PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 180, 27 April 1929, Page 11

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Sir, —I guess Mr. Murray, the secretary of the New Zealand Alliance, moves in a circle. I have seen a clog chasing its own tail, and when I read Mr. Murray’s'latest letter that sight was recalled to my vision. He knows that many former prohibitionists in the U.S.A., like Mr. Hearst, have denounced Volsteadism as unenforced and unenforceable. Others, it is true, are opposing investigation because they say prohibition is a success and that there is nothing to investigate. President Hoover does not believe that prohiibtion is a success. He knows it is not. He called it “a noble experiment” before election day, and now he says he must appoint an impartial commission to investigate; and, believe me, no biased prohibitionist will be upon.that commission. . Mr. Murray tells your readers that the laws against murder, theft, robbery, etc., are not effective, and that prohibition is being enforced as effectively as a large number of other laws in the U.S.A. But he does not tell your readers that “all forms of criminality” in the U.S.A, have increased enormously since the adoption of non-.enforcement of prohibition. Mr. Murray imagines that the law against murder and robbery is on the same plane as the law against using alcoholic beverages. To mention them in the same breath as such shows Mr. ray’s absurdity and his total lack of moral values. To murder is a violation of one of the Ten Commandments —the foundation of all moral conduct. There is no'divine “thou shalt not” against drinking alcoholic liquors. There is no violation of any moral code in using such liquors. Only prohibitionists . (if total abstainers) say drink and drinking is immoral because they do not drink and they seek to impose their' habit or custom upon others. That is not moral. If there was anything good about prohibition'it would attract all the people to. it, but it has proved a very evil-producing power in the U.S.A., hence its general denunciation after due trial. • I do not know what Mr. Murray means in his reference to Wisconsin. That State has as a whole denounced prohibi.. tion. Home-brewing was against the very spirit of the Volstead Act. Now Wisconsin has sanctioned home-brewing without penalty. That State has legalised the manufacture of alcoholic liquors In the homes of the people. Do I understand that the prohibitionists in New Zealand are in favour of home-brewing in homes here if they succeed In doing away with licensed premises? Wisconsin has outlawed Volsteadism as far as that State is concerned, and has legalised what the people believe is an improvement to do away, or at least lessen, the evils that prohibition has brought about. Mr. Murray has a queer notion of prohibition, I must think, if he applauds the Wisconsin people for making Volsteadism in that State a dead letter. As an American I see in Wisconsin’s act a declaration of State-rights as against Federal law; but their action shows that they have taken the bull prohibition by the horns and have thrown it completely. My friend Dr. Doran, the head of the Prohibition Enforcement Organisation, says there , are 3000 “speak easies” in Washington, D.C., and if that proportion holds good for the whole of the States (and no doubt it does), then there are more than double the number of “speak easies” now in the U.S.A., as compared with the nearly three hundred thousand saloons in all the States before prohibition. One of the papers I have recently from my home town says this: “Yes; we have prohibition in America, but we want to know when it is going to begin.” It is laughable to read Mr. Murray’s words ujjon prohibition in U.S.A.—I am, etC " FREDERICK C. HAWKINS. Wellington, April 24.