PUT THAT PIPE OUT!

Free Lance, Volume XVIII, Issue 988, 11 June 1919, Page 11

PUT THAT PIPE OUT!

More Prohibition, NEW Zealanders, ourselves included, who have read of the antismoking agitation in the United States have been apt to scoff at the very idea of such a movement attaining siuch proportions as to warrant it being considered seriously. A perusal of recent American newspapers shows that the tobacco trade is taking quite a grave view of the agitation. Its leading organ solemnly warns "heedless smokers and careless spitters" to mend their ways. The States are being bestrewn with anti-tobacco literature. The An t.is! wax pathetic oyer the "waste of one and a-half million acres of good productive land" and declare that "backy" lessens mental efficiency. We wonder what Tom Carlyle or Tennyson, each of whom had an intense affection for "a yard of dry" and some good Virginian tobacco, would have said to this. Also, it is charged against the 3>ivine Weed that it "causes a large percentage of our destructive fires." For tobacco, substitute wax matches, and perhaps the insurance experts would agree. Anyhow the agitation is receiving big support, as indeed will any fad from a certain section of the American people, by no means so hard-headed a race as they are often made out to be. As to the evils of tobacco all sensible people know full well they are out-weighed by its virtues. **« . » The persecuted "Trade"—we are now, it appears, to have two of them — should circulate Calverley's famous "Ode to Tobacco" as a "counterblaste" against the doctors' and states/men's diatribes against the weed. As the witty Cambridge rhymer sang: Cats may have had their goose . Cooked by tobaccy juice; Still why deny its use Thoughtfully taken? We're not as tabbies are; Smith, take a fresh cigar; Jones, the tobacco jar; Here'a to thee, Bacon! But alas, your inveterate faddist, especially when he assumes the guise of a would-be reformer, has rarely any sense of humour. The anti-tobacco movement is bound to grow, but we console ourselves with the thought that the big trial of strength is not likely to come in our time.