THE BRITISH LICENSING BILL.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8546, 28 March 1908, Page 3

THE BRITISH LICENSING BILL.

LIBERALS WILL STAND OR FALL BY IT. (By Electric Telesrraph—Copyright.) Per Press Association. ' LONDON, March 27. The United Kingdom Alliance meeting at Queen's Hall was marked by uproarious proceedings. Numerousopponents of the Licensing Bill and also suffragists were ejected. Mr Lloyd George urged his hearers to examine the situation in '' the lurid light of the spirit lamp." As to the Peckham by-election, he said, the Government was not in the least daunted. The Government was ready to stake its existence on the stand between the liquor traffic and the homes it desolated. The Peckham result ■was more than a political .defeat; it was a social portent, showing the demoralisation the liquor traffic had wrought. Unless Great Britain's virility was sufficiently strong to throw off this hypocrisy, the nation was fated to the equalid doom of the drunkard. If the Government knew that they would be expelled from power a fortnight hence, when the division bell came, they would rather fall, and on that fall stand up and begin the fight again, for they were only at the beginning and must see it through. He recognised the Archbishop of Canterbury's noble attitude and the Church ought to unite on this question. If the great Church which was the official guardian of the people's moral interests took the lead, every Nonconformist would follow.