AFTER THE 'HARD-UP BALL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 189, 12 August 1939, Page 8

AFTER THE 'HARD-UP BALL.

Yesterday the president of the Auckland Commercial Travellers' Association was fined £15 for the offence commonly known ns sly-grog selling, on the occasion of the "hard-up ball." He took the responsibility for the breach of the law which was associated with that unhappily notorious gathering. That a citizen of unblemished character should be thus convicted, and that an organisation with an unsurpassed rccord of servicc in practical philanthropy should be associated with that conviction, arc not thoughts that the community can relish. The law being as it is, the prosecution was inevitable and the conviction just, but, just as in a sense the president was the association's scapegoat, no less was the association the community's scapegoat. The odium which has been incurred by the "hard-up ball" is due to the fact that some of the people who attended it drank to excess. It was not contended, nor could it be, that the drinking was confined to liquor supplied by the association—a great deal was taken into the hall by the dancers. Nor was that a singular circumstance. Liquor is taken to the great majority of public dances and consumed in the hall or in cars outside. Neither those who organise dances nor the police are able in practice to prevent it. The reason they cannot prevent it is that a large number of people deliberately flout the law, becntlse they consider the law completely out of harmony with the needs of the people. Moreover, they believe, because they sec the evidence every day, that this law does not promote temperance, which was its object, but intemperance, and that it does so increasing!}'. It forces people, if they would drink legally, to drink fast and often. It results, when they drink illegally, in their drinking far more than they would wish to drink. It results in their beginning to drink too young. To this criticism it is not a practical answer to say that people should not drink at all. Prohibition has been rejected. Unfortunately, despite its repeated rejection, there has been no comprehensive revision of our licensing laws designed to secure that if people must drink they shall do so decently and moderately. It can be done; it is done abroad. At present the community suffers most of the ill associated with prohibition without enjoyingr any of its good. The remedy does not lie in catching and punishing people for breaking the existing law, but in making a law that they may be reasonably expected to observe, ami then enforcing it rigorously.