in Ireland. This movement to combat one of the vilest and most dangerous of our drinking customs, has come to stay, and it only remains" to hope for its spread tfrom the Green Isle into every English-speaking land. The annual report of 1902 is before us, and among other interesting matter it contains a letter from an American priest who, while

strongly approving of the anti-treating principle, holds* that it requires to be supplemented. His words can hardly fail to be of some practical interest to our reverend c'ergy in New Zealand. Mere anti-treating (he writes) ' is purely negative, not prohibitive, and makes no attempt to substitute anything for what it takes away. It takes away from the people the old-time rollicking carouse in the public house with which they were wont to kill dull care on their days of merry-making, such as race-day, fair-day, or holiday. It is necessary to take it away when it leads to such grave abuses, but yet the people's ideas of relaxation and enjoyment are bound up with those customs, and when they are taken away there is a dark void in their lives that needs to be filled up somehow. It is a way with you Irish clergy,' he adds, «to be ever uprooting and never planting. You always take up the " Anti " attitude— anti-treat, antidance, anti-pattern— and thete you rest. In America, on the contrary, when the priest wishes to keep his flock from dangerous places of amusement, the first step he must take is in conjunction with some of his parishioners to provide the people witn a substitute under proper supervision and control. The people must have relaxation and amusements, and the way to keep them from those that are bad is to provide them with those that are good.'