LICENSE SUPPORTING TACTICS.

Evening Star, Issue 14630, 28 July 1911, Page 2

LICENSE SUPPORTING TACTICS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—ln his latest letter “Anti-No-licorifi® ” does not attempt to stand up to the knock-out that I gave to his bigh-fahitm* passage. Though that pju-eage declared that “the Jews drank and gave us mono theism, the highest form of religion,” and a lot of other equally indefensible statemerits, “ Anti-No-liceusc ” <lo*Vs not now Goek to further state Urat the worship of oho God and that God Himself were the inventions of a wine-soaked brain, and that tho worship of the One and True God would not have come to pass if the Jews had not dr unit alcoholic liquor. Stated thus, tho thing is too silly even for tho average liquor'supporter to swallow. Yet unless they claim that it was because they drank that the Jews gave ns monotheism, where is tho sens© in connecting the two facts? All the rest of his' passage succumbs to the same reasoning. Whatever the Jews, Greeks. Komans, arid Teutons did they did in spite of alcohol drinking, and not because of it. A tow years ago all sorts of medical virtues were ascribed to alcohol, and it was very generally prescribed to all sorts of patients for all sorts of diseases. All who got better, of course, attributed their recovery to alcohol. It is now found that in fully nine-tenths of these cases the alcohol was hurting tho patient instead of benefiting him. Thus they nearly all got belter in spite of the alcohol, not because of it. Tho chief use of alcohol medically to-day is in quack nostrums, and it is put there because tho makers of these concoctions find that its presence creates in those wl;o use them a desire for more. What do they car© about tho results to tho patients, so long as the medicines sell ? Alcohol is practically found out medically—it will soon be found out nationally.

The quotation from Sir James Paget, claiming that the nations that use alcohol have a longer life and hotter thinking power during that life, is absolutely at variance with all up-to-date scientific" and insurance date. Many life insurance offices are giving 10 per cent, reduction in premiums to abstainers, and the experience of those companies that keep their abstainers in separate records shows that the moderate drinkers (no drunkards are included in the comparison) die fully 25 per cent, more quickly that the abstainers. From whence, therefore, comes the claim of longer life for drinkers ? Then, also, recent mails from India have brought news of deplorable degradation there through the spread of the habit of drinking. Thus the Hindus and Mohammedans are not a poor class because they were abstainers. for the general use of'drink immediately thrusts them to a still lower level. Great as have been the achievements of the British race, they would have been greater still had wo not wasted our strength and our substance in drink. The lime has now come when, as the German Emperor says, competition is so keen, and steady nerves and high efficiency' so essential, that the nation that will win out will bo the one that drinks least alcohol. The people are realising this, and “ Anti-No-license ” cannot turn hack the hands of the clock. All this yarn about tourists and emigrants being frightened away by National Prohibition is just moon shin o. I think it would be the greatest advertisement New Zealand ever got. The right class of people would come here, and the class wo can well spare would go away or would avoid us.—l am, ote.. Progress. July 27. ! I ! !