THE LIQUOR BILL.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VIII, Issue 313, 6 December 1918, Page 4

THE LIQUOR BILL.

[TO IUE EUITOR.J Sir,—The “Tribune,” in my estimation, is the best paper in Hawke’s 1 Bay, and, as a rule, I have found both its war leaders and its financial! leaders informing and marked with considerable insight and wisdom. It is therefore vexing when it falls from these fine qualities, as it certainly does in its leader of Wednesday on the very important matter of the Liquor Bill. The very phrases in which it is written are its condemnation, savouring of the nasty, and its assignment of the bill to the Prohibition Party is unfair. You know, everybody knows, that the bill is the outcome of the finding of a board of representative men deliberately set up to collect all evidence. Having carried out this duty, they formulated the scheme which is tae basis of the present bill. After the proposal had been published and the country had had time to sort it ' out, it came to be favoured by the Government, and by a large section of the House of Parliament, and by a big number of electors in all parts, of tae country, as the fairest, the shortest, the easiest way to settle a difficult and vexatious question, lb was not the proposal of the Prohibition Party, nor has it been thrown at people nor at Parliament, as you say, but has been long in their minds and has been amply discussed in every quarter. And it was only after being approached by those not of the Prombition Party that this party, alter careful consideration, agreed ito stand in with the influential section of tne community that were urging it. You write tuat some section of the community is taking a mean advantage or war conditions to bring about a pet theory of social reform. Would you tell us who compose this section! Was the Btficieney Board made up of Prohibitionists, or nave Prohibitionists financed tins scheme, or have they been so politically powerful as to gam for the bill so easy a passage through the Hous? ! is it not, to write as you do, to declare your invincible ! liquor bias, and how hopeless the teaching or the war has been for you on this vital question ! The leader contains the statement that the Prohibition Party “has so far temporised with Satan as to forgo its set policy of insisting on Prohibition without compensation.” If my mood were not chastened through long and close contact with the prevailing epidemic, my pen would fairly scorch you for that statement. But it does remind me of a Gospel preacher on Glasgow Green who was being reviled by an infidel. The speaker bore it with great patience for a time, and then, looking down at the man, he said, “You are like your father.” “My father !” “bo you know my father ”, asked the interrupter. “Yes, 1 know him. You ar,a very like your father, the devil.” That story of the long ago came at once to my mind, and seemed very fit. There is nothing of Satan about our action, but a large measure of political and commercial sense., downright horse sense, as the American would say. It is an ancient tricK to ascribe to Satan the casting out of devils from the individual, or from the community. The Scribes and Pharisees spoke thus of the Son of Man. Nearly all reformers and advanced people have been so spoken against. Luther did his work by the help of Satan. Dr. John Brown, of Haddington, had acquired so much more learning and wisdom than the people of his time that they could only explain it by the aid of Satan, and so with Edwards, the botanist. Of course, Satan must be fairly delighted to be regarded as the inspirer of the new Prohibition Bill. 'I he suggestion 1 take it is original, and sprang into tne mind of the writer from—where I Sorry, Mr. Editor, to make this so long, more so to write against my jsUr-med old friend the “Tribune.” —1 am, etc., P. JIA M SAY.