Beer

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23801, 21 November 1942, Page 4

Beer

It was reported to the North Canterbury Methodist Synod, this week, that the Government intends to allow wet canteens to be opened to territorials in the training camps. Members of the synod, who believe that young men can and should be’ trained to fight the Japanese but cannot and must nof be trusted to drink a pint of weak beer in strictly controlled military canteens, were doing their duty when they protested. They are to be respected for doing it conscientiously, and most of all by others who as conscientiously believe the protest to be misguided. These will certainly agree, moreover, that the Government cannot be too strongly urged to see that the licensing laws are strictly enforced, though they will also suggest that it is equally important to have the licensing laws sanely revised. They will agree that, if transport restrictions have delayed the carriage of " needed “ foodstuffs ” while “ liquor was “ given preference,” there is no excuse for the policy or the blunder that permitted this to happen. Certainly, as has been emphasised in this column, the South Island zoning officer has complained that he has power to check waste in carting bread or coal but none to check worse waste in carrying beer. There will be strong support, also, for the synod’s endeavour to have the teaching of “ temperance ” made effective in the schools, if that means the teaching of temperate living, and strong support for its endeavour to secure “wider “ publication of authoritative facts " regarding the effects of alcohol on health; but this support will be given on two wise and essential conditions. One is that the authorities from whom the authoritative facts are derived shall be of unchallengeable status: which means that they must be chosen because they can speak with the impartial authority of science, not because they can be counted on to speak with the partial authority of doctrinaires. The second is that, in the schools and beyond, “ wider “ publication of authoritative facts ” should not begin with the “ effects “ of alcohol,” or end with them, or concentrate on them, but should give them their due place in balanced and comprehensive health instruction. It is necessary to show the child—and the adult—that drinking too much beer is bad, and why. It is not less necessary to show that over-eating and faulty dieting are bad, and why; that too

much tea and too much coffee will poison mind and body; that milk •has its dangers, though less renowned than beer, which rarely if ever carries any contamination: and that if New Zealanders have horrible teeth, it is no use # blaming beer, for the mischief lies in directions seldom explored by synods. “ The sound scientific “ knowledge that the church “ possesses," as the Rev. M. A. Rugby Pratt claimed, may be substantial; but the suggestion cannot be accepted that it leaves nothing to be said for beer, by laboratory science or by the history of the race, or that it ought to rule the government’s policy in the camps and instruction in the schools.