DRINK AND EFFICIENCY

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3193, 18 September 1917, Page 6

DRINK AND EFFICIENCY

Sir, —Does your correspondent "Britisher" expect your renders to take him sm'iously when ho represents the practice, of Christ as favouring the drink traffic? It is quite true that Christ turned water into first-class wine that would undoubtedly have made the guests drunk if they had used it to excess; and Uio explanation, is that He did it to reveal His glory as being the Son of the Creator, and, therefore, able to create. It is quite true that , Christ invariably followed his Oriental practice of taking

wine with his meals whenever wine was to be had. Moreover, He deliberately incurred tho ire of the self-righteous Pharisees by sitting down to meals without washing his hands; that He deliberately choose tho Sabbath- for the performance of His miracles; and that He frequently had intercourse with the drunkard's and tho most notorious cheats and rogues, so nrnch so that the Pharisees contemptuously exclaimed: "I'hi3 Man receiveth sinners and eateth with them!" The accepted explanation of His conduct is that He purposely did these things in order to combat the Pharifaical notion that holiness before God consisted in abstinence from wine, a rigid observance of the Sabbath, and excessive physical- cleanliness. Christ, it-is assumed, consorted with publicans and sinners with a view to their salvation, to a better and purer life, and to proclaim to all ages that He was par excellence the friend of sinners, the harlot, the drunkard, and the outcast, whom He had a special mission to save, But if vour correspondent is right, then Christ must have eaten with unwashed hand.-; in order to commend dirtiness and filth. He must have'turned water to wine because He did not like to see

the wedding guests at Gana go away disappointed of a drunk. He must have drunk wine Himself because He was] addicted to it, and not to show (hat the' moderate use of wine is right. Ho must have mingled with the abjects and outcasts not as Saviour, but as boon companion in their drunken sprees. And we may safely assume that if_ Christ came to one of our modern cities, and saw what an organised institution the "Trade"' has become, he would not hesitate to commend the Trade for its efforts and recommend his followers to hobnob freely with the habitues of the liquor bars, where at present His name is seldom men Honed in prayer, but frequently in blasphemous oaths. Tho notion of your correspondent that the Russian Ewolutimi was cansed by Prohibition is rubbish ei-ough. Prohibition was carried in Rus u because under State control the drink '}. 1 had assumed Riifih gigantic proportion; that every patriotic Russian saw an, felt that, as Kerensky tersely put it,'"lf the vodka was not put away, then Russia would go down in a pool of alcohol and blood. Russia stands to-day as tho terrible object-lesson, warning the nations of the fate in storo for them if the drink traffic is not stopped. Just as opium tias made China what she is to-day, so alcohol has made Russia what she now- is. And yet only a century ago Napoleon said the Russian soliders were the best he over met. Drink, in tho short space of a centurv, has more than miy other cause worked this fearful change. Every schoolboy has read of the battle of Corunna, but" it is not everyone who knows that the battle need never have been fought if it had not been for a drunken trooper losing his dispatches while drunk. He was eent by Sir John Moore with dispatches, ordering the. admiral commanding the British Floet stationed at Vigo to take his Fleet round to Corunna for tho British Army marching to that port. Tho delay caused by the loss of tho dispatches was responsible for the fact that when the British Army arrived at Corunna there was no Fleet ready for them there. There was nothing for it but to turn on the pursuing French and fight them, in order to gain time. Even then tho British Army might have'had to surrender if a strong, fair breeze had not brought the Fleet'to the rescue in extra quick time—just in time to prevent, an even greater disaster than the loss of the lives of thousands of brave men,' including the life of the commander as well. That'* only one of hundreds of cases where drink has impaired military efficiency.—l am, etc.,

H. C. THOHSEN. Carrington, Cavterton."