THE PAST CAMPAIGN.

Evening Star, Issue 18160, 28 December 1922, Page 4

THE PAST CAMPAIGN.

The official count of the voting on the liquor issue three weeks ago is not yet complete, but it is very nearly so, and the “wet” majority, now stated at about 25,000, is greater than earlier returns suggested. It is always interesting to know what others think of us. One Melbourne paper, published at a time when the deficiency on the Prohibition side was announced at only about 16,000, declared that the result demonstrates the rashness and unfairness of allowing the personal habits of all the people to he decided by a simple majority when no important moral .principle is involved, as the transfer of relatively few votes would have enforced abstinence on all, whereas the 290,000 Prohibition voters are not compelled as a result of the poll! .to become total abstainers. In view of America’s experience, it is questionable whether abstinence coulej hare been enforced' on all,

but the same paper certainly errs, through insufficient knowledge of our present legislation, when it proceeds to say that it is conceivable that a few wavering electors might change their minds at every election, making tlio country “wet” and “dry” by turns, and also making it ridiculous in the eyes of the rest of the world. It would, we think, bo a still more ridiculous position if New Zealand, having given Prohibition a trial and found it wanting, were to be denied tho opportunity—as our law at present would denjt it—of ending the experiment by tho same method as it initiated it, by an expression of opinion at tho polling booth! A Sydney paper, commenting on tho .16,000 “wet” majority, says that in Now Zealand the teetotal cause did well in 1911, did less well in 1914 and 1919, and “ crashed with remarkable force ” in 1922. It makes merry over tho discomfiture of “Pussyfoot” Johnson, Father Zurchcr. and l Alias Armour, whom it describes as “paid Yankee agitators,” who dll “began by denying that they wero paid for their services ”; and it surmises that their visit had “something to do with the catastrophe.” ' Evidently this paper scents something more than pure reform in the Prohibition movement, since it hazards the opinion that American money is likely to be available towards helping in the attempt to send New South Wales “dry” at tho approaching polls, “rag, lolly, and soda-fountain interests ” being expected to finance the coming Prohibition drive there. But it hopes, in view of what -has happened in New Zealand, that New South Wales will he spared the effrontery of persons coming “ missionising to a white man’s country which stands at least as high in the cultural scale as their own nigger-burning land.” New Zealand’s welcome to the missioners was perhaps not very effusive, but it is comforting to reflect that we remembered our position in the cultural scale sufficiently to observe the ordinary canons of politeness in speech.