A GIGANTIC ORGANISATION.

Evening Star, Issue 8719, 11 January 1892, Page 2

A GIGANTIC ORGANISATION.

At the first convention of the World’s Women’s Christian Temperance Union, held in Boston last November, thirty-four nations and provinces were represented. The delegates’ chairs were marked with banners Bearing the names of their respective countries. Prominent among them were the colors of China, Japan, India, Burmah, France, and Australia, South Africa, the Hawaiian Islands, and the provinces of British America sent delegations, while the Mother Country was represented in the person of Lady Henry Somerset. Old Faneuil Hall was elaborately famished with fiags of allnations and greenhouse plants; but most nniqaeof decorations was a strip of white paper festooned across the galleries, with the ends furled in massive rolls resting upon either end of the platform. This was the “great petition,” already numbering a million names. When it shall have reached two millions a commission, with Lady Henry Somerset and Frances E. Willard in the lead, will present it to the Governments of the world. It is already a veritable polyglot, having signatures in forty languages. In the course of her address of welcome. Lady Henry Somerset said“ I feel that I am not the one to greet you to-day. It should have been an American voice to give, words of weleome, for your women have led the way in this great temperance work. I feel ashamed of my own country when I think of the awfal opium trade with India. To England’s shame be it said that the men who are given licenses to cell this stuff are fined if they do not dispose of it in a certain time. Standing in this historic hall, 1 am reminded of the time when America declared her independence. And she did well. Nations as well as mothers are sometimes blind to the best interests of their children. To-day we are here to proclaim a grander and truer independence. We meet to wage a holy war which shall free thousands who are the slaves of liquor. We oaunot overestimate the noble army of American women who have gone to every corner of the earth, filled with the power of the Almighty. It is woman to-day who steps into the arena of the world’s strife, because she wishes with God's help to proclaim His message. We are beginning in these days to understand the solidarity of labor ; we are also beginning to leam something of the solidarity of humanity. _ The wretched barriers which have been built up between nation and class and creed are being broken down, and following the bloodstained banner of the Cross we are ready now to go forth in every land and say that these things shall not be. It is a woman’s voice to-day, sounding in every land, which shall proclaim this new gospel of personal and equal parity. For she has heard the voice of God calling her to rescue those tbak sit in darkness and in the shadow of death* bound in affliction and iron.”

The “ declaration of principle! ’’ was read by Miss Willard. The following la the pledge formulated and adopted:— 1 hereby solemnly promise, God helping me, to abstain from all alcoholic liquors as a beverage, whether distilled, fermented, or malted; from opium in its various forms, and other narcotic poisons, and to use all proper means to discourage the use ana traffic in the same.” . _ . The preamble to the constitution without ambiguity sets forth the central principle and motives of the federation : “ In thelo'-e of God and humanity we, representing the Christian women of the world, band our selves together with the solemn conviotbo that oar united faith and works will, with God’s blessing, prove helpful in creating a strong public sentiment in favor of persona! purity of life, covering total abstinence from the use of all narcotic poisons, the protection of the home by the outlawing of the traffic in alcoholic liquors, tobacco, opium, end im purity; the suppression by law of gambling and Sunday desecrations, the enfrachisement of the woman of all nation?, end the establishment of courts of na'unal and international arbitration, which shall banish war from the world.” The constitution ia practically that ot the National W.C.T. U.