PROHIBITION MOVEMENT IN GERMANY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3128, 31 July 1922, Page 7

PROHIBITION MOVEMENT IN GERMANY.

“Mankind, allot yourselves a couple of non-alcoholic days each week,” is_ the motto which should be ’hung up everywhere, according to a Professor Walter Nernst, rector of tho Univcr sity of Berlin and a Nobel prize winner. . ..... Dr Nernst voiced his opinion, in addressing the second annual German Congress for the Propagation of Prohibition Among Youths. He assorted that he thought young students particularly liked to sing drinking songs, but that they did not drink so_ much as is commonly assumed. He called attention to great writers, from Horace to Goethe, who have sung the praises, of alcohol, but said of late years young students were swinging to the other direction. He said one no longer found the- inclination to drink solely for the sake of getting drunk, and declared that scholars had become the best allies in the fight against alcohol. Other speakers at the Congress included prominent educational and medical leaders in Germany, Austria and Czeclio-Slovakia, who emphasised the injurious effects of alcoholism from various standpoints. Minister of Justice Radbruch said the Government was taking a lively part in tho campaign against alcohol. This finds expression in the new criminal code, which provides that habitual drinkers shall bo prohibited access to public houses and that repeated drunkenness may be- treated as an offence. Professor Tiiczek of the University of Marburg, citing American prohibition as “a drastic remedy,” demanded tho restriction of the manufacture of alcoholic liquors, the restriction of licenses and the lightening of taxation on non-alcoholic drinks. Ho declared total abstinence was absolutely essential to the health of youths under 21 years old.