TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 135, 4 December 1909, Page 12

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

[The matter for this column is supplied J>y a representative of the local temperance bodies, who alone is reeponsible for the opinions expressed in U.I

THE GREAT REMOVER. An exchange says that alcohol will remove grass-stains from summer clothes. It will also remove summer clothes (adds a Chicago paper), and also spring and winter clothes, not only from the man % who drinks it, but from his wife and 'children. It will remove household furniture from the house and eatables from the pantry ; the smiles from the face of the wife, and the happiness from the home. As a remover of things, alcohol has few equals. FOR THE HONOUR OF ENGLAND. Miss D. L. Woolmer, whose stirring appeals regarding the opium iniquity have been widely circulated, has issued another call "for the honour of the great Name and for England's fair fame." She writes : Opium and alcohol of British manufacture cause the ruin of native races in all parts of the world. The remnants that remain are growing more and more alive to their danger, while many of them are -becoming less and less able to resist destruction. The bishops of West Africa plead for the deliverance of their people under British rule. Their churches subscribed, in the year ending 1908, £SCL towards the Society for the Prevention of the Demoralisation of Native Races by the Liquor Traffic. Mr. Leif Jones, M.P., declares that the indirect effects of the liquor traffic wfth West Africa are comparable with the indirect effects of the misrule in the Congo. He gives statistics showing that the revenue ' from the tax upon spirits in South Nigeria grew from £400,000 in 1903 to £800,000 in 1907. China protests that all her efforts to overcome the great national drug habit are vain whilst England continues to pour Indian opium into her ports. From information in The Pioneer, an Indian journal, it is calculated that the British factories at Patna and Ghazipur had in reserve in 1908 sufficient opium to supply the legitimate medical requirements of the whole world for 417 years. The great quantity of this deadly poison is sold for vicious use in China. An intelligent Chinaman openly declares through the press that the few of his countrymen who have taken to strong drink have acquired the habit through Europeans, and that if the British Government would "safeguard them" by raising the cost of alcoholic beverages, it would "confer a boon upon the Chinese, and also upon the Indians and Malays residents in British colonies and protectorates. " The drug habit has laid hold of men and women of all classes in England and her colonies. According to the law of retributive justice, the curse must return home. The strong, whether nations or individuals, who put an occasion of falling in the way of the weak, can neither escape punishment nor find favour with God unless they confess and forsake their sin. Through the International Opium Commission of February, 1909, thirteen nations have vindicated the earnestness and sincerity oi" China's efforts to eradi cate the opium habit. Whilst >jreat Britain continues to tempt and injure China with the supply of opium, and the more primitive nations of the world with strong drink, the Name of Christ must be blasphemed before non-Christians. A Chinese representative at the International Commission appealed to the Christian conscience as "a force greater than the world's combined navies and armies, greater than the power of all the world's gold and silver." In pleading for the deliverance of his people, he cited "the eternal law of Heaven, which, through Confucius, says : 'Do not unto others what you would not have others do unto you,' and which, through Jesus Christ, says, 'Thoushalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' " The year 1909 is marked by an International Opium Commission, a Congress on Alcoholism, and a great Church J of England Temperance Forward Movement. There is a motive for all the enterprises and for carrying them to their practical conclusions, greater than the love of our fatherland, greater than humanity towards the perishing, greater than promoting measures of self-pro-tection — noble though these motives may be — and that motive is, that (iod's great Name may be glorified. STATE CONTROL A DELUSION. A correspondent at Johnsonville, in a courteous note, questions a remark in this column a fortnight ago to the effect that the State control of the liquor traffic is a socialistic ideal, and that under such a system the continuance of the demand would be held to justify the supply. "In a State where the wellbeing of the people would be the first consideration production for use and not for profit would prevail." Evidently the writer has no sympathy with the "extreme Socialists" ret erred to. But his ideal state exists nowhere on earth to-day.; our references were to the invariable result which have followed attempts at State control— and there are/ notably in Britain, Socialists who oppose prohibition because they covet the profits of the traffic for the State : that is, the commercialist State of today, not the altruistic State of a millennium to come. State control of the traffic is not to be found anywhere save in imagination; the traffic is not to be controlled. But it has at times come dangerously near to controlling ithe State. THE RISING TIDE. The tide of prohibition still flows in the United States, so that over large districts the "local option" tide-mark is quite out of sight. The Arkansas House of Representatives, on Ist March, by a vote of 44 to 35, rejected a Bill to submit the question of State-wide prohibition to the vote of the people. A motion to reconsider was tabled by a vote of 49 to 29, and later the Gann Bill providing ior statutory State-wide prohibition passed the House by a vote of 53 to 27. This Bill provides that liquor may only be sold by druggists for such purposes as art, medicinal and similar uses, and that wines may be sold to churches for sacrament. Michigan Prohibitionists have nominated a complete State ticket, which declares for national and State prohibition ; and Idaho has also fallen into line. On the 14th June last, the Supreme Court of Mississippi declared that no beverage can be sold within the borders of that State which contains any percentage whatever of alcohol. The decision was aimed especially at the sale of "near beer" in Mississippi, and will prove of great significance in the movement for strict enforcement of the State prohibition law in that Commonwealth.