TEMPERANCE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16558, 23 May 1914, Page 12

TEMPERANCE.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir, —I read in your Saturday’s issue a long and dreary letter signed; “Moderate.” The writer believes that the prohibitionists are trying to confuse the meaning of temperance. -I turn to my dictionary, and I find the; definition, “Moderation in indulgence of the natural appetites; sobriety; abstinence from intoxicants.” For any man to suggest that temperance means ■moderate use of all things is absurd: the real meaning is moderation in air good things. When a man indulges in alcohol lie is not indulging in the natural appetites of man. Temperance is not voluntary, but a compulsory law of Nature, which punishes if disobeyed. Prohibitionists do not wish to take man’s right to indulge in good, but to take from him the opportunity to do wrong. The savage never takes alcohol, never had the opportunity to obtain alcohol, and lives to healthy old age without it. The animal lives without alcohol.The civilised savage commences to indulge because it is obtainable. It creates an. unnatural appetite, which craves for it. Alan does not need it. Bring your greatest physician, your greatest scientist, both declare alcohol is not good as food or medicine, and I challenge “ Aloderate ” to prowe it is.—l am, etc-,

•ALFRED LEWIS.