TEMPERANCE COLUMN

Evening Star, Issue 21822, 11 September 1934, Page 3

TEMPERANCE COLUMN

(published by arrangement with the United Temperance Reform Council.) No man ever sets out to be a drunkard, but the alcoholic habit destroys thousands. CONTROLS. All machines have controls. Railway engines are controlled by levers, motor ears by clutches, and so on, aeroplanes by “ joy sticks,” and scooters by small boys. The body is a machine, and it is controlled by the brain. Now, if you damage the levers, the clutches, or the “ joy stick ” it means trouble, and maybe disaster. And if you damage your brain it also means trouble and disaster. The brain is a very fine and delicate control. It may be damaged by shock, as when you have a fall, or by sickness, but it is most often damaged by alcohol. A single drink of alcohol damages the very finest qualities of the brain responsible for judgment and selfrcontrol. That is why loss of self-control is one of the first things noticed about drinkers. If you warn, to retain your control at its best always, leave ' alcoholic liquors alone, entirely alono. There are plenty of risks iii life as it is without making an extra one by risking damage to your brain through drinking. TEST CRICKET. C. J. Macartney: “ I won my way to first-class cricket in Australia at twenty years of age, and have maintained my place for seventeen years; and I owe this measure of success largely to the fact that I have always been a total abstainer. Archie Jackson: “ I would like to advise every young man who wishes to rise to the topmost pinnacle of fame in any branch of sport to leave alcohol well alone.” A POOR CHAUFFEUR. John Barleycorn is a bad chauffeur. His hand shakes, his knees wobble, his eyesight poor, and his conscience halfasleep. And anyone who permits this reckless driver to sit at the wheel of a motor car is a menace to life. That’s why little sympathy is felt for a man just sentenced to two years in prison for killing a cyclist—the driver’s brain was dulled by drinking beer. “ I shall now inflict upon you the penalty which is going to be the universal penalty for driving a motor car whilst under the influence of drink, and /that is imprisonment.”—Mr Ivan Snell, Marylebone Police Court magistrate. . GRENFELL SAYS: “ You can be just as good a sportsman, just as clever a scholar, and just as successful a doctor without ever using it for a beverage. When I made up my mind that I wanted to be as perfect a citizen as I could, the first thing I did was to swear off the use of alcoholic ■ drinks. From that day to this, nearly fifty years later, I have never used alcohol personally or in my practice as a drink. A thousand times I have thanked God that at least I have kept clear of that handicap. ‘‘Personally, 1 believe that there is only one glory in life anyhow, and that is to leave the world better for our having been in it, and I am absolutely certain that alcoholic drinks do not help us to do that. - “ Recently I was sitting with an old international Rugby football player, a friend of my early days, who had differed with me when I decided to throw all alcoholic drinks out of the window, and who had seen mo many times light my fire in the morning with strong spirits which friends would send to mo. He was himself within twelve months of his end then.* As we were watching the game he suddenly-turned round to mo and said: ‘ You were right about alcohol, Grenfell. 1 wish with all my heart I had done as vou did with it.’ ” —Sir Wilfred T. Grenfell, K.C.M.G., the world-famous “ Grenfell of Labrador,” doctor and missionary. Calvin Coolidge once said: “America may produce men and women worthy of our standards of citizenship.” This can only be done by joint action. No home, no school, no public or private agency can take on the whole task. Teamwork and understanding between all are needed to reach the goal of May Day—children whole and healthy in body, mind, and spirit. “ When I enlisted in the W.C.T.U warfare, it was for life, and when the day is darkest, my courage is best.” was one of the courageous utterances of that valiant loader, Lillian M. Stevens. An editorial in the ‘ Insurance Field,’ a journal devoted to life insurance, states that liquor store proprietors, managers, and clerks show a mortality of 135 per cent., which means 35 per cent, above normal. Actuaries believe thao employees in beerselling restaurants, delicatessens, and similar places where beer is sold will show approximately the same increase in mortality. The effects of alcohol are not confined to the drinker, hut are likely to be visited upon his chldren unto the third and fourth generation—if there are any great grand-children. Why are intoxicated men said to bo. corned ? Because corn is made into whisky, and whisky into wine, and whisky and wine intoxicate those who use them. . PREFERS BUDGET DEFICIT. “If I were Chancellor of the Exchequer. I would sooner have a Budget deficit than I would an alcohol balance. I should know that my country was on the road to recovery, that mv people were going to work and would be more intelligent and wiser, and 1 should know there would bo less expenditure in many directions. The cost of the police would go down, and the cost of the whole legal system of the country . would immediately decline. Think of the saving there would he in our prisons and the saving in the mental . hospitals. If that could be brought about, in a very short time the revenue would recover far beyond the £130,000,000 that would be lost from the tax on alcohol, and the whole nation’s income would be amazingly increased.”—Sir George Paisb.