CRUSADE AGAINST DRINK

Evening Star, Issue 25419, 26 February 1945, Page 2

CRUSADE AGAINST DRINK

BUILDING OF NEW WORLD W.C.T.U. PRESIDENT’S CALL “The world is in the grip of mighty forces—war, drink, impurity. and gambling—which threaten the destruction of all that .is good and pure,” said Airs W. 11. liiett this afte moon in the presidential address 'delivered at the Dominion convention of the Women s Christian Temperance Union. “There is a struggle between darkness and light, between evil and righteousness. We have, a personal responsibility concerning the state of the world. If every Christian had really been on fire for God it would not be possible that after 3,900 years of Gospel teaching twothirds of the people would bo nonChristian and millions locked in deadly warfare.”

-It was essential, said Airs Hiett, to establish bands of hope or loyal tempera nee unions ,in every community. In .starting the new year’s work, boys and girls should, be the W.C.T.U.’s first responsibility. They must rebuild the world after' the period of travail was past. We must give them the sense that life was a spiritual, more than a physical, adventure. Our system of education was secular, and we must extend the system of Bible reading in schools and encourage children to attend Sunday schools. Tho children of our land had suffered a great loss because of ignorance of vital things that mattered more than education. Juvenile delinquency was increasing among children, who were well fed intellectually but spiritually starved. ' What about the cinema? the speakerasked. Thousands -of New Zealand children crowed into the picture shows every Saturday and on week nights. Drinking was glorified in the movies. Vice, drinking, and smoking were shown as essential to life. The influence of the cinema could not bo over-estimated. AVo must create a strong public opinion with the co-opera-tion of all church women. One way of creating public opinion was by protest. A concerted, constant protest, with the co-operation of all women interested in chastity, morality, and abstinence, would make a mighty crusade against these elements in pictures. Motion pictures were character builders. . How essential it was to eliminate from the pictures crime, sex vice, gambling, and drinking.

The W.C.T.U., said .Mrs Hiett, was eager to co-operate with parents. If homes were the centre of social and religious life, with tho family altar, grace before meals, and children taking part, religious and temperance papers on the table, the temperance pledge on the wall, and hymn books on tho piano, all these would help to build up a spiritual atmosphere and would assist tho children to view life as a spiritual adventure. Temperance teaching would enable them to see than the building of a new world could not bo accomplished when alcohol, tho breaker of homes, was permitted to destroy the building plans. There was a hush-hush attitude about the part drink played in the moral slide which was so mnnifest today. Venereal disease was otfen caused by indulgence in alcohol, which lessened self-control and blurred the moral twinges. Members of the W.C.T.U. must not let false modesty deter them from stating facts which specialists emphasised. This year must be one of concentrated effort to promote youth branches in every centre, that young. New Zealanders might know the. truth and remove the stone of offence in the land, the stumbling block to real progress in the building of a finer, safer world/ - »