THE PROHIBITION SET-BACK

Evening Star, Issue 18145, 8 December 1922, Page 6

THE PROHIBITION SET-BACK

Unless miracles happen, Prohibition is not to be carried as the result of yesterday’s poll. Tire latest figures give a majority against Now Zealand going “dry” of over 14,000, and this is on a total vote roughly 45,000 larger than was polled in December, 1919. Tho hope may bo abandoned, therefore, of Prohibition making up its deficiency on votes still to come. Unless some astonishing error has been made in the counting of votes —and it is only unofficial figures that are available as we write—the cause has sustained a defeat which makes a greater blow to its supporters to the extent that it was unexpected. The total vote for Prohibition has not decreased. It has increased very appreciably since the last previous vole was taken, when the figures were i For Continuance, 241,251; for State Purchase and Control, 32,261; for Prohibition, 270,250. But the vote against a “dry” regime has Increased more than proportionately, with tho result that the absolute majority for Prohibition, which seemed to be brought well within reach by the results of the last plebiscite, has been removed to a greater distance than ever. Tho natural conclusion from the figures is that tho very strength of the probability that Prohibition would be carried was the means of bringing thousands of the comparatively indifferent to rally against it who had never taken tlio trouble to vote before. They were indifferent while they considered the adoption of this particular experiment to be no more than an unlikely possibility, but they were genuinely alarmed when the prospect was forced home to them of its being passed. We feel sorry for a great many Prohibitionists who had set their whole hearts upon tho victory of a cause in Which the most unselfish devotion has been shown by them, however vye must believe them to be mistaken in it. But the vote shows unmistakably that New Zealanders as a people are not yet piepared for the drastic operation which enthusiasts would impose upon tills country. The Prohibitionists will not despair; that is not in their nature. Since the State Control vote has rather more than maintained its strength, despite all the disadvantages under which it was put to the electors, they are not likely to bey successful during next Parliament in having that issue removed from the ballot paper. Endeavors will no doubt bo made by them to got legislation so amended that Prohibition would be able to be passed at a future poll by tho equivalent of a bare majority on a single issue; but tho drastic change which Prohibition contemplates obviously is not one should be made by a bare majority. If tire serious attempt, which various parties have been promising, to reduce present evils of the liquor traffio by -improved control and regulations is genuinely made hr the coming session, Prohibition in three years time may bo a much less attractive cause to New Zealanders than it is to-day. Failing those reforms, and unless the system in America should be shown soon to bo a hopeless failure, tho Prohibition vote almost certainly will be larger when tho next plebiscite comes to be taken.