MAUDE ROYDEN AND PROHIBITION

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 299, 18 September 1928, Page 7

MAUDE ROYDEN AND PROHIBITION

Sir, —The editor of "Cheerio” probably means that 1 "implied”— not ‘•inferred” —that the above-mentioned lady was misquoted iu "Cheerio.” As a matter of tact what 1 said was "Cheerio” and "Mother Machrce’ were wrong in the use they make of the lady's utterance, and 1 quoted her as saying "America having found a way to unite the initiative, courage and optimism of the West with the abstinence and self-denial of tiie East will become the greatest nation on earth.” The sentiments of these great minds is expressed in the words of Lloyd George: "The country that got most out of the war is the United .States. It has got prohibition. America has made the decision with the courage that characterises that great people. Let us give her a fair chance to deal with probably the greatest curse of modern civilisation.” And, Sir, that is the point, not the temporary difficulty of enforcement in those few places where insufficient public sentiment was created, such as those three .States who did not ratify the Eighteenth Amendment (ami which friends of the traffic so joyfully and glibly quote as a criterion of America as a whole). Rather our great statesmen huve stood ng’hfist nt the t’emiul evil. One can quote Brougham, Beaconsfield and especially Rosebery, who said: "If the State does not soon control the drink traffic, the traffic will control the State.” And, again. Gladstone: “Greater calamities are inflicted on mankind by intemperance than by the three great historic scourges of war, famine and pestilence combined.” And Joseph Chamberlain: "If I could destroy to-morrow the desire for strong drink in the people of England, what changes we should see We would see our taxes reduced by millions sterling; we would see our gaols and workhouses emptying; we would see more lives saved in twelve months than are consumed in a century of bitter and savage war.’ Dr. Bond, CU G F.R.C.S., honorary consulting surgeon, Leicester Infirmary, asserts that ‘‘if the whole population of the United Kingdom became total abstainers this would mean a saving ot 220,000 lives each year.” These are startling words and led Britain to send a delegation to America to investigate, and their 1927 report is pre-eminently favourable "Since 1918 £330,000,000 has been spent on unemployment benefits, but nearly £3,000,000,000 on drink, the main cause of unemployment,” said the Right Hon. Sir Donald Alaclean. "If you could supply me with £200,000,000 to-day I could promise you that there would not be a single man in this country unemployed If Britain would stop the traffic we should see this great vision realised. Everybody should lend a hand in th .When at I W v°o r iunteered to go to France and left my wife and family it was to serve a great ideal—a war to end war—and I am convinced that the drink traffic is a greater evil than all war and fa’ ine combined, and it is the duty o every lover of Empire to fight it and end it. May I quote Lloyd Geoi„e a»ain? “If we are going to found the prosperity of the country, its commercial prospertiy, its industrial supremacy, upon an impregnable basis we cleanse the foundation from the rot ot alcohol.” Is it not a sane proposition not to build the useless, dangerous, destructive traffic into the foundation of this young nation, and rather that we should have something of the ideal embodied in that great Presidential declaration which says, "being satisfied from observation and experience as well as from medical testimony that drink is not only needless ,but hurtful, and that the entire disuse of it would, tend to promote the health, the virtues, and the happiness of the community, we hereby express our conviction that should the citizens of the United States discontinue entirely the use of it they would promote the good of our country and the world This declaration was signed by the great Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln. —I am. etc.. ONE OF THE DIGGERS. Napier, September 11.