Page 9 Advertisements Column 2

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16701, 9 December 1919, Page 9

nUDYARD KIPLING, PROHIBITIONIST. 4 Tho following incident (writes a correspondent) is related by Hudyard Kipling to explain why ho bccame a prohibitionist:— 'Tho other sight of the evening was a horror. Tho little tragedy ployed itself out at. a neighbouring table where two very young women wore sitting. It did not striko rao till very late in the evening that tho pimply young reprobates were making the girls drunk. Thev gave them red wine, and then white, and the voices rose sligthly with tho maidens' eheek flushes. I watched, wishing to stay, and the youths drank till their speoch thickened and their eveballs grew watery. It was sic&ening to see, booauso I know what waa going to happen. My friend eyed tho group and said: 'Mnvbo they are the children of respectable parcnis? I hardly think, though, they'd be allowed out without any better escort than those boys, and yet tho plnco is a place everybody come*. They may be.' And they were, all four, children of sixteen and seventeen. Then, previous opinions, I became a prohibitionist. Better it is that a man should go without his beer in public places, and content himself with swearing at tho narrow-mind. - dness of the majority; bf4ter it is to poison the inside with very rile temperance drinks, and to buy lager furtively at back doors, than to bring temptation to the lips of young fools such as the four I had seon. I understand now why the preachers rage against the drink. I have said, is no harm in it if taken moderately,' and yet my own demand for beer helped directly to send those two girls reeling down the dark streets to—God alone knows what end." fAdVt.]