LICENSE AND PROHIBITION

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 66, 19 March 1915, Page 6

LICENSE AND PROHIBITION

The complete returns for the licensing polls have been long in coming, but they have not been in the same eager demand as those for the General Election. It was sufficiently clear from the provisional figures that,were published within a day or two after the closing of the licensing polls that neither for the Dominion noi for any of the districts could the declared results be altered by the votes that had still to be counted. The verdict was "As you were," both for the Dominion and for the individual districts, whether License or No-License had bee«i their previous choice, and the margin was in no case so narrow as to justify the hope or the fear that it would disappear when the provisional returns had been checked and completed. But No-License and Prohibition have had a set-back which is undeniable. No-License had indeed suffered in the same way at the polls of 1911. As we pointed out on tho 12th December, the enemies of the liquor trade had made steady and uniform progress as long as they were content to limit their immediate demands to the carrying of local No-License. In 1905 they had secured a majority of the votes cast, and in 1908 their proportion was as high as 53.45. But with the raising of the Dominion Prohibition issue in 1911, the No-Liccn6e vote fell away to 49.74 per cent., and failed to destroy a single license. In 1914 the vote has proved equally barren, and the proportion has suffered a further decline to 45.56 per cent. In 1911 the Prohibitionists had some compensation in the remarkably heavy vote which was cast for the larger issue. No less than 259,943 electors declared for the most drastic form of Prohibition imaginable, against 205,661 supporters of Continuance. That root-and-branch Prohibition should at the first attempt have secured a majority of more than 54,000 appeared to justify the extremists who, in defiance of the canons of reasonable reform and sound business, had urged the abandonment of the certainties of steady progress for the rosy possibilities of a short cut to' Utopia. But the second attempt has brought no comfort to these extremists. Their party is now in a minority for the first time since 1902. National Prohibition has only secured 247,217 votes —a decrease of 32,726; National Continuance has polled 257,442 votes— an advance of 51,782. The one crumb of comfort for the Prohibitionists in the returns i» that the verdict "As you were" applies to the " dry" districts as well as to the others. Though the vote for restoration has increased, and in several of the NoLicense districts is in a majority, it has failed to score the necessary three-fifths majority in any of these districts. It is, however, noteworthy that, if the reduction of the majority from 60 per cent, to 55 per cent, had been carried out as the Prohibitionists desired, both Masterton and. Ashburton would have reverted to License. The reduction of the required majority which the party is expecting from the present Parliament is thus likely to prove a two-edged sword. What are the causes of this severe check to the progress of a party which had. for fifteen years gone steadily ahead? We mentioned the most obvious of these causes in. our previous article on the subject. The enlargement of the issue has intensified the enthusiasm of the stalwarts of the party, but it has acted as a deterrent upon a. laxge number of Moderate voters, who had been voting fox No-Licenso in despair of any other reform, but not only could, not support "whole-hog " Prohibition, but were even induced to go back on their previous vote by having its probable ultimate consequences brought unmistakably before them. Many who voted for Prohibition in 1911 without expecting to see it carried, also declined to repeat the vote when they saw that there was a chance of its being effective. Of the special causes at work against them the Prohibitionists attach most importance to the distraction caused by the war, and the stimulus -which it gave to the feare on behalf of the revenue. Both of these are real causes, favouring the status quo, and the first will certainly be out of the way in 1917; but as the war bills will then be in process of liquidation the revenue question may be expected to have entered an acuter stage than ever.