NATIONAL PROHIBITION POLL

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3169, 21 August 1917, Page 6

NATIONAL PROHIBITION POLL

URGED BY NEW ZEALAND ....'.. . . ALLIANCE. l At a special meeting of the New Zealand Alliance Executive, (he following resolution was adopted:—"That in the opinion of ..the executive of. the New Zealand Alliance, the National Efficiency ■Board is deserving of tho profound gi atitude of the people of New Zealand for the thoroughness, impartiality, and courage with which it has. investigated the relation of the liquor traffic to tho iv.ilitary, industrial, and economic efficiency of the country.

"•The executive points out that tho National Efficiency Board is a board of business experts, appointed without regard to their views on the liquor question by a Government opposed to prohibition; that it has investigated the matter on business grounds to tho entire exclusion of moral considerations, and that- for tho ■purpose of its investigation the board lias takcu tho evidence of brewers, hotelkeeit crs, wine and spirit merchants, and others interested m .the trade, as well as that of the representatives of temperance organisations and philanthropic societies, judicial, magisterial, medical and military evidence, and that of farineis, merchants, manufacturers, employers and employees was also talcen.

"Tho executive considers that tbe decision of such a tribunal, that 'the gTtatest efficiency would be obtained both for the nation and the individual by a state of complete prohibition,' and {hat this prohibition should be both immediate and permanent, is one of ,Mio most memorable and significant'events in the luetory of the temperance movement in New Zealand, amounting as it does to a verdict of guilty- against the liquor traffic which must carry convection to i>ll reasonable minds. ■

"Tho executive rogrets that the Loader of the Government that appointed the bonrrl should have allowed it.? impartiality to be assailed in his presence by partisans of the liquor traffic, without, so far as has been reported, one v.-ord of protest.

"The executive strongly urges that t'ic recommendation of the 7s;itionnl 'Efficiency Board for an immediate noli on 7i(itional prohibition be carried out with'OUt delay, in order that Hie neople may have the onportunity of qualifying tl'emfelves to liear the burdens of the war by destroying the greatest, of nil preventable obstacles to national efficiency of every kind; and that nendiiisj Ilio taking of the poll the practical restrictions suggested by the board be put into immediate operation."