WET CANTEENS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 70, 23 March 1915, Page 7

WET CANTEENS.

(To the TCditor... Sir.—"Kow stop I forth to whip hypocrisy" is the text from which with your permission, J would like to'make :i few remarks. Because a few fussy individuals, along with a "Yea-Xo" Minister, have decided that water eliall he the camp leverage, the men are driven to go abroad for it, and then naturally, as they are not allowed to get a glass when they want it, it onde in them getting it fn bucketfuls. Xow, these men are putting up their lives for us, "going to their God as soldiers of the King." for New Zeajanclers, like the men of the Cameron clan, they will die before they will yield, and so forsooth they must be denied a little plea-sure. Let us look at what is goin? on here. At toe trote the other day I sn W hundreds of young fellows, "just )&e the Trentliam men, and who ought to be in Trcntham too, rushing i:i to the bars after every raep. No 'Irv canteen for them. At To Aroha races,"the same thing. No dry canteen there. After every art in "The Glad Eye," a procession to the two nearest hoteis. No dry canteen either. That v ire-served for the bravo; only the shfrfcera, the men who ought to have a white feather ir their hate, are entitled to a w<>t one. A relative of minj who has beer in five camps in Wellington, and who its a. staunch teetotaller, mc there is only one hope oi a sober camp, am , that. is not a dry canteen. In the '-Times" (February 12) a letter from tfiie front ielte how. after .fourteen hours in a trcncli full of water, their lives were saved by a hearty drink of mm, but our temperance friends would have given them a drink of the fluid they had been wading in all night, and thrni wondiered at <tn attack of piwunronia supervening. Kitchener knew what he was about when he sent those 150,000 gallons of rum to the lighting line.—l am, ttc, .W. R. WEIGHT.