BY A CORRESPONDENT

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume XLVI, Issue 3230, 22 June 1928, Page 5

BY A CORRESPONDENT

A reader of the Guardian writes as

To-day's news reports the safe arrival from America of the aeroplane Friendship' on the Welsh coast. Yesterday 's news reports the. arrival at Auckland of a party of American University debaters, and announces that on Wednesday, 27th inst., they Avill meet a Canterbury College team, the visitors proposing "That the American Policy of Prohibition is desirable." Can your readers find any connecting link between these two announcements'J It is cotained in the one-word '--Control. In statics two opposing forces of equal strength produce "equilibrium. In dynamics two opposing forces, of equal strength, acting on a moving body, keep its direction straight. The steersman, the motor driver, the pilot of an aeroplane controls these opposing forces, keeping a straight course or making the necessary deviations. In the last-named we have become used to the term controls as applied to the machinery the pilot uses. The human body is in the same way under a number of controls, moral, mental, physical. Alcohol has a very marked influence on these controls, varying in its manifestations according to the diverse natures of the persons affected. In a.large number of cases a very small amount of alcohol Avill cause them to waver in their eou*_e, and, likely enough, Avaver the wrong Avay. This, as affecting morals, is mostly personal, and only . affects .others indirectly. Its effect on drivers of motor vehicles has been much in evidence-of" late years, and many a man has been let off because his breath did not smell of alcohol, or because bystanders agreed that he was not drunk, and yet it Avas quite certain that he was under the influence of the poison (intoxicated) and had lost control of eye, hand, or nerve, and it has been stated from the Bench in all seriousness, and quite truly, that '' intoxication commences Avith the .first drop SAvallowed.''

We Avill not go back to the dictum of the old teetotal orator that alcohol was '' the devil in solution,'' but start fifty years ago, when even medical men regarded it as a stimulant, and ordered it in the hospitals often in heroic quantities. At the present, day most medical men regard it as a narcotic and prescribe it mostly to give sleep to old people, or in certain acute cases where violent delirium must be made to give way to natural sleep or death ensues from exhaustion. Whipping the heart up with alcohol does not impart renewed strength any more than whipping the horse; but when you consider the all-important matter of controls, it. is like throwing the reins on the horse's. back at the same time as you give it a cut with the whip. It is up to the parents of the rising generation to give the youngsters a word of warning. It is better to be safe than sorry! Alcoholism is the effect of and a sign of mental instability; seldom its cause. Start the youngsters as total abstainers, and they never want it; the craving once established, is almost impossible to eradicate.

To show you that Britons are waking up to the danger and the waste, I enclose a paragraph from St. Martin's Review of October, 1927:—