THE PROHIBITIONISTS.

Evening Star, Issue 15477, 27 April 1914, Page 4

THE PROHIBITIONISTS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—" Temperance" does hot belie\'e in classing drunkards and Prohibitionists as the two extremes in the liquor question. Yet physiologically both are often neurotic in their temperament, and in that respect they are alike. " Temperance " says the Prohibitionists are sorry for the drunkards. That, is humbug. They are not sorry at all; it i| just a way they have of speaking. The drunkard votes for Prohibition, and gets up at 6 in the morning to get a drink. The drunkard does not believe in Prohibition.

The quotation attributed to Abraham Lincoln by " Temperance " is not Lincoln's at all, But an invention of an American Prohibitionist and fathered upon Lincoln. /Lincoln was for temperance, but not for total abstinence; and he never spoke a word in favor of the prohibition of the_ use of alcoholic beverages in the whole of his public speeches. Prosperity does not follow in the wake of Prohibition. Prohibition or No-license towns in New Zealand do not, town for town of equal size, show the same nelative progress in point of population as towns enjoying and living under the freedom to buy, sell, and use alcoholic beverages under licensing. I challenge "Temperance" on this issue alone; and the only blessings (?) that follow No-license are sly-groggeries, General contempt for law, and general egradatioh of the moral sense of the community. The least progressive States of America are those where Prohibition is in operation.—l am, etc., Common Sense. April 24. '