PROHIBITION CAUSE

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 35, 5 November 1928, Page 9

PROHIBITION CAUSE

LECTURE BY REV. L. B. FLETCHER HIP-FLASKS AT CABARETS 'The Town Hall was crowded yesterday afternoon when an address on prohibition was given by the Rev. .Lionel B. I'Tetcher, pastor or the Beresford Street Congregational Church at Auckland. The chair was taken by the Rev. J. It. Blanchard, 8.A., minister of St. Johns Presbyterian Church. The speaker said that the liquor party in their propaganda rigidly avoided New Zealand's own no-liceuse areas, but went thousands of miles overseas to discuss no-license in other countries. It seemed to him a remarkable theory, if one iota of the things said by the trade about prohibition. m the United States was true, that no political party at the Presidential elections in America, with its great and progressive people, was advocating the repeal of the prohibition law. Not one leader of thought in America was advocating the open saloon'.’ "Don’t you take any notice of Tom Heeney coming over here and talking of the failure of prohibition in America,” said Mr. Fletcher. "He got licked by a man who trained on milk.” (Laughter.) The prohibition fight had not been a losing one —it had resulted in 6 o'clock closing and every reform of the trade that had come to New Zealand. The true patriot was not a man who went out and beat the big drum. The true patriot was the man who loved the beautiful to take possession of his country. He knew that the character of his people meant more to his country than all the war battalions and all the gold in the world. What was more admirable than to meet a man who was known as a white man, who was honoured by his fellow citizens, whose purity was unassaibale, and whose word was his bond? The character of the Britisher was the admiration of all the nations of the earth. As the patriot looked over his land and saw the beauty of character and the beauty of home, there was only one thing to complete the future and that was the beauty of children. .Surely New Zealand was an ideal land for an ideal people, and any great patriot should be proud of it —and then there walked on the stage of this fair land the figure of the beast. The ’figure was the embodiment of evil and the greatest evil in the world to-day was the organised liquor traffic. The greatest evil that men had to face to-day was the wrongful use of alcoholic liquor. Liberty was the cry of the trade. "Liberty.” said Mr. Fletcher, “is not license; liberty does not mean to do-as you like, but to do as you ought for the good of your fellowman, and if that liberty hurts your fellow-man then you must be curbed.”

Mr. Fletcher declared that he had never said anything during the present campaign which he did not know to be absolutely . true. “I do say,” he said, “that men are going to cabarets and dances with flasks in their hip pockets, or on their person, which contain liquor. I do know this because ministers in big cities have revealed to them certain things which it would be a breach of secrecy for them to reveal. How could I'drag here a girl that has had her life blasted and stand up and tell you she is one of them and tell you she can never face the world again in character? I have not been in a town in New Zealand but doctors and businessmen have come to see me and said, ‘Fletcher, go on saying it; we know it to be true.’ Up and down Now Zealand men and women have a fear and dread, wondering in these ultra-modern days of stupidity, wondering what is going to happen to the young men and women. If your girl comes home nfined you remember that you had the remedy in your hands. What does the brewer care about these girls as long as he draws his dividends?”

“If a man offers you a ‘spot’ and wants you to get into a motor-car to drink it,” said Mr. Fletcher to the girls present, “then he wants to damn your purity." _________