LETTER FROM OUR PRESIDENT.

White Ribbon, Volume 32, Issue 375, 18 September 1926, Page 3

LETTER FROM OUR PRESIDENT.

Dear White Ribbon Sisters, 1 am often thinking about our Membership Campaign, and wondering how the districts and local Unions .•re getting on with it. More than five months have passed since Convention, and if we an* to come any where near o<*r objective of a 10,000 membership 1027, we should now have somewhere like 1,000 new members already on the roll, or an average of about 85 for each district. 1 feel sure that some districts have already done more than their share of this average, but we must not forget that other districts are weak in numbers, both of Unions arid members, and therefore the strong districts and the powerful Unions, must pull all the stronger to build up their memberships. The present Licensing Hill has lieen dropped so much to the good for an expression of puolic opinion. Hut, it will appear again, so we are told, next session, and aP may take it for granted that in it will be clauses against which we must fight. It is possible that next year we may be called upon, in company with the Alliance and other bodies, to work up the strongest opposition to some clause that has ever been organised in New Zealand. In any case, wo should see to it that, if asking for a two-issue ballot i>aper. persistently and insistently, can incur its introduction, then we snail keep asking for it. What better way have we of preparing for this work than by building up an educated and powerful membership. Ten thousand personally pledged women, representing through their families many more tens of thousands of voters, would surely be a force that no Prime Minister or member of Parliament would afford to lightly pass over in any demand they might make for the highest welfare of the young life of this nation.

So let us go on building up our organisation for the work ahead of us. Our foundations are deep and strong, as everlasting as Christ's own teaching, therefore, see to it that we build a structure worthy of those foundations, well set and good to look upon, a refuge for the sorrowing ones in the midst of this our country. But, for this we must have faith,

faith in our Master's will for us, and faith in our own power to do whatever He caltl us to do. Living creative faith in Cod and man and ourselves, for this alone can bring a dynamic spiritual life-force into our work and give concrete form to nil our Christian ideals. With loving greetings, E. B. TAYLOR. Dominion President.