PROHIBITION CAMPAIGN

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 137, 8 December 1919, Page 7

PROHIBITION CAMPAIGN

MR, CREAGH AT NEWTOWN PARK.

Yesterday afternoon Mr. W. D. B. Creagh, of Sydney, delivered an address at Newtown Park on Prohibition. The speaker was of opinion that the liquor traffic was doomed, even tne Tiade's 'little five-year-old son," the Moderate League, admitted that its parent was not playing the game; it needed reforming, but the,people's movement, the Prohibition Party," had its idea of the matter, and looking down the ages after every conceivable reform and control had bean tried, it came to the conclusion that there was only one way to deal with this traffic in alcohol dope—banishment —as a common beverage. Like every other thing on earth alcohol had its use. In America they find now that it is far better to put it inside their motor-cars and engines and not inside their men and women. Education and science had proved the death knell to the Trade, which was gradually pushing out those things that were hindering the welfare of the people. The common use of strong alcoholic beverages .hindered the nations' progress. The habit of drinking alcoholic liquors had put more men and women and even children on the human scrap-heaps than any other known thing; it aggravated all other evils. He instanced the last forty-one years' work of the New Zealand Police Force. There had been 779,200 prosecutions for all crimes. Excluding 322,121 prosecutions for drunkenness, there were 457,079 other charges, from murder down. Most of these crimes were committed by drunken people. The Government, through-* its police, had had: control of this traffic during this periol of time, but had failed to stop the evil. If State "control and purchase, were carried, the police would still try to control it, and were they likely to be more severe on. Government officials than they were on the present licensees? He urged that by getting rid of what had been called "The Liquor Problem." it would be possible to make up the wastage of war in men, money, and efficiency. 'This country would then take its. place with progressive Canada, giving the other colonies and the Motherland a lead.