SIX O'CLOCK CLOSING

Evening Post, Volume xciv, Issue 73, 24 September 1917, Page 2

SIX O'CLOCK CLOSING

The Rev. R. Wood, in the course ofl 'Ins, sermon last night in the Seatonn Presbyterian Church, referred to the reduction of the hours for the sale of drink as a very necessary reform, and he expressed satisfaction at the action of Mr. Massey in moving the 6 o'clock motion when the House had shown its mind on the question. The preacher said he deplored the reactionary attitude on temperance reform taken Tip by Sir Joseph. Ward and the Attorney-General. Their attitude reminded him of the things some politicians said a quarter of a century a-go. He was surprise^ to hear Sir Joseph Ward describe the awakened moral sense of the nation on the drink evil'as "national hysteria," and to hear him view with alarm a decreased revenue, from drink. In,the,past a Radical like John Ballance and a Conservative like Sir Stafford Northcote agreed in saying that decreased revenue fromdrink as 'the result of the growth of temperance would mean the enriching of the nation in money as well as in manhood. As regards the Attorney-General it was by no means a good omen to hear him denounce the cry for restriction on the sale of drink as "intolerance " and as ■ " impertinence." A former. Attorney-General, Who now leads the Legislative Council, had publicly stated that the liquor traffic was prohibited save when licensed, and that the district .veto without, compensation,- was a right the people oould in justice use. The drink traffic stood, for the waste of money, the waste of food, and for the crippling^ of labour. The Government, through its Life Assurance Department, has branded the trade in liquor as making for national inefficiency by either refusing to insure the lives of publicans or by loading them heavily, and yet the Attorney-General does not see how the liquor traffic injures industrial efficiency.