A MOTHER'S OPIMON ON PROHIBITION.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1336, 13 January 1912, Page 6

A MOTHER'S OPIMON ON PROHIBITION.

Sir, —I am tho mother of three daughters and four sons, all grown up, all temperate and in every way a. coiftfort and a credit to their father and mother. Not ono failure. Well, as tho mother of lour temperate, honest, earnest young men, I offer no apology for expressing an opinion on a matter so important to the world generally and to this Dominion especially. The main thought that I have had in my mind in the bringingup of my, children was expressed more than once in tho very able sermon delivered by our vicar, the Vonerablo Archdeacon Harper, in St. Peter's Anglican Church, Willis Street, and which provoked so much adverse criticism from all classes of the community. "Shall men rely on their strength of character ... or shall they bo in leading strings all their lives and forever dispense with the exercise of will?" As our vicar very rightly stated, though not exactly in these words, "Humanity will develop by exerciso of tho will in the future as in the past, and it will not develop through coercion or confession of failure. The aim of civilisation is to make men better and' stronger by the exercise of will-power, not by imposing arbitrary rules upon them. Temperance is civilisation and intelligence. Prohibition is tyranny. Most mothers have a horror of intemperance, a hatred and loathing, for tho drunkenness that has ruined so many homes and destroyed so many boys. I believe that with tho Ven. Archdeacon that tho salvation of men is to bo found in the strengthening of their will, and that you cannot substitute for will-power in the individual coercion froi)i without. I have brought up my sons remembering that I must leave them, and that any ; excrcise of my willpower . could only 1)9 temporary. I have in mind, as I believe'all mothers and all makers of laws should havo in min<l, the fact thait success and good living must como from within. Outsido influences may encourage and develop tempera nee and strength of will; but those qualities cannot be forced upon mankind' or upon tho individual. I believe that over and over again tho greatest mtetako lias been made in trying to keen children in ignorance, thus exposing them to sudden outside temptation. Our bovs ■ must grow un ill the world as it is. They must meet; the world's temptations. Knowledge, temperance, self-control, based upon good example, and thorough of the lyorld—those are the things which produce the strong balanced mind. Hysterical exaggeration; mysterious dread that arouses curiosity, such are tho beginnings of many a man's drunken raroer. Temperance, and not prohibition, would solve the drink question in the Dominion. The Government should deal with the citizens as a wi=o father deals with his children, teaching them warning them, making the indulgence of normal temperate appetites easy, coercing never—struggling to build up insido of tho. individual, a will-power that shall save him. In temperance the law works with the individual. In prohibition tho individual mil work apniVjt the law; the law is made contemptible, and drunkenness is incroased, ndt diminished.—l am. etc., MOTHER OF FOUR SONS. Wellington, January 12, 1912.