THE LICENSING BILL.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 76, 28 March 1908, Page 5

THE LICENSING BILL.

GOVERNMENT DETERMINED,

If the Government, continued Mr. Lloyd-George, knew they would be expelled from power a fortnight hence when the division bell came they would rather fall, and on that fall stand up and begin the fight again, for they were only beginning, and must see it through. Concluding, he said that he recognised the Archbishop of Canterbury's noble attitude. The Church ought to unite on this question. If the great Church which was the official guardian of the people's moral interests- took the lead, every Nonconformist would follow.

AN UPROARIOUS MEETING.

LONDON, March 27.

A mass meeting held in Queen's Hall, under the auspices of the United Kingdom Alliance, was marked by uproarious proceedings, numerous opponents of the Licensing Bill and suffragists being ejected.

Mr. Lloyd-George (President of the Boand of Trade) urged his hearers to examine the situation in the lurid light afforded by the "spirit" lamp of the Peckham by-election. The Government was not the least daunted, and was ready to stake its existence on its stand between the liquor traffic and the homes it desolated.

The Peckham result, he went on, was more than a political defeat. It was a social portent, showing the demoralisation the liquor traffic had wrought. Unless Great Britain's virility was sufficiently strong to throw off this hypocrisy, the nation was fated to the squalid doom of the drunkard.