Prohibitionists on the Polling.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17634, 11 December 1922, Page 6

Prohibitionists on the Polling.

The leaders of the Prohibition Party hare lost no time in claimiiig that their defeat on Thursday by a larger majority than in 1919' was a moral victory and in announcing that they are going on with Jheir campaign. This is in accordance with their usual custom, and we need not just yet pay attention to what is signified by their threatened persistence, although the sigiMcance;yis serious, enough. We shall notice here only the light which their comments upon the poll throws upon their standards of candour and tolerance. The Rev. John Daw Son, the secretary of the New Zealand Alliance, concentrates upon what he regards as the necessity for eliminating the State control issue. "Less than 6 per cent. "of the voters," he says, "availed "themselves of the State control issuej "which is a distracting rather than a "national one." Therefore, he urges, it ought to be eliminated, or else the Prohibitionists should be put in such a position; that even if they are really a minority they may be able to dictate to the majority. If the supporters of State control, or of some other form of public management of the sale of liquor, were to increase in numbers, until, say, the votes cast for each of the three issues were about equal, Mr Dawson contends that if Prohibition were slightly the most strongly supported issue, Prohibition should be carried! But what deserves particular notice i«.the Prohibition view that because the supporters of State Control did not cast a relatively heavy, vote, they should be disfranchised. This is the true spirit of intolerance and oppression. ''You are few," the Prohibitionists say in effect, "therefore "we shall slay you." As for the Prohibition standard of candour, it is shockingly low. Mr Adams, the president of the United Temperance Heform Council, complains of "the unfair han"dicap" under which "temperance rej "form" (as he calls Prohibition, which is not temperance, or temperance re- ' form, or anything Telated to temper- ' anco) is attempted in New Zealand. "The Prohibition majority," he says, ' 'is rendered ineffective,'' and '' the /'minority rules." Mr Adams is here making a statement flatly and obviously contrary to fact. Those who desire Prohibition voted Prohibition, and they were a minority. Those who voted State Control did so because they are opposed to Prohibition, and do not want it. Their votes were anti-Prohibition votes as clearly as the Continuance• votes. This is so plain that it is difficult to believe that Mr Adams does not wish to mis-state the facts and mislead the simpler amongst the electors. Mr J. I. Eoyds, who is the head of another Prohibition organisation, goes one better than Mr Adams. H« actually claims that half of those electors who voted State control really dosire Prohibition. He supplies no* ground for this amusing claim, and leaves the public to wonder why, if those elfletori desired' Prohibition, they did not vote

for it. Having made this claim, and taken half the State control votes as votes for Prohibition, Mr Koyds disallows the votes of 8000 persons convicted of drunkenness (which he assumes, without any ground given, were votes against Prohibition) and then disallows the votes of 50,000 others who ought in his opinion to have been arrested. This gives him a majority.of 70,000 for Prohibition, and he thinks it outrageous that ''this overwhelming "majority" did not Becure Prohibition. Mr Royds has, in our opinion, greatly understated the majority in favour of Prohibition which can be calculated by his methods. If he had claimed all the Stato control votes for Prohibition, and had disallowed all tho votes for Continuance, which, being cast by electors with whom he disagrees and for whom, therefore, no respect or tolerance can fairly be claimed, the .true majority for Prohibition would work out at over;' 300,000, the voting being 300,000 odd to nil.