THE PROHIBITION CAUSE

NZ Truth, Issue 881, 14 October 1922, Page 3

THE PROHIBITION CAUSE

Catholic Advocates on the Platform GREAT AUDIENCE IN TOWN HALL America's Experience*

A great meeting held m the Town Hall, Wellington, on Sunday after-, noon was addressed by three Roman Catholic prohibition advocates, Mr. Charles Todd, of Dunedin, Dr. O'Brien, of Christchurch, and the Rev. Father Zurcher, of America. Mr. W. D. Hunt, who presided, briefly introduced the speakers. The hall was full to overflowing-, and the speakers had a most enthusiastic reception. Mr. Hunt stated that the Rev. Father Zurcher was born m France and had lived m America from the age of twenty- one years. He was president of the Catholic Clergy Prohibition League, U.S.A. Dr. O'Brien was a New Zealander, practising medicine m Christchurch. He was a man standing high m the profession. As a student, he had been a member of a football team, representing All England. Mr. Todd was a well-known business man. All three speakers were members of the great Roman Catholic Church.Mr. Hunt proceeded to say a few words on the relation of the churches to the prohibition movement. He thought all would agree with him that prohibition had succeeded only where and when it had had support from the churches. For many years the movement had had the whole-hearted support m this country of what he might call the newer churches and Christian organisations — such as the Salvation Army and the Methodist, Wesleyan, Baptist, and .Presbyterian Churches. Until comparatively recently, the oldest two churches — the Anglican, to which he belonged, and the Roman Catholic — had stood aloof from the movement. In recent years, however, more and more members of the Anglican Church had become supporters of the movement, and quite lately the Anglican Synod had passed a resolution to the effect that the only cure for the evils of the liquor traffic was prohibition. It could now be said that the Church was right with the.movement. At the last poll the prohibition cause had been much strengthened by the whole-hearted support it had received from Bishop Cleary, of Auckland: Since then there had been-an increasing number of adherents of the Roman Catholic faith who had come into the movement, and he was quite satisfied that the time was not far distant when the great Catholic Church would be with the cause as the Anglican Church was. It was quite natural that the churches should have given their support m the order m which they had done. The oldest institutions were always the most conservative, and when they entered a movement it was not until they had satisfied themselves completely that it was m the right direction. MR. CHARLES TODD. Mr- Todd said that m the South .Island, which he had just been touring, prohibition sentiment was growing stronger and stronger everywhere. Men -^.nd women who had never voted for prohibition had told him that on this occasion they were going to vote for it. The trade was shivering m its shoes. He and other speakers were not paid men. They were volunteers. In saying so, he had no wish to reflect m any way on those workers for prohibition who could not afford to give their time to the cause without remuneration. Father Zurcher was merely having his expenses paid. On the West Coast they had

met with most appreciative audiences. i A publican m Greymouth had offered 1 them his hospitality, and a trade secretary who tried intimidation had merely been told by the publican to "go. to hell." There ..was no ground for fearing 1 that if prohibition were carried the finances of the country would suffer. The country was passing through a difficult time and it could ill ; afford any vicious luxury such as the drink traffic. Drink had cost last year as much as £7,500,000 at wholesale rates; what it had cost m retail prices, m loss of efficiency, and m misery and-crime heaven alone knew. The money now obtained by the State from taxation of the liquor traffic would, if prohibition were carried, be spent on other things that were taxable, and the State would be no worse off. The State would receive as much as ever when the money now expended on "wet" goods went into "dry." To run r business with wages and overhead expenses amounting to £6,000,000, and make £5,000,---000 was to make a loss, and the cost of cleaning up the wreckage that resulted, from the liquor traffic was greater than the revenue from the traffic. The cost of hospitals' and charitable institutions and old-age pensions last year was £2,400,000, and he held that more than half of that amount had to be expended on account of the effects of drink. The Lord Chief Justice of England had recently stated that but for drink the country would be able to shut up nine out of ten of its gaols. Catholics need have no fear that prohibition would deprive their church of altar wine. Legislation safeguarded the right of the churches to continue the use of wine for sacramental purposes. The , leading prohibitionists m New Zealand had declared themselves m favour of preserving that right. In the Catholic Church, Mr. Todd continued, there were many sincere and conscientious men for prohibition, and many equally sincere and conscientious men against it. This proved^that the liquor question was one for free Catholic thought and action — that it was a citizens' subject, and not a church matter. One thing that prohibitionists must see to was that their names were on the rolls. A Dunedin man who had fallen out with the trade had informed him that at the test poll on© man m Auckland had voted 23 times, and voted "wet" every time. It was Important, therefore, that all prohibitionists should do their best to have the rolls cleaned up and to prevent bogus names from appearing on it. DR. O'BRIEN'S VEEWS. Dr. 'O'Brien began his speech by denying a rumour that Father Zureher was an excommunicated priest. He assured the audience that Father Zurcher celebrated Mass, and that the rumour referred to was a shameful concoction. It was humiliating, the speaker added, that the Church should be dragged m the mud by being associated, as it was m the speech of some, with the liquor traffic. The Church was a holy thing, and to say that it- was supported by the liquor traffic was a villainous lie. The Church had nothing to do with the traffic, and the traffic had nothing to do with the Church. Some years ago a gentleman m America had written to Pope Leo XIII., asking whether it was right to vote for prohibition. The reply had been that if the -writer held the opinion that prohibition was the remedy for the drink evil, it was not only his right but it was Kis duty to vote for it. Cardinal Mercier, whose utterances on the subject of the Germans had had wide acceptance during the war, spoke to-day of "the plague of alcoholism." The speaker proceeded to deal with the scientific aspect of the drink .question. Once, he said, it had been customary to bleed people on the slightest pretext. Barbers had done the bleeding. To-day, bleeding- was seldom performed, and when it was performed it was done by experts only. The day s would come when, just as bleeding had become a rare operation and one for experts to perform, the supplying of alcohol would become rare also, and would be entrusted only to experts. Alcohol would be found only on the drug shelves,, and would be dispensed only by men who knew what they were doing. He thought it would be safe to assert that no doctor to-day ordered a patient to take alcohol. Many doctors would permit patients to take it, but they would not order them to- Many people kept m their homes a drop of spirits for use m case of illness. But they had no right to administer spirits unless they knew what was wrong with the patient. To give alcohol to a fainting person without knowing the cause of the faintness was a criminal action. Doctors were prescribing alcohol less gud less even far use as a drug. Some persons asserted that alcohol was a food. The only claim that could be made tot alcohol was. that when burned m the body it gave heat and energy, as foods did, but the body rejected it as a food, and the moment it was taken into the body i^t began to be thrown out. If one took two ounces of alcohol at hour on one day there would be nothing left of it m the bo^y by the corresponding time iiext day. If one could apply the name food to a substance which could not regenerate the body,/ which could not be stored by the body, but which the body tried all the time to get rid of, one could also apply it to the anaesthetic ether. The body acted with ether m just the same way as it acted with alcohol. An apologist for the use of alcohol had very recently made the foolish v < statement that sugar was turned into alcohol m the body. The only way m which it could be turned into alcohol m the: body would be by the swallowing of yeast. It had been claimed that the great value of | alcohol was its power to stimulate the heart. The great medical authorities m Glasgow; however, had given up the idea of alcohol being a stimulantIt., was a narcotic, sedative drug. The first nerve it depressed was the nerve which regulated the speed of the heart and kept it from beating too often. The depression of that nerve set the heart racing away without control. The man who took a glass of whisky before going to bed folt that it was doing him good. One of the things.; it did was to induce sleep. That was a medicinal off ect, and the passing of prohibition would not prevent a doctor from using v alc6hol to produce the effect m a patient if it was adv:sable. But the sleep-time was that during which the heart normally ' beat more slowly and took some rest. Alcohol, by removing the control as he had explained, allowed the heart to beat too fast, so that the man who took the whisky before going to bed awoke m the morning feeling tired, and anxious . for. nine o'clock to come so that he! could get something- to cheer him up i again. Alcohol paralysed the highest facility of mah, the faculty of selfcriticism, and left him to make<,a' fool of himself — to beat the • woman he loved f best, and to bully a child whom he would never permit anyone else to strike. The disastrous effects of alco- j hoi upon heredity had been demonstrated by experiments on guinea pigs. Deformities and weaknesses had- persisted through four generations of guinea pigs descended from parents which had had their sj stems poisoned by alcohol. Alcohol must ultimately be relegated to the drug shelf. Those who studied the considered opinion of medical authorities would find that alcohol was a deluder. REV. FATHER ZURCHER. The Rev. Father Zurcher said that on coming to New Zealand he had been surprised to learn that the people were not getting the truth about American prohibition; but a mere caricature of it- There were m America thirty-two organisations having for their object the villiflcation of prohibition. In New York, m 1921, under prohibition, the infant mortality rate was 71 per thousand; m Canada, the average rate was S3 per thousand, and m Montreal it was 155; m "poor, wine- drinking France"' it was 200. It was little wonder that America was saving the lives of its babies. The

mothers were enjoying more food andclothing, and more comfort; the babies had more milk; the fathers took their earnings home instead of dissipating, them m saloons. In Buffalo, where he had lived for twenty years, there was an institution equivalent to the Magdalene Home m this country. He had been told by one of the sisters m charge that whereas formerly the institution had received! on an average as many as four and fh c drunken women every week it now received on an average only one drunken woman every three or four months. In an anti-pro-hibition pamphlet it was, stated that prohibition had made five million drug fiends m America. The people who had become drug fiends were those who were so deeply saturated with alcohol that they feared delirium tremens if they kept drinking it, and feared the same complaint equally if they suddenly gave up. their drinking. They were "holding the ; bull by the horns." They took drugs on account of \ their condition, and sometimes acquired the drug habit. No one heard of prohibitionists resorting to drugs. He would quote official statistics showing the quantities of drugs imported into tha States m 1919. and 1921 respectively. In 19J19, 12,000 ounces of cocaine were imported; m 1921, 7000 ounces. In 1919, 15,000 ounces of morphia were imported; m 1921, 3000 ounces. In 1919, 316,0001 b of morphine was imported; m 192 L 96,0001 b. In 1919, 795,0001 bof cocoa" leaves (from which morphine was extracted) were imported, and m 1921, 104,0001 b. The American Pharmacopoeia no longer included alcohol m the list of medicines. Three-quarters or fourfifths of the practising physicians no longer took out any license to prescribe alcohol medicinally. The prohibition law allowed thorn to apply for a license, but most of them were not availing themselves of the permission. Some objected that prohibition was an interference with personal liberty. Many men, however, had! argued the question out with themselves and concluded that for the sake of the hundreds and thousands of persons and families which were ruined and wrecked by the liquor traffic, they would readily make a sacrifice. Very * ■■___

often men and women made much greater sacrifices for one another. If New Zealand got rid of the alcoholic pestilence, Australia would follow suit. In his opinion it would- not be long before "all English-speaking countries had adopted prohibition. The speaker referred to the opinions of leading Roman Catholics on the liquor 'question. He explained that the meeting was not a Catholic meeting or one held under the auspices of the Catholic Church. He spoke as an American citizen m reply to slanders which had, been circulated regarding his country. He assured his audience that the right of the churches to obtain wine for sacramental purposes had been fully preserved m America. Answering a question at the conclusion of his speech, he said that he knew of only one instance m which it was alleged that a priest had trouble m obtaining wine for the sacrament. Tlie instance had been -given m a newspaper; he had written to the editor for the name of the priest, ancl to this day he had had no word m reply. (Extended report by arrangement.)