PROHIBITION AND PLEDGES.

Evening Star, Issue 20020, 10 November 1928, Page 17

PROHIBITION AND PLEDGES.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —As an elector of Dunedin North I have received a circular from the United Temperance Reform Council stating tho attitude of the various candidates for tho electorate with regard to the questions submitted to them by that council. Tho council have gone out of their way to particularly cast a slur on Mr Tapley, clearly with the aim of inliuencing votes away from him. This is the “reward” Mr Tapley gets from the Temperance Council for his honesty of conviction. Mr Tapley fulfilled his pledge to the council in maintaining its claim for “ bare majoi’ity ” and “ two issue ballot paper,” surely the two great planks on which it pins its faith; yet because ho exercised his private judgment on a side issue (which, if I remember correctly, was left open for reconsideration if tho Bill containing the main issues at stake had been carried by Parliament) the Prohibition Council seeks to hold Mr Tapley up to censure, with the evident insinuation that ho “ does not keep his promise,” clearly thus seeking to prejudice him in the eyes of the electors. My sympathies have been and always will bo for tho prohibition of the'liquor traffic as at present conducted, hut such treatment as the Temperance Council has meted out to Mr Tapley puts a heavy strain on one’s loyalty to tho temperance cause. I maintain that tho Prohibition issue should not be used to cloud the many other issues just as important which are at stake in the general interests of tho country.—l am, etc., Solidity. November 8.