TEMPERANCE COLUMN

Evening Star, Issue 20784, 5 May 1931, Page 3

TEMPERANCE COLUMN

[Published by Arrangement with the United Temperance Reform Council.] DRINK AND NATURAL HEALTH. Tho habit of alcoholic indulgence is a potent cause of fatality in pneumonia, and is also a predisposing cause of bronchitis. The International Congress of Tuberculosis has repeatedly emphasised that tho fight against tuberculosis must bo combined with the fight against alcohol. In short, alcohol is tho direct and indirect cause of much impaired health and many serious diseases. Even the smallest doses have been proved to have a physiological effect as a narcotic. From tho point of view of the community the evils, individual and social, physical and moral, inseparably associated with the taking of alcoholic beverages far outweight any consideration of its comparative harmlessness in restricted quantities. RESULTS OF ALCOHOL. Drink contributes its quota every year to the population of our mental hospitals, and continuously enfeebles tho intelligence of many who never enter these institutions. Its most disastrous effects are wrought in the characters of men and women. The police courts and higher courts repeat with tragic monotony tho story of its doings. Social workers and officers of rescue homos daily witness degradation in which it has been the most potent factor. Its economic consequences spread throughout tho whole range of productive activity, and react injuriously upon the higher developments of human life. We speak of economic consequences as though they could be measured and summed up in tho terms of the market place. But tho real economic significance of this, as of every other practice, is also a moral significance. It is found in the effect upon the standard of living, upon tho nature and regularity of employment, upon the degree of hopefulness and purpose prevailing in the souls of men, and, ultimately, upon the expansion of the powers of mind and heart. And in all the evil that is wrought, the purity and happiness of home life, tho freedom and gladness of tho child and tho adolescent, the contentment and satisfaction of elder men and women, are involved. The evil that attends the practice is continuous. It is sometimes charged against the temperance reformer that there is a certain monotony about tho story he unfolds. It is the same today as yesterday, and as a thousand yesterdays. That very monotony is tho most striking proof of the certainty and persistence of the evil. It is a condemnation of the practice, since it springs from tho constant repetition of the tragedy that is wrought. For the story that is told is not the same story as told yesterday. It is only a tragically similar story. It is a fresh crime that is committed; a new home that is desolated; another character that is degraded. It is further waste that is committed; further resistance that is offered to the upward movement in tlie standard of living; a further measure of restraint that is imposed upon the freedom of human life. Many lands and successive generations of men add to the growing experience of this land and of the men who live around us. An ever-growing body of facts attests the power of the evil and proves the menace of alcohol to he the menace of a continuous succession of the tragedies with which its use has darkened tho experience of mankind. The menace is threatening today that it has been heretofore. The striking power of the evil is increasing. Thankfulness is frequently expressed for the fact that in New Zealand the number of premises licensed for the sale of intoxicating liquor has decreased during the last thirty years, and lias so decreased despite the great proportionate increase in the population. But rejoicing on this account is tempered by realisation of the significant effect of the increased speed of travel and improvement in methods of distribution. Motor cars, speedy trams and buses have great! y_ reduced the time distance between given points. “SHALL I DRINK?” [By Dr Edmund D. Soper, President of Ohio University.] We have a generation of college students who can scarcely remember the days of the saloon and who have not seen drunken men reel down the street after pay day or every Saturday night. They do not know what made it necessary for the whole dry movement to get under way. They can scarcely realise what drink did to the habitual drinker, how corrupting the saloon was as a factor in American politics, how families everywhere were impoverished and broken up, how many careers wore blasted, and how , the whole business became a drag upon the economic life of the country. Unless the educational process is continued we shall soon have a generation of young men and women who have no convictions and cannot know the enormity of the evil. They may ignorantly allow tho camel to get its nose under the tent, and before long it will be entirely inside —with tho whole problem again on our hands awaiting solution. Where does the real evil lie in drink? Of all the counts which may be made against it this is probably the one which is most significant. To come under the influence of liquor means the surrender of the citadel of personality. It means a relinquishing of self-con-trol. We call strong drink “ardent spirits.” Very few realise that this metaphor was not always a metaphor, that in tho childhood of our western race it was believed implicitly that when a man drank and had lost possession of _ himself ho was taken in hand by spirits, very ardent indeed. Head Whittier’s poem, ‘The Brewing of Soma,’ to be convinced. We have given up the superstitions mythology, though wo have retained some of the ancient nomenclature. Tho effect of drink, however, is tho same. It means that there is surrender, that the man is no longer in control of himself, that his will ceases to function, and that he is at the mercy of what is meanest and most bestial and irrational and cruel in his nature. — ‘lnternational Student.’ DRINKING CUSTOMS MEAN No ideal of the American people has been more sacred since tho first adventurers reached tho eastern coast, than that of the pursuit of freedom. With scientific application fitting it to new knowledge and present-day living conditions, it remains to-day as snored as ever. The struggle against drink and its deadening hand on human personality through the ages may well he considered one of tho ways of continuing the struggle for personal and group freedom. It makes the conflict concrete, real, against a suppressing fact and force of present-day bondage, not merely against dead forms of tho past. —Harry S. Warner. BEER OR MILK—WHICH? James K. Cassidy, auxiliary bishop of Fall Hirer, recently addressed a young men's Catholic total abstinence society. with 1,000 present, relates tho ‘ Christian Century.’ He emphasised